have a copy, made at the time, which is a
tolerably fair reproduction of the drawing.

I visited Jonathan Martin after he was
removed to Bedlam. He remembered what had
taken place at York, and said, all that he had
ever done, or thought of doing, was as nothing
to that which he was now commissioned to do.
He talked of blood, of the field of Armageddon,
and it was clear his was to be the hand that was
"to pour out the cup of the wine of the fierceness
of the wrath of God." "Not since men
were upon the earth" had anything so dreadful
been seen or heard as the deed he was about to
accomplish. It was to bring about all the
denunciations contained in the sixteenth chapter
of Revelations. I asked him what he meant to
do. He answered, "You must wait till you
see." I reported to the authorities that he was
contemplating something terrible, and required
to be specially watched.

Shortly afterwards, Jonathan Martin died.

     INTERNATIONAL FISHERY-MEETING.

THERE are two things which inevitably follow
the railway, wherever it goes— at least in
Europe— namely, gas and fish. To the stay-at-home
Englishman, the persistent companionship
which those luxuries keep up with the iron
track is less striking than it is to the continental
traveller, especially in the case of the
first of the two. Coal, with us, is so widely
dispersed and of such comparatively easy
transport, that there are few even small country
towns in England which are not illuminated
by its brilliant flame. On the Continent, when
you branch off from the railway by Diligence,
you mostly exchange the light of gas for the
darkness visible of oil.

The same is true with regard to fish. At least,
after the commencement of the coaching period,
during which, although fish might be scarce in
the Midland Counties and of uncertain quality
in summer, still it was a possibility. People
knew what cod and skate and soles were, and
enjoyed them highly when they got them. The
supply now is regular, good, and abundant;
but the great change effected in England has
been rather a question of price than of fish or
no fish. The produce of our seas has been
dispersed over a larger area, and prices have been
equalised throughout that area. Dwellers along
the seaboard suffer most from a scarcity of fish.
Some of my readers may remember, like myself,
the time when, along certain parts of the coast,
four fine fresh mackerel were occasionally to be
had for a penny. Those seasons of local plenty
are gone, never to return, until the exhaustion
of our coal-fields. Still it does seem hard for
the inhabitant of a fishing-town, who wants a
turbot, to be obliged to order it back from
London.

On the Continent, the difficulty of getting
sea-fish used to be something like proportional
to the square of the distance. If oysters, when
they reached our George the First, still resident
in Hanover, were already so "high" that
his Majesty, after removing to London, found
our best natives insipid and flavourless— they
had to be kept several days to please the royal
palate — in what state must shell and other fish
have been when, and if, it reached the cities of
Central Europe?

At the present day, when a train can flit
from sea to sea in six-and thirty hours or less,
sea-fish stare you in the face in the most
unexpected localities. You are surprised with
delicious mussels at Tours. At Lyons you are
served with mackerel or anything else of its
class you like to call for. A few weeks ago, a
fishmonger at Berne exhibited in his shop a live
sea crawfish. It must have been an early specimen,
for such crowds gathered to stare at the
monster that he closed his shutters to avoid
further inconvenience. The consequence is, that
in the second half of our century, inland people
ate enormously more fish than they did in the
first, while dwellers near the coast still consume
a considerable quantity, though at a higher cost
than formerly. The rich still get their wants
supplied; the poor have to put up with a
scanty share. Which is a pity.

The wholesome, nay, restorative results of
varying a meat and vegetable diet with fish
need here be only hinted at. The wonders
worked by cod-liver oil, which are equally attainable
by feeding on the cod itself and its liver;
the beneficial effects of the phosphates in oysters,
rendering them an object of craving with many
invalids; the specific action of iodine on scrofulous
complaints; and the source whence iodine
is obtained— the sea— are instances in point.

Although gas, by following the rail, may
perhaps eventually run short, it is not so, and
never will be so, with sea-fish. River-fish, in
thickly peopled countries, must be carefully
guarded, tended, and overseen by fry-herds
and fish-keepers; but the fecundity of Ocean
knows no limits. We may take and eat all
we can take, without fear or scruple. We
need not abstain, through economical motives.
It is not man who will depopulate the seas. A
full-grown cod, or an adult seal, has consumed
more fish than the most fish-dinner-loving of his
eaters or his flayers. The grand alimentary
problem now before Western Europe is, how
to catch, cure, and distribute more, more, and
still more, sea-fish.

We (the nations of North-West Europe) are
most happily situated for the purpose. The
United Kingdom has the two Channels (the
English and St. George's), the German Ocean,
and the Atlantic, for her fish-ponds. France
has her three seas, the Channel, the Ocean, and
the Mediterranean. The North Sea lies open
to Norway and Holland; while Prussia,
Denmark, and Sweden skirt the Baltic— a sea
enjoying the double advantage of being both cool
and only moderately salt.

Waters too salt are adverse to the fattening
and thriftiness of fish, probably also to their
increase— witness the pitting of oysters and
mussels, the ascent of rivers by fish to