basking before the fire —playthings for
infancy —creatures to be asked a favour of—
until aroused by the fragrance of hot tea and
muffins. These we have ordered, principally
as a perfume.

The bill of the Swan is to be commended
as not out of proportion to its plumage; and
now, our walking shoes being dried and
baked, we must get them on somehow —for
the rosy driver with his carriage and pair
who is to take us among the fires on the
blasted heath by Bilston announces from
under a few shawls, and the collars of three or
four coats, that we must be going. Away
we go, obedient to the summons, and, having
taken leave of the lady in the Swan's bar
opposite the door, who is almost rustled out
of her glass case and blown up stairs whenever
the door opens, we are presently in
outer darkness grinding the snow.

Soon the fires begin to appear. In all this
ashy country, there is still not a cinder visible;
in all this land of smoke, not a stain upon the
universal white. A very novel and curious
sight is presented by the hundreds of great
fires blazing in the midst of the cold dead snow.
They illuminate it very little. Sometimes,
the construction of a furnace, kiln, or chimney,
admits of a tinge being thrown upon the pale
ground near it; but, generally the fire burns
in its own sullen ferocity, and the snow lies
impassive and untouched. There is a glare
in the sky, flickering now and then over the
greater furnaces, but the earth lies stiff in its
winding sheet, and the huge corpse candles
burning above it affect it no more than
colossal tapers of state move dead humanity.

Sacrificial altars, varying in size, but all
gigantic, and all made of ice and snow,
abound. Tongues of flame shoot up from them,
and pillars of fire turn and twist upon them.
Fortresses on fire, a whole town in a blaze;
Moscow newly kindled, we see fifty times;
rattling and crashing noises strike the ear,
and the wind is loud. Thus, crushing the
snow with our wheels, and sidling over
hillocks of it, and sinking into drifts of it, we
roll on softly through a forest of conflagration;
the rosy-faced driver, concerned for the honour
of his locality, much regretting that many fires
are making holiday to-night, and that we see
so few.

Come we at last to the precipitous wooden
steps by which we are to be mast-headed at a
railway station. Good night to rosy-face, the
cheeriest man we know, and up. Station very
gritty as a general characteristic. Station
very dark, the gas being frozen. Station very
cold, as any timber cabin suspended in the
air with such a wind making lunges at it,
would be. Station very dreary, being a
station. Man and boy behind money-taking
partition, checking accounts, and not able to
unravel a knot of seven and sixpence. Small
boy with a large package on his back, like
Christian with his bundle of sins, sent down
into the snow an indefinite depth and distance,
with instructions to "look sharp in delivering
that, and then cut away back here for
another." Second small boy in search of
basket for Mr. Brown, unable to believe that
it is not there, and that anybody can have
dared to disappoint Brown. Six third-class
passengers prowling about, and trying in
the dim light of one oil lamp to read with
interest the dismal time-bills and notices
about throwing stones at trains, upon the
walls. Two more, scorching themselves at
the rusty stove. Shivering porter going in
and out, bell in hand, to look for the train,
which is overdue, finally gives it up for the
present, and puts down the bell —also the
spirits of the passengers. In our own
innocence we repeatedly mistake the roaring
of the nearest furnace for the approach of the
train, run out, and return covered with
ignominy. Train in sight at last —but the other
train —which don't stop here —and it seems
to tear the trembling station limb from limb,
as it rushes through. Finally, some half-an-hour
behind its time through the tussle it
has had with the snow, comes our expected
engine, shrieking with indignation and grief.
And as we pull the clean white coverlid over
us in bed at Birmingham, we think of the
whiteness lying on the broad landscape all
around for many a frosty windy mile, and
find that it makes bed very comfortable.

        LIVES OF PLANTS.

It is unfortunate for the general diffusion
of the great truths of science, that learned
men have always amused themselves by
throwing dust in the eyes of the unlearned;
clothing the history of their investigations
in pedantic and technical language. We can
comprehend why the medical man should
wish to conceal the nature of his remedies
from the nervous patient by using a
hieroglyphic to which only the profession possess
the key: but it is quite indefensible that
interesting and elevating subjects should be
rendered unintelligible and repulsive to the
mass of readers who have not time to master
the slang of each branch of science, by the
adoption of an arbitrary vocabulary, itself
requiring special study. Although in nature,
everything is sublimely simple, the initiated
render everything complicated by overlaid
explanation, concealing their ignorance by
formidable words.

As science advances, the tangled web is
gradually unravelled. What appeared to be
confused and unconnected, is seen to blend
harmoniously in a general action regulated
by a common law. Formerly, as the botanist
looked around upon the infinitely varied
vegetation of the world, and saw plants clothing
the whole surface of the globe, in endless
wealth of differing forms; the mighty oak
and the minute duckweed, the baobab counting
six thousand years of life, and the fungus
springing up in a night; all varying in