she was loth to leave her father alone. She
needed the relief of solitude after a day
of busy thinking, and busier repenting.

But she seemed much as usual the next
day; the lingering gravity and sadness, and
the occasional absence of mind, were not
unnatural symptoms in the early days of
grief. And almost in proportion to her re-establishment
in health, was her father's
relapse into his abstracted musing upon
the wife he had lost, and the past era in
his life that was closed to him for ever.

CHIP.

CRIMINAL LUNATICS.

In reference to a recent Chip, entitled
Her Majesty's Pleasure, a correspondent
mentions that during the last six or eight
months two cases have come under his notice
in which criminal lunatics, who had committed
very grave offences, had been acquitted
by a jury on the plea of insanity, and having
been placed in temporary custody in the
county asylum, have been set at liberty.
There was no difficulty in the matter. The
medical officer of the asylum sent his certificate
to the Home Secretary, declaring
that these criminals were perfectly restored
to sanity; and "Her Majesty's pleasure on
the subject of their custody," was immediately
made known in a warrant for their
release.

"In cases where the offence committed has
been one of a very grave character," he adds,
"the certificate of the medical officer has to be
accompanied by a formal petition from the
Committee of Visiting Justices to the Home
Secretary for the liberation of the offender.
But, if I am not mistaken, in crimes of a less
serious nature, the latter formality is dispensed
with. I imagine, therefore, that if
any criminal lunatic, restored to undoubted
sanity still remain in custody, 'her Majesty's
pleasure on the subject' not having been
made known, it arises not from any defect
in the laws, but more probably from the fact
that no certificate has been presented to her
Majesty that such lunatic is now of undoubted
sanity, and is a fit person to be at
large."

A SCIENTIFIC FIGMENT.

With all its love of demonstration, Science
sometimes dreams as strange dreams as Poetry
itself. The ancient systems of Astronomy
have long ago waned into the region of myths
and visions; and Ptolemy, since he cannot
maintain his place among the discoverers of
natural laws, must be content to rank henceforth
as an unconscious fabulist. So, also,
with the astrologers, and the alchemists,
and the disciples of the divining-rod, and, it
must be added, with many of the would-be
wise men of our own day, who confuse the
boundary lines of Science and Superstition.
Investigation, in fact, has a tendency to go
to sleep at times over its work; and, while
thus somnolent, to be troubled with nightmares
of a very fantastical character.

One of the most curious of these aberrations
—though by no means the most absurd—
was the belief, entertained by the ancient
philosophers, and lasting until recent times,
that many of the lower order of animals were
produced (not only in the original formation
of all things, but systematically, so to speak,
and year after year) by the action of the sun
upon moist clay, or putrescent matter in a
state of fermentation. This notion probably
arose from the fact that heat and moisture
appear to be the two great principles of physical
life; and the old and universal tradition
of the substance of all things having
originally existed in Chaos, where it lay inert
until vivified by the Divine warmth and
energy, seemed to justify and strengthen an
opinion which was not in itself so unreasonable
as might at first appear. The ancient
Persians adored the sun as the visible Creative
Power; and the more we search into the
essential nature (physically speaking) of
things, the more we discover in earth and
moisture the passive and pliable elements,
and in heat the working and formative. It
seems probable that the first creation of all
animals (as far as concerns merely secondary
causes) was from the combination of these
elements; though whether such a phenomenon
is ever repeated, is more capable of
question. But the belief in the affirmative
was formerly so general, that we can scarcely
wonder at the many wild chimæras to which
it has given birth.

Animals, as well as the rudiments of all
other things, according to the Phoenicians,
were formed from the putrefying of the mud
and ooze left by the dark waters of Chaos
after subsiding. These rudiments, however,
remained lifeless, until the brooding heat of
the sun produced clouds, from which issued
thunder and lightning; when the slumbering
principle of vitality was awakened, and
the earth, sea, and air swarmed with throbbing,
conscious, and multiform life. This
tradition may possibly be the origin of a very
grand and lurid fable in connection with the
Bermuda Islands. Stowe records that these
lonely spots,

Placed far amidst the melancholy main,

"were of all nations said and supposed to be
enchanted, and inhabited with witches and
devills, which grow by reason of accustomed
monstrous thunder, storms, and tempests."
Here, in its turn is probably the hint out of
which arose the idea of Shakspeare's Caliban,
and the other ugly phantasms of the wonderful
drama of enchantment. A living Shakspearian
commentator, who is himself a noble
dramatist, eloquently remarks upon the
above passage from Stowe, that "this account
of the elemental growth and generation of the
hags, and imps, and devils, and abortions, is