fact, it was clear that poor Louise Duval had been considered as an adventuress by the hotel-keeper and the medical attendant at Munich; and her death had excited so little interest, that it was strange that even so many particulars respecting it could be gleaned.

After a prolonged but fruitless stay at Munich, Graham and M. Renard repaired to Vienna; there, at least, Madame Marigny had given an address, and there she might be heard of.

evidently written by a man, and apparent- amination by the civil authorities. In ly by a lover. It expressed an impassioned regret that the writer was unavoidably prevented returning to Munich so soon as he had hoped, but trusted to see his dear bouton de rose in the course of the following week; it was only signed Achille, and gave no address. Two or three days after, a lady, also young and handsome, arrived at the hotel, and inquired for Madame Duval. She was greatly shocked at hearing of her decease. When sufficiently recovered to bear being questioned as to Madame Duval's rela- At Vienna, however, no research availed tions and position, she appeared con- to discover a trace of any such person, fused; said, after much pressing, that and in despair Graham returned to Engshe was no relation to the deceased; that land in the January of 1870, and left the she believed Madame Duval had no rela- further prosecution of his inquiries to M. tions with whom she was on friendly Renard, who, though obliged to transfer terms, at least she had never heard her himself to Paris for a time, promised that speak of any; and that her own acquaint- he would leave no stone unturned for the ance with the deceased, though cordial, discovery of Madame Marigny; and Grawas very recent. She could or would not ham trusted to that assurance when M. give any clue to the writer of the letter Renard, rejecting half of the large gratusigned Achille, and she herself quitted ity offered him, added, "Je suis FranMunich that evening, leaving the impres-çais; this with me has ceased to be an sion that Madame Duval had been one affair of money; it has become an affair of those ladies who, in adopting a course that involves my amour propre.” of life at variance with conventional regulations, are repudiated by their relations, and probably drop even their rightful

names.

Achille never appeared; but a few days after, a lawyer at Munich received a letter from another at Vienna requesting, in compliance with a client's instructions, the formal certificates of Louise Duval's death. These were sent as directed, and nothing more about the ill-fated woman was heard of. After the expiration of the time required by law, the seals were removed from the effects, which consisted of two malles and a dressing-case. But they only contained the articles appertaining to a lady's wardrobe or toilet. No letters not even another note from Achille - no clue, in short, to the family or antecedents of the deceased. What then had become of these effects, no one at the hotel could give a clear or satisfactory account. It was said by the mistress of the hotel, rather sullenly, that they had, she supposed, been sold by her predecessor, and by order of the authorities, for the benefit of the poor.

If the lady who had represented herself as Louise Duval's acquaintance had given her own name, which doubtless she did, no one recollected it. It was not entered in the books of the hotel, for she had not lodged there; nor did it appear that she had allowed time for formal ex

CHAPTER VIII.

IF Graham Vane had been before caressed and courted for himself, he was more than ever appreciated by polite society, now that he added the positive repute of wealth to that of a promising intellect. Fine ladies said that Graham Vane was a match for any girl. Eminent politicians listened to him with a more attentive respect, and invited him to selecter dinner-parties. His cousin the Duke urged him to announce his candidature for the county, and purchase back, at least, the old Stamm-schloss. But Graham obstinately refused to entertain either proposal, continued to live as economically as before in his old apartments, and bore with an astonishing meekness of resignation the unsolicited load of fashion heaped upon his shoulders. At heart he was restless and unhappy. The mission bequeathed to him by Richard King haunted his thoughts like a spectre not to be exorcised. Was his whole life to be passed in the weary sustainment of an imposture which in itself was gall and wormwood to a nature constitutionally frank and open? Was he for ever to appear a rich man and live as a poor one? Was he till his deathbed to be doomed a sordid miser whenever he refused a just claim on his supposed wealth, and to feel his ambition excluded from the objects it

earnestly coveted, and which he was forced to appear too much of an Epicurean philosopher to prize?

-

From Macmillan's Magazine. NIAGARA.*

It is one of the disadvantages of reading books about natural scenery that they fill the mind with pictures, often exaggerated, often distorted, often blurred, and, even when well drawn, injurious to the, freshness of first impressions. Such has been the fate of most of us with regard to the Falls of Niagara. There was little accuracy in the estimates of the first observers of the cataract. Startled by an exhibition of power so novel and so grand, emotion leaped beyond the control of the judgment, and gave currency to notions regarding the waterfall which have often led to disappointment.

fine writing, I daresay, but above me. I go in forLes Mystères de Paris' or Monte Christo.' But I even find Georges More torturing than all else to the Sand a bore," — then as a critic Graham man's innermost heart was the con- Vane fired up, extolled the roman he sciousness that he had not conquered, would have given his ears for Isaura could not conquer, the yearning love with never to have written; but retired from which Isaura had inspired him, and yet the contest muttering only, "How can I that against such love all his reasonings, I, Gradam Vane - how can I be such all his prejudices, more stubbornly than an idiot - how can I in every hour in the ever were combined. In the French twenty-four sigh to myself, 'What are newspapers which he had glanced over other women to me? - Ísaura, Isaura!'" while engaged in his researches in Germany nay, in German critical journals themselves - he had seen so many notices of the young author-highly eulogistic, it is true, but which to his peculiar notions were more offensive than if they had been sufficiently condemnatory of her work to discourage her from its repetition, notices which seemed to him the supreme impertinences which no man likes exhibited towards the woman to whom he would render the chivalrous homage of respect. Evidently this girl had become as much public property as if she had gone on the stage. Minute details of her personal appearance of the dimples on her cheek of the whiteness of her arms - of her peculiar way of dressing her hair-anecdotes of her from childhood (of course invented, but how could Graham know that?) of the reasons why she had adopted the A record of a voyage in 1535 by a profession of author instead of that of French mariner named Jacques Cartier, the singer of the sensation she had contains, it is said, the first printed allucreated in certain salons (to Graham, who sion to Niagara. In 1603 the first map of knew Paris so well, salons in which he the district was constructed by a Frenchwould not have liked his wife to appear) man named Champlain. In 1648 the Jes- of the compliments paid to her by uit Rageneau, in à letter to his superior grands seigneurs noted for their liaisons at Paris, mentions Niagara as "a catawith ballet-dancers, or by authors whose ract of frightful height." In the winter genius soared far beyond the flammantia of 1678 and 1679 the cataract was visited mania of a world confined by respect for by Father Hennepin, and described in a one's neighbours' land-marks,- all this, book dedicated "to the King of Great which belongs to ground of personal gos- Britain." He gives a drawing of the wasip untouched by English critics of fe- terfall, which shows that serious changes male writers-ground especially favoured have taken place since his time. He deby Continental, and, I am grieved to say, scribes it as "a great and prodigious caby American journalists, all this was to dence of water, to which the universe the sensitive Englishman much what the does not offer a parallel." The height of minute inventory of Egeria's charms the fall, according to Hennepin, was more would have been to Numa Pompilius. than 600 feet. "The waters," he says, The Nymph, hallowed to him by secret "which fall from this great precipice do devotion, was vulgarized by the noisy foam and boil in the most astonishing hands of the mob, and by the popular manner, making a noise more terrible voices, which said, "We know more about Egeria than you do." And when he returned to England, and met with old friends familiar to Parisian life, who said, "Of course you have read the Cicogna's roman. What do you think of it? Very VOL. II. 91

LIVING AGE.

* A Discourse delivered in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on Friday, 4th April, 1873.

From an interesting little book presented to me at Brooklyn by its author, Mr. Holly, some of these data are derived: Hennepin, Kalm, Bakewell, Lyell, Hall and others, I have myself consulted.

than that of thunder. When the wind | beauty as I gazed upon it. The channel blows to the south, its frightful roaring spanned by the wooden bridge was deep, may be heard for more than fifteen and the river there doubled over the edge leagues." The Baron la Hontan, who vis- of the precipice like the swell of a musited Niagara in 1687, makes the height cle, unbroken. The ledge here over800 feet. In 1721 Charlevois, in a letter hangs, the water being poured out far beto Madame de Maintenon, after referring yond the base of the precipice. A space, to the exaggerations of his predecessors, called the Cave of the Winds, is thus enthus states the result of his own observa- closed between the wall of rock and the tions: "For my part, after examining cataract. it on all sides, I am inclined to think that we cannot allow it less than 140 or 150 feet," -a remarkably close estimate. At that time, viz. a hundred and fifty years ago, it had the shape of a horse-shoe, and reasons will subsequently be given for holding that this has been always the form of the cataract from its origin to its present site.

Goat Island terminates in a sheer dry precipice, which connects the American and the Horse-shoe Falls. Midway between both is a wooden hut, the residence of the guide to the Cave of the Winds, and from the hut a winding staircase, called Biddle's Stair, descends to the base of the precipice. On the evening of my arrival I went down this stair, and wanAs regards the noise of the cataract, dered along the bottom of the cliff. One Charlevois declares the accounts of his well-known factor in the formation and predecessors, which, I may say, are re- retreat of the cataract was immediately peated to the present hour, to be alto- observed. A thick layer of limestone gether extravagant. He is perfectly formed the upper portion of the clif right. The thunders of Niagara are for- This rested upon a bed of soft shale, midable enough to those who really seek which extended round the base of the them at the base of the Horse-shoe Fall; cataract. The violent recoil of the water but on the banks of the river, and partic-against this yielding substance crumbles ularly above the fall, its silence, rather it away, undermining the ledge above, than its noise, is surprising. This arises, in part, from the lack of resonance, the surrounding country being flat, and therefore furnishing no echoing surfaces to reinforce the shock of the water. The resonance from the surrounding rocks causes the Swiss Reuss at the Devil's Bridge, when full, to thunder more loudly than the Niagara.

On Friday, the 1st of November, 1872, just before reaching the village of Niagara Falls, I caught, from the railway train, my first glimpse of the smoke of the cataract. Immediately after my arrival I went with a friend to the northern end of the American Fall. It may be that my mood at the time toned down the impression produced by the first aspect of this grand cascade; but I felt nothing like disappointment, knowing, from old experience, that time and close acquaintanceship, the gradual interweaving of mind and nature, must powerfully influence my final estimate of the scene. After dinner we crossed to Goat Island, and, turning to the right, reached the southern end of the American Fall. The river is here studded with small islands. Crossing a wooden bridge to Luna Island, and clasping a tree which grows near its edge, I looked long at the cataract, which here shoots down the precipice like an avalanche of foam. It grew in power and

which, unsupported, eventually breaks off, and produces the observed recession.

At the southern extremity of the Horse-shoe is a promontory, formed by the doubling back of the gorge excavated by the cataract, and into which it plunges. On the promontory stands a stone building, called the Terrapin Tower, the door of which had been nailed up because of the decay of the staircase within it. Through the kindness of Mr. Townsend, the superintendent of Goat Island, the door was opened for me. From this tower, at all hours of the day, and at some hours of the night, I watched and listened to the Horse-shoe Fall. The river here is evidently much deeper than the American branch; and instead of bursting into foam where it quits the ledge, it bends solidly over and falls in a continuous layer of the most vivid green. The tint is not uniform but varied, long stripes of deeper hue alternating with bands of brighter colour. Close to the ledge over which the water rolls, foam is generated, the light falling upon which and flashing back from it, is sifted in its passage to and fro, and changed from white to emerald green. Heaps of superficial foam are also formed at intervals along the ledge, and immediately drawn down in long white striæ. Lower down, the sur

* The direction of the wind with reference to the

face, shaken by the reaction from below, | wish," I added, "to see as much of the incessantly rustles into whiteness. The Fall as can be seen, and where you lead descent finally resolves itself into a I will endeavour to follow." His scrutiny rhythm, the water reaching the bottom of relaxed into a smile, and he said, “Very the Fall in periodic gushes. Nor is the well; I shall be ready for you to-morspray uniformly diffused through the air, row." but is wafted through it in successive veils of gauze-like texture. From all this it is evident that beauty is not absent from the Horse-shoe Fall, but majesty is its chief attribute. The plunge of the water is not wild, but deliberate, vast, and fascinating. From the Terrapin Tower, the adjacent arm of the Horse-shoe is seen projected against the opposite one, midway down; to the imagination, therefore, is left the picturing of the gulf into which the cataract plunges.

ity of an accident clearly before the mind, | from the blinding shock of the spray, and to decide beforehand what ought to while the line of vision to the upper ledg be done should the accident occur. Thus es remained to some extent clear. On wound up in the present instance, I en- looking upwards over the guide's shoul tered the water. Even where it was not der, I could see the water bending over more than knee-deep, its power was mani- the ledge, while the Terrapin Tower fest. As it rose around me, I sought to loomed fitfully through the intermittent split the torrent by presenting a side to spray gusts. We were right under the it; but the insecurity of the footing en- tower. A little further on, the cataract, abled it to grasp the loins, twist me fairly after its first plunge, hit a protuberance round, and bring its impetus to bear upon some way down, and flew from it in a prothe back. Further struggle was impos-digious burst of spray; through this we sible; and feeling my balance hopelessly staggered. We rounded the promontory gone, I turned, flung myself towards the on which the Terrapin Tower stands, bank I had just quitted, and was instantly and pushed, amid the wildest commotion, swept into shallower water. along the arm of the horseshoe, until the boulders failed us, and the cataract fell into the profound gorge of the Niagara river.

The oilcloth covering was a great incumbrance; it had been made for a much stouter man, and standing upright after my submersion, my legs occupied the Here my guide sheltered me again, and centres of two bags of water. My guide desired me to look up; I did so, and exhorted me to try again. Prudence was could see, as before, the green gleam of at my elbow, whispering dissuasion; but the mighty curve sweeping over the uptaking everything into account, it ap- per ledge, and the fitful plunge of the peared more immoral to retreat than to water as the spray between us and it alproceed. Instructed by the first misad- ternately gathered and disappeared. An venture, I once more entered the stream. eminent friend of mine often speaks to Had the Alpenstock been of iron, it might me of the mistake of those physicians have helped me; but as it was, the ten- who regard man's ailments as purely dency of the water to sweep it out of my chemical, to be met by chemical remedies hands rendered it worse than useless. Í, only. He contends for the psychological however, clung to it by habit. Again the element of cure. By agreeable emotions, torrent rose, and again I wavered; but he says, nervous currents are liberated by keeping the left hip well against it, I which stimulate blood, brain, and viscera remained upright, and at length grasped The influence rained from ladies' eyes the hand of my leader at the other side. enables my friend to thrive on dishes He laughed pleasantly. The first victory which would kill him if eaten alone. A was gained, and he enjoyed it. "No sanative effect of the same order I extraveller," he said, "was ever here be- perienced amid the spray and thunder fore." Soon afterwards, by trusting to of Niagara. Quickened by the emotions a piece of drift-wood which seemed firm, there aroused, the blood sped healthily I was again taken off my feet, but was through the arteries, abolishing introimmediately caught by a protruding rock. spection, clearing the heart of all bitterWe clambered over the boulders to- ness, and enabling one to think with tolwards the thickest spray, which soon be- erance, if not with tenderness, of the came so weighty as to cause us to stagger most relentless and unreasonable foe. under its shock. For the most part noth- Apart from its scientific value, and purely ing could be seen; we were in the midst as a moral agent, the play, I submit, is of bewildering tumult, lashed by the worth the candle. My companion knew water, which sounded at times like the no more of me than that I enjoyed the cracking of innumerable whips. Under- wildness; but as I bent in the shelter of neath this was the deep resonant roar of his large frame, he said, "I should like the cataract. I tried to shield my eyes to see you attempting to describe all with my hands, and look upwards; but this." He rightly thought it indescribthe defence was useless. My guide con-able. The name of this gallant fellow tinued to move on, but at a certain place was Thomas Conroy. he halted, and desired me to take shelter We returned, clambering at intervals in his lee and observe the cataract. The up and down so as to catch glimpses of spray did not come so much from the the most impressive portions of the catupper ledge as from the rebound of the aract. We passed under ledges formed shattered water when it struck the bot- by tabular masses of limestone, and Hence the eyes could be protected through some curious openings formed by

tom.