or heaped manure there; or ground his | his oven, or suffered him to dig a pit for corn there for a period of three years: manure, then a three years' enjoyment of in these cases he could at any time be the privilege gave him the right of hazastopped; the arrangement was not considered permanent. His neighbor might justly say, I have so far allowed you to do this; I cannot, however, permit you longer to do so. If, however, the owner of the yard had permitted the other to erect any permanent structure there, a shed for his beasts, a bricked square for

kah. The acquiescence of the owner was here taken for granted; if he had objected he could have made a declaration before witnesses that the arrangement was only temporary, and could readily have compelled the intruder to remove the constructions on his property.

placed it, the culprit came forward and ap
plauded himself for mending the work of
'some stupid fellow" who did not know where
to place medical books! A friend sent me
Miller's "Old Red Sandstone." It burst its
cover in the post-bag coming from England,
and a discussion arose as to whom it might
have been sent. At last some one suggested I
was the most likely owner of a work of that
class, and I was summoned. On arriving at
the P.O. with the sender's letter, I accosted
the P.M.G. with the remark that I believed
the book then in his hands was mine.
"It is,"
I said, "the Old Red Sandstone,' by Miller,
who wrote -I was going to add "The Tes-
timony of the Rocks," when my old friend cut
me short with "Yes, yes, I know, the jokes,
the jokes"!! Shades of old Joe! I gravely
acquiesced, and walked off with my book.

THE CLASSIC ORDER OF ARCHITECTURE. The vitality of the ordinance of column and entablature, roughly hinted by the Egyptians and perfected by the Greeks, is certainly the most remarkable fact in the history of architecture. For it must be remembered that in speaking of the life of the Greek order, or, at all events, of the Greek column, we are not even confined to what are called the classical periods of architecture, original or revived. Although in the Middle Ages the entablature disappeared, being thrown from its seat, as one may say, by the rising of the arch to supersede it, the Gothic shaft and capital is still traceable by direct descent from its Greek ancestor, and had the one not existed the other never would have been developed, or would have assumed some very different form. Yet, after this Gothic progeny of the classic column had run through its changes, and been worn out, the Greek column, so far from being now done with and forgotten, rose up again for a new race under different conditions, and has exerted a more direct sway over architecture than perhaps it ever did before. It has trav- A DEVONSHIRE TOWN.- Imagine a series elled to Australia and New Zealand, to the of little hills, or rather a mingling of little hills new and old settlements of America; in the and little valleys! Imagine a cluster of houses cities of the states of Mexico, of Brazil, in built upon this combination of hill and valley! our own colonies in Canada, and elsewhere, Imagine an intermingling of paved streets and the classic column is a familiar object; so also green lanes, of houses, delightful villas, and in the buildings erected under our rule in the fruit gardens. Imagine walking out of oldgreat cities of the Hindostan peninsula. And fashioned streets filled with old-fashioned recently we have found a constantly increasing houses, into paved ways which seemed to go number of indications that its modern journey everywhere, "up hill and down dale," between into this Indian territory is its second visit; high walls covered with wall ferns, wallthat it has been there before as an original flowers, and mosses! Imagine yourself walkfeature, not as conveyed in the borrowed archi-ing along all sorts of terraced roads at every tecture of a modern people.

Builder.

SOME years ago, when we moved into the combined South African Library and Museum buildings, several volunteers assisted in placing the books in the shelves. One morning the librarian, with an amused smile on his face, showed me a book he had found among the medical works; it was Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy"! Next day it was back again! and while we were wondering who had so

Nature.

conceivable height above the river levelhouses being above you, beneath you, around you! Imagine bricks and mortar placed at a disadvantage in a contest with sites that are so charmingly rural as to make you feel that they could never have been intended to be built upon! Imagine, finally, a queer intermingling of town and country, with ferns growing on the houses and on the garden walls, and meeting you at every corner wherever you turn! Such is Totnes; and from every part of the little town-at the top, at the bottom, and on each side-one may get away into the most delightful country.

Fern Paradise.

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450

"DEO GRATIAS."
APRIL, 1880.

AUTUMN SONG.

VOTE out, from where the heather-blush
Purples the hills of Scottish song,

The sand-heaps raised of self and wrong,
Vote out the policy of plush.

Vote in, with him who first upreared,
Over the wave of northern moss,
The banner of the Fiery Cross,

Vote home the good ship, homeward steered.

Vote in the old, vote out the new ;

Bring back the calm and steadfast days, When England's truth was England's praise, Vote out the false, vote in the true.

Vote Honor to the front once more,

The leaves around me fell sadly down,
Then I said, "Alas! the autumn is nigh!
The summer swallow has homeward flown.

Whose drooping hands have veiled her face, Perchance, thus love and longing fly,

While every weak and savage race The might of England overbore.

Far, far and swift,

With time they drift."

Gold was the color of her hair;
The color of her eyes was vair;
The sun shone on her everywhere.

O fair she was as hawthorn flowers!
It seemed the flush of the spring hours
Lay on her cheeks, and summer showers

Had bathed her in a sweet content,
A virginal faint ravishment

Of peace; for with her came a scent

Of flowers plucked with a childish hand In some forgotten fairyland,

Where all arow the sweet years stand.

And all the creatures of the wood
Crept from their leafy solitude,
And wondering around her stood.

The fawns came to her, unafraid,
And on her hand their muzzles laid:
And fluttering birds flew down and stayed.
JOHN PAYNE.

NOTES ON INFINITY.

From The Gentleman's Magazine. that which a French philosopher has called the "scientific apotheosis of man:" in this sense, that, so far as quality of knowledge is concerned (as distinct from range of knowledge), men may become as gods, knowing all things, and even in the fulness of time able to discern good from evil, distinguishing that real good which exists in what, with our present knowledge, seems like absolute evil.

But so soon as we consider the infinite, the absolute necessity, according to our conceptions, of infinity of space and time, if not of matter and of energy, we recognize not only that there is much to which our researches can never be extended, but that the knowledge which is unattainable infinitely transcends that which is attainable.

Take, for instance, the infinity of space. If we could suppose that the extremest possible range of telescopic vision fell short to some degree only of the real limits of the universe, we might not unreasonably believe that the unattainable parts were not unlike the portions over which our survey extends. But when we consider what infinity of space really means, we are compelled to admit that the portion of the universe which we have examined, or can conceivably examine, is absolutely as nothing a mere mathematical point - compared with the actual universe. This being so, it would be utterly unreasonable to suppose that what we know of the universe affords any measurable indication of the

WERE it not for the infinities by which he is surrounded, man might believe that all knowledge is within his power at least, that every kind of knowledge is, to a greater or less degree, masterable. Men have analyzed, one by one, the mysteries which surround the very great and the very little. On the one hand they have penetrated farther and farther into the star-depths, and have brought from beyond the remotest range of the telescope information not only as to the existence, but as to the very constitution of the orbs which people space. We know the actual elements which build up worlds and suns on the outskirts of our present domain in space; and that domain is widening year by year, and century by century, as telescopes of greater power are constructed and greater skill acquired in their use. On the other hand, men have not only analyzed the minutest structure of organic matter, have not only dealt with the movements of molecules and even of atoms, but they have inquired into the motions taking place in a medium more ethereal than matter as commonly understood a medium utterly beyond our powers of direct research, and whose characteristics are only indirectly inferred from the study of effects produced by its means. Such is the extreme present range of man's researches in the direction of the vast on the one hand and the minute on the other; and at first sight|structure of the rest. The part we know this range seems to include all that is or can be. For if the portions of the universe to which man cannot now penetrate, or may never be able to penetrate, resemble in the general characteristics of their structure and constitution the portions which he can examine, then, though he may examine but a part, he has in reality sampled the whole. And again, if the intimate structure of matter forming the visible universe, and the structure of that far subtler matter which forms the ether of space, represent the ultimate texture -so to speak-of the universe, then in the analysis of the minute also man has attained a similar success. We E might thus recognize the possibility of

If

being as nothing compared with the
whole, to assume that the remainder re-
sembles it, is as unreasonable as it would
be for a man who had seen but a single
thread of a piece of cloth to attempt to
infer from it the pattern of the whole.
such a man assumed that the whole piece
was of one color and made throughout of
the same kind of thread, he would be
much in the position of the man of
science who should assume that the in-
finity of space surrounding the finite por-
tion which we have examined, consists
throughout of systems of suns
multiple, and clustered
systems of planets.

single, attended by

So again of the infinity of time. We

nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion, and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles."

know of certain processes which are tak- | infinitely small, or is to the finite as nothing place in that particular portion of time ing. A million, equally with a single unit, in which our lives are set, or over which is as nothing compared with a number our reasoning powers range; inferring infinitely large; a million years, equally from the present what has happened in with a single second, is as nothing comthe remote past or will happen in the dis-pared with eternity. The whole of what tant future. We trace back our earth to modern astronomy calls the universe is, its beginning "in tracts of fluent heat," equally with the minutest atom, as nothor pass farther back to what Huxley has ing compared with infinite space. "Syscalled the "nebulous cubhood" of the tem of nature!" exclaims Carlyle justly; solar system, or even attempt to conceive" to the wisest man, wide as is his vision, how the system of multitudinous suns filling the depths of space may have been formed by processes of development. And looking forward to the future, we trace out the progress of processes arising from those earlier ones, recognizing apparently the ultimate surcease of every form of life, the life of all creatures living upon worlds, of worlds themselves, of solar systems, of systems of such systems, and of even higher orders of systems. If time were but finite, if we could conceive either a beginning or an end of absolute time, we might fairly enough suppose that processes such as these, and the subordinate processes associated with them, were the fulfilment of time. But time being infinite, of necessity we have no more reason for supposing that what we are thus cognizant of in our domain of time resembles what takes place in other portions of time, than a man who listened for a single second to a concerted piece of music would have for imagining that the notes he heard during that second were continued throughout the whole performance.

Let us consider, however, whether, after all, we must admit that space is infinite or time eternal. Remembering that space and time are forms of thought, and that the ideas of infinite space and infinite time are inconceivable, may it not be that, though we cannot escape the inconceivable by rejecting these infinities, we may nevertheless be able to substitute some other conditions less utterly oppressive than they are?

So far as time is concerned, no attempt has been made, so far as I know, in this direction. It does not seem easy to imagine how time can be regarded as other than infinite. We should have entirely to change our conception of time, for instance, before we could regard it as selfrepeating. We can readily conceive the idea of a sequence of events being continually repeated, and thus assign a cycli. cal character to occupied time. But if we thus imagined that all the events now tak ing place had occurred many times before and will occur many times again, always in the same exact sequence, the cycles thus imagined would only be new and larger measures of absolute time. Though infinitely extended in duration, according to our conceptions, they could no more be regarded as bearing a measurable ratio to time itself than the seconds or minutes into which we divide the part of time in which we live bear a measurable ratio to the duration, past, present, and future, of the visible universe.

Combining the consideration of the infinity of space with that of the infinity of time, we have no better right to consider that we understand the operation of the mighty mechanism of the universe, than one who for less than a second should be shown the least conceivable portion of a mighty machine would have thereafter to assert that he understood its entire workings. The saying of Laplace (whom, however, Swedenborg anticipated) that "what we know is little, while the unknown is immense," may truly be changed into this, that the known is nothing, the unknown infinite; for whatever is finite, I am not, indeed, prepared to admit however great, bears to the infinite a ratio | that a more successful effort has hitherto