Yet man is never at rest in his speculations as to causes; and he contrives all manner of theories to satisfy his demands for them. A favorite theory nowadays is what is called the Development theory, which proceeds on the assumption, that one gerin of being was originally planted on the earth, and that from this germ, by the wondrous power of Life, all forms of vegetable and animal life have progressively been developed. Unquestionably, all living beings are organized on one grand plan, and the higher forms of living beings, in the process of their growth, successively pass through the lower organized forms. Thus, the it was the consummation of creative power, at | secludes it from the air, and then places it under which the morning stars sang together for joy. the influence of a powerful electric current. Livis not the sun glorious because there are living ing beings are stimulated into existence, the acari eyes to be gladdened by his beams? is not the Crossii appear in numbers! Here we touch on fresh air delicious because there are living creat- the borders of a great mystery; but it is not at ures to inhale and enjoy it? are not odors fra- all more mysterious than the fact of Life itself. grant, and sounds sweet, and colors gorgeous, Philosophers know nothing about it, further than because there is the living sensation to appreciate it is. The attempt to discover its cause, inevitathem? Without Life, what were they all? What bly throws them back upon the Great First Cause. were a Creator himself, without life, intelligence, Philosophy takes refuge in religion. understanding, to know and adore Him, and to trace His finger in the works that He hath made? Boundless variety and perpetual change are exhibited in the living beings around us. Take the class of insects alone of these, not fewer than 100,000 distinct species are already known and described; and every day is adding to the catalogue. Wherever you penetrate, that life can be sustained, you find living beings to exist; in the depths of ocean, in the arid desert, or at the icy polar regions. The air teems with life. The soil which clothes the earth all round, is swarming with life, vegetable and animal. Take a drop of water, and examine it with a micro-human being is successively a monad, an a-vertescope: lo! it is swarming with living creatures. Within Life, exists other life, until it recedes before the powers of human vision. The parasitic animalcule, which preys upon or within the body of a larger animal, is itself preyed upon by parasites peculiar to itself. So minute are living animalcules, that Ehrenberg has computed that not fewer than five hundred millions can subsist in a single drop of water, and each of these monads is endowed with its appropriate organs, possesses spontaneous power of motion, and enjoys an independent vitality. In the very ocean deeps, insects, by the labor of ages, are enabled to construct islands, and lay the foundations of future continents. The coral insect is the great architect of the southern ocean. First a reef is formed; seeds are wafted to it, vegetation springs up, a verdant island exists; then man takes possession, and a colony is formed. Dig down into the earth, and from a hundred yards deep, throw up a portion of soil-cover it so that no communication can take place between that earth and the surrounding air. Soon you will observe vegetation springing up-perhaps new plants, altogether unlike any thing heretofore grown in that neighborhood. During how many thousands of years has the vitality of these eeds been preserved deep in the earth's bosom! Not less wonderful is the fact stated by Lord Lindsay, who took from the hand of an Egyptian mummy a tuber, which must have been wrapped up there more than 2000 years before. It was planted, was rained and dewed upon, the sun shone on it again, and the root grew, bursting forth and blooming into a beauteous Dahlia ! At the North Pole, where you would expect life to become extinct, the snow is sometimes found of a bright red color. Examine it by the microscope, and, lo! it is covered with mushrooms, growing on the surface of the snow as their natural abode. A philosopher distills a portion of pure water, brated animal, an osseous fish, a turtle, a bird, a ruminant, a mammal, and lastly an infant Man. Through all these types of organization, Tiedemann has shown that the brain of man passes. This theory, however, does nothing to explain the causes of life, or the strikingly diversified, and yet determinate characters of living beings; why some so far transcend others in the stages of development to which they ascend, and how it is that they stop there-how it is that animals succeed each other in right lines, the offspring inheriting the physical structure and the moral disposition of their parents, and never, by any chance, stopping short at any other stage of be ing-man, for instance, never issuing in a lion, a fish, or a polypus. We can scarcely conceive it possible that, had merely the Germ of Being been planted on the earth, and set a-going," any thing like the beautiful harmony and extra ordinary adaptation which is every where ob servable throughout the animated kingdoms of Nature, would have been secured. That there has been a grand plan of organization, on which all living beings have been formed, seems obvious enough; but to account for the diversity of being, by the theory that plants and animals have gradually advanced from lower to higher stages of being by an inherent power of self-development, is at variance with known facts, and is only an attempt to get rid of one difficulty by creating another far greater. Chemists are equally at fault, in endeavoring to unvail the mysterious processes of Life. Before its power they stand abashed. For Life controls matter, and to a great extent overrules its combinations. An organized being is not held together by ordinary chemical affinity; nor can chemistry do any thing toward compounding organized tissues. The principles which enter into the composition of the organized being are few, the chief being charcoal and water, but into what wondrous forms does Life mould these com mon elements! The chemist can tell you what these elements are, and how they are combined, when dead; but when living, they resist all his power of analysis. Rudolphi confesses that chemistry is able to investigate only the lifeless remains of organized beings. "We love," says Virey, "because we do not live forever: we purchase love at the expense of our life." To die, is as characteristic of organized beings as to live. The one condition is necessary to the other. Death is the last of life's functions. And no sooner has the mysterious principle of vitality departed, than the laws of matter assert their power over the organized frame. Universal experience teaches us," says Liebig, "that all organized beings, after death, suffer a change, in consequence of which their bodies gradually vanish from the surface of the earth. The mightiest tree, after it is cut down, disappears, with the exception, perhaps of the bark, when exposed to the action of the air for thirty or forty years. Leaves, young twigs, the straw which is added to the soil as manure, juicy fruits, &c., disappear much more quickly. In a still shorter time, animal matters lose their cohesion; they are dissipated into the air, leav ing only the mineral elements which they had derived from the soil. There are some remarkable facts connected with Animal Chemistry-if we may employ the term-which show how superior is the principle of Life to all known methods of synthesis and analysis. For example, much more carbon or charcoal is regularly voided from the respiratory organs alone, of all living beings-not to speak of its ejection in many other ways-than can be accounted for, as having in any way entered the system. They also produce and eject much more nitrogen than they inhale. The mushroom and mustard plant, though nourished by pure water containing no nitrogen, give it off abundantly; the same is the case with zoophytes attached to rocks at the bottom of the sea; and reptiles and fishes contain it in abundance, though living and growing in pure water only. Again, plants which grow on sand containing not a particle of lime, are found to contain as much of this mineral as those which grow in a calcareous soil; and the bones of animals in New South Wales, and other districts where not an atom of lime is to be found in the soil, or in the plants from which they gather their food, contain the usual proportion of lime, though it remains an entire mystery to the chemist where they can have obtained it. The same fact is observable in the egg-shells of hens, where lime is produced in quantities for which the kind of food taken is altogether inadequate to account: as well as in the enormous deposits of coral-rock, consisting of almost pure lime, without any manifest supply of that ingredient. Chemistry fails to unravel these mysterious fact's; nor can it account for the abundant production of soda, by plants growing on a soil containing not an atom of soda in any form: nor of gold in bezoards; nor of copper in some de-a muscular fibre in the heart of a man, assists to scriptions of shell-fish. These extraordinary propel the blood through his frame, was perhaps facts seem to point to this-that many, if not a constituent of the heart of one of his ancestors; most, of the elements which chemists have set and any atom of nitrogen in our brain has perdown as simple, because they have failed to re-haps been a part of the brain of an Egyptian or duce them further, are in reality compound; and of a negro. As the intellect of the men of this that what we regard as Elements, do not signify generation draws the food required for its develmatters that are undecompoundable, but which opment and cultivation from the products of the are merely undecompounded by chemical pro- intellectual activity of former times, so may the .cesses. Life, however, which is superior to hu- constituents or elements of the bodies of a former man powers of analysis, resolves and composes generation pass into, and become parts of our the ultimate atoms of things after methods of its own frames. own, but which to chemists will probably ever remain involved in mystery. The last mystery of Life is Death. Such is the economy of living beings, that the very actions which are subservient to their preservation, tend to exhaust and destroy them. Each being has its definite term of life, and on attaining its acme of perfection, it begins to decay, and at length ceases to exist. This is alike true of the insect which perishes within the hour, and of the octogenarian who falls in a ripe old age. Love provides for the perpetuation of the species. "This grand natural process of the dissolution of all compounds formed in living organizations, begins immediately after death, when the manifold causes no longer act under the influence of which they were produced. The compounds formed in the bodies of animals and of plants, undergo, in the air, and with the aid of moisture, a series of changes, the last of which are, the conversion of their carbon into carbonic acid, of their hydrogen into water, of their nitrogen into ammonia, of their sulphur into sulphuric acid. Thus their elements resume the forms in which they can again serve as food to a new generation of plants and animals. Those elements which had been derived from the atmosphere take the gaseous form and return to the air; those which the earth had yielded, return to the soil. Death, followed by the dissolution of the dead generation, is the source of life for a new one. The same atom of carbon which, as a constituent of The greatest mystery of all remains. What of the Spirit-the Soul? The vital principle which bound the frame together has been dissolved; what of the Man, the being of high aspirations, "looking before and after," and whose PERSONAL SKETCHES AND REMINIS- would serve her but I must be bridesmaid. And so it was settled. CENCES. BY MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.* RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD. She was married from her own home, about four miles from our house, and was to go to her husband's after the ceremony. I remember the MOST undoubtedly I was a spoilt child. When whole scene as if it were yesterday! How my . I recollect certain passages of my thrice hap-father took me himself to the church-yard gate, py early life, I can not have the slightest doubt where the procession was formed, and how I about the matter, although it contradicts all fore- walked next to the young couple hand-in-hand gone conclusions, all nursery and school-room with the bridegroom's man, no other than the morality, to say so. But facts are stubborn village blacksmith, a giant of six-feet-three, who things. Spoilt I was. Every body spoilt me, might have served as a model for Hercules. most of all the person whose power in that way Much trouble had he to stoop low enough to was greatest, the dear papa himself. Not con- reach down to my hand; and many were the tent with spoiling me in-doors, he spoilt me out. rustic jokes passed upon the disproportioned How well I remember his carrying me round the pair, who might fitly have represented Brobdig orchard on his shoulder, holding fast my little nag and Liliput. My tall colleague proved, three-year-old feet, while the little hands hung however, as well-natured as giants commonly on to his pig-tail, which I called my bridle (those are every where but in fairy tales, and took as were days of pig-tails), hung so fast, and tugged good care of his little partner as if she had been so heartily, that sometimes the ribbon would come a proper match for him in age and size. off between my fingers, and send his hair floating, and the powder flying down his back. That climax of mischief was the crowning joy of all. I can hear our shouts of laughter now. Nor were these my only rides. This dear papa of mine, whose gay and careless temper all the professional etiquette of the world could never tame into the staid gravity proper to a doctor of medicine, happened to be a capital horseman; and abandoning the close carriage, which, at that time, was the regulation conveyance of a physician, almost wholly to my mother, used to pay his country visits on a favorite blood-mare, whose extreme docility and gentleness tempted him, after certain short trials round our old course, the orchard, into having a pad constructed, perched upon which I might occasionally accompany him, when the weather was favorable, and the distance not too great. A groom, who had been bred up in my grandfather's family, always attended us; and I do think that both Brown Bess and George liked to have me with them almost as well as my father did. The old servant proud, as grooms always are, of a fleet and beautiful horse, was almost as proud of my horsemanship; for I, cowardly enough, Heaven knows, in after-years, was then too young and too ignorant for fearif it could have been possible to have had any sense of danger when strapped so tightly to my father's saddle, and inclosed so fondly by his strong and loving arm. Very delightful were those rides across the breezy Hampshire downs on a sunny summer morning; and grieved was I when a change of residence from a small town to a large one, and going among strange people who did not know our ways, put an end to this perfectly harmless, if somewhat unusual pleasure. But the dear papa was not my only spoiler. His example was followed, as bad examples are pretty sure to be, by the rest of the household. My maid Nancy, for instance, before we left Hampshire, married a young farmer; and nothing From "Recollections of a Literary Life, or Books, Places, and People." By Mary Russell Mitford In press by Harper and Brothers. In this order, followed by the parents on both sides, and a due number of uncles, aunts, and cousins, we entered the church, where I held the glove with all the gravity and importance proper to my office; and so contagious is emotion, and so accustomed was I to sympathize with Nancy, that when the bride cried, I could not help crying for company. But it was a love-match, and between smiles and blushes Nancy's tears soon disappeared, and so by the same contagion did mine. The happy husband helped his pretty wife into her own chaise-cart, my friend the blacksmith lifted me in after her, and we drove gayly to the large, comfortable farm-house where her future life was to be spent. It was a bright morning in May, and I still remember when we drove up to the low wall which parted the front garden from the winding village road, the mixture of affection and honest pride which lighted up the face of the owner. The square, substantial brick house, covered with a vine, the brick porch garlanded with honeysuckles and sweet-brier, the espalier apple-trees on either side the path in full flower, the double row of thrift with its dull pink bloom, the stocks and wall-flowers under the window, the huge barns full of corn, the stacks of all shapes and sizes in the rick-yard, cows and sheep and pigs and poultry told a pleasant tale of rural comfort and rural affluence. The bride was taken to survey her new dominions by her proud bridegroom, and the blacksmith finding me, I suppose, easier to carry than lead, followed close upon their steps with me in his arms. Nothing could exceed the good-nature of my country beau; he pointed out bantams and peafowls, and took me to see a tame lamb, and a tall, staggering calf, born that morning; but for all that, I do not think I should have submitted so quietly to the indignity of being carried, I, who had ridden thither on Brown Bess, and was at maid, if it had not been for the chastening inthat instant filling the ostensible place of bridesfluence of a little touch of fear. Entering the poultry-yard I had caught sight of a certain turkey-cock, who erected that circular tail of his, and swelled out his deep-red comb and gills after a fashion familiar to that truculent bird, but which up to the present hour I am far from admiring. A turkey at Christmas well roasted with bread sauce, may have his merits; but if I meet him alive in his feathers, especially when he swells them out and sticks up his tail, I commonly get out of his way even now, much more sixty years ago. So I let the blacksmith carry me. Then we went to the dairy, so fresh and cool and clean-glittering with cleanliness! overflowing with creamy riches! and there I had the greatest enjoyment of my whole day, the printing with my own hands a pat of butter, and putting it up in a little basket covered with a vine leaf, to take home for the dear mamma's tea. Then we should have gone to the kitchen, the back kitchen, the brew-house, the washhouse, and the rest of the bride's new territories, but this part of the domicil was literally too hot to hold us; the cooking of the great wedding dinner was in full activity, and the bridegroom himself was forced to retreat before his notable mother, who had come to superintend all things for the day. So back we drew to the hall, a large square brick apartment, with a beam across the ceiling, a wide yawning chimney, and wooden settles with backs to them; where many young people being assembled, and one of them producing a fiddle, it was agreed to have a country dance until dinner should be ready, the bride and bridegroom leading off, and I following with the bridegroom's man. Oh, the blunders, the confusion, the merriment of that country dance! No two people attempted the same figure; few aimed at any figure at all; each went his own way; many stumbled; some fell, and every body capered, laughed, and shouted at once. My partner prudently caught me up in his arms again, for fear of my being knocked down and danced over, which, considering some of the exploits of some of the performers, seemed by no means impossible, and would have been a worse catastrophe than an onslaught of the turkey-cock. A summons to dinner put an end to the glee. Such a dinner! The plenty of Camacho's wedding was but a type of my Nancy's. Fish from the great pond, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. boiled fowls and a gammon of bacon, a green goose and a sucking pig, plum puddings, apple pies, cheese-cakes and custards, formed a part of the bill of fare, followed by home-brewed beer and home-made wine, by syllabub, and by wedding cake. Every body ate enough for four, and there was four times more than could by any possibility be eaten. I have always thought it one of the strongest proofs of sense and kindness in my pretty maid, that she rescued me from the terrible hospitality of her mother-in-law, and gave me back unscathed into my father's hands, when, about three o'clock, he arrived to reclaim me The affluence and abundance of that gala day the great gala of a life-time-in that Hampshire farm-house, I have never seen surpassed. This was my first appearance as a bridesmaid. My next, which took place about a twelvemonth after, was of a very different description. A first cousin of my father, the daughter of his uncle and guardian, had, by the death of her mother's brother, become a wealthy heiress; and leaving her picturesque old mansion in Northumberland, Little Harle Tower, a true border keep overhanging the Warsbeck, for a journey to what the Northumbrians of that day emphatically call "the South," came after a season in London to pass some months with us. At our house she became acquainted with the brother of a Scotch duke, an Oxford student, who, passing the long vacation with his mother, had nothing better to do than to fall in love. Each had what the other wanted-the lady money, the gentleman rank and as his family were charmed with the match, and hers had neither the power nor the wish to oppose it, every thing was arranged with as little delay as lawyers, jewelers, coachmakers, and mantua-makers would permit. How the first step in the business, the inevitable and awful ceremonial of a declaration of love and a proposal of marriage, was ever brought about, has always been to me one of the most unsolvable of mysteries—an enigma without the word. Lord Charles, as fine a young man as one should see in a summer's day, tall, well-made, with handsome features, fair capacity, excellent education, and charming temper, had an infirmity which went nigh to render all these good gifts of no avail: a shyness, a bashfulness, a timidity most painful to himself, and distressing to all about him. It is not uncommon to hear a quiet, silent man of rank unjustly suspected of pride and haughtiness; but there could be no such mistake here-his shamefacedness was patent to all men. I myself, a child not five years old, one day threw him into an agony of blushing, by running up to his chair in mistake for my papa. Now I was a shy child, a very shy child, and as soon as I arrived in front of his lordship, and found that I had been misled by a resemblance of dress, by the blue coat and buff waistcoat, I first of all crept under the table, and then flew to hide my face in my mother's lap; my poor fellow-sufferer, too big for one place of refuge, too old for the other, had nothing for it but to run away, which, the door being luckily open, he happily accomplished. That a man with such a temperament, who could hardly summon courage enough to say, How d'ye do?" should ever have wrought himself up to the point of putting the great question, was wonderful enough; that he should have submitted himself to undergo the ordeal of what was called in those days a public wedding, was more wonderful still. Perhaps the very different temper of the lady may offer some solution to the last of these riddles; perhaps (I say it in all honor, for there is no shane in offering some encouragement to a | in clear muslin frocks, edged with lace, and long bushful suitor) it may assist us in expounding Persian sashes, the whole width of the silk, them both. Of a certainty, my fair cousin was pre-eminently gifted with those very qualities in which her lover was deficient. Every thing about her was prompt and bright, cheerful and self-possessed. Nearly as tall as himself, and quite as handsome, it was of the beauty that is called showy-a showy face, a showy figure, a showy complexion. We felt at a glance that those radiant, well-opened, hazel eyes, had never quailed before mortal glance, and that that clear, round cheek, red and white like a daisy, had never been guilty of a blush in its whole life. Handsome as she was, it was a figure that looked best in a riding-habit, and a face that of all head-dresses, best became a beaver hat; just a face and figure for a procession; she would not have minded a coronation: on the contrary, she would have been enchanted to have been a queen-regent; but, as a coronation was out of the question, she had no objection, taking the publicity as a part of the happiness, to a wedding as grand as the resources of a country town could make it. So a wedding procession was organized, after the fashion of Sir Charles Grandison, comprising the chief members of each family, especially of the ducal one; an infinite number of brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins and clansfolk, friends and acquaintances, all arranged in different carriages, according to their rank; ladies, gentlemen, servants, and horses, decorated with white and silver favors, in so long a line, that it extended from Coley Avenue to St. Mary's Church. The first carriage, a low phaeton, drawn by ponies led by grooms, containing three children, two of five and six years old, niece and nephew of the bridegroom, who, with myself (already a lady of experience in that line), were to officiate as bride-maidens and bridegroom's man; the last, also an open carriage, with only the bride and my dear papa, who gave her away. How well I recollect the crowd of the street, the crowd of the church-yard, the crowd of the church! There was no crying at this wedding though; no crying, and far fewer smiles. fringed with silver, while all parties, little boy and little girls, had white beaver hats and heavy ostrich plumes. We young ladies had, as matter of course, that instinctive respect for our own finery which seems an innate principle in womankind; moreover, we were very good children, quiet, orderly, and obedient. Master Martin, on the other hand, our elder by a year, had some way or other imbibed the contempt at once for fine clothes and for the authorities of the nursery, which is not uncommon among his rebellious sex so the first time it fell to his lot to hide, he ensconced himself in the very innermost recesses of the coal-hole, from which delightful retirement he was dragged, after a long search, by his own maid, who had at last awakened from the joys of gossiping and making believe to help in the housekeeper's room, to the recollection that Lady Mary might possibly inquire after her children. The state of his apparel and of her temper may be more easily imagined than described. He, duke's grandson though he were, looked like nothing better or worse than a chimney-sweeper. She stormed like a fury. But as all the storming in the world would not restore the young gentleman or his bridal suit to their pristine state of cleanliness, she took wit in her anger and put him to bed, as a measure partly of punishment, partly of concealment; the result of which was, that he, the culprit, thoroughly tired with excitement and exercise, with play and display, and well stuffed with dainties to keep him quiet, was consigned to his comfortable bed, while we, pattern little girls, had to undergo the penalty of making our appearance and our courtesies in the drawing-room, among all the fine folks of our Camacho's wedding, and to stay there, weariest of the many weary, two or three hours beyond our accustomed time. With so little justice are the rewards and punishments of this world distributed-even in the nursery! MARRIED POETS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWN ING ROBERT BROWNING. MARRIED poets Charming words are these, significant of congenial gifts, congenial labor, congenial tastes;-quick and sweet resources of mind and of heart, a long future of happiness, live in those two words. And the reality is as rare as it is charming. Married authors we have The young couple proceeded to Bath and Clifton from the church door; and the rest of the procession returned to our house to eat bridecake, drink to the health of the new-married pair, and be merry at their leisure; after which many dis-had of all ages and of all countries; from the persed, but the members of the two families and the more intimate friends remained to dinner; and in the confusion of preparing to entertain so large a party, the servants, even those belonging to the nursery, were engaged in different ways, and we children, left to our own devices, and finding nearly the whole house free to our incursions, betook ourselves to a game at hide-andseek. Now in honor of the day, and of the grand part we had filled in the grand ceremony of the morning, we small people had been arrayed in white from top to toe, Master Martin in a new suit of jean, richly braided, his sister and myself Daciers, standing stiff and stately under their learning, as if it were a load, down to the Guizots, whose story is so pretty, that it would sound like a romance to all who did not know how often romance looks pale beside reality; from the ducal pair of Newcastle, walking stately and stiff under their strawberry-leafed coronets, to William and Mary Howitt, ornaments of a sect to whom coronets are an abomination. Married authors have been plentiful as blackberries, but married poets have been rare indeed! The last instance, too, was rather a warning than an example. When Caroline Bowles changed her own loved and honored name to become the wife of the |