temperature is apparently different, but really the same. Every increase of heat is found to diminish their respiration, every increase of cold to augment it. Thus it is ascertained that the smaller mammals, at a temperature of 86° to 104° Fah., consume one half the quantity they consumed at freezing-point. Various experiments on man have elicited the general fact, that under the influence of a moderately cold atmosphere the respiration is increased by one sixth more than in a moderately warm atmosphere. Pre cisely as too intense a degree of heat diminishes the respiration of the frog, by enfeebling its vital activity, does too intense a degree of cold diminish the respiration of a warm-blooded animal by enfeebling its vital activity. There are certain limits of temperature within which every increase of heat raises the respiration of the frog, because the increase raises its vital activity; and there are certain limits within which every decrease of heat raises the respiration of the man, because the decrease raises his vital activity; but if these limits be overstepped, the stimulant is changed into a debilitant.

We see this very curiously illustrated by the hybernating animals, the dormouse, marmot, bat, hedge-hog, etc. They occupy, in this respect, an intermediate position, between the cold-blooded and the warm-blooded animals; for although they are really warm-blooded animals, the ef fect of temperature on them is closely allied to that produced on the cold-blooded. No sooner is there a fall of external temperature than their respiration diminishes. Unlike the rest of warm-blooded animals, their organism seems to have little power of resisting the changes of external temperature; they can not produce heat with sufficient rapidity to counterbalance the loss they sustain from the surface of their bodies when the air is cold. Instead of acting on them as a stimulus, which would accelerate the respiratory process, cold acts on them with a depressing influence which gradually reduces their respiration almost to zero. But no sooner have they passed into this winter-sleep, and their organic activity has become almost null, than we can at pleasure reäwaken it to any degree by raising the surrounding

temperature, and as the vital activity once more begins to manifest itself, the respiration (which is only one form thereof) likewise becomes manifest.

Why do we breathe? The foregoing pages have given some answer to the question, How do we breathe? but have not hinted at the why; yet after reading about the respiratory process, a natural curiosity prompts the inquiry as to its cause. Unhappily, nothing but extremely vague answers can be given. We know that the chest expands and contracts with beautiful rhythm, and mostly, as an involuntary, automatic process. We know that our attention is not required, that no effort is needed, and indeed that no effort of ours can prevent the regular alternation of inspiration and expiration. We can by an effort accelerate or retard these motions, but we can not prevent them. The process, then, clearly depends on a stimulus given to the involuntary part of the nervous system; it is called into action by nervous stimulus, and physiologists have vainly endeavored to discover the nervous apparatus which is involved, and the rationale of its action. The pressure of carbonic acid in the air-cells, or of venous blood in the capillaries, may act as a stimulus to the pnemogastric nerve; but what is the rationale of whipping a newly-born child's back and continuation, as a means of making it draw breath? Generally, the stimulus of the cold air on the child's face suffices to make it draw breath, which it expires again in a wellknown cry, to mothers' ears most musical; but this stimulus is often insufficient, and the doctor or nurse initiates the little stranger into that experience of " external local applications" which, in later years, will also be freely used as a stimulus to virtue or learning. The fact we know; but why such "local applications" excite the respiratory activity, we do not know, for we do not know the nervous apparatus which regulates the actions of respiration. It is probable that the researches of physiologists will, ere long, clear up this point, as they have cleared up so many others; meanwhile we must content ourselves with vague answers to our question, Why do we breathe ?

ONE stream there is which crosseth every way That man can tread, a stream of bitter savor; To some more bitter, showing seeming favor: How ruled by strictest Justice who shall say? Sometimes, a Child, who chaseth butterflies Through primrose-meadows, comes upon this river,

And plungeth with a helpless cry and shiver. Anon, a Maiden with love-languid eyes, Plucking blush-roses on the hidden brink, Unwary slideth down the bush-green grasses Which clothe the banks, thorn-wounded as she

passes

To pitiless death. She and her roses sink.
A feverous Youth, all wild with throbbing
blood,

In willful pride and wanton daring, diveth
Into mid-stream; and, rising sobered, striveth,
And gains the shore beyond the bitter flood.
Again, a Mother with a sucking child

On treacherous mosses coucheth, caverned under

By creeping waters. Dashing waves asunder,
She battleth with a spirit more strong and wild
Than they, and lands the babe on further bank.
A Dreamer, folded deep in flowery vision,
Down-falleth, and awakeneth in transition
To death-embrace of weedy fetters dank.

A Crafty-man with coldly-glistening eye, Whose scrupulous velvet-feet were ever choosing The safest ground, his wariest footing losing, Sinks in the marsh, and can not live or die.

A Gray-beard, who for four-score years hath trod

On shaven lawns, athwart his pathway seeth The stream, and neither stays his steps nor fleeth,

But wearily commits his soul to God.

This stream is ever-changeful; gliding now
A sinuous thread o'er-bridged by margin-rushes,
Humming a mournful lullaby which hushes
To melancholy dreams; or, creeping slow
A shallow sluggish river, night-mare bound
By bat-winged winds through all its silent
spaces;

Or, deep and rapid, undermining bases
Of tangled banks which lapse with sullen sound.
Now narrowing, its torrent waters roar
Through stride-broad gorges, piteously hurling
Strong victims to and fro, and onward whirling
Torn limbs which vainly grasp the further
shore;

Anon, like Death, it lies in fathomless pools,
Unstirred by any breeze, and voiceless ever,

Through all its depths. No phantom-sound doth sever

The silence that with icy scepter rules:
Or, broadening far and wide, its waters sleep-
A placid sea, whose dreary levels vanish
In sombrous brooding mists, and, endless,
banish

All hope from such as float upon that deep;
For some there be who from their very birth
Hercin are launched and find a life-long dwell-
ing-

Who learn to love its frozen bosom, quelling
Their infant-loathing-who, in utter dearth
Of other nurture, drink the poisonous tide,
Quaffing with parchéd lips full many a potion
Of bitter-sweet from this lethargic ocean.
Pale are these Nereids, wan and mistful-eyed,
With patient faces dusked by twilight smiles,
Of listless form, with weary heads down-droop-
ing.

Thus drift they onwards lonely, never grouping;
And come, at times, on little floating isles
Of colorless water-lilies, (for this mere,
Else-barren, hath its pallid, shadowy flowers,)
And gazing, rain from mistful eyes sweet
showers

Of thankful tears, in unaccustomed cheer.

Full many a mortal course this stream doth end;
But such as stem its greedy waters, gaining
The thither bank, look back with no complain-
ing,

But rather hail the terrible pass a friend.
Their severed pathways lie before them still,
O'er softer swards, through greener pastures
leading,

'Neath shadier trees, by cooler fountains feeding Perennial flowers which sweeter scents distill. More glorious sunlight streams from bluer skies O'er all the breadth of these thrice-blessed dominions;

And balmier airs come borne on gentler pinions, Breathing a calmer sleep on quiet eyes.

Brother! this stream atwart our pathway lies. Perchance, where flowers and fruits are thickest growing,

Even at our feet, 'tis treacherously flowing.
Oh! let us not be taken by surprise;
But breast the hungry flood with resolute soul,
With meek submission not with vain repining,
Seeing how God's eternal Sun is shining
Full where the bitter waters murkiest roll.
J. A.

GHOSTS OF OF

MRS. CROWE'S work is not new; but as the most compendious collection of ghoststories in the language, serves better than any other as a text for what few words we have to say on the subject of the oldfashioned ghosts. The writer is a woman of genius. Her stories of Susan Hopley and Lilly Dawson are models of straightforward narration. A female De Foe could not have told them better; if, indeed, such stories can be said to be told, which seem rather like the conscientious detail of real incident. The power of producing this effect is not the result of art, any more than that undefinable tone which lies in a man's voice when he means what he says, is the result of art. It is the untraceable transfer of something in the writer to his page. It is the influence, how exerted we can not analyze, of a peculiar sort of mind and imagination. Such writers stamp their pages with the intensity of their own convictions. It is a characteristic of their minds that they will have reality or nothing. Most of us possess a certain nebulous district in our minds, inhabited by the things we are not sure of; we keep a suspense account of matters not yet determined, and many of which we are content enough to see no present hope of determining. But the De Foe school of mind has no such half beliefs. Truth to them consists not so much in accumulation of evidence as in firmness of grip. When they have got fast hold of a thing, they believe it; that is, there is with them a belief of the imagination stronger than the belief of the reason. With the sort of bull-dog tenacity which they possess, they fasten upon things new and old, false and true; and the differ

* A very sensible article, suited to correct and

cure the notions of modern Spiritualists.-ED.

The Night Side of Nature. By CATHERINE CROWE. London: J. C. Newby, 1848.

Spirit Drawings: a Personal Narrative. By W. M. WILKINSON. London: Chapman & Hall, 1858. An Angel's Message: being a Series of Angelic and Holy Communications, received by a Lady. London: John Wesley & Co., 1858.

SCHOOL.*

Pis Hari Redd

ence between these things is merged in the common vividness with which they stand before the eye of the mind. These are the people to tell ghost-stories and make you believe them: they make tangible things where names are the names for nonentity. They grasp a specter as if it were a walking-stick, and hold a disembodied spirit hard and fast by the button. The confidence which other men repose in their senses, or in their intuitions, is a bagatelle to the blind earnestness of conviction with which these minds hold to the phantasmata of their imaginations.

De Foe believed his own invented facts as much as if they were real external ones; and his imaginative fictions, from the strength of his own hold upon them, became lies to other people. This is not Mrs. Crowe's way. She invents no apparitions, and tells no history of a Cavalier; but she shows a common nature in the placid depths of conviction with which she handles her favorite subject-matter. You, she says to her reader, may believe in ghosts or not, as you please; I merely state these facts, and leave you to dispose of them as you can. For herself, she would far rather "doubt truth to be a liar." Thus she tells her stories well: she always has her eye firmly on the ghost she knows is there; and steadily pressing through to get at him, she brushes away the imperfect evidence, doubts, and hesitations, which obscure him from our more hesitating vision. The more wonderful a story is, the more ardently she welcomes it; the more incredible it is, the less is she inclined to question the foundation on which it rests; and in her own heart she believes it impossible that it should be false, provided it be but sufficiently near dence at all, it is boldly to reverse all the being impossible. If she speaks of eviUsual and natural practice of the mind. She summons us, irrespectively of the tes timony, to believe what is foreign to our experience unless we can disprove it. The majority of persons, she tells us, "forget that nobody has a right to call any belief

superstitious until he can prove that it is unfounded." form favenske Burst f

This is an alarming assertion. Has even Mrs. Crowe herself acted on it? If so, she must have gone through a vast course of inquiry, to make her competent to disbelieve in very little. We should like to know some of the results. Is Aladdin's lamp true or disproved? What is the logical demonstration that ghouls, "jinns," and afreets do not exist? Is that true about the bottle of smoke which expanded into a giant? Is it proposed to recognize or disprove the spiritual existence of the members of the Hindoo mythology, from Vishnu down to the substratum of tortoise; of "Peor and Baalim," "Isis and Orus and the dog Anubis;" the deities of Greece and Rome, of Odin, Baldur, and the tree Ygdrasil; of the Great Spirit, the premundane bear and squirrel, and all the chaos of pagan and savage superstitions? Are there just limits, and if so, what limits founded on disproof, to our belief in fates, furies, norns, nymphs, naiads, oreads, hamadryads, nereids, fairies, goblins, trolls, peris, deevs, imps, familiars, nikkers, dwarfs, mermen and maids, the Sandman, Rumpelstiltzkin, Dr. Faustus, and the dog Cerberus? Hades, we know, is much in vogue just now; but is Charon the correct thing? and how about the Elysian fields? Do Antony and Cleopatra there walk "hand in hand, and with their sprightly port make the ghosts gaze"? How would this idea of Mrs. Crowe's, if widely received, affect our education, and especially our theology? Imagine "Arguments against Fetish-worship," by the Archbishop of Canterbury; "Wooden Idols proved not Gods," by the Dean of Carlisle; and a "Discrediting of Diana of the Ephesians," in seven sermons, by Father Newman. All we can possibly say against the reäppearance of the dead, continues Mrs. Crowe, is, not that it is impossible, but that we do not believe it; and if we say this, we ought at once to be subjected to the interrogation: "Have you devoted your life to sifting all the evidence that has been adduced on the other side from the earliest periods of history and tradition ?" Unless we have done this, we are bound to believe; and even when we have done this, we shall be bold inquirers if we think ourselves entitled to say more than that the question is open. This is shifting the burden of proof with a vengeance. Fortunately for us, how

ever, we all know disbelief is not the result of elaborate inquiry of this sort; but is due to the mind being occupied by certain positive convictions, which by their simple presence exclude those matters which are inconsistent with them; and that where no such inconsistent prepossession obtains, it is instinctive with us to seek some sort of evidence for that which claims our belief, rather than to believe until we can obtain satisfactory evidence of a negative. This seems elementary; and it is not doing justice even to ghosts to claim our belief in them on principles of inquiry so directly opposed to those which are true and natural.

Any value which Mrs. Crowe's book might have as an attempt at the solution of some of the most puzzling facts of our experience, is destroyed by the indiscriminating voracity with which she devours every thing that bears the semblance of the marvelous. In a book which claims to collect facts on a subject in which the original authorities are for the most part unattainable, and the evidence peculiarly slight and precarious, we are in an especial degree dependent on the cool judgment and sagacity of the writer, on the degree in which we can rely on his caution in accepting authority, and his skill in weighing and investigating evidence. Mrs. Crowe's mind, as we have said, is remarkably ill-constituted for work of this sort. Things are true to her because she is determined they shall be so. She begs all the facts, and only asks you to scrutinize the explanation of them. She shares largely in a not uncommon delusion, that we extend the boundaries of knowledge by inventing new theories to account for unascertained facts; and she is simply blind to the idea that any story about spirits can be false. An anecdote has only to send up its card with "ghost" written on it, and it is at once admitted into the innermost penetralia of her convictions. The unquestioning way in which she receives and tells the story of the "Grecian Bride," may serve as an instance of how ready she is to think a story true, and how impossible it is for any degree of the à priori incredible to overtask the willingness of her credence.

wonderful; and yet it comes to us surprisingly "The story of the Grecian bride is still more well authenticated, inasmuch as the details were forwarded by the prefect of the city in which the thing occurred to the proconsul of his pro