man souls, that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good and evil which gradually determines character."

Bianca was a product and a portent of her land, her Church, her day; and we must judge her always with reference to the Italy of the sixteenth century. It bequestion whether Ferdinando should kill Bianca, or Bianca kill Ferdi

came a

nando; and it would almost seem that the Cardinal was the victor in the fatal contest. As regards her death, history has no choice but to return an open verdict. Fair and yet foul, lovely and yet repellent, is the picture which we ultimately paint in our imaginations of the beautiful and winning, if tempted and wicked, Bianca Cappello.-Nineteenth Century.

DR. TAYLOR, in his fascinating book, The Sagacity and Morality of Plants, which has all the charm of a fairy tale, the marvellous fairy tale Science tells to those who will listen to the ever-strengthening music of her voice, says:

Who knows? perhaps there can be no life, animal or vegetable, unaccompanied by consciousness. The physical basis of life, Protoplasm, is the same for plants as for animals. To speak of Vegetable Psychology would cause a smile to ripple over the faces even of those who have granted the identity of the intelligence between man and the brute. But the near future may have occasion to show there can be no life absolutely without psychological action, that the latter is the result of the former. It may some day be shown that life is conditioned by psychological action, and that there is in plants the equivalent of "instinct" in animals, the power of gaining individual experience, and of transferring such experience to descendants to profit thereby, not altogether unconsciously!

And, again, speaking of modern Botany, he tells us: "It has taught us to regard plants as fellow-creatures, regulated by the same laws of life as those affecting human beings themselves!"

He has struck the right note there, and, if we wish really to understand the vegetable world, we must regard its members as fellow-creatures, as children, perhaps, and as creatures with imperfectly developed brains, and a rudimentary moral sense, much as General Booth regards the submerged tenth," of whom he writes so eloquently and with such a burning desire to aid and save; for though there are saints and martyrs, and beautiful lives, made fairer by simple humility and renunciance, by taking little and giving

much, by making their flowers the lovelier and their leaves or roots of healing more salutary, through dwelling in the shade of loftier brothers who claim the sunlight for themselves, and the choicest foods provided by earth and air, though all these blessed ones belong to the vegetable world, yet they are there, as in the human one, alas! outnumbered by the baser sort, the selfish, the greedy, the thieves, vampires, and murderers.

There are, of course, many degrees of degradation among these; some only occupy the ground to the exclusion of their weaker brothers, which, in these days of merciless competition, may be regarded as rather creditable to their sagacity than damaging to their morality. Such an one is the gout-weed, or Herb Gerard (Egopodium podagraria) which, though not a native of England, has become a naturalized citizen to such good purpose that it at once takes possession of the ground, covering it with its cool-looking pale green leaves, and twisting its snake-like roots round those of any unhappy plants growing near, until it chokes them and is left in possession; still, though it merci. lessly defends its usurped land, beyord increasing rapidly, it does not go out of its way to thieve and murder, and, according to that quaint old book, the English Physician Enlarged—

It is a low herb, seldom rising half a yard high, having sundry leaves standing on brownish green stalks by three, snipped about, and of a strong unpleasant savour. The umbles of the flowers are white and the seed blackish, the Root runneth in the ground, quickly taking up a great deal of room. Saturn rules it. Neither is it to be supposed goutwort

hath its name for nothing, but upon experience to heal the gout and sciatica as also joynt-aches, and other cold griefs. The very bearing of it about one easeth the pains of the gout, and defends him that bears it from the Disease.

It has, therefore, some redeeming qualities, though, perhaps because we suffer in these days from an aggravated variety of gout or have lost the old faith, its remedial and protective powers appear to have lost their virtue since the English Physician Enlarged our knowledge!

Another of these avaricious plants is the Burdock (Arctium lappa), which fights not only with its deeply penetrating roots, but also with its large heavy blustering leaves; it is an excellent type of the bully, and does not hesitate to starve or crush out of existence any feebler brothers who chance to stand in its way.

Then comes the Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) and its brother, the Winter Heliotrope (Tussilago fragrans), to whom much is forgiven for the touch of beauty and fragrance which lightens their sordid career, and gives hope that redemption may come to them in the future, as they even in their degraded condition, capable of producing fair color and fragrance in their flowers. Every one must have noticed the gleam of gold given to barren places, heaths, and swamps in the spring, when the Coltsfoot, as our Phy

are,

sician says

shooteth up a slender stalk, with small yellowish flowers somewhat earlier, which fall away quickly, and after they are past, come up somewhat round Leaves sometimes dented a little about the edges, much lesser, thicker, and greener than those of Butterbur, with a little down or Freeze over the green Leaf on the upper side, which may be rubbed away, and whitish or mealy under. neath. The Root is small and white, spreading much underground, so that where it taketh, it will hardly be driven away again, if any little piece be a-hiding therein. The Plant is under Venus; the fresh Leaves or Juice, or a Syrup thereof, is good for a hot, dry cough or wheezing, and Shortness of Breath.. The distilled Water hereof, simply or with Elder Flowers and nightshade, is a singular good remedy against all hot agues, to drink two Ounces at a time and apply

Clothes wet therein to the Head and stomach.

I fear our good old Physician, when he wrote this, was under the influence of that charity which "believeth all things," or else our modern scepticism has caused Venus to weaken the properties of her

herb; but its beauty in the bleak February days is indisputable, and, with finer organs, we should hear the brave, bright little blossom singing its song of hope, while the cold wiuds drift the snow across

its golden radiance, and strive in vain to bury it or dim its brightness. Yet, all the time, its roots in the darkness are starving and smothering everything weak and helpless that falls in their way; and its brother, the Winter Heliotrope, is doing the same fell deeds while outwardly filling the air with its delicious fragrance! These plants are evidently believers in the formula that the end sanctifies the "What matters, "" means. they argue,

if our flowers gladden the world, how they are produced? What matter the hidden springs, the physical motives, which give them life, if the finished works of art are fair? Art for art's sake, beauty for beauty's sake, neither for the informing soul, neither for the heightening spirit! Far better be Pagans than Philistines !" So these soulless creatures argue, in their sweet speech, which, being only expressed in color and fragrance, is so infinitely less irritating and aggressive than our human arguments on the same subjects, but also so infinitely more difficult to answer. is answered, however, by the saintly and But Samaritan members of their world. my eyes and ears to-day are exclusively occupied with the criminal and vagabond population; therefore I pass on to those essentially feminine sinners, whose martheir baleful influence, the Ivy (Hedera vellous grace and loveliness blind us to helix), and the so-called "Traveller's Joy" (Clematis vitalba).

It

Looking at the beautiful trails of the Ivy, with its exquisitely-shaped and shaded leaves, and the pale green garlands and innocent-looking white flowers, clinging to the softest down-like feathers of the Clematis, as they fling themselves, as though in the abandonment of uttermost love and dependence, over hedge and tree, who could imagine the clinging rootlets and closely-clasping stems and leaves of dril and coiling flower-branch of the other, the one, and the profusion of slender tenare slowly stifling and crushing the life. out of the stalwart organisms they cling to for support and make doubly beautiful by their presence ? Such is, however, the sad truth; and though their murderous work is slow, it is none the less sure,

and even the strength of oaks, hollies, and yews, little as their stern, stiff appearance would lead one to guess it, is sapped and weakened, until finally it is a decaying corpse to which the fair vampires cling, beautiful as ever, and, while their murdered victim is able to afford them the crutch they need, utterly unmoved by the ruin they have wrought.

It is strange to notice how accurately every shade of humanity is reflected in this vegetable world; there is apparently no action or rule of conduct, no train of thought even, as far as we can judge from the deeds done, the conduct followed, which cannot be paralleled. Have we not all known (many of us to our cost and everlasting sorrow) people who, for their beauty and genius, we have loved and trusted, and believed in, only to find the soul of a vampire may dwell behind the face of an angel, or the instincts of a murderer within the brain of a sage ?

As I turned over the leaves of the quaint old English Physician, and read of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and the other gods and goddesses (or planets, as you will) ruling these vegetable fellow-creatures of ours to their harm or salvation, just as, according to the astrologers (who, under the banner of Theosophy, seem coming forward again), our own natures and fortunes are fixed for us by the same supernatural agency, my mind seemed to lose itself in shadows and unknown regions, and I found myself transported, how or by whom I know not, into a thick and gloomy pine-forest. A dense gray mist lay over everything, enveloping the morning in the soft folds of a haunted twilight. There was nothing of the masculine tyranny, the blackness and suffocating oppression of a London fog; it was the gentle clinging, essentially feminine clasp of a country mist, pressing round you with delicate touches and faint caresses, yet none the less lowering the temperature physical and moral, setting the nerves a-jangle, and half-deadening, half intoxicating the brain, until the shrouded trees peered at you in the semblance of gigantic monks, cowled and clad in black, bearing down with resistless power and unheard footsteps to crush out the life of the daring wanderer; and the intense silence, wherein even the leaves feared to fall, or the flowers to open, made this intangible terror more real and vivid.

It

was as though God had forgotten this shrouded world, and you divined, rather than felt, a thousand hostile presences, no longer held in check by His strong hand, lurking behind the fantastic cowled forms, plucking at your garments, barring your path, surrounding you everywhere; melting away, indeed, when you turned in swift fear to meet their baleful eyes, yet closing round again with the cold persistency of fate or death, so that every moment a terrible doom seemed about to fall; yet you could gain no glimpse of the hand it came from, and no forewarning how to avoid it.

The pine wood in which I had lost myself was particularly well suited to be the lair of the beautiful but evil spirit of the mist; even in bright sunshine the tall, dark trees have ever something ghostly and mysterious about them, as though they kept watch above graves; and the dull, yellow grass growing at their feet, and the brown, rejected fir-pins scattered round, glow with a baleful glare, as of uprising fires sullenly burning, with no aspiring strength to spring up into the gladness of flame.

Occasionally a strange glimmer pierced the deep-gray atmosphere from the far-off hidden sun; but this glimmer could hardly be called light, for it revealed nothing distinctly, and rather added to the terror of the dull fires over which my feet were driven by some inner compulsion with which my will had no connection, and the spectres who impalpably barred my path and dogged my steps.

66

I struggled on, inly marvelling if this were the land of dreams or the region of darker shadows heralded by death. I had always been a seeker after something in the world that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all;" and so, perhaps, was doomed to be a seeker through eternity. . . . A strong shudder went through me as this thought drifted across my mind, and for a time I lost consciousness altogether.

When I came to myself I grew gradually aware that the scene was changing; the strange glimmer had brightened and grown clearer, the clinging gray mist did. not fade away, but became transparent, while at intervals in the distance fantastic figures robed in gleaming gold, or intense crimsons and purples stood out in vivid contrast to the surrounding shadows.

Slowly I was entering a new land; my feet appeared not so much to bear me beyond the thick wood, with its terrible haunting trees, as these threatening trees seemed fleeing away before the strengthening light; and, with a gasp of half-dismayed astonishment, I perceived that the dark forest had been but the entrance portal to an enchanted garden, in which strangeness and beauty were inextricably bound together with evil.

At my feet lay a pool of dull gray water, kissed into phantom gold by the now lightly-veiled sun; alders and hazels bent over it sighing and moaning, and when I looked to see the cause of their grief, behold! on each a cruel Tooth-wort (Lathræa_squamaria) had fixed its sharp fangs, and despite every effort of the unhappy trees, it sucked away their lifeblood, and displayed its crowded, evillooking flowers as though proud of its dastardly crime. On the surface of the water, gazing up with apparently pitiful innocence at the tortured trees, floated the shining green stars of the Aldrovanda vesiculosa, looking so fresh and sweet that I stooped to examine them more closely, and at the moment a shoal of delicatelycolored water insects paddled by; some of them, attracted by the freshness of the green stars, stepped up on to them, but, almost ere they had landed, the twin lobes, of which each leaf is composed, sprang together with a swift and noiseless motion, crushing the hapless insect to death before my eyes!

I turned away hastily, and saw close by, a perfect picture of radiant beauty and sweet looks a little plant (Drosera rotundifolia) grew near the water, with pale green heart-shaped leaves covered with crimson hairs, on which drops of dew shone as brightly as tears; a tiny lily-like flower rose from these encircling leaves, its pure whiteness sparkling softly above their deep crimson. It looked as though the spirit of the plant, too pure for its surroundings, were flying away, raised on pinions of flame fed by its saint-like tears. I watched it, marvelling, when suddenly a shower of glittering flies, sounding their small trumpets for joy of the brightening morning, flew through the air; two or three of them caught sight of the fair vision, and, forgetting everything else, alighted on the shining leaves under the shadow of the lily. Then a terrible transformation took

place the crimson hairs curved inwards like tentacles, holding the imprisoned insect with fingers of steel, while hidden glands poured forth a torrent of apparent tears, suffocating the miserable captive in a flood of assumed grief. Meanwhile the lily-like flower seemed straining wildly away from this deed of death, sickening at the action, yet having, alas! no power to hinder the stronger evil part of its being from performing it. Looking at this terrible little plant, I realized the anguish of a pure spirit linked to an animal nature; loathing it, and yet too feeble to war against and subdue it. There are Dr. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes in the vegetable world as in the human one, and the curse of double-being is laid on all life-exists through all time.

A swift movement at my side, and an anguished thrumming, turned my attention from the Drosera, and I saw two other murderous vampires pursuing their fearful trade. One of them, Venus's Fly-trap (Dionaea muscipula), somewhat resembled the Sundew in its mode of operation; it held out two welcoming hands in greeting to the passing insect from its long green leaf-stalks, and immediately an unfortunate and too friendly fly or other wanderer flew to return its deceitful advances, the hands closed upon it with a snap, crushing it to death, yet allowing the victim to peep through the slender, interlaced fingers, and watch, amid its agonized death-struggles, its happier comrades flitting about in the glad sunshine!

The Drosera and Dionæa are not only murderers but cannibals, feeding on the flesh of their victims, and waxing fairer and brighter as they absorb the life-blood of these unfortunates; but at the Dionæa's side stood one who seemed a torturer from no sense of advantage, prompted by no foul appetite, but simply impelled by a devilish love of inflicting pain and anguish calinly, in the placid morning hours. Apocynum Androsæmifolium filled her delicately tinted blossoms with sweet wine, and held them invitingly out, so that each passer-by smelled the subtle fragrance of the nectar, which was evidently as irresistible to the giddy fly as the winecup to the habitual drunkard, for with an ardent motion, and faint, deep note of intense desire, the miserable creatures rushed to their doom. But their first sip of intoxication was their last; for no sooner had they extended their small

trunks than the fairy-like filaments inside the flowers closed upon them, each holding its captive in uttermost agony, yet with iron strength, until, exhausted by pain and weariness, it expired. Then the beautiful vicious thing dropped her victim hastily, as though afraid to touch a corpse, and again prepared her fatal lure for others.

I turned away with a shudder, and kept my eyes on the ground, afraid to look round me, but even so could not escape from the fearful sights of this garden of death; for two criminals were creeping along the ground stealthily, starving and choking every healthy innocent life that came in their way. The one, Dodder (Cuscuta europaea), was beautiful with the hectic eerie beauty of an evil spirit, and there was a certain wanton grace about its movements as it seized its victim with purplish-crimson shoots, threw two or three swift wire-like coils round it, and then, striking knife-like roots into the stem of its captive, feasted on its stores of sap, and proceeded leisurely to develop the pinkish-white rosettes of flowers with which it decorates the murdered corpse of its victim. These flowers, fair and delicate looking, strung so profusely on the dead stems of thistles, oats, heaths, and others, are veritable funeral-garlands, and always denote the success of this vegetable Thug.

The other criminal carries on its murderous work chiefly underground, and woe be to the roots of any plant meeting the coarse, heartless, unbeautiful couch grass (Triticum repens). Its million feet trample down remorselessly all young up-springing lives, choke them in the cradle, as it were; while, should any prove strong enough to escape upward into the day, they are at once met and suffocated in the treacherous embrace of the stiff, yellowish, repulsive-looking arms, waiting in the light, like the cruel feet in the darkness, to offer a choice of deaths to the victims of their avaricious malice.

The cold, unmoved cruelty of this was too much for me, and I seized and tore up handfuls of the coarse hideous growth, but to no purpose; its roots clung to the ground, and would, I knew, spring up again stronger and more vicious than ever, almost before I had recovered from the painful strain of its attempted destruction! My hands were torn and bleeding, for its

blades cut like steel knives; and I left it at last with the sad certainty that no bodily punishment is of any service while the directing mind is unreached and the spirit unreclaimed.

Your Fouriers failed
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within.

I wandered on sadly and slowly after this, until in front of me rose higher and more beautiful forms, Sarracenias and Nepenthes in all the gorgeousness of their southern coloring and luxuriance. Slim delicate pitchers, pale green, embroidered with crimson, and broad bulky ones with rich purple patterns damascened round their lips, met my gaze everywhere, while one (Darlingtonea), which resembled a huge and vicious snake, with its mottled hood and depending two-lobed leaves, like a poisonous lolling tongue, seemed striking out at me, its murderous instincts having grown beyond control. There was something indescribably repulsive about this Darlingtonea; with its brethren, sinful lives had not yet been able to destroy all beauty, that visible sign of God's love and care, though surrounding it with an atmosphere of terror and distrust; but from this degraded organism all fairness had fled, leaving only grotesque forms and impure coloring.

About these pitchers fluttered hummingbirds and butterflies, looking like winged flowers or living jewels. Who can ever express in cold words the wonder and beauty of these tiny creatures, flashing in the sun like rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, so small, so exquisitely graceful, so perfect in form and coloring? They seemed to me veritable disembodied spirits, clad in all the radiance and sweetness of the good deeds done, and loving words uttered, in the flesh.

I watched these lovely little creatures flitting about like detached sunbearns, and longed for a voice they would understand, to warn them against the deceitful sweetness of the murderous pitcher-plants; but, alas though I strove to shout, to clap my hands, even to seize their almost intangible beauty, a cold resistless power held my lips silent, and bound my hands down to my side nearer and nearer the gleaming wings fluttered to the fatal lure, until at last the intoxicating_fragrance could no longer be ignored. There was something irresistible in the subtle odor,