man Uncle Alfred was when he began that promising profession, I know not except from hearsay; for when I first became acquainted with him, he was the head of the medical firm of Smug and Snawley, and drove a-well, a pill-box upon wheels. Snawley did all the parish business, and all the club' cases which were undertaken for 2s. 6d. a head-and Alfred Smug, F.R.C.S., confined his practice to the paying patients only. For a man to have laid by anything in such a position as Snawley occupied, and which Smug had originally filled, shewed certainly a very great talent for acquisition in my deceased uncle; and when he once began to have a balance at his banker's, it is easy to believe that it increased in geometrical progression. But he never grew proud, not he; he used to say that there were very few men in the world who could afford that luxury; but to the day of his death would hob and nob with the smallest farmer (at the latter's expense), or sit for hours by the bedside of an ailing artisan, were he only in receipt of good wages, and not a member of the Benefit Society aforesaid. No poor man ever left Uncle Alfred's house without the kindest advice and the most powerful medicines-suaviter in modo, fortiter in re-provided that he had the money to pay for them; if he had not the money, Mr Snawley would be at home in the course of the afternoon, and attend to his esteemed order.'

I really do not know a more pleasing type of the money-getter by Application than the relative I have in my mind. He never gave me a rude word (although I was far from rich myself), nor even unpalatable advice, as most uncles do, nor the least suspicion, during our lengthened connection, that he had any design of leaving his property in charity. He has even praised me when I sometimes paid a turnpike for him out of my own pocket, observing that he always liked to see a young man free with his money. His memory will long abide in the district, and if his actions do not exactly 'smell sweet and blossom in his dust,' it must be remembered that he kept a dispensary and not a market-garden. will conclude with one of his actions.

I

He was coming home one afternoon in the pill-box through a certain hamlet, when an excited woman ran out of one of the cottages, and besought him to look in and see her husband, who had a bad leg. Drops of compassion began to gather upon Uncle Alfred's eyelids as she told her pitiful story, while he remarked the respectability of her attire, and the promise of payment given by the external appearance of the cottage.

'A bad leg, has he?' observed he, having convinced himself of the solvency of the sufferer; and how did he get that?'

The poor woman, who had already entered into the most elaborate details, began again, and this time Mr Smug listened.

So you thought it was ringworm, did you? And Mrs Nettlerash recommended you to put ink to it, did she? And you thought it was not worth while to call in the doctor, eh? Ah! let me see your poor -I mean your dear husband's leg.'

Then he entered the cottage, the furniture of which came up to his expectations, and was ushered to the bedside of the patient, and examined his leg.

'It is a very providential circumstance, my good woman, that you called me in when you did. You may thank your stars that Mrs Nettlerash did not make you a widow in a very short time. Ringworm! ink! Why, good heavens, the case is a most serious one, a case surrounded by doubts and difficulties-he has got indications of Dontnoyer Tryagenyer.'

'Heaven preserve him !' exclaimed the poor woman. 'I must see him night and morning, then,' observed my uncle gravely. Let one of your lads come home with me for a bottle of lotion and some pills. Good

bye, my good man; keep up your spirits.' And Uncle Alf slowly descended the stairs, muttering portions of a Latin prescription. Still he was not so self-involved as to leave the house without giving the woman time to offer him a fee.

'I must see your husband constantly,' reiterated he, with the intention of making the delicate operation of payment less awkward to the lady.

'Well, sir, if he be so bad as that, I think you'd better give us a ticket for the club at once, so that we may draw the sick allowance.'

The club!' exclaimed Uncle Alf, holding on to the table for support-do you belong to the club?' Then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, he murmured: "Why, I never used my spectacles! Did I use my spectacles, my good woman? No, I thought not. Dear me, how extraordinary that I should have forgotten them!' He drew an enormous pair from his coat-pocket, and observed: 'I must see your husband's leg again, with these on.' After the second inspection of the limb, Uncle Alf addressed the wife as follows:

'It is a very providential circumstance that I came up to see this poor man a second time, and wearing my spectacles. I had quite mistaken the nature of his complaint at first. I should have gone away, leaving you a prey to groundless alarm. There is not the slightest cause for my giving you a certificate for the club. It is the simplest-I had almost said a healthy form of ringworm. It is altogether unnecessary that I should see your husband again. He can't do better than go on with the ink.'

Uncle Alf drove home at a quicker pace than customary that afternoon, observing to himself repeatedly, that he had never wasted half an hour in his life before, and I don't believe he ever had.

He died, as I have said, worth fifty thousand pounds, but without having experienced the least enjoyment in life beyond amassing that treasure. A great number of persons attended his funeral, but not one of them would have been present except for their curiosity to see the contents of his will, which, however, greatly disappointed them. R. I. P.

Instances

The money-makers by Genius are very much more interesting than the class to which Uncle Alf belonged. They do not sacrifice themselves at the altar of Plutus, and yet they never let slip a profitable opportunity of paying their devotions to that deity. They cannot be said to speculate, and yet they are the originators of all sorts of prosperous enterprises. They either create a demand in the public, by persuading it, for instance, that it has got diptheria, for which they sell anti-diptheric plasters; or they supply a demand which already exists, as by inventing a coat-collar to confound garrotters. I have no doubt (although I have as yet seen no prospectus from the company), that they have already started a tungstate-of-soda-washerwomen's-association to mitigate the evils of crinoline. of their ingenuity appear in the advertising columns of the Times daily, and, I am sorry to say, sometimes in the police reports. A butcher in Newgate Market lately conceived an admirable plan of making money, which, however, can never become of general utility, since only a butcher, or at least a gentleman who possesses a live ox and a slaughter-house, can put it into execution. This butcher directed an unhappy foreigner, proceeding to Paternoster Row-perhaps with the intention of selling the copyright of a work upon zoology-up a cul de sac of his own, and immediately afterwards drove an ox in after him, like a ramrod after a cartridge. Iron bars alone surrounded the whole of this arena, so that the general public were not deprived of any of the exciting spectacle. The foreign gentleman, after expecting instant death for a few hours, which must have seemed rather long ones, offered a ransom of half-a-crown; this being deemed by his captor as much as he was likely to get, was

graciously accepted, and the ox having been pulled backwards (as I suppose) by the tail, the terrified alien was suffered to make his escape. A police magistrate, to whom he subsequently applied for redress, instead of taking a humorous view of this little pecuniary transaction, fined the butcher forty shillings, but the frowns of the Secretary of State himself would not suppress my admiration for my ingenious countryman. There was no preconcerted plan, no bait, no lure of any description, as in the vulgar transactions of the share-market; but the opportunity of making money presenting itself, it was taken advantage of on the instant with what rough materials chanced to be handy.

a

For Genius, I know nothing like the above, except the exploit of a certain inhabitant of Whitechapel, now in years, but who was greatly esteemed among the medical profession in his youth, for body-snatching. Passing down Fleet Street in the full tide of summer noon, he had the good-fortune to be near a gentleman who dropped down with coup de soliel, and almost instantly expired. Most persons would have had their judgments disordered by such a distressing accident; some might have been shocked; a few might even have been moved to pity; but our astute young gentleman, upon the instant, took upon himself the filial duties of a bereaved and affectionate son. He wrung his hands with vehemence, he pulled a hair or two out of his head in affected agony, he called upon his parent to acknowledge him -which was hardly to have been expected-with his last breath; then he explained to the gathering multitude that he was not rich, and that the funeral expenses of his deceased relative thus cut off before their eyes, would fall uncommon heavy on his orphaned shoulders; having collected a handsome sum to defray the undertaker's bill, he placed the body with many tears in a hackney-coach, and sold it to the surgeons, reserving its handsome suit of clothes for his own wearing.

Uncle Alf, and the money-getters of his class, with all the will in the world for doing such a stroke of business, would have been utterly incapable of so grand a coup as this.

I know, however, no more pleasing example of the talent under consideration, than was exhibited by Mr Toby Large, a publican of the village in which I am at present residing, and it is the more to be admired since he made his gain out of what would seem to be a disadvantage. Toby labours under the personal defect or perhaps I should say excess-of weighing about three-and-twenty stone, and this makes him a little short-winded. Travel of all kinds is irksome to him, but he always goes to London at Christmas-time to see the pantomimes, and a very unwelcome sight to the money-takers he is, for he takes up the room of three at the price of one. The innkeepers are not very anxious to see him either, for his appetite at 'the ordinary' is extraordinary, so that he rarely honours the same hotel with his patronage twice. This last Christmas, he was at the Three Tuns, where the following piece of good-fortune befell him, which I give in his own words.

'After supper one night there was a lot of folks in the smoking-room, and the talk turned upon runners and such like-what you calls Predestinism, because, I suppose, most matches is "made safe" beforehand. There was two or three talking very big about Deerfoot and the Windsor Antelope, and a heap of fellows famous with their feet; and presently one turns round to me and observes that I look very much as if I wanted to make a match, for that I was just the figure for a runner. All the company larfed at this; but when I answered that it was no matter how I looked, but that I was quite ready to run Deerfoot, or any other man, for a hundred yards, if I might name my own ground, and have ten yards in advance, I thought all that heard me would have died o' larfing

thin as they were. my word, said they. "Well," said I, "I am no betting-man, but I'll wager fifty pounds."

Would I wager anything to prove

66

Done," says the fellow who had first spoken; "you shall run agen me; it is a great deal too good a thing to let Deerfoot have. Let us stake our money with the landlord, and sign articles at once."

'So I drew up the document, setting forth that the race was to come off that day-week down at Mudboro' here, in Wunman's Lane. The London chap did not even take the trouble to come down and look at the ground, he felt so sure of the money, and yet he didn't get it neither. I said I was to have ten yards start; but, bless ye, half a yard would have been quite enough in Wunman's Lane. I can scarcely get along it, broadside on, by myself, and as for passing me, why my very shadder can hardly do it. His fifty pounds was handed over without our going through the formality of a start at all; and the London chap was very good-natured about it too; all he asked was for me to give him particulars of my weight and size, and permission to use my name in any bets of a similar kind; so now parties come down pretty often, whom he has persuaded to back themselves agen me on my own ground with a little start, and goes back disappointed enough, and pays their money. Yes; though I says it as shouldn't say it, I calls it a very knowing way of turning a pound or two.'

And, for my own part, I agree with Mr Toby Large, and think him a kind of Genius, although his personal appearance, I allow, is opposed to that theory.

As a general rule, men don't make money in mines, I believe, although most people try their luck with them. I suppose there are few persons with a few hundred pounds to spare who have not, at some period or other, seen a nice opportunity for a little investment under ground. It is not a thing that you can easily get a warm' man to confess, but most of our well-to-do acquaintances have once in their lives seen a promising opening' in some mine or another, and dropped their money down it. The capacities of a mine for swallowing the precious metals are unrivalled, whatever may be its powers of producing them. Wheal Lucy Jane has a more confirmed habit of making calls' than any lady of fashion, and in the end but too often turns out the reverse of weal. Even if this be not the case, the speculation is far too risky to be undertaken by any genuine money-maker. Application is of no use whatever in such case, and even Genius commonly fails-but not always. David Digges, Esq., who inhabits the best house in Mudboro', and patronises Mr Toby Large pretty freely in the matter of Kinahan's whisky, which he prefers after dinner to what he calls your wishywashey drinks,' such as claret, owes all his wealth to a mine, or rather to the ingenuity with which he worked it. Mr Digges's hands are horny, which he is not ashamed to own comes from hard labour with the pick and spade. A very few years ago he was a common miner in Wheal Something-or-other down in Cornwall. Hopes were entertained of it by the proprietary, but it had given small indications as yet of being a Wheel of Fortune to anybody. A small vein of tin had been discovered and exhausted, and subsequent researches had not as yet hit upon a second. Every encouragement, however, was given to the workmen, who were promised a large percentage on the ore when found. The manager, who lived in the neighbouring town, had given orders that he should be communicated with whenever the vein should be struck, and all was expectancy and excavation. In the meantime, however, the L.10 shares fell down to eighteenpence, and the financial prospects of the concern were the subject of commercial ribaldry. David Digges, who, without being a money-maker in a bad

sense, was a diligent, hard-working fellow, and had laid by a few pounds, was down in the mine one morning early with two of his companions, when the longlooked-for discovery was made. A stroke of the pick-axe laid bare to their delighted eyes a seam of tin, which, for all they knew, might reach westward to the Bristol Channel, and downward to the antipodes. You may imagine how each man rested on his weapon for a moment, and looked at his fellowsLike some watcher of the skies,

When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent-upon a peak in Darien.

'One on us,' observed David Digges, ought to go and tell the manager.'

'That's true,' remarked the others, but without moving, for they knew they would lose time, and the percentage on what they excavated by so doing.

'I'll go myself,' said Digges, if nobody else will.' And his friends praised his virtuous resolution, and set him down for a fool. Both parties were wise after their fashion, David had Genius, and the others only Application. He walked away into the town, but did not go directly to the manager-not liking, perhaps, to disturb that gentleman at so early an hour. He went to the telegraph-office instead, and sent word by it to a man on whom he could depend in London to purchase all the shares in the mine that could be got under a certain very low figure. After transacting this little bit of business, he delighted the manager with the news of what had happened, and then returned to his two friends. They looked at him rather pityingly, for they had made at least a sovereign apiece during his somewhat prolonged absence. Mr David Digges, however, had made, as it subsequently turned out, L.12,500 by that morning's work. I had the pleasure of hearing the above incident from Mr Digges's own lips, for he is never so pleased as when he is talking about his own good-fortune. He leads, or rather forces the conversation on to Mines whenever he can; and a very curious instance of it occurred only yesterday at my own dinner-table. Dr Sophtly, who is as anxious to talk about his subject as Digges is about mines, was detailing to us as usual some medical experience of his own, wherein the rank of his patient and his professional skill were dwelt upon with equal unction. 'Her ladyship died yesterday, sir, in spite of all my efforts, and I may say that I left nothing untried that is sanctioned by science. I gave her gold as a last resource; she took hundreds of grains of gold, upon my sacred word of honour. It lies in her still, poor thing, for gold is absorbed and carried into the tissues.'

'Do you mean to say, doctor,' inquired Digges, excitedly, that her ladyship has gold in her now?' 'Most certainly I do,' returned Dr Sophtly. "Then let us form a company at once and work her,' exclaimed Mr David Digges with rapture: 'Come, who's for shares?'

6

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. TWELVE years ago, in an article entitled 'Time,' we speculated on the enlarged chronology required for humanity upon earth, in consequence of modern discoveries, and spoke of two hundred centuries as not too much to allow for it. The ideas of the learned upon this subject were then comparatively vague; they have since acquired some consistence, and now it seems likely that twenty thousand years will erelong be regarded as rather a moderate time to assign to the past existence of the human family. Not that the late researches of geology point definitely to any number of years; but the facts argue generally so

vast a tract of time, that two hundred centuries would appear little in comparison.

Sir Charles Lyell, who is both an accomplished geologist and a philosophical writer, has deemed the present a fit crisis to summarise the discoveries on this subject, with the view of arriving, if possible, at some conclusion, more or less approximate to the truth. He has executed his task, in our opinion, in a very creditable manner, though obviously leaving it open to much subsequent revision, as might indeed have been expected, from what we previously knew of the state of the facts.*

The remains of man are, after all, found only in the latest and most superficial formation. The long procession of animal life had gone through the Paleozoic Rocks, the Secondary or Mesozoic, and the Tertiaryfirst invertebrates, then fishes, next reptiles, with traces of birds, finally mammals-and still no appearance of the Master Animal had been presented. Over all, however, lie the beds of clay, silt, sand, and gravel, constituting the Pleistocene or Drift, and surfaced by moss and vegetable soil. This, also, is a formation of many strata-strata so varied as to shew frequent changes of condition, and thereby indicating a vast space of time. It is here that we find the natural hieroglyphics which tell us of early man. From them it appears that the present general arrangements of land and water had not, as was once assumed, been formed when the featherless biped first began to walk the surface. He was at first associated with mammals, which no longer dwell in our region of the globe. Large areas now grow totally different kinds of timber from what first saluted his eyes with the glory of leaf and flower. So that, though we cannot say he has existed for a certain number of years, we may be well assured he has lived a very long time, much longer than our fathers, in their wildest dreams, imagined.

Sir Charles, on the whole, sustains the vague but sublime chronology of Man first instituted by the Danish antiquaries-that is to say, primitive man made utensils and weapons out of the flint, stone, and bone; he next moulded articles of bronze; afterwards he attained to the use of iron. To these epochs, as is well known, the names of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age are applied. Now man, all through the three thousand years of written history, has had iron. It follows that the Bronze Age in the main was antecedent to three thousand years ago. How long it lasted, or how long before three thousand years ago the Stone Age terminated, is a question the solution of which can only be obtained approximately by antiquarian research. We find, for example, that it was once customary in Switzerland to have dwellings of wood raised upon piles within the margin of the lakes: their remains have lately been explored, and some were found to be associated with bronze, some with stone articles. In one instance, a gradual deposition of alluvium has placed the remains of the lakedwelling so far inland, that, taking modern accumulations as a measure, it must be three thousand three hundred years since the Bronze Age people lived in that lake-dwelling. In another instance, where the relics indicated the Stone period, a similar rule of measurement indicated a lapse of nearly seven thousand years. In Denmark, similar inferences are formed from certain ancient refuse-heaps found all round the coast. Here, bones of many animals are found, mingled with shells of oysters much larger ments, but none of bronze. Now, from the size of than those now living in the Baltic, and stone implethe oysters, it becomes evident that the Baltic was not formerly, as now, a brackish sea. It consequently appears that there has been a change of relative level of sea and land since the existence of the people of whom these refuse-heaps are memorials.

8vo. Murray, London. 1863.

A large department of the evidence is furnished by the numerous bone-caves found in the limestone-beds throughout England, France, and Germany. The number of such recesses, containing bones of man mingled with those of extinct animals, throughout Europe is surprisingly great. The only feasible way of accounting for them is to suppose that the bones were carried in by water-floating relics of the animated beings which inhabited the adjacent country, and indebted for their preservation to the protection of the caverns, while all similar relics scattered over the upper surface decayed under the atmospheric influences. But if such a view is to be admitted, we have it clearly placed before us, that the surface has undergone great geologic changes since the deposition took place, as no running or other waters now reach these caverns; consequently, the existence of man preceded these geologic changes.

Sir Charles examines with care, and sets forth very clearly, the stratigraphy of a number of places where traces of Man have been found in the Drift. As our readers must be generally aware, it is only about four years since English geologists first admitted that the Drift, or Superficial Formation, contained any relics of man at all. Now, they acknowledge this fact, not merely in regard to the French locality long ago insisted upon by M. Boucher des Perthes, but also in regard to sundry places in our own island. The general results are very striking. When we examine the surface-beds on the coast of Norfolk, we find that subsequently to a time when a forest grew upon the original chalk surface, giving shelter to a primitive elephant (Elephas meridionalis), to a primitive rhinoceros (R. Etruscus), and other extinct mammals, there had been a deep submergence of the land, and a glacial sea deposited a deep bed of compact clay mingled with boulders borne from great distances to the northward. After this, there were other deposits, including one in which the sand-beds are curiously contorted-supposed to have been an effect of stranded masses of ice. An emergence followed, giving occasion and time for denudations or cuttings in the above deposits; for example, the valley of the Thames was now scooped out, leaving relics of the former surface on the top of Muswell Hill and certain similar eminences in Essex. At this point, Man comes in. He occupies those valleys in company with a number of mammalian animals, all of them since changed (Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Equus fossilis, Cervus tarandus, Felis spelæa, Hyena spelæa, &c.); but a new submergence takes place, covering the ground he had occupied with fresh deposits of gravel, sand, marl-burying beneath and amongst these the only relics of humanity which perhaps were capable of preservation; namely, the rude implements of flint which primitive man fashions for fishing, the chase, and war. It is to us an impressive idea, that our early ancestors were doomed to witness and to suffer from extensive sinkings of the land into the sea. But this is not all. After the epoch just described, glacial conditions were resumed, on condition more limited than before, but greatly exceeding what we now witness and experience. Sir Charles laboriously makes this out from considerations regarding the Parallel Roads of Glenroy; but he might have made sure of it with less trouble by adverting to a Coarse Gravel, composed of the detritus of subaerial glaciers which overlies in Scotland the brick clay which corresponds with the deposits in England containing the remains of the extinct mammals last enumerated.* The partial diffusion of this stuff (for it is but partial) must have been owing to the drifting away of masses of the glaciers from the extremities of their respective valleys, as is seen to be the case on the coast of

a

Papers by David Milne Home, Robert Chambers, and Professor Fleming.

In Scotland, every

Greenland at the present day. suitable Alpine system exhibits, at its outlets into the surrounding low country, prodigious masses of gravel, superficially sorted and stratified, but composed at bottom of pure moraine matter. Every one who has examined the gravels round the places where the Spey and Findhorn and the Tay debouch from the hills, or seen the gravelly masses at Carstairs, in the valley of the Clyde, and Melrose and Lessudden, in that of the Tweed, must have some conception of what we mean. But even these comparatively recent events were followed by others marking further lapses of time, for the moraine accumulations have all been subjected to strong watery action, and in many instances exhibit those terraces which mark pauses in the subsequent emergence. An example of the latter fact, complicated curiously with a memorial of earlier events, is presented at the mouth of Glen Jorsa, in the island of Arran. The moraine produced by the ancient glacier of the valley is there thrown over the terrace of erosion, twenty-five feet above present sea-level, which is traced not only round that island, but all the neighbouring coasts. It is also superficially marked with terraces of its own to a considerable height. The terrace of erosion of the Scottish coasts consequently belongs to a system of things or events antecedent to the period of the subaerial glaciers of the same country.

The history of our species is thus, it will be perceived, put into a most interesting connection with geological events, and shewn to be of vast though undefinable extent. Rather unexpectedly, while the mammalian associates of early Man have all been changed, the marine and fresh-water testacea remain the same.

THE LOST BROTHER.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.-CONCLUSION.

Her

A

THERE are no worse managers of love-affairs than cautious men, particularly when they have to deal with characters opposite to their own. That very generalship which was to make Englebert's conquest complete, roused the jealousy of Madame Falkenstein's Italian nature, and made her set a keen but silent watch on all his proceedings. Madame had a maid named Constanza. Like her mistress, she had been born beside the lagoons, and was a true Venetian. age was the same, but she had not worn so well, perhaps because nature had not been so liberal to her, for Constanza never could have been pretty. rough and now wrinkled skin, a wide mouth, with thin lips, a pair of fierce black eyes, with a most decided squint, and a nose long and sharp as the beak of the old Roman eagle, did not form an agreeable contour; but Constanza was an Italian woman, and could therefore look out for lovers, lay snares, coquette, and, if need were, intrigue as keenly as the brightest beauty in the land. She was the daughter of madame's nurse; had been brought up with her in the family palace hard by the church of St Mark; came with her from Venice, and served her faithfully through her marriages and travels; had her entire confidence, and was believed to know the secret of the trunk, though nobody had been bold enough to tempt her fidelity by either bribe or question. To this confidante of many years, the countess imparted her suspicions. Did this mere artist dare to trifle with her? Was his allegiance growing cold? Had his eye found another star? Constanza would take notes, and observe his comings and goings.

Ill betide the power which has made mischief between maid and mistress, and ladies of every degree, since men began to be faithless! Constanza did take notes at first dutifully for the countess, but by and by it was for herself. Among his other abilities for getting through this world with credit,