but nothing to hinder its crystallization. Your pencils in fact are all pointed with formless diamond, though they would be H H H pencils to purpose, if it crystallized.

SIBYL. But what is crystallization?

L. A pleasant question, when one's half asleep, and it has been tea time these two hours. What thoughtless things girls are !

SIBYL. Yes, we are; but we want to know, for all that.

L. My dear, it would take a week to tell you.
SIBYL. Well, take it, and tell us.

L. But nobody knows anything about it.

SIBYL. Then tell us something that somebody

knows.

L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea. (The house rises; but of course the LECTURER wanted to be forced to lecture again, and was.)

LECTURE II.

THE PYRAMID BUILDERS.

In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been summoned by ringing of the great bell.

L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallization! I cannot conceive why, unless the little ones think that the discussion may involve some reference to sugar-candy.

(Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members of council. ISABEL frowns severely at L., and shakes her head violently.)

My dear children, if you knew it, you are yourselves, at this moment, as you sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye of a mineralogist, but a lovely group of rosy sugar-candy, arranged by atomic forces. And even admitting you to be something more, you have certainly been crystallizing without knowing it. Did not I hear a great hurrying and whispering, ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the playground; and thought you would not all be quietly seated by the time I was ready :-besides some discussion about places-something about 'it's not being fair that the little ones should always be nearest?' Well, you were then all being crystallized. When you ran in from the garden, and against one another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence; when you got seated in those orderly rows, each in her proper place, you became crystalline. That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can, whenever they get disordered: they get into order again as soon as may be.

I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, 'But we know our places; how do the atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dispute about our places; do the atoms-(and, besides, we don't like being compared to atoms at all)-never dispute about theirs? Two wise questions these, if you had a mind to put them? it was long before I asked them myself, of myself. And I will not call you atoms any more. May I call you let me see-primary molecules?' (General dissent indicated in subdued but decisive murmurs.) No! not even, in familiar Saxon, 'dust?'

(Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt; LILY gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid Please don't.')

No, children, I won't call you that; and mind, as you grow up, that you do not get into an idle and wicked habit of calling yourselves that. You are something better than dust, and have other duties to do than ever dust can do; and the bonds of affection you will enter into are better than merely getting into order.' But see to it, on the other hand, that you always behave at least as well as 'dust;' remember, it is only on compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes, that it ever gets out of order: but sometimes, with some of us, the compulsion has to be the other way-hasn't it? (Remonstratory whispers, expressive of opinion that the LECTURER is becoming too personal.) I'm not looking at anybody in particular indeed I am not. Nay, if you blush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking? We'll go back to the atoms.

'How do they know their places?' you asked, or should have asked. Yes, and they have to do much more than know them: they have to find their way to them, and that quietly and at once, without running against each other.

We may, indeed, state it briefly thus:-Suppose you have to build a castle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out of bricks of a given shape, and that these bricks are all lying in a huge heap at the bottom, in

utter confusion, upset out of carts at random. You would have to draw a great many plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had enough for this and that tower, before you began, and then you would have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in order, slowly.

But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy days, when children don't read children's books, nor believe any more in fairies, if suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright brick-red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say: Bricks, bricks, to your places!' and then you saw in an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees, and-you have been used to see bees make a honey-comb, and to think that strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!- You want to ask something, Florrie, by the look of your eyes.

FLORRIE. Are they turned into real bees, with stings?

L. No, Florrie; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw the slates flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only those slates didn't seem to know where they were going, and, besides, were going where they had no business: but my spell-bound bricks, though they have no wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their way in the air just where they should settle, into towers and roofs, each flying to his place and fastening there at the right moment, so that every other one shall fit to him in his

turn.

LILY. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals?

I

L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more than crystals; but she builds these also. dreamed that I saw her building a pyramid, the other day, as she used to do, for the Pharaohs.

ISABEL. But that was only a dream?

L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isa bel; but I won't tell it you unless you like.

ISABEL. Oh, please, please.

L. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to you; you won't believe anything.

LILY. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, when you say we ought.

L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect that evening when we had been looking at your old cave by Cumæ, and wondering why you didn't live there still: and then we wondered how old you were; and Egypt said you wouldn't tell, and nobody else could tell but she; and you laughed-I thought very gayly for a Sibyl—and said you would harness a flock of cranes for us, and we might fly over to Egypt if we liked, and see.

SIBYL. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find out after all!

L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that third pyramid of hers;* and making a new entrance into it; and a fine entrance it was! First, we had to go through an ante-room, which had both its doors blocked up with stones; and then we had three granite portcullises to pull up, one after another; and the moment we had got under them, Egypt signed to somebody above; and down they came again behind us, with a roar like thunder, only louder; then we got into a passage fit for nobody but rats, and Egpyt wouldn't go any further herself, but said we might go on if we liked; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and then to a granite trap-door—and then we thought we had gone quite far enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed at us.

EGYPT. You would not have had me take my crown off, and stoop all the way down a passage fit only for rats?

L. It was not the crown, Egypt—you know that very well. It was the flounces that would not let you go any farther. I suppose, however, you wear them as typical of the inundation of the Nile, so it is all right.

* Note i.