would have created for a rain-doctor in Africa! What an 'historical miracle' might have been made of it by a clever commander on the eve of a tough battle! But Science, though she knew the show was coming, is only beginning to form a conception of the part the meteors play in the endless maze of the planetary dance. We have, indeed, the fact of indisputable connection between these radiant wanderers and the meteorolites and aërolites which fall to our earth. But how did they come within our region at all? Are they made, as some think, by strange vital forces which gather together and agglomerate the floating star-dust, and so manufacture the germs and kernels of planets and suns to be? Are they shot, as others imagine, point-blank from volcanoes in the moon, with a mighty explosion, compared to which anything that Big Will can do is like the performance of a child's pop-gun? But in that case there must be something worse than the needle-gun aloft wherewith to fire at us such incessant broadsides! Or is it the case, as seems generally accepted in the absence of an equally reasonable theory, that there is a vast, a boundless caravan of these tiny starlets scouring along at inconceivable speed in the infinite desert of the sky, and that stragglers get caught in our envelope of air when we come near their path, and flash themselves into light by the intense friction of their passage through that medium? There is cosmical grandeur in this idea a baby-star, cold to the heart with the silence and frost of the empyrean suddenly heated into frenzy of fire by the coarse air of earth, till the chilly heart and the glowing skin split asunder, and the baby-star perishes in dust and glory-perishes of his teething. But, in that case, how marvellous it still is thus to come once in thirty-three years upon this firmamental nursery among the young planets! If these swarms of silver star-bees buzz along their path without a thrill of what we call life, do not their very emptiness and busy want of business remain a marvel that checks the breath? Yet these, whatever they be, are but as the dust in the streets to the globe itself—as the spray upon the ocean to its fathomless billows-compared with the glorious and unimaginable perfections even of that portion of the universe which comes within our own ken.

Whoever missed the sight must wait thirty-three years and

a quarter for the da capo of the exhibition. That will be about the finish of the century-the year of grace 1,900. Will those that see the stars shoot then know a great deal more about it all than we do? Will they laugh with pity at our poor and uninformed appreciations? Will it be a much better age than this, with no terrors of death, no contests of religion, no knaves, no fools, no Tories? The world travels fast now-a-days, in events as well as space, and it is a wonderful thing to reflect upon what has happened in it since the celestial pyrotechny was last celebrated. And speed breeds speed, and events hasten events; so that without doubt the balance of the century will witness some wonderful consummations. Well, it is posterity's concern! And posterity just now is making pothooks and eating jam on its bread and butter; taking more interest in a good sixpenny rocket than in all the stars which shot on Tuesday between Sagittarius and Hercules. Those who are older know enough to wonder and to wait, assured that the Koran is right when it asks, in the name of Allah, 'The heavens, and the earth, and all that is between them, think ye I have created them in jest?'

136. THE CANDID MAN.

One bright laughing day, I threw down my book an hour sooner than usual, and sallied out with a lightness of foot and exhilaration of spirit, to which I had long been a stranger. I had just sprung over a stile that led into one of those green shady lanes, which make us feel that the old poets who loved and lived for nature, were right in calling our island'the merry England' -when I was startled by a short quick bark on one side of the hedge. I turned sharply round; and, seated upon the sward, was a man, apparently of the pedlar profession; a great deal box was lying open before him; a few articles of linen and female dress were scattered round, and the man himself appeared earnestly occupied in examining the deeper recesses of his itinerant warehouse. A small black terrier flew towards me with no friendly growl. 'Down,' said I: 'all strangers are not foesthough the English generally think so.'

The man hastily looked up; perhaps he was struck with the quaintness of my remonstrance to his canine companion; for,

touching his hat civilly, he said: The dog, sir, is very quiet; he only means to give me the alarm by giving it to you; for dogs seem to have no despicable insight into human nature, and know well that the best of us may be taken by surprise.'

'You are a moralist,' said I, not a little astonished in my turn by such an address from such a person. 'I could not have expected to stumble upon a philosopher so easily. Have you any wares in your box likely to suit me? if so, I should like to purchase of so moralising a vendor !'

'No sir,' said the seeming pedlar, smiling, and yet at the same time hurrying his goods into his box, and carefully turning the key-'no, sir, I am only a bearer of other men's goods; my morals are all that I can call my own, and those I will sell you at your own price.'

'You are candid, my friend,' said I, 'and your frankness, alone, would be inestimable in this age of deceit, and country of hypocrisy.'

'Ah, sir!' said my new acquaintance, 'I see already that you are one of those persons who look to the dark side of things; for my part I think the present age the best that ever existed, and our country the most virtuous in Europe.'

'I congratulate you, Mr. Optimist, on your opinions,' quoth I; 'but your observation leads me to suppose that you are both an historian and a traveller: am I right?'

Why,' answered the box-bearer, 'I have dabbled a little in books, and wandered not a little among men. I am just returned from Germany, and am now going to my friends in London. I am charged with this box of goods: God send me the luck to deliver it safe!'

'Amen,' said I; 'and with that prayer and this trifle I wish you a good morning.'

'Thank you a thousand times, sir, for both,' replied the man —but do add to your favours by informing me of the right road to the town of -:

'I am going in that direction myself: if you choose to accompany me part of the way, I can insure your not missing

the rest.'

'Your honour is too good!' returned he of the box, rising, and slinging his fardel across him—'it is but seldom that a gentleman of your rank will condescend to walk three paces with one

of mine. You smile, sir; perhaps you think I should not class myself among gentlemen; and yet I have as good a right to the name as most of the set. I belong to no trade-I follow no calling: I rove where I list, and rest where I please: in short, I know no occupation but my indolence, and no law but my will. Now, sir, may I not call myself a gentleman ? ›

"Of a surety!' quoth I. 'You seem to me to hold a middle rank between a half-pay captain and the king of the gipsies.'

'You have it, sir,' rejoined my companion, with a slight laugh. He was now by my side, and, as we walked on, I had leisure more minutely to examine him. He was a middle-sized, and rather athletic man; apparently about the age of thirtyeight. He was attired in a dark blue frock-coat, which was neither shabby nor new, but ill-made, and much too large and long for its present possessor; beneath this was a faded velvet waistcoat, that had formerly, like the Persian ambassador's tunic, 'blushed with crimson, and blazed with gold;' but which might now have been advantageously exchanged in Monmouth Street for the lawful sum of two shillings and ninepence; under this was an inner vest of the cashmere shawl pattern, which seemed much too new for the rest of the dress. Though his shirt was of a very unwashed hue, I remarked, with some suspicion, that it was of a very respectable fineness; and a pin, which might be paste, or could be diamond, peeped below a tattered and dingy black kid stock, like a gipsy's eye beneath her hair.

His trousers were of a light grey, and the justice of Providence, or of the tailor, avenged itself upon them for the prodigal length bestowed upon their ill-assorted companion, the coat; for they were much too tight for the muscular limbs they concealed, and, rising far above the ankle, exhibited the whole of a thick Wellington boot, which was the very picture of Italy upon the map.

The face of the man was commonplace and ordinary; one sees a hundred such, every day, in Fleet Street, or on the 'Change; the features were small, irregular, and somewhat flat; yet, when you looked twice upon the countenance, there was something marked and singular in the expression, which fully atoned for the commonness of the features. The right eye

turned away from the left, in that watchful squint which seems constructed on the same considerate plan as those Irish guns, made for shooting round a corner; his eyebrows were large and shaggy, and greatly resembled bramble-bushes, in which his foxlike eyes had taken refuge. Round these vulpine retreats was a labyrinthean maze of those wrinkles vulgarly called crow's feet; deep, intricate, and intersected, they seemed for all the world like the web of a Chancery suit. Singular enough, the rest of the countenance was perfectly smooth and unindented; even the lines from the nostril to the corners of the mouth, usually so deeply traced in men of his age, were scarcely more apparent than in a boy of eighteen.

His smile was frank—his voice clear and hearty—his address open, and much superior to his apparent rank of life, claiming somewhat of equality, yet conceding a great deal of respect; but, notwithstanding all these certainly favourable points, there was a sly and cunning expression in his perverse and vigilant eye and all the wrinkled demesnes in its vicinity, that made me mistrust even while I liked my companion : perhaps, indeed, he was too frank, too familiar, too dégagé, to be quite natural. Your honest men soon buy reserve by experience. Rogues are communicative and open, because confidence and openness cost them nothing. To finish the description of my new acquaintance, I should observe that there was something in his countenance which struck me as not wholly unfamiliar; it was one of those which we have not, in all human probability, seen before, and yet which (perhaps from their very commonness) we imagine we have encountered a hundred times.

We walked on briskly, notwithstanding the warmth of the day; in fact, the air was so pure, the grass so green, the laughing noon-day so full of the hum, the motion, and the life of creation, that the feeling produced was rather that of freshness and invigoration than of languor and heat.

'We have a beautiful country, sir,' said my hero of the box. ‘It is like walking through a garden, after the more sterile and sullen features of the Continent. A pure mind, sir, loves the country; for my part, I am always disposed to burst out in thanksgiving to Providence when I behold its works, and, like the valleys in the Psalm, I am ready to laugh and sing.'

'An enthusiast,' said I, 'as well as a philosopher! perhaps