married woman met the girl with a gushing air | face framed in hair of that true ruddy, golden of glad happiness that contrasted vividly with hue that we see in old Venetian pictures. Violet's uncertainty and constraint. For it is What color her eyes were Violet could not a truth that the secrecy which had been forced see; but they were dark, deep, soft, and exupon her and the silence of Laurence had de-pressive, and were heavily fringed. So much, veloped both these things in her. She no longer felt sure of him. How, then, could she feel sure of herself, or of any thing else in the world?

at least, was perceptible even at the distance she stood. Her mouth was winningly lovely, and as she kept on smiling, and showing a nest of little dimples in her chin and cheek, Violet exclaimed,

"Mr. Burgoyne's infatuation is quite accounted for."

It happened, unfortunately for the composure she desired to maintain about him before strangers, that Laurence Waldron's name was the first mentioned at the dinner-table that night. "I wanted my favorite, Laurence Waldron, to dine here to-day," Mrs. Taylor said. "I told him I had a lovely friend coming, but he turn-But doesn't she know how to dress? Just look ed a careless ear."

"Yes; isn't she a Venus? But I shrewdly suspect that she is a vulgar Venus. Models spring from the ranks, as a rule, you know.

at the shade of that purple velvet! She will go

"You didn't mention my name, did you?" out riding at the fashionable hour with the Violet asked, with a vexed air.

"No, I didn't. But why?"

"Because I happen to know Mr. Laurence Waldron, and I should not like to think that he 'turned a careless ear' to the tidings of my coming," Violet said, telling the truth-as people do sometimes-to cover her confusion.

"No; I mean you two to fall in love with one another, though. He's a little absorbed just now in a love affair of his brother's-" "Then they are your two delightful young men ?"

"Of course they are. Didn't I mention their names to you, either? Oh dear, how unpremeditatedly cautious I'm becoming! Ernest Burgoyne, his half-brother, looks ten times quieter and less likely to fall into a scrape than Laurence, and yet he has been the one to do it. He's married to a lovely being of inferior birth who sat to him as a model. I have screwed so much out of them by a judicious course of interrogations, which my husband characterizes as idle curiosity."

"Married, is he? Then what good can Laurence do with his parents for him?" Violet asked.

"I really can't tell you, my dear; and as Laurence's interests are not at stake, I really don't care. The woman's beauty is bewitching. I have seen her once with Laurence. He didn't introduce me, of course."

There was no more said on the subject that was the most interesting in the world to Violet until she was settled with her friends at their bijou house in the Addison Road. Then Mrs. Taylor called Violet to the window, and pointed out a picturesque abode just opposite.

two young men, and then you will see how superb she looks in her habit."

"Does Laurence always go with them?" "Yes-Mr. Waldron does. I didn't know you were intimate enough with him to call him Laurence," Mrs. Taylor said, dryly.

"It's hearing you speak of him with such familiarity led me into error, Gertrude," Violet said, calmly. But though she spoke calmly, she knew that she had betrayed the secret of her love to yet another human being.

The tale of all that took place during the next two or three weeks must be hurried over, in order to reach the dénouement before the space allotted for this story is exceeded. Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Taylor's lovely guest were attractions that both the brothers seemed to find irresistible. They would saunter in of a morning, and obtain admission to Mrs. Taylor's boudoir, where Violet and her hostess usually sat; and there they would remain, reading poetry and politics, till courtesy compelled Mrs. Taylor to invite them to luncheon. And all this time Ernest's neglected wife was never alluded to, and Violet was becoming more and more deeply attached to Laurence.

"Why doesn't Laurence Waldron speak out? He evidently adores her, and has done so for months. All that time he was away he was down in their neighborhood," Mrs. Taylor said to her husband. And he replied:

"I honestly confess that I don't care half as much about Laurence's reserve as I do about Burgoyne's want of it toward your friend. Don't you see, Gertrude, that Burgoyne is in love with her to? and he has a wife."

"No, I do not see it," Mrs. Taylor said, stoutly. Nevertheless she made up her mind to "It

"That is the Temple, Mr. Burgoyne's house, and there-quick!—at the window is Mrs. Bur-speak to her favorite, Laurence, about it. goyne herself."

Violet looked, and saw, leaning against the half-closed French window of the opposite house, a woman whose beauty was indeed bewitching; a woman who was past her first girlhood, whose age might be about five-andtwenty, perhaps, but from whose luxuriant face and form time had not taken one charm; an exquisitely beautiful woman, with a rich, fair

will stir him up a bit," she thought, "and make him jealous for Violet."

She put her plan into execution that very night, while they were waiting for Violet to come down dressed to go to the opera with the Taylors and Laurence. Ernest was to join them in their box later in the evening.

"I am glad your brother dined at the Arts to-night," Mrs. Taylor began, abruptly.

66

"Because-to be quite frank with you-he is here too much. What must that poor wife of his think of it? She is his wife, is she not ?" the matron went on, anxiously. "I have not been deceived about her marriage?"

"You have not been deceived about her being married. She is married safely enough, confound it!" he muttered.

"Why?" he asked, starting from his position when Ernest Burgoyne came to them the folby the window. lowing morning with a confession. He had a horrible task to fulfill, poor fellow, for he had come to love Violet desperately; and he had to tell her that his brother, whom she loved, had been married for more than a year to the beautiful woman who had passed as Mrs. Burgoyne. "I lent myself to the deception because my mother would have stopped his allowance if she had known the truth," he said; "but it became unbearable at last, especially after you came here, and her jealousy got roused. It culminated this morning, when I declared that I should come over here and make a clean breast of it. Laurence has taken his wife away, and means to go to Australia, where they will be unknown. Not that there is any thing against my poor sister-in-law; but Laurence's own feelings wouldn't allow him to remain in England. He was out all last night, and this morning when he came home his utter despair and his self-reproaches were horrible to listen to."

"Poor thing! what must she feel when she sees her husband so constantly with a lovely girl like Miss Grey?"

"Mrs. Taylor, you are right to blame me; but spare me to-night-let me enjoy to-night.' "Why should you take your brother's misconduct to heart so seriously?" she said, earnestly and kindly. "Violet is in no danger from Ernest, I can assure you; but he has no right to trifle with the happiness of that poor woman, who is kept under such a cloud. I begged him yesterday to introduce her to me, and his answer was that she would know no one. She must feel outraged by her husband, to come to such an unwise decision."

"Let me have to-night to think over things," he pleaded, with a strange earnestness; and then Violet came in.

That night, sitting in the back of the opera box, he scribbled a few words and gave them into Violet's hands. She fed on them in her heart all the way home; she sprang up into her room without a moment's pause, when she got home, to read them. The offer must have come at last. She fell on her knees and thanked God in a fervent prayer that he had permitted her to be so blessed. The offer had come at last! and it was couched in these words: "Violet, you know how madly I love you; trust yourself to me, and leave London with me to-night. If you will not do this, you condemn us both to bitter misery; for we shall be parted by a power I shall be powerless to oppose after to-night. I shall wait for you in a carriage at the top of the road until three o'clock; you must find means to come. Violet, my love, you will destroy me if you do not." Then he signed his initials, after declaring himself to be "her lover eternally." The girl read the letter while she was still upon her knees in the attitude into which she had fallen to thank God for the great joy he had given her. When she had finished it she groveled down and lay with her head upon the ground for some time; and while she lay there her youth fled from her, and the conviction was borne in upon her that, come what would, for her the bloom of life was gone.

It need not be said that Violet Grey did not leave her friend's roof at three o'clock. Several times, as she sat up in the dark, listening, she heard impatient footsteps pass her window, and she recognized them for Laurence's. They trampled out the last particle of her trust in him-but they did not trample out her love.

That lasted it did not even die in hate

"He did not tell you why he was out all night, did he?" Violet asked, quickly.

"No," Ernest answered; and then Violet breathed another prayer of thankfulness that the full measure of his sin was unknown to the brother who loved him so well still.

It was fully two months after these occurrences before Violet could make up her mind to allude to them in her letters home. Then she did it in the following terms to her mother:

"You know that Laurence Waldron was very dear to me. I say this to you now because I want you to understand how I suffered when I heard he was married, in order that you may spare me the further suffering of having to explain things. He is married, and he has taken his wife to Australia; and I live to write this to you-this, and something else that another man, and that man his brother, has asked me to be his wife. But what was a summer's amusement to Laurence Waldron was more to me. I shall be your old - maid daughter, mother dear; for I hope that Bessie and Marion will be more fortunate than I have been."

WAITING.

WAITING for health and strength,

Counting each flickering pulse, each passing hour,
And sighing when my weary frame at length
Sinks like a drooping flower.

Waiting for rest and peace

Rest from unraveling Life's perplexing woofPeace from the doubts that crouch like hidden foes, And glare at me aloof.

Waiting for absent eyes,

Bright as the sunrise to the lonesome sea,
Lovely as life to youth's expectant gaze,
And dear, next heaven, to me!

Thou who didst watch and pray,

Quicken the pulse, bid Doubt and Weeping flee!
Or, if these must abide, still let me say,
Bring back the loved to me!

A

LYELL AND GEOLOGY.*

STORY is related of a young man who, desiring to learn something of geology, asked at a bookstore for the best elementary work on that subject. On opening the book that was offered to him, and turning over the leaves, and finding the work illustrated throughout with engravings of plants and animals, he said:

"No, it was a text-book of geology that I wished for. This seems to be a work on natural history."

So numerous were the vegetable and animal forms that were delineated upon the pages of the volume that the work seemed to be occupied altogether with the phenomena of life, instead of being intended to illustrate the appearance and the characteristics of geological formations.

It is surprising to what an extent the study of geology has become the study of fossils. Fossils, in fact, constitute the language in which the geological records are to be read. The study of comparative anatomy has made such progress, and the advantages derived from the use of the microscope are so great, that the spe

fossil wood brought up from a great depth among the strata-formed, apparently, of ancient river deposits-which underlie the whole region on which London stands, the whole formation having received the name, on that account, of the London clay. The wood is entirely fossilized-that is (on the supposition that it once really was wood), it has been converted into stone by the gradual substitution of argillaceous and calcareous particles for the vegetable fibre of which it was composed. The specimen has the appearance of having been bored in different directions, just as wood is now bored Fig. 1.

FOSSIL AND RECENT WOOD DRILLED BY PERFORATING MOLLUSCA.

cific differences of the various Fig. 1. a. Fossil wood from London clay, bored by Teredina.

plants and animals in a fossil

b. Shell and tube of Teredina personata, the right-hand figure the ventral, the left the dorsal view.

form can be easily and very cer- Fig. 2. e. Recent wood bored by Teredo.

tainly determined; sometimes even when only a fragment of the original form remains. And the mass

d. Shell and tube of Teredo navalis, from the same.

c. Anterior and posterior view of the valves of same detached from the tube.

mains consist each of a somewhat globular but irregular mass, with a tube attached to it, as shown in the front and back view at b.

of observations which have been made by the | by worms; and in the borings, in certain places, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of labor- are found what seem to be the remains of aniers that have now for half a century been en-mals that might have made them. These regaged in this field is so great that the most important results have been established on evidence so conclusive that no single individual who really looks into it, whatever may have been his previous ideas or conceptions, can possibly withhold his assent from the results. These results determine the fact that the progress of change, both in the condition of the various portions of the earth's surface and in the forms of vegetable and animal life which have from time to time appeared upon it, has been going on for immensely long periods of timeso long as infinitely to transcend the conceptions of the human mind.

The disposition to believe or disbelieve in the truth and reality of the indications furnished by fossil remains depends, in the minds of different observers, very much upon the degree of knowledge they severally possess in respect to the character and relations of the forms in question.

In Figs. 1 and 2, for example (from Lyell), there is a faithful representation of a piece of

*The Student's Elements of Geology. By Sir CHARLES LYELL, Bart., F.R.S. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Now a person who had no knowledge of the borings made by animals in wood might very probably hesitate to believe that this specimen had ever been a piece of real wood, and that it actually had been bored by living animals. He would say, perhaps, that it was a mere lusus natura-an accidental resemblance; that it was created as it is when the world was made, and had, of course, always been what it is now. He might say, moreover, that it was found at a depth and in a position among compact strata of clay to which worms, to say nothing of real wood, could never penetrate, and that the little globose forms supposed to represent worms were mere amorphous masses, to which chance had given that shape, and could never have existed as real animals at all.

But there is, in fact, at the present day, a genus of wood-worms, one species of which is well known to all ship-builders and ship-owners, and is the object of their special abhorrence and detestation on account of its habit of boring

into and destroying the hulls of ships. The genus is known to naturalists as the Teredo; and the species which attacks the wood employed in naval constructions is the Teredo navalis. A representation of this animal is seen by itself in the engraving at c, and also, in connection with the tube or shell which it forms, at d. A specimen of the wood as perforated by it at the present day is seen to the right, at e.

depths below the surface, are now constantly going on in various parts of the earth, the difficulty which the ship-builder would find in believing the fossil to be an unmeaning sport of nature becomes in his mind an absolute impossibility.

Thus the capacity of a person to judge of the evidence in such cases as this depends not on the general cultivation of mind which the observer possesses, but on the degree of attention which he has paid to the special subjects directly involved in these inquiries.

Now if a common shipwright's apprentice or journeyman were to be shown this specimen, however uncultivated and unformed his mind The writings of Lyell have, perhaps, more might be in other respects, if he was familiar than those of any other man, contributed to with the operations of the Teredo navalis—or the bring this special knowledge before the minds ship-worm, as he would call it-and of the ap- of the educated portion of the Christian world, pearance of the wood which had been cut through and have had a vast influence in modifying the and through by the animal's borings-having opinions of men, and enlarging their knowledge often been employed in removing from the hulls in respect to the history and structure of the of ships portions of planks or timbers so destroy-globe. The point, moreover, in which the ed, and in replacing them with sound wood-greatest change has been effected in the preit would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to believe that the borings in the fossil specimen were not produced in the same way. The person first supposed, who was incredulous in respect to the origin of the fossil, might be a man of great general intelligence and cultivation, and might have made much progress in classical or metaphysical studies; but the simple fact that he had never had the opportunity to observe the existence and the operations of wood-boring worms might make him wholly inaccessible to proofs which would be perfectly convincing to a mind which, though otherwise wholly uncultivated, had enjoyed this opportu-tributed in for.ner times to violent and extraornity.

If the skeptic were to point out to the shipwright, who had never, we may suppose, known any other wood-borer but the Teredo navalis, that the form of the animal in the fossil was not the same, or if he should ask him how such a specimen, if it were once really a piece of wood, could possibly have found its way down through strata of stiff clay to such a great depth, he might be puzzled, and admit that there was a mystery in the case which he could not solve. But the only effect would be, not to shake his belief as to the real origin of the fossil, but only to lead him to scrutinize it more closely, and to find in minute marks and in almost imperceptible peculiarities in the shape of the borings, and other indications of the presence and action of an animal, additional proofs to confirm him in his first convictions.

vailing ideas relates to the time during which the process of change which we now witness has been going on. The great elevations and depressions, the disruption of strata, the fissures and chasms, and other marks of great change in the conformation of the earth's crust, which it was the fashion in former times to attribute to great catastrophes and sudden and violent convulsions, are now universally believed to have resulted from the slow and continuous action, through very long periods, of causes still in constant operation before our eyes.

The reason why these vast effects were at

dinary agencies was because it was believed that the time within which they had all been produced was limited to the period within which it was then generally supposed that the whole visible creation had been called into being. This opinion has now been universally abandoned by all well-informed persons, and it is, in fact, a matter of surprise that the idea of limiting the existence of all created things to a period of about six thousand years could ever have been entertained. For, independently of the objection to it resulting from the progress of modern science, it would seem that even on theological grounds the arguments against it are conclusive. For the Scriptures represent God as unchangeable, and there has perhaps never been among any class of believers even an individual dissent from the acknowledgment of this absolute immutability as one of the Divine attributes. And yet to suppose that from all eternity—through all the millions upon millions of ages that elapsed-the creative power was entirely withheld from action; that during all these countless periods God existed utterly inactive and alone, His boundless wisdom, power, and good

And then when the scientific observer, bringing to the case his zoological and geological knowledge, finds that the differences between the fossil and the living animal, studied by the help of the microscope, are precisely analogous to those observed in many cases between one genus and another of living animals, and ob-ness totally unoccupied and inert, until, at serves, moreover, that processes of burying animal and vegetable remains by a gradual deposit of such a character as to become ultimately strata of clay, accompanied by changes of level, which, if long enough continued, would fully account for such fossils being found at great

length, six thousand years ago, these attributes came suddenly forth into a state of such universal and energetic activity as now manifests itself in the visible creation, in the millions upon millions of worlds which send their light to us from the regions around us in space, and in the

inconceivably vast profusion of life every where | significance of all the phenomena of nature that around us upon this earth-which fills every we observe, in respect to the duration which forest and field, swarms in the air, vivifies every they indicate, as well as in regard to all other drop of water, from the rills on the mountain-points, devoutly receiving all the instruction sides down to the lowest depths of the sea- they afford. The manifestations of nature conimplies as great a change as it is possible for stitute one of the forms in which the Supreme us to conceive. It may be said, it is true, that First Cause, in showing us the methods of His such a change as this is one of action only, and working, reveals to us the evidences of His wisnot of character. This is true; but then, as dom and power. by the supposition there was nothing existing without the Divine mind that could have caused it, it must imply, it would seem, so far as we can reason at all on such subjects, some very great and mysterious change within.

The truth is that all ideas respecting the assignment of limits, either in respect to space or time or to the exercise of power on the part of the Supreme First Cause, are idle, since the whole subject lies beyond the realm of human

Fig. 3.

And so, leaving metaphysics, let us return to our fossils as Lyell exhibits them to us.

The case of supposed rain-drop marks upon stones found as parts of solid strata, sometimes deep in the earth, affords a striking illustration of the influence which certain collateral knowledge has upon our judgment in respect to the true character of these phenomena. The engravings below are correct representations of a specimen of these rain-drop marks. Fig. 4.

Fig. 3. Carboniferous rain-prints with worm-tracks (a, b) on green shale, from Cape
Fig. 4. Casts of rain-prints on a portion of the same slab (Fig. 3), seen to project on
the under side of an incumbent layer of arenaceous shale. Natural size.
The arrow represents the supposed direction of the shower.

thought. We can not conceive of space or time except as limited; nor, on the other hand, can we conceive of the possibility of any limits existing to either. And it is the same in respect to the agency of God. We can not conceive of its having been in exercise from all eternity. We say it must have had a beginning at some time. We might as well say that space must have an end somewhere. And just as we can not conceive of a limit beyond which there can be no space, so we can not conceive of a time before which there can not have been an exercise of creative power. All reasoning on such subjects transcends the powers of the human mind as at present constituted. Every thing connected with infinity lies entirely without the domain of human thought. We must interpret the words, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," in the sense in which they were undoubtedly intended to be received, namely, as simply to declare that all which exists had its origin in one supreme creative power; and so, without any hinderance from fancied restrictions, inquire freely into the

Probably many persons, in looking at these engravings, or at the specimens themselves, would think that the idea of the marks having ever been really produced by drops of rain is imaginary.

But when the geologist finds the exact counterparts of these rain-prints now forming along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, and sees not only the process of their formation, but the mode of their preservation perfectly exemplified, he is at once prepared to believe in the possibility, at least, that the fossil specimen may have been produced in the same manner. On those shores, as Lyell explains in another of his works, a peculiar combination of circumstances favors the formation and preservation of these marks. The tides rise forty or fifty feet, and there are large tracts which, being only covered at the highest tides, are at regular intervals for nearly a fortnight bare. The muddy sediment which each tide deposits remains thus, sometimes for a considerable period, exposed to the action of the sun, by which it is baked hard, with all the marks and