of our modern Galens-like that ancient apothecary, whom Romeo found-.

"In tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones,
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill shaped fishes."

The day will come, Peter Jones hoped, when science will yet be able to conquer the power of that "sweltering venom," whose fatal effects are amongst the earliest of human recollections; or if that may not be, extended cultivation may sweep from the earth man's primitive types of evil; and the once worshipped Python, and the poisonous Snake, become in History, what the Ichthyosaurus and the Pterodactyle are in the crust of the earth-memorials of ancient Time, of a world that has passed away.

CHAP XIII.

THE WITCH OF ENDOR.

"The oracles are dumb!

No voice or hideous hum

Rings through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

No nightly trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."

MILTON-Hymn of the Nativity.

"There are numbers of the like kind, especially if you include dreams and predictions of astrology. My judgment is, that they ought all to be despised, and ought to serve but for winter talk by the fire-side. That which hath given them grace, and some credit, consisteth in three things. First, that men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss; as they do, generally, also of dreams. The second is, that probable conjectures or obscure traditions many times turn themselves into prophecies; while the nature of man, which coveteth divination, thinks it is no peril to foretell that which indeed they do but collect. The third and last, which is the great one, is, that almost all of them, being infinite in number, have been impostures, and by idle and crafty brains merely contrived and feigned, after the event past." BACON-Of Prophecies.

A CIRCUMSTANCE occurred, which roused Peter Jones into a vehement fit of indignation. There was a fair young damsel of his acquaintance, whose ingenuous countenance and sparkling eyes bespoke an intelligence superior to her condition, and even, as Peter fancied, above the average of that of her sex. But she had been induced by a female companion to visit a fortune-teller; and the fees extracted from them bore no relative value to the information received in exchange. This was not all. The fortune-teller

Q

endeavoured to induce the girls to commit robbery, alluring them to the act by tempting revelations of the future, which the cunning crone pretended to have in store. Happily, sound moral training, acting on ingenuous minds, was a counter-match to the power of credulity. The fortune-teller was apprehended, and committed to a House of Correction as a rogue and a vagabond.

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Peter Jones could scarcely control himself. He was indignant that such things should occur in the middle of the nineteenth century-in the days of Mechanics' Institutes, gas, steam, railroads, and the electric telegraph. The damsel, who had hitherto been regarded with a tender and even respectful consideration, now fell a few degrees lower in his estimation. "Aha!" he exclaimed ; so the fortuneteller could not foresee that she would be sent to gaol!" He hoped she would be punished-severely punished; and at that moment, had a commission been granted to him to search the land for fortunetellers, he would willingly have betaken himself to the task with a zeal, which, if furnished with sufficient opportunity and encouragement, might have introduced not a few impostors and dupes into various prisons of the United Kingdom.

The INTELLECTUAL pride of Peter Jones had, in fact, been most grievously offended; and he sought satisfaction in intellectual appreciation and depreciation. 'Oh!" he impatiently muttered; "it is not education and information that will cure the ignorance and stupidity of some people. The human race is as different in the structure of their minds as of their bodies. I suppose there will always be weak, credulous people, who will start at shadows, and believe in ghosts, just as there will always be vain, imaginative

folks, who will dream of some lucky event that will get them on in life, such as the discovery of a concealed treasure, or the fascination of their talents or their beauty on some great or rich man. There are tall people and short people; individuals with large judgment, and individuals with very little; folks who will believe all you choose to tell them, and folks who are so hard and dull of faith that they will doubt anything. So I suppose there will always be people disposed to give credence to fortune-tellers, and to imagine that ghosts can revisit the glimpses of the moon.' We must put up with it; but it is a disgrace to the intelligence of the age to tolerate fortunetellers!"

Peter Jones was scarcely aware that he was actuated at that moment by an INTOLERANCE akin to that which has burned men to death, filled prisons with some of the noblest of their kind, and visited countries with the most appalling of the calamities of war. His intellectual light was annoyed by the grossness of the deception practised by the fortune-teller; and therefore he would have sent the whole tribe to gaol. But he forgot that it was the same feeling inverted which had doomed Socrates to the poison-cup, and Galileo to prison and recantation. With Peter Jones, it was INTELLIGENCE which would have persecuted Ignorance; but, unfortunately, in the past history of the world, IGNORANCE has been able to persecute Intelligence, until the spread of light, and the advent of new generations, have conquered for Intelligence a larger domain, and drawn round Ignorance a narrower circle.

While Peter Jones was in his persecuting humour, his mother dreamed a dream. Poor woman!-her heart was in her husband's grave: she was truly a