ings went, about two years, I got to my lodgings, and instinctively sought for the salad oil flask. As always happens under such circumstances, it was empty, and I had to wait while another could be purchased. A copious friction with the oil had a sensible effect in alleviating the suffering, though when I happened to catch a glance of my own face in the mirror I hardly knew it all white, wrinkled, and shrivelled, with cold perspiration standing in large drops over the surface.

How much brandy was administered to me I almost fear to mention, excepting to say that within half an hour I drank as much alcohol as would have intoxicated me over and over again, and yet was no more affected by it than if it had been so much fair water. Several days elapsed before I could walk with any degree of comfort, and for more than three months afterwards the shooting pang would occasionally dart through the chest.

Yet, as before mentioned, the result might have been more disastrous than was the case. Severe as were the effects of the poisoned filaments, their range was extremely limited, extending just above the knee of one leg, the greater part of the right arm, and a few lines on the face, where the water had been splashed by the curling waves. If the injuries had extended to the chest, or over the epigastrium, where so large a mass of nervous matter is collected, I doubt whether I should have been able to reach the shore, or, being there, whether I should have been able to ascend the cutting through the cliffs before the flowing tide had dashed its waves against the white rocks.

It may be easily imagined that so severe a lesson was not lost upon me, and that ever afterwards I looked out very carefully for the tawny mass of fibre and membrane that once had worked me such woe.

On one occasion, after just such a gale as had brought the unwelcome visitant to our shores, I was in a rowing boat with several companions, and came across two more specimens of Cyanea capillata, quietly floating along as if they were the most harmless beings that the ocean ever produced. My dearly bought experience was then serviceable to at least one of my companions, who was going to pick up the Medusa as it drifted past us, and was only deterred by a threat of having his wrist damaged by a blow of the stroke oar.

Despite, however, of all precautions, I again fell a victim to the Cyanea in the very next season. After taking my usual halfmile swim I turned towards shore, and in due course of time arrived within a reasonable distance of soundings. As all swimmers are

in the habit of doing on such occasions, I dropped my feet to feel for sand or rock, and at the same moment touched something soft, and experienced the well-known tingling sensation in the toes. Off I set to shore, and this time escaped with a tolerably sharp nettling about one foot and ankle that rendered boots a torture, but had little further effect. Even this slight attack, however, brought back the spasmodic affection of the heart; and although nearly fourteen months have elapsed since the last time that Medusa shook her venomed locks at me, the shooting pang now and then reminds me of my entanglement with her direful tresses.

For the comfort of intending sea-bathers, it may be remarked that although the effects of the Cyanea's trailing filaments were so terrible in the present instance, they might be greatly mitigated in those individuals who are blessed with a stouter epidermis, and less sensitive organization than have fallen to the lot of the afflicted narrator. How different, for example, are the effects of a wasp or bee sting on different individuals, being borne with comparative impunity by one, while another is laid up for days by a precisely similar injury. And it may perchance happen that whereas the contact of the Cyanea's trailing filaments may affect one person with almost unendurable pangs, another may be entangled within their folds with comparative impunity.

As, however, the comparative degree is in this case to be avoided with the utmost care, I repeat the advice given in the earlier portion of this narrative, and earnestly counsel the reader to look out carefully for the stinger, and, above all things, never to swim across its track, no matter how distant the animal may be, for the creature can cast forth its envenomed filaments to an almost interminable length, and even when separated from the parent body, each filament, or each fragment thereof, will sting just as fiercely as if still attached to the creature whence it issued. It will be seen, therefore, that the safest plan will always be to keep well in front of any tawny mass that may be seen floating on the waves, and to allow at least a hundred yards before venturing to cross its course. Perhaps this advice may be thought overstrained by the inexperienced. "Those jest at scars who never felt a wound;" but he who has purchased a painful knowledge at the cost of many wounds, will deem his courage in nowise diminished if he does his best to keep out of the way of a foe who cares nothing for assaults, who may be cut into a thousand pieces without losing one jot of his offensive powers, and who never can be met on equal terms. J. G. WOOD.

From The Spectator.

MORE WELLINGTON DESPATCHES.*

THIS bulky volume, the ninth of the series of Supplementary Despatches, contains six hundred and thirty-eight pages. The despatches and documents signed "Welling

ton" number one hundred and four, some few of which appeared in the second edition; and the rest of the volume is made

up

of letters and documents from a great variety of persons; so that Wellington's own writings, as in previous volumes, appear at intervals in the solitary grandeur of larger type, about as thickly as captains of companies in a line of infantry. To the public, therefore, these pages are what a very juvenile critic termed "uneasy reading;" but the student of military and still more of political history will not complain, and it is for their behoof that this extended edition is published. The time covered by these documents is exactly a year from April, 1814, to March, 1815. The first set of papers spring from the consequences of the capture of Paris and the defeat of Soult at Toulouse; the last to the measures adopted in consequence of Napoleon's final throw for empire. We begin with the temporary destruction of his power; we break off on the threshold of its temporary revival. The interval is filled up with the dispersion of Wellington's splendid little army to the four winds of heaven, with the first occupation of Paris, with the complicated negotiations at Paris, and subsequently at Vienna, with the great quarrels for the spoils of victory, the schemes of Prussia on Saxony, and of Alexander upon Poland, and of France and Austria in Italy, with the painful disputes arising out of the American war, and its termination at the peace of Ghent, too late to save Pakenham from his repulse at New Orleans; and with an infinite variety of lesser subjects which disturbed the serenity of the first year of peace since the establishment of the first empire. The despatches of Liverpool, Castlereagh, Goulburn, Bathurst, and men of inferior position, are thickly sown throughout these pages; and hardly a single paper

can fail to be of interest to some one desir

ous of studying the details of special or general questions. Although so few, in com

Supplementary Despatches of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington. Edited by his Son. Vol. 9. John Murray.

parison with the setting in which they are embedded, Wellington's hitherto unpublished papers will be found to possess very great interest, while the writings of his colleagues and the context of events show how rapidly he, without special direct effort, was increasing his influence as a statesman, and gradually and solidly acquiring that position as foremost man of a political party which he held until he died. Nor was his influence confined to his own country. He was a great power upon the continent. No Englishman since the days of Marlborough had achieved such a position abroad, and no Englishman whatever was so much esteemed, trusted, and respected. For he had what Marlborough had not an unimpeachable character, and although differing from him in so many respects, Wellington in this resembled George Washington more than any other man who has attained the front rank during the last century and a half.

Although in 1810 the prince regent ridiculed the victor of Talavera, although in 1813 Lord Melville was allowed to write to him impertinent despatches, although the poor old king alone in a lucid interval was willing to give him the amplest powers for the conduct of the war in the Peninsula; yet in 1814 the regent was glad to shelter his unpopular person under the shadow of the victorious general, and the ministry trembled lest anything should happen to a man who had made their military fortune, and whose political views were so moderate, sagacious, and practical. In the autumn of 1814 disaffection in Paris and the fear of it In October, General Macaulay was of opinwere visible to all men except the Bourbons. ion that an outbreak would occur within a few weeks. Wellington, who thought that it "might occur any night," deprecated alarm. But General Macaulay coming to England so frightened the ministry by the picture he drew of "the combustible state of Paris," and the duke's liability to sudden arrest, that Lord Liverpool was most solicilest the revolution should succeed, and the tous for the instant departure of the duke, duke should be detained in spite of his charto Vienna on some pretext of aiding Castleacter as ambassador. Would the duke go reagh; would he return to England to give evidence on Sir John Murray's court-martial; would he even, for the sake of appear

CHAPTER VII.

his own peculiar type of weakness or wickedness to a whole race, disappearing in one generation, re-appearing in another, exactly the same as physical peculiarities do, requiring the utmost caution of education to counteract the terrible tendencies of nature the "something in the blood" which is so difficult to eradicate; which may even make the third and fourth generations execrate the memory of him or her who was its origin.

hold which rarely was more than five pounds beforehand with the world.

The long life-curse of Henry Leaf the elder, and Henry Leaf the younger, had

“I will be careful-I will indeed-if you will help me this once, dear Aunt Hilary; and don't think too ill of me. I have done nothing wicked. And you don't know London-you don't know, with a lot of young fellows about one, how very hard it is to say No."

At that unlucky postscript the Misses Leaf sorrowfully exchanged looks. Little the lad thought about it but these few words were the very sharpest pang Ascott had ever given to his aunts.

"What's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh." "Like father like son." "The sins of the parents shall be visited on the children." So runs many a proverb; so confirms the unerring decree of a just God, who would not be a just God did he allow himself to break his own righteous laws for the government of the universe; did he falsify the requirements of his own holy and pure being, by permitting any other wages for sin than death. And though, through his mercy, sin forsaken escapes sin's penalty, and every human being has it in his power to modify, if not to conquer, any hereditary moral as well as physical disease, thereby avoiding the doom and alleviating the curse, --still the original law remains in force, and ought to remain, an example and a warning. As true as that every individual sin which a man commits breeds multitudes more, is it that every individual sinner may transmit

that during Ascott's childhood and youth, his very fractiousness and roughness, his little selfishness, and his persistence in his his aunts as a good omen that he would own will against theirs, had been hailed by grow up so unlike his poor father."

66

If the two unhappy Henry Leafs-father and son-could have come out of their graves that night, and beheld these three women-daughters and sisters-sitting with Ascott's letter on the table, planning how the household's small expenses could be contracted, its smaller luxuries relinquished, in order that the boy might honorably pay for pleasures he might so easily have done without! If they could have seen the weight of apprehension which then sank like a stone on these long-tried hearts, never to be afterwards quite removed, lightened sometimes, but always-however Ascott might promise and amend-always there! On such a discovery, surely, these two "poor ghosts" would have fled away moaning, wishing they had died childless, or that during their mortal lives any amount of self-restraint and self-compulsion had purged from their natures the accursed thing-the sin which had worked itself out in sorrow upon every one belonging to them, years after their own heads were laid in the quiet dust.

"We must do it," was the conclusion the Misses Leaf unanimously came to even Selina; who, with all her faults, had a fair share of good feeling and of that close clinging to kindred which is found in fallen households, or households whom the sacred