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he had escaped, and there strangled with his page. Again, Mr. Chanson makes Bothwell escape, at Mary's suggestion, on the flight of his followers from a charge of the enemy. The fact was, however, that Mary, at the conference with Kirkcaldy of Grange, in which she surrendered herself, stipulated that Bothwell should be allowed to go to Dunbar. Once more,

Murray is here represented as requiring Mary, on pain of death, to sign a declaration that she had of her own free will executed the deed of her abdication, which is hardly consistent with the fact that such a declaration formed part of that deed. Murray's interview with Mary on this subject at Lochleven, appears thus in these pages

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This thy sheet anchor gone-But-hold, hold, heart!—

Ay, wherefore should you frown?

MORAY. I muse me, Madam, of your hardihood;
But judge you not it shall avail you aught:
For has the har'st doth seed-time follow sure,
So retribution ever follows wrong.

QEEEN.

Not here, my lord, not here. . .
For lusting Greed, more cruel than the pard,
Preys on poor trusting Innocence, destroys,
And battens to the last. But, God be praised,
There is a life beyond!

MORAY. This skim of moralizing ill becomes you.

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MORAY. Ay, foul. O wretched thing-thy husband's blood!
QUEEN. Do I yet live?-Sustain me, God!

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Or hint, or think, that I, the Queen o' Scots-
The blood now tingling in my bursting veins
From half the bygone kings of Christendom,
Had stooped so low to do a dastard deed,
To quit me, shameless, of a once dear mate,
From whom your wretched self a month foregone,
By form, in open day, proponed divorce,

By me declined-for honour and my son-
Oh, it is monstrous!

MORAY. Do you deny your mating with his slayer?
QUEEN.
If he were so, I knew it not.

The forceful mating-well you know the truth-
Cool, cool, my brain!-An enemy is here.
He was a rebel once. O simple I,

To think the rebel ever was my friend!

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"Rhadaman" is a forced contraction for Rhadamanthus, still more so is "har'st" for harvest. Elsewhere Mr. Chanson has the abbreviations "lotted" for allotted, "tentive" for attentive, and tent" for attention. He also affects Scotticisms, and uses strange words, such as "dule,” "timeous," and "timeously." Occasionally, too, he throws the accent on the wrong syllable of a word, as on the first in "fanatic," and on the second in "panacea."

These blemishes would mar the effect of a greater work than Mr. Chanson's, which, though so far successful as not to be tedious, has no claim to skill in construction, stirring incident, startling situation, masterly portraiture of character, or powerful expression of feeling. What interest there is centres in Mary and Bothwell, rather than the nominal hero of the play.

Weather Charts and Storm Warnings. By R. H. Scott, M.A. H. S. King and Co. London, 1876.-An important addition has lately been made to the intelligence communicated by our daily newspapers, in the shape of the weather charts, which, even with the aid of the explanatory remarks appended, are still far from easy to understand properly without some further information.

The special object of Mr. Scott's work is to supply this information. As Director of the Meteorological Office, he must be considered to possess special qualifications for the useful task he has undertaken. Avoiding theoretical discussion, except so far as is necessary for his purpose, he confines himself to a simple description of the various instruments and methods of weather observation now in use, pointing

out some of the imperfections in our meterological information, and confirming his statements by references to facts. Nothing can be clearer than his explanations and descriptions, with the numerous illustrations by which they are accompanied. To ensure a perfect comprehension and recollection of his remarks, he takes the trouble to recapitulate what he has said, not only at the end of separate chapters, but also the substance of several chapters forming a division of the subject. Hence, no one can read his work without learning the full meaning and value of weather charts, and at the same time getting a correct idea of the present state of our weather knowledge.

Mr. Scott exposes the error of supposing that sufficiently trustworthy indications of

weather

change can be obtained from any single barometer, and insists on the necessity of comparing the readings of barometers at numerous distant stations, the differences between which, like differences in level, are denoted by gradients. These gradients" are expressed in hundredths of an inch of mercury per one degree of sixty nautical miles." They afford about the best available means of learning the approach of storms. Even sudden changes in a single barometer cannot be taken as safe guides. It is necessary to compare several, spread over a large surface, and to do this often. Mr. Scott complains that the reports received at the Meteorological Office are far from frequent enough.

"The signal office at Washington receives three reports every day from each of its stations; but, as is well known, that office is most liberally supplied with funds by Congress. Our own Meteorological Office, however, can afford

only one at eight A.M., from most of our stations, and at best we only get additional reports at two P.M. and at six P.M. from a few places. As regards Sunday mornings, our information does not reach us till next day."

It is only by knowing the meteorological condition of districts around us that we can calculate with any approach to certainty as to the kind of weather we are likely to have; yet this indispensable knowledge is not attainable by readers of newspapers, or even subscribers to the Daily Weather Report, till several hours, and often a whole day, after its arrival. If reports cannot be obtained more than once a day, it would seem more convenient to fix eight P.M. for their reception than 8 A.M. They would then be only about twelve hours old by the time they reached the public eyc, which would often make all the difference.

The information supplied by the weather reports is necessarily meagre; many important particulars, especially with regard to the clouds and the sky, being omitted. Nor are the instruments always so perfect, or the observers so well qualified, as could be wished. The instruments, Mr. Scott says, ought to be automatic, showing at a glance the movements that have taken place since the last preceding observation. The observers should be persons of out-door occupations, practised in noting the changes of weather and the preceding meteorological conditions, such as coastguards, &c.

In spite, however, of the imperfections attaching to the weather charts and reports, Mr. Scott maintains that they may be of service, if properly used.

"These charts are therefore useful helps to the local observer, and will be

on

found so by those who study them
regularly, and combine with that study
careful and systematic observations of
their own instruments, and of local
weather; but for the purpose of judging
whether a particular afternoon will be
wet or fine, which is all that the public
generally care to know about weather,
it is obvious that charts which are in
many places necessarily twenty-four
hours old cannot be of much service.
Moreover the phenomena,which we in-
clude under the general term' weather,'
often depend in great measure
the nature and conformation of the
ground in the neighbourhood of the
observer, so that one place will be
more liable to rain during disturbed
weather than another, while
second will exhibit a greater tendency
to the formation of fog at a calm period
than an adjacent district might show.
As, therefore, such exceptional ten-
dency is confined to each special
locality, and does not belong to the
phenomena produced at all stations by
the system of circulation prevailing at
the time, it is necessary that the
observer who endeavours to forecast
probable weather should seek to ascer-
tain under what conditions such pecu-
it
liarities manifest themselves, as
would be useless to apply merely
general rules in order to see the mean-
ing of phenomena of a purely local
character.

8

"On the whole it must be said that our insular and exposed position precludes us. in the present state of our knowledge, from the possibility of issuing forecasts of future weather sufficiently trustworthy to be worth publication, excepting occasionally, and then priucipally for the south-east of England."

As to the storm warnings, Mr.
Scott shows by a tabular statement,
that, in the years 1873 and 1874,
about 80 per cent. of those issued
proved correct, which is a tolerably
satisfactory result.

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The Immortals; or, Glimpses of
London in
Paradise. A Poem.

Light and Darkness; with all the
Author's shorter poems. By Nicho-
las Michell. W. Tegg and Co.-
Having in our August number
described three volumes of Mr.
Michell's, we need not dwell at any
great length on those before us
We have not found anything in
them to alter the opinion we then
expressed, or to require much addi-
tion to our observations. It is true
we have four additional volumes of
Mr. Michell's work to judge from,
but there is great sameness-and
not much else-in all that he writes.
The wonder to us is, how any one
can manage to write so much, and
say so little."

Mr. Michell writes on a variety of topics, and in varied forms. "Sibyl of Cornwall," is an attempt at senIn "The sational story in verse. Heart's Great Rulers," we have a series of sketches illustrative of the passions. "Pleasure" contains similar illustrations of the various objects, pursuits, and passions from which pleasure is derived, interIningled, however, with painful scenes which do not add to the harmony of the general effect.

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Mr. Michell attempts a higher "The Immortals; or, flight in Glimpses of Paradise." Here, as in his Poetry of the Creation," he rashly rushes in where wiser men fear to tread, and the result is anyThe last thing but satisfactory. volume is a miscellaneous collection of sentimental pieces, without freshness of thought or depth of feeling.

In all these varied lines Mr. Michell acquits himself respectably, so far as the versification is concerned, which, though not remarkable for melodious smoothness, is free from glaring faults. His composition is, with occasional exceptions, correct, it not elegant. He is not often guilty of gross error

in point of taste, and is always wellmeaning in sentiment. The misfortune is, that a vein of rhetorical commonplace runs through all he writes. It matters not how lofty or how touching may be his theme, he does not rise above the dead level of prosaic artificiality, or give utterance to strains that even arouse the attention, much less move the heart. In short, the essentials of true poetry are not to be found in his

verse.

The following lines on the Falls of Niagara are as favourable a specimen of his descriptive writing as we have met with

"We stand below the falls; this smooth, broad rock

Is wet with spray, yet safe amidst the shock,

Goat Isle half hung in air, its cliffs moss-brown,

And tall black pines, all shivering, gazing down,

As though they shrank, but still, by some strong spell,

Would peer below, and watch the torrents swell

Watch the mad billows plunging, seething white,

The water-flakes thrown out, like bars of light;

Down, down in gulfs where maelstroms 'round are flashing;

Down, heavily down, as waves turned rocks while dashing.

Behold! but speak not; wor's may rarely be

Interpreters of mind's intensity:

When most we feel, then mutest grows the tongue,

The goddess Silence from pale Wonder sprung.

'Tis not the whirl, the bound of raging

waves,

Hurled from above, to dive in earth's deep caves;

'Tis not the mountain clouds where foam-bows shine,

Like rubies dropping from some skydeep mine,

While eagles o'er the abyss in terror

scream,

To see those waters toss, and boil, and gleam;

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The writer evidently wants to be impressive. His painful straining after effect is only too apparent. He seems to think success is to be reached by worn-out rhetorical artifices, instead of by vividly realizing the scene in all its grandeur, and. being deeply stirred with the various emotions it is calculated to excite. No one can write good description -especially of such an object as Niagara-who has not an eye to see, or an imagination to conceive, and a heart to feel; and whoever possesses these requisites will disdain the use of any other art than the simple transcript of his mind. and the spontaneous utterance of his feeling. Stage trickery will be an abomination to him.

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