"Wenna," he said, "don't go away: I want to speak to you for a minute. You are offended with me about something, and I want you to tell me why. If you wish our friendship to cease, say so, and I will obey you; but you must tell me why first."

"I am not offended with you, Mr. Trelyon," she said in a low and nervous voice. "Do not think that. But—but I think it will be better if you will let our friendship cease, as you say."

"Oh no," he said, "I will not in this fashion. You've got to tell me what is the matter first. Now remember this. Not very long ago you chose to quarrel with me about nothing—absolutely about nothing. You know quite well that I meant no harm to you by lending Mr. Roscorla that money, yet you must needs flare up and give it me as hot as you could, all for nothing. What could I do? Why, only wait until you saw what a mistake you had made."

"It was very wrong of me," she said: "I ask your forgiveness. But now it is quite different: I am not angry with you at all. I should like to remain your friend, and yet I think it better not. I—I cannot explain to you, Mr. Trelyon, and I am sure you won't ask me when I say so."

He looked at her for a moment, and then he said, gently and yet firmly, "Look here, Wenna. You think I am only a boy—that may or may not be—but I am going to talk reasonably to you for once. Come over to this chair by the window and sit down."

She followed him in passive obedience. She took the one chair, he the other.

"Perhaps I am only a boy," he said, "but I have knocked about a good deal, and I have kept my eyes as wide open as most folks. I suppose ill-natured people might say that as I had nothing to do at Eglosilyan, I wanted to have a flirtation with the only girl who was handy. I know better. Year after year I saw more and more of you, bit by bit, and that after I had been abroad or living in other places in England from time to time. I got to believe that I had never seen anywhere any girl or woman who was so honest as you are, and good in a dozen secret ways that needed a deal of discovering. I found out far more about you than you imagined. I heard of you in cottages that you never knew I was in; and everything I heard made me respect you more and more. Mind this, too. I had no sort of personal liking for the sort of thing you were doing. I don't admire beastly little rooms and poverty and sick people as appealing to a fine sentiment. There never was anything of the parson or the benevolent old lady about me. I would rather give half a crown to an impertinent little boy who had just whopped another boy bigger than himself than give a halfpenny tract to a sickly child in its mother's arms: that's original sin in me, I suppose. But all that squalid sort of work you were in only made the jewel shine the more. I used to think I should like to marry a very grand woman, who could be presented at court without a tremor, who would come into a drawing-room as if she was conferring a favor on the world at large; and I certainly never thought I should find the best and finest woman I had ever seen in back kitchens sewing pinafores for children. And then when I found her there, wasn't it natural I should put some store by her friendship? I suppose you didn't know what I thought of you, Wenna, because I kept chaffing you and Mabyn? I have told you something of it now; and now I want you to say whether you have a right to shunt me off like this, without a word of explanation."

She sat still, silent and nervous. The rude and impetuous eloquence of his speech, broken by many a hesitating stammer, had touched her. There was more thoughtfulness and tenderness in this wild lad than she had supposed.

"How can I explain?" she burst out suddenly. "I should cover myself with shame!"

"And what have you to be ashamed of?" he said with a stare. The distress she was obviously suffering was so great that he had almost a mind to take her at her word and leave the house without further ado.

Just at this moment, when he was considering what would be the most generous thing to do, she seemed to nerve herself to speak to him, and in a low and measured voice she said, "Yes, I will tell you. I have had a letter this morning from Mr. Roscorla. He asks me if it is true that you are paying me such attention that people notice it; and he asks me if that is how I keep my promise to him."

Something like a quiver of rage passed through the young man at this moment, but his teeth were kept firmly together. She did not look up to his face.

"That is not all. I must tell you that I was deeply shocked and grieved by this letter; but on looking back over the past six weeks I think a suspicious person might have been justified in complaining to Mr. Roscorla. And—and—and, Mr. Trelyon, did you see that dried flower in my Prayer-book last night?"

Her resolution was fast ebbing away: he could see that her hands were clasped piteously together.

"Yes, I did," he said boldly.

"And oh what could you have thought of me?" she cried in her distress. "Indeed, Mr. Trelyon, it was all a mistake. I did not keep the flower—I did not, indeed. And when I thought you had seen it I could have died for shame."

"And why?" he said in a way that made her lift up her startled eyes to his face. There was a strange look there, as of a man who had suddenly resolved to dare his fate, and yet was imploringly anxious as to the result. "For you have been frank with me, and so will I be with you. Why should you not have kept that flower? Yes, I sent it to you, and with all the purpose that such a thing could carry. Yes, you may be as angry as you please; only listen, Wenna. You don't love that man whom you are engaged to marry; you know in your heart that you do not believe in his love for you; and are you surprised that people should wish to have you break off an engagement that will only bring you misery?"

"Mr. Trelyon!"

"Wenna, one minute: you must hear me. Do with my offer what you like—only here it is: give me the power to break off this engagement, and I will. Give me the right to do that. Don't mind me in the matter. It is true I love you—there, I will say it again: there is nothing I think of from morning till night but my love for you—and if you would say that some time I might ask you to be my wife, you would give me more happiness than you could dream of. But I don't wish that now. I will remain your friend if you like, Wenna; only let me do this thing for you, and when you are free you can then say yes or no."

She rose, not proud and indignant, but weeping bitterly. "I have deserved this," she said, apparently overwhelmed with mortification and self-reproach. "I have earned this shame, and I must bear it. I do not blame you, Mr. Trelyon: it is I who have done this. How many weeks is it since the man left England to whom I promised to be faithful? and already—But this I can do, Mr. Trelyon: I will bid you good-bye now, and I will never see you again."

Her face was quite pale. She held out her hand.

"No," he said firmly. "We don't part like that, Wenna. First, let me say that you have nothing to accuse yourself of. You have done nothing and said nothing of which any man, however mean and suspicious, could complain. Perhaps I was too hasty in speaking of my love for you. In that case I've got to pay for my folly."

"And it is folly, Mr. Trelyon," she said passionately, and yet with nothing but tenderness in her face. "How could you have thought of marrying me? Why, the future that ought to lie before you is far more than you can imagine yet; and you would go and hamper it by marrying an innkeeper's daughter! It is folly indeed, and you will see that very soon. But—but I am very sorry all this has occurred: it is another grief to me that I have troubled you. I think I was born to bring grief to all my friends."

He was anxiously debating what he should do; and he needed all his wits at that moment, for his own feelings were strong within him, and clamoring for expression. Should he insist? Should he bear down all opposition? Happily, quieter counsels prevailed, for there was no mistake as to the absolute truthfulness of what the girl had said.

"Well, Wenna," he said, "I will do anything you like, only to remain your friend. Is that possible? Will you forgive all that I have said if I make you a promise not to repeat it, and never again to mention your engagement to Mr. Roscorla?"

"No, we must part now altogether," she said slowly. Then by haphazard she glanced up at his face for a moment, and there was a great sadness in her eyes. "It is a hard thing to part. Perhaps it will not be necessary that you should never come to see me. But we must not be friends as we have been, for I have my duty to do toward him."

"Then I may come to see you sometimes?"

She hesitated: "You may come to see my mother sometimes. And I will always think of you as a dear friend, whether I see you or not."

He went outside, and drew a long breath. "I had to keep a tight grip on the reins that time," he was thinking to himself—"a precious tight grip; but I did it."

He thought of the look there was in her eyes when she finally bid him goodbye. His face grew the happier as he thought of it. He was clearly not at all down-hearted about his rejection: on the contrary, he went and told his cousin Juliott that the little affair of the morning had been quite satisfactorily arranged, that Miss Wenna and he were very good friends again, and that it was quite a mistake to imagine that she was already married to Mr. Roscorla.

"Harry," said his cousin, "I strictly forbid you to mention that gentleman's name."

"Why, Jue?" he said.

"Because I will not listen to the bad language you invariably use whenever you speak of him; and you ought to remember that you are in a clergyman's house. I wonder Miss Rosewarne is not ashamed to have your acquaintance, but I dare say you amend your ways when you are in her presence. She'll have plenty to reform if ever she takes you for a husband."

"That's true enough, Jue," the young man said penitently. "I believe I'm a bad lot, but then look at the brilliant contrast which the future will present. You know that my old grandmother is always saying to me, 'Harry, you were born with as many manners as most folks, and you've used none; so you'll have a rare stock to come and go on when you begin.'"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



FEVER.

At present all branches of Science possess an intrinsic interest for every intelligent man, but such elementary knowledge as enables its possessor to understand the explanations of the medical attendant has a double value. Over and over again I have heard the remark when some bold successful treatment was being discussed, "But you would not have dared to do that in private practice." The days of medical mystification are not yet entirely passed, but year by year the profession is assuredly losing that peculiar virtue of office which it formerly possessed in so eminent a degree. The doctor is no longer a dignified personage with gold-headed cane and powdered wig, mounting the mansion steps with stately tread, but a busy man in various garb, hurrying from house to house, studying the multitudinous problems of disease, and applying the fruits of such study to the relief of individual cases. No longer able to awe his patients into obedience, he must rely upon his moral and intellectual powers in controlling them. To enable any one to understand the explanations of physicians, and to protect himself, by discovery, against the impudent assumptions of quacks, some knowledge of medical truths and of the drift of modern medical thought is necessary. Every successful physician, no matter how independent he may be by nature, is necessarily more or less cramped by the prejudices of patients—prejudices which often a little primary instruction would have done away with.

Of all the diseased processes fever is one of the most frequent and one of the most serious in their results. A discussion, therefore, of its nature, the method of its production and of its relief, will, it may be hoped, engage the attention of the general reader.

If the hand be laid upon the skin of a person in a high fever the attention is at once attracted by the great heat, and if the bulb of a thermometer be placed under the tongue or in the armpit of the patient the mercury may indicate a temperature of 107 deg., 108 deg., 109 deg., or even 110 deg. Fahrenheit, instead of 98 deg. to 99 deg. Fahrenheit, the normal temperature of the human body. It is a common belief that the skin in fever is always dry as well as hot, but this is a mistake, as intense fever may coexist with a reeking perspiration. During the fever the pulse is greatly increased in frequency, the head aches and throbs, and if the attack be very severe restlessness, sudden startings, irregular muscular twitchings, or even violent epileptiform convulsions and stupor, delirium or coma, indicate the disturbance of the nervous system.

These various symptoms are simply results of the excess of caloric, which excites universal irritation, and, if prolonged, destroys the tissues. This fact I have verified by three series of experiments, by the first of which it was shown that the general application of external heat so as to raise the bodily temperature produces all the phenomena of fever; by the second, that the local application of heat to the brain and to the heart causes the nervous and circulatory disturbances so universally seen in fever; and by the third that the abstraction of heat in fever is followed by immediate subsidence of the other symptoms.

If a small animal, such as a dog, cat or rabbit, be placed in a chamber heated by means of the sun's rays falling upon a slanting glass roof or by some artificial method to a temperature of considerably over one hundred degrees, a very constant series of phenomena is developed. The breathing becomes hurried and the pulse greatly quickened, whilst the restless movements of the body indicate nervous distress. After a time, if the exposure be continued, the symptoms are intensified, and restlessness passes into the weakness of partial paralysis; then suddenly or gradually, with or without convulsions, stupor sets in, deepening into coma, and death from arrested respiration is the final result. If the temperature of the animal be tested from time to time during the exposure, it will be found to rise steadily, and the severity of the symptoms will be directly, and in any one species constantly, proportional to the intensity of the bodily heat.

The nervous system of man apparently resists the action of heat, but in reality it does not do so. Man, it is true, is the only animal that can thrive almost equally amidst arctic snows and in tropical jungles. This is not, however, because his nervous system lacks sensitiveness, but because he has the power of heating or cooling his body in such a manner that its temperature is comparatively unaffected by that of the surrounding air. Man might be well defined as the naked sweating animal. In the north he strips the bear and the fox of their coat to keep him warm; in the south his own skin acts as a refrigerator. The dog has a few sweat-glands about the mouth—man has two millions densely covering his body. In the horse exposed to heat the hair soon becomes wet and matted, interfering very greatly with evaporation; in man the bare skin offers an excellent surface, from which the perspiration passes off almost as fast as formed. Evaporation, conversion of a liquid into a vapor, means a steady conversion of sensible heat into what was formerly called latent heat, but what we now know to be repulsive force: the heat-energy of the body is lost in driving the particles of sweat asunder in the form of vapor.

It is possible, however, to have a temperature which even a Hindoo cannot resist. When a man is exposed to such a heat his bodily temperature rises, and as it rises the symptoms of fever develop precisely as they do in the lower animals—sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly—with disturbances of the respiration, circulation and innervation precisely similar to those already noticed as occurring in the dog, the cat and the rabbit. Sunstroke, or thermic fever, is generally believed to be instantaneous in its onset, but the wide experience of the English in India has shown that whilst in some cases it is thus sudden in its development, in others it is a slow process, and probably in almost all cases close observation would have revealed the existence of premonitions.

External heat, by producing an internal rise of temperature, may thus cause all the phenomena of fever. Of these phenomena the most prominent is disturbance of the nervous system and of the circulation. In order to determine whether the heat itself directly causes the nervous disturbance, or whether it produces it indirectly by causing changes in the blood, I applied caloric directly to the brains of animals. This was done by fitting a hog's bladder like a bonnet over the head and allowing hot water to run through it. It was found that stupor, coma, convulsions, and finally death from arrest of the respiration, were produced, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly, precisely as in the case of exposure of the animal in a hot chamber. Moreover, on opening the skull and plunging a thermometer into the cerebrum immediately after death or the supervention of unconsciousness, it was found that these phenomena were developed at the same brain-temperature when the heat was locally applied as when the animal was exposed in the hot box. Thus, if any given species in the hot box became unconscious when the temperature reached 110 deg. Fahrenheit, this species also became unconscious when the locally-heated brain attained a temperature of 110 deg.; or if death occurred by arrest of the respiration in the hot box at 114 deg., so did it when the locally-heated brain reached that point.

Dr. Lauder Brunton of England has performed a series of experiments upon the circulation parallel to those just narrated. Anaesthetizing animals and exposing the heart, he has found that the action of that organ is accelerated and weakened by the local application of heat, precisely as occurs in fever.

In order to test the effect of the withdrawal of heat, I have taken a rabbit out of the hot chamber, in which it lay upon its side totally unconscious, and plunged it into a bucket of cold water. The temperature of the water rose rapidly, whilst that of the rabbit fell even more rapidly. As soon as the bodily heat approached its normal intensity consciousness returned, and in a few moments the animal, which had just before been at the point of death, was running about the grass.

Some months since I had an opportunity of repeating this experiment upon a human being.

In acute inflammatory rheumatism it sometimes happens that the swelling and pain of the joints suddenly disappear, and the patient becomes comatose or wildly delirious. It has been customary to explain these symptoms as the result of the rheumatism leaving the joints and attacking the brain. Evidently, this being the case, the proper thing to do was to irritate the joints so as to draw the rheumatism back to them. This method was formerly practiced, and the almost invariable result was death in a few hours.

In most if not all of these frightful cases of sudden accession of severe nervous symptoms in rheumatism the temperature will be found, on testing it, to be exceedingly high—108 deg., 109 deg. or even 110 deg. Fahrenheit. If the views advocated in this paper be correct, it is not the rheumatism, but the intense bodily heat, which causes the severe symptoms, and finally death. The joints lose their sensitiveness, not because the disease has left them, but because the heat so overpowers the brain that it has lost its power of perception: the patient's leg might be cut off without his feeling it. In such a case the proper treatment is to take away the heat by plunging the patient into a cold bath. But can there be anything more shocking to the universal belief and prejudices than to put a patient dying of acute rheumatism into an almost ice-cold bath?

Last spring there was in my ward in the Philadelphia Hospital a stout young Irishman who had passed through an acute attack of inflammatory rheumatism, and was suffering from a sharp relapse. Entering the ward one day, I saw at once that the man was unconscious, and turning to the resident physician asked, "What is the matter with James?" "Nothing," was the reply: "I saw him an hour and a half ago, and he was doing very well, except that the fever was very high." "He is dying now, at any rate," was my rejoinder. On going to the bedside the patient was found perfectly unconscious, the skin dry and intensely hot, the affected joints pale and devoid of sensibility, the breathing irregular and jerking, the pulse 170 and scarcely perceptible, every muscle relaxed as in death, every power of perception abolished. A thermometer placed in the armpit registered 108-4/5 deg. Fahrenheit.

Believing that the symptoms were due simply to this excessive temperature, I ordered the man to be at once stripped and put in a full bath drawn from the cold-water spigot. The temperature of this bath was found to be 60 deg. Fahrenheit. In one minute and a half after the patient had been placed in the tub he recovered consciousness sufficiently to put out his tongue when told to do so in a loud, commanding tone. In three minutes he began to struggle to get out and to complain of the cold. In six minutes and a half he had become quite rational. He was now taken out, only partially wiped, laid upon an India-rubber blanket and covered with a single sheet, the temperature of the room being between 65 deg. and 70 deg. Three minutes after this the temperature in the armpit was 94 deg., in the mouth 105-3/5 deg.; five minutes later the mouth-thermometer marked 103 deg., and the pain and tenderness had reappeared in the affected joints. It would be out of place here to give further details as to his treatment. It is enough to state that, although owing to a misunderstanding of my orders, the man was left in a cool room for twelve hours upon the gum blanket, wet and covered only with a sheet—or possibly because he was so left—he recovered without a relapse or any bad symptoms.

The first case in which the cold-water treatment was practiced in the Philadelphia Hospital was that of a woman suffering from a desperate relapse of typhoid fever. She was semi-comatose, with a pulse of 150 and a temperature of 107 deg. Fahrenheit: death was seemingly inevitable and imminent. As the bath-tubs were not convenient, the order was given that the woman be laid upon an India-rubber cloth, and be wrapped simply in a sheet constantly wet with water at a temperature as near 32 deg. as practicable. The nurses, aghast, refused at first to carry out the order, but the physician's power being despotic, obedience was enforced. About three pints of whisky were given in the twenty-four hours, besides drugs, the whole treatment being successful.

It has been shown that excessive bodily heat is capable of producing the various symptoms of fever, and that its withdrawal is followed by the immediate relief of these symptoms; and since excessive heat is always present in fever, it is a logical deduction that it is the cause of fever symptoms; or, in other words, that it is the essential part of fever.

It must be borne in mind, however, that the term fever is here used in an abstract sense, to express a general diseased process, a bodily condition. A fever is a very different thing from fever. We may have a fever, such as typhoid, without the existence of fever. In a fever, the fever—i.e., the elevation of temperature—is only part of the disease, and great judgment and experience are often required to decide how much of the general symptoms is caused by the fever, and how much by the disease which is the cause of the fever.

The importance of high temperature having been recognized, it becomes a matter of the gravest scientific and practical interest to determine the method in which it is produced.

There are only two systems which bind the body together—namely, the circulation and the nervous system. As fever is usually a universal phenomenon, occurring simultaneously in every part of the body, it must be produced either through the nervous system or by a poison in the blood acting simultaneously on every tissue. Every physician knows, however, that there are cases of fever in which there has been no introduction of a poison into the blood: hence it follows that at least sometimes fever must be produced by the nervous system.

This being so, the study of the influence of the nervous system upon animal heat is naturally the next step in our investigation. Before making this step it may be well to call to mind the fact that chemical processes are usually accompanied either by the giving out or the withdrawal of heat. Thus, the chemical actions which result when ice and salt are mixed cause a withdrawal of heat, and a "freezing mixture" is formed. When a candle is burnt, the oxidation of its constituents, a chemical process, evolves heat. Oxidation is the great source of artificial heat, and animal heat is chiefly generated by the same process; in other words, animal heat is always the product of the chemical movements of the body, and these movements are almost exclusively of the character of oxidation. In the animal tissues a lessened oxidation is equivalent to a lessened heat-production, and vise versa.

If a large nerve be exposed in one of the lower animals, and a galvanic current be sent through it for half a minute or more, the temperature of the animal falls very decidedly; and if the irritation be repeated several times at intervals, the diminution of the animal heat may amount to several degrees. Galvanization of a nerve affects very powerfully the circulation, and it has been believed that this derangement was the cause of the lessened chemical movements. But the alteration of the circulation is immediate, and ceases almost at once when the current is broken, whereas the fall of temperature comes on only after several minutes, then progressively increases, and persists for many minutes—it may be hours. The two phenomena being thus differently developed, it is impossible that they should have the relation of cause and effect, and the fall of temperature must be traced to a direct influence of the nervous system upon the chemical processes of the body.

This lowering of temperature under the influence of a powerful irritation of a nerve-trunk or of its minute branches, which everywhere pervade the tissues and spread out in the skin, is common to all species of mammals. If a rabbit be merely tied down tightly upon a table, the fall is perceptible, and if it be severely wounded, the temperature diminishes very greatly. It has long been known that severe burns are followed by a very great depression of the animal heat. Redard, a French physician, made during the late siege of Paris a most interesting series of observations upon the influence of severe gunshot wounds. He found that, entirely independent of any haemorrhage which might have occurred, the temperature fell enormously, and in direct proportion to the gravity of the wound; so that by the aid of the thermometer he was able to predict whether a fatal issue would or would not occur in the course of a few hours.

We have found that both in man and the lower animals the nervous system is able to check the chemical movements of the body, but before we can decide how it does so facts not yet noticed must be looked at.

If the spinal cord of an animal be cut just below the origin of the nerves of respiration, an immediate fall of temperature occurs, and, if the animal be left in a cool room, persists until death ensues. If, however, the victim be put in a warm place, after a time the temperature begins to rise, and finally a most intense fever is developed. Parallel phenomena follow division of the spinal cord in man. Indeed, Sir Benjamin Brodie was first led to experiment upon animals by observing in 1837 an excessive fever follow in a patient a wound of the spinal cord.

I have already explained, in a former number of this Magazine,[2] the nature of the so-called vaso-motor nerves, which preside over the little circular muscles that run round and round in the coats of the blood-vessels. When they are excited, these muscles contract and the size of the arteries is diminished: when they are paralyzed, the arterial inner muscles relax and the vessels dilate. The vaso-motor nerves have their governing centre in that upper portion of the spinal cord which is within the skull, the so-called medulla oblongata. When the spinal cord is divided, the vessels are cut off from the influence of this vaso-motor centre, and at once dilate, profoundly affecting the blood-current by doing so.

The first fall of temperature which follows division of the cord is believed by most physiologists to be due to this dilatation of the vessels. Very probably the blood-stream, flowing sluggishly, does not give the normal amount of stimulus to the tissues, so that at first their chemical actions are lessened, and consequently less caloric than usual is generated in the body. Further, the blood moving slowly through the dilated vessels of the lungs and of the surface of the body, is cooled more completely than it should be; hence, unless the body is protected by being surrounded with warm air, no excessive accumulation of heat in it can occur, and therefore no fever can appear.

Assuming that this explanation of the primary lowering of the temperature after division of the cord be correct—and no better one has as yet been offered—what is the cause of the fever which afterward develops itself? As it occurs only when the animal is exposed to a somewhat elevated temperature, it has been thought by some to be due to the absorption of this external heat. This, however, is certainly not true, as is shown, to omit less decisive proofs, by the experiments of Naunyn and Quincke, who exposed animals for two days to a temperature of 90 deg., and at the end of that time, their bodily temperature not having risen, cut their spinal cords, after which intense fever was developed in a few hours without any change of atmosphere.

Section of the cord must therefore give rise to an increased chemical movement and heat-production in the body. As already stated, this section affects very greatly the circulation, but the fever is independent of such action. The upper end of the medulla oblongata is continuous with a nervous mass which joins the two brain hemispheres together, and hence is known as the pons or bridge. If, instead of cutting the spinal cord, we separate the medulla oblongata from the pons, an immediate rise of temperature occurs, and continues until death, whether the operation be performed in a cold or heated room.[3]

Cutting the medulla at its junction with the pons causes, then, an immediate and direct elevation of temperature, without disturbance of the circulation. What can this mean? Evidently, only one thing—namely, that by the division of the medulla there has been separated from the general tissues of the body a repressive force—a something which normally controls their chemical activity and the production in them of animal heat.

The existence of nerves whose function is to repress action is no new discovery in physiology. Readers of Lippincott's Magazine may remember my description of the pneumogastrics or brake-nerves of the heart, whose duty it is to control the action of that viscus. Nerves which repress or inhibit action are spoken of in modern physiology as inhibitory. The experiments which have been adduced prove that there are nerves whose function it is to control the general vital chemical actions, and that the governing centre of these nerves is situated above the medulla oblongata. To this centre, whose exact location is unknown, the name of the inhibitory heat-centre has been given.

The way in which galvanization of a nerve, violent injuries and excessive pain depress the temperature, independently of any action upon the circulation, is now evident. An impulse simply passes up the irritated or wounded nerve, and excites this inhibitory heat-centre to increased action, and the temperature falls because the chemical movements of the body are repressed.

The method in which fever is produced also becomes very evident when once the existence of an inhibitory heat-centre has been established. Any poison having the power to depress, and finally paralyze, this centre must, if it find entrance to the blood, produce fever. If the poison, from its inherent properties, or from its being in very small quantity, only diminishes the activity of the inhibitory heat-centre, the controlling influence is not entirely removed from the chemical movements of the body, and only slight fever results; but if the poison actually paralyzes the inhibitory nerves, a very great rise of temperature must rapidly follow the complete removal of the brake-power.

As an illustration we may consider the intense rheumatic fever, or the so-called "cerebral rheumatism," such as affected the young Irishman whose case has been narrated in the present article. Without any apparent reason the poison of rheumatism habitually attacks one joint on one day, and another joint on another day, and with as little apparent reason it occasionally falls of a sudden upon the inhibitory heat-centre, and actually paralyzes it. In a few minutes intense fever is developed, and the bodily temperature rapidly approaches nearer and nearer that line on the other side of which is death.

In many cases of fever, however, there is no poison in the blood; thus, the local irritation of a boil or other inflammation may cause what is well termed "irritative fever." The way in which this is produced is by an indirect, and not a direct, action upon the inhibitory heat-centre.

The casualties of the late war proved but too abundantly that a man may be wounded in one part of the body and suffer from paralysis of voluntary motion in another part. Thus, a soldier struck in the neck fell unconscious, and on awaking was astonished to find his right arm powerless at his side. This is the so-called "reflex paralysis." Very commonly the irritation of a nerve will give rise to an impulse which will travel up the nerve to a motor-centre, and so excite it that it shall send in turn an impulse down a second nerve to a distant muscle, and a spasm result. Sometimes, however, the impulse which travels to the nerve-centre is of such a character that, instead of exciting it to action, it deprives it of the power of action. In the former instance reflex motion, in the latter reflex paralysis, results.

We have seen that galvanization of a nerve may excite the inhibitory centre to activity, and the peculiar persistent irritation of a local inflammation may deprive the same centre of its power of action: in the one instance a reflex inhibitory heat-centre spasm—i.e., lowering of temperature—is produced, and in the other a reflex inhibitory heat-centre paralysis—i.e., fever—results.

It would be going too far at present to assert that all fever is produced in the way spoken of. There are certain drugs which lower the temperature in the fever that follows division of the cord and consequent paralysis of the heat-centre, and which must therefore act either upon the blood, or universally upon the tissues so as to diminish their-chemical movements. It is most probable, although not yet absolutely proved, that there are other substances which act directly upon the blood and tissues in such a way as to increase their chemical activities, and thereby cause fever.

The practical considerations in regard to the treatment of disease which naturally flow from the recent investigations of fever are very important and very obvious. This is especially true since it has been shown in Germany that under the influence of a continuous high bodily temperature, not intense enough at any time to compromise life, all the muscular tissues of the body undergo a peculiar granular degeneration. Many a typhoid-fever patient has undoubtedly died from the heart-muscle having undergone this change, when, if by artificial cooling the temperature of the body had been kept down, the alteration of the heart-structure would have been prevented, and death averted. It is obvious, also, that the old plan of thwarting the intentions of Nature, and depriving the fever-patient of the free use of cooling drinks, was practically a baneful cruelty. As the body is burning up in fever, it is also evident that to deprive it of sustenance is to aid in the production of fatal exhaustion. The burning will go on, whether food is given or not, so long as the tissues can serve as fuel. Of course no more food should be taken than the patient can digest, but every grain of digested food is so much added to the resources of the system, which is engaged, it may be, in a close and doubtful conflict with disease.

If it were possible, of course the best treatment for fever would be that which lessened the production of heat. Fortunately, we have some drugs—notably, quinine and alcohol—which do exert a decided influence upon the vital chemical movements, but, unfortunately, their power is limited. As we are therefore often unable to control heat-production, the best we can do is to abstract the caloric from the body whenever it becomes so excessive as to threaten serious results. To do this, all that is necessary is to put the patient in a cold bath, or wrap him in a sheet wet with ice-cold water, or lay him upon an ice-mattress, or surround him with coils of tubing through which cold water runs, or use some similar efficacious device. I do not wish to be misunderstood. External cold is not to be lightly employed: it is a powerful two-edged weapon, capable of cutting both ways—a weapon as injurious and destructive in the hands of the ignorant and inexperienced as it is efficient in the hands of those to whom study and experience have taught its skillful use.

To illustrate what cold water may effect when employed by intelligent and skillful physicians, I may be permitted to cite a few hospital statistics from Germany and Switzerland, the only countries where the so-called antipyretic treatment of continued fever has been efficiently carried out on a large scale. From 1850 to 1861 there were treated without cold water, at the hospital at Kiel, 330 cases of typhoid fever, with 51 deaths—a mortality of about 15-1/2 per cent.; from 1863 to 1866, 160 cases were treated with cold baths, with 5 deaths—a mortality of only 3-1/10 per cent. In the hospital of Bale, from 1843 to 1864, there were 1718 cases without antipyretic treatment, with 469 deaths—a mortality of about 27-1/2 per cent; from September, 1866, to 1873, 1121 cases were treated antipyretically, with 92 deaths—a mortality of a little over 8 per cent. Assuredly, we may claim that this water-treatment in typhoid fever is one of the greatest gains of modern medicine since the discovery of anaesthesia.

Some of my readers may here say to themselves, "Why, this is hydropathy!" Not so. It is the legitimate, not the illegitimate, use of cold water. It is the use of it as a single weapon, not as the only weapon of the armory. It is the employment of it in a single affection, not as a cure for all diseases.

Perhaps, in concluding this essay, I may be pardoned one word of counsel to my lay audience. Any physician who proclaims himself a follower of any special doctrine, be he a hydropath, an electropath, an allopath, a homoeopath, or any other path, should be viewed with suspicion. Water, cold, heat, electricity, drugs, are all agents capable of being used advantageously in the treatment of disease. Above all men, the physician ought to have that teachable spirit which is the offspring of true humility. Knowing the grave responsibilities which he assumes, living almost beneath the shadow of that past whose life-imperiling mistakes are so plainly visible in the light of the present, he, of all men, should be ever seeking for new knowledge, gathering with equal zest the seeds of healing in the waste as well as in the cultivated places, amongst the lowest and most ignorant of the populace, as well as in far-famed schools of medicine.

H.C. WOOD, JR., M.D.



SONNET.

Young bride, that findest not a single star Shining to-night with longed for prophecy, Though snowy drifts are swelling near and far, They need not chill thy happy hope and thee. If blue had overarched the earth all day, And heaven were brilliant with its stars to-night, "A happy omen!" many a guest would say, And think that Fortune blessed the sacred rite. Be superstition far from thee, sweet soul: This snowy robe, in unison with thine, Nature will doff to-morrow, and the whole Of this white waste in spring-like freshness shine. If love be strong, then all adversity Will melt like snow, and life the greener be.

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.



SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF HIRAM POWERS.

There are—or were—many at Florence whose recollections of Hiram Powers stretch over the best part of a quarter of a century; and there are few men of whom it could with equal truth and accuracy be said that such recollections are wholly pleasant in their character to the survivors and honorable to the subject of them. He was in truth universally respected by people of all classes, and by Americans and English, as well as Italians, in the city of his adoption, and personally liked and esteemed by all who had the good fortune to be among his friends. Recollections such as these are, I say, the property of very many at Florence. But there is no one in that city—there was during his life no one in that city, not even she who during a long life was a companion, friend, partner and helpmeet in every sense admirable for him—whose recollections went back to so early a period as mine did.

When I came to Florence with my mother in 1841, intending to make a home there for a few years, we found, with some surprise and much pleasure, Hiram Powers, with a wife and children, settled there as a sculptor. It was long since, in the course of the changes and chances of life, we had lost sight of him, but the meeting was none the less pleasurable to, I think I may say, both parties. It was at Cincinnati in 1829 that my mother and myself first knew him. My mother, who had long been an acquaintance of General La Fayette, became thus the intimate friend of his ward, Frances Wright. Fascinated by the talent, the brilliancy and the singular eloquence of that remarkable and highly-gifted woman, and at the same time anxious to find a career for one of her sons (not the well-known author of the present day, but another brother, long since dead), whose wishes and proclivities adapted him for a life of more activity and adventure than that of one of our home-abiding professions, my mother was persuaded by her to join her in a scheme which at that time was engaging all her singularly large powers of energy and enthusiasm, the object of which was to found at New Harmony—I think, though I am not sure whether Frances Wright's colony was not another, separate from that of New Harmony—an establishment which was in some way or other to contribute to the emancipation of the slaves, mainly, I imagine, by showing that under proper management they were not unfitted for freedom. The fate of that philanthropic scheme is too well known to make it necessary for me to rehearse the story of it here, imperfectly known to me as it is. The upshot was, that my mother and brother were induced to go to Cincinnati and attempt other plans, the final result of which was also a failure. I had had no share in these Transatlantic projects, being at the time a scholar at Winchester in the college of William of Wykeham. But between quitting Winchester, at the age of eighteen, and going to Oxford, I had a period of liberty of nearly a twelvemonth, the greater part of which I devoted to accompanying my father on a visit to Cincinnati. And there I became acquainted with Powers, a very few years only my senior, whom I found already the valued friend of my mother and brother.

He was at that time—I well remember the look of him—a tall, lanky, but remarkably handsome lad, somewhat awkward in person, but with a calm but at the same time intellectually expressive beauty of feature which marked him as one of Nature's noblemen. His eyes were the most noticeable point about him. They were magnificent—large, clear, well-opened, and expressive of calm thought and the working of the intellect rather than of shrewdness or passion. His manner, I remember, was marked by an exceeding simpleness, and a sort of innocent and dignified straightforwardness which much impressed me. Altogether, my acquaintance with him was a contribution of a new sort to the education of my mind. I had passed eight years in the acquisition of those things which an English "gentleman's education" is supposed to offer. These things (in the year 1829) consisted in a very fair knowledge of Latin and Greek. Unquestionably, the eight years which I had spent in learning those languages had brought with them other advantages and other teachings of an altogether priceless sort. But what they professedly had taught me, what I then considered as the net result of my eight years at school, was a competent knowledge of Latin and Greek, and nothing else. Now, here was a young man of my own age, or little more, about whose idiosyncrasy there was something especially simpatico to me, as the Italians say—who knew nothing whatever of the only things which I knew, but knew a whole world of things of which I was profoundly ignorant. I was (of course) full of prejudices also—ecclesiastical prejudices, class prejudices, political prejudices, caste prejudices—all of which were as unintelligible to my new friend as they would have been to a red Indian. He was singularly free from prejudice of any kind—a sort of original, blank-paper mind, on which nothing had been written save what he had consciously written there himself as the result of his own observations of life. I knew other young Americans, and perceived and could have pointed out characteristics which distinguished them. But Powers was not like them. He seemed to me a sort of Adam, a fresh, new and original man, unclassable and unjudgable by any of the formulas or prejudices which served me as means of appreciating men. Despite all this—perhaps because of all this—we soon became great friends. I very shortly discovered that he was wholly and entirely truthful. His "yes" was yes, his "no" was no; and not only that, but what is much rarer still, his "five" or "six" was not five and a quarter or six and a half, but five or six. I remember in him then what I recognized after many, many years in later life, and what is often so amusing a characteristic in simple, upright and truthful minds—the notion that on occasion he could be deep enough to outwit the cunning of the unscrupulous, whereas his loyal unsuspiciousness of evil was such that he might have been cheated by the first shallow rogue who chose to exercise his vulpine craft against him.

When I reached Cincinnati I found him intimate with my brother, and a favorite with my mother, who had formed a high opinion both of his character and of his talents. The latter had already very markedly manifested themselves in that direction which finally decided his career in life. Yet there was little of that dreamy and enthusiastic worship for the abstract beautiful which is generally supposed to be the marking characteristic of the artistic temperament. But he had a wonderful faculty of executing with his hands whatever his mind had conceived, and a mind singularly active in invention and in devising means for the execution of a mechanical end. Had circumstances not made him a sculptor, he might have been—probably would have been—a successful inventor, mechanician or engineer. Throughout life he was an eminently and specially practical man—a man whose tendency was not to dream, but to do. That artistic temperament, as it is generally called, which so often manifests itself in exactly the opposite direction—in a tendency to dream rather than to do, and to allow the pleasures of the ideal to incapacitate those who indulge in them for real work—was so little his that I have never known a more industrious and conscientious worker with his hands. And there was nothing to which he could not turn them, and that with a degree of skill that would often put to shame the attempts of members of the craft which he might be essaying for the first time.

At that time Hiram Powers was, as the saying is, living upon his wits; and they, being such as I have described them, were not likely to fail in producing the wherewithal to do so. There was at that period a little Frenchman named Dorfeuille at Cincinnati—not a bad sort of little man, I believe, and with some amount of literary and other talent. But he also being engaged in the operation of living on his wits, or mainly so, and not finding them so abundantly sufficient for the purpose as those of my young friend, thought that he too might in part live on the wits of the latter; and during the time of my stay at Cincinnati he did so to the satisfaction of both parties. This Dorfeuille was the proprietor of a museum, the main and most attractive portion of which was a number of wax figures. But the Cincinnati public was not large enough in those days to supply a constant stream of fresh spectators, and, though there was little in the way of public amusement to compete with M. Dorfeuille's museum, the Cincinnati people soon got tired of looking at the same show; and but for the happy chance which brought him into contact with Hiram Powers, M. Dorfeuille must have packed up his museum and sought "fresh woods and pastures new." But with the advent of young Powers, and the contents of the museum given over to his creating brain and clever fingers, a period of halcyon days and new prosperity commenced for the little Frenchman and his show. With the materials at his disposition all things were possible to the young artist, to whom such a chance gave the first clear consciousness of his own powers. New combinations, new names, new costuming, alterations of figures, etc. etc. were adopted to produce fine effects and amuse the public with constant novelties. For the invention of these Powers often used to consult my mother, whose suggestions he never failed to carry into effect, to the great amusement of both parties. On one occasion an idea struck her, which, when she communicated it to him, fired the imagination of Powers and turned out a great success. This was nothing less than to give a representation of some of the more striking scenes of Dante's Divina Commedia. The idea was a sufficiently audacious one. But "audaces Fortuna juvat." Powers scouted the notion of difficulty. My mother was to draw up the programme, and he undertook, with the materials furnished him by the museum, and with the help of some of his own handiwork, to give scenic reality to her suggestions. The result, as I have said, was a brilliant success. I have a copy of the "bill" that was issued to the public inviting them to the exhibition in question, which is a curiosity in its way, and which I must give the reader. It is drawn up in high sensational style, with lines of different lengths and boldness, and printed in all the different sorts of capitals which the printer's case afforded. I cannot occupy space with any imitation of these typographical magnificences, but will simply copy the language of the bill. It must have been my mother's composition, and Powers had to work up to it, which he did to the letter:

"The World to come, as described by Dante, and comprising, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, will be exhibited in a room adjoining the Western Museum on the 4th of July, and days following. Admittance, twenty-five cents. In the centre is seen a grand colossal figure of Minos, the Judge of Hell. He is seated at the entrance of the INFERNAL REGIONS [enormous capitals]. His right hand is raised as in the act to pronounce sentence, his left holding a two-pronged sceptre. Above his head is a scroll on which are written the concluding words of Dante's celebrated inscription, 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!' To the right of this figure the foreground presents a frozen lake, on the surface of which are seen the heads of those who have been doomed to this species of punishment. Among these is the head of Ugolino, whom Dante describes as eternally gnawing the head of his enemy, who, after placing him and his three sons in the upper chamber of a strong tower near Florence, threw the key of it into the moat and left them to perish with hunger. Grinning in mockery of these ice-bound sufferers, A BLACK IMP [biggest extra black capitals] is seated on a rock, dandling a young monster. On the edge of the opposite side of the frozen lake stands a spirit, who is just about to endure the frozen torment; and his attitude and countenance express the agony of extreme cold. Behind him opens the fiery gulf, the reflection of whose lurid glare is seen on his half-frozen body. At his feet a female head, fixed in the ice, looks up to the flames, as longing for their warmth; while a little way within the lake of fire another head is seen gazing with longing eyes upon the ice. A brilliant fountain of flame is in the midst of the lake, and around it crowds of condemned spirits in all varieties of suffering. In one corner a fiend is proclaiming their infamy by the aid of a trumpet through all the depths of Hell. Birds and animals of hideous form and evil omen are fluttering over the heads and tormenting the sufferers. Large icicles hang from the rocks that form the Gate of Hell, and reflect on their bright surface the red glare of the fires within. On the left of Minos is seen a Skeleton ascending a column of Icicles and holding a standard bearing these lines:

"'To this grim form our cherished limbs have come, And thus lie mouldering in their earthly home. In turf-bound hillock or in sculptured shrine The worms alike their cold caresses twine. So far we all are equal; but once left Our mortal weeds, of vital spark bereft, Asunder farther than the poles we're driven— Some sunk to deepest Hell, some raised to highest Heaven.'

"Still farther on the left of Minos, and melting into distance behind him, is seen the shadowy region of Purgatory. Four bright stars—the Cardinal Virtues—give a delicate and cheering light amid the gloom. A group of figures loaded with the burthen of their sins are about to plunge into the lake of purgatorial waters, in the hope of depositing them there. A boat wafted by the wings of an Angel is bearing departed, souls toward Heaven; and near it is a column of pale light to direct its course. In the distance is the mountain that divides Purgatory from Heaven; and Beatrice, the departed mistress of Dante, is standing on its summit, encouraging him to proceed with her to Heaven, where his former guide, Virgil, cannot be admitted (being a Pagan). Groups of Pilgrims who have passed through Purgatory are ascending the mountain. Still farther to the left, and opening in unbroken splendor above the head of Beatrice, is seen the Heaven of Heavens. The golden light pours down on the heads of the Pilgrims, and angels are seen floating in the air and encouraging their efforts. The foreground of this part of the scene presents various objects to cheer the spirit of the Pilgrims in their passage through Purgatory. The entrance indeed is rocky, but shrubs and flowers adorn it, and the Dove, the bird of Hope, is bearing the olive-branch before them."

If all that was packed into "a room adjoining the Western Museum," the sight of it must, I think, be admitted to have been a cheap twenty-five cents' worth. The Cincinnati world of hard upon half a century ago judged it to be so, and flocked to the exhibition in crowds. But very soon the versatile and indefatigable artist devised new means of still further stimulating the curiosity and excitement of his public. A bar ran across the exhibition-room, dividing the space allotted to the spectators from that occupied by the scenery and objects provided for their amusement. But since the available space was, as may easily be imagined, somewhat limited, it came to pass that the foremost spectators, being often of that class of persons who see with the ends of their fingers, would stretch out their arms and audaciously touch "the Black Imp," or "the Skeleton," or Minos himself, or any other of the dramatis personae they could reach, to the damage of those somewhat perishable properties. A notice was therefore placarded in the room, written in flame-colored letters and couched in the choicest bugaboo phraseology, warning all such indiscreet persons that the denizens of the Infernal Regions could not be touched by mortal hands with impunity, and that immediate punishment would visit transgressors. Of course it was foreseen that such threats would not avail to restrain, but would rather stimulate the curiosity of the disciples of Saint Thomas. But, sure enough, the threatened punishment, by no means "pede claudo" followed in every case—very accurately with the speed of lightning—on the transgression; for Powers had cunningly contrived, preparing it all with his own hand, that a sharp electric shock should be communicated to each audacious hand that braved the prohibition. The astonishment, the terror, and subsequently the fun, produced by this ingenious device may easily be imagined. The sufferers, like the fox who had lost his tail, brought their friends, and enjoyed the fun of leading them into the same scrape. The "room adjoining the Western Museum" was more thronged than ever, and little Dorfeuille reaped a golden harvest. How large a share of it found its way into the pockets of the ingenious artist I know not—probably a much smaller one than fair play would have assigned him.

In the long after years at Florence, Powers and I had many a laugh together over his reminiscences of the scenes that occurred in that exhibition-room, all of which he remembered as well as if the incidents had happened but a year before, and would chuckle over with as much enjoyment as he did at the time of their occurrence. My copy of the hand-bill which I have given above—doubtless the only one now in existence—was matter of much amusement to us, and served to recall every portion and every figure of the early work of his hands.

From the time I left America to go to Oxford, in the spring of 1829, till our meeting at Florence in 1841, I saw no more of Powers. But, as may be easily imagined, we lost no time in renewing our old friendship. He was then, and for many years afterward, living in the Via Romana, not far from the city gate of that name. The house stood back from the street, and was approached only by a passage through another tenement, from which it was divided by a little garden; a situation which, though not in all respects convenient, had at least the advantage of securing quietude. The young sculptor, with his already numerous and rapidly increasing family, occupied the first and second floors, while the ground floor was exclusively devoted to workshops and show-rooms. The premises were large and the accommodations ample. Already few Americans came to Florence without paying a visit to the "Studio Powers," but they were in those days but few in comparison to the number which, partly as residents and partly as merely passing tourists, throng every winter the fair "City of Flowers." Up to the revolution of 1848 the English at Florence were very far more numerous than the citizens of the other English-speaking nation. That unsuccessful movement drove many English, very unnecessarily, from their moorings. The English colony was very much reduced even after those who returned on the return of the grand duke had resumed their old places. And from that time forward I think that America has been more numerously represented on the banks of the Arno than England. Powers had at that time produced various successful busts, but had not as yet made himself known as an imaginative sculptor. Nevertheless, the former works had sufficed to give him an amount of reputation in the United States that ensured constant visits of his countrymen to the studio in the Via Romana.

Some twelve years had elapsed when I first saw Powers in Florence since the old days in Cincinnati. In such a space of time, especially at that period of life which turns a lad into a man, most men change much. But the change in Powers's face was but small: I should have known him if I had met him in the street anywhere. But in person he was much changed: he had become stout and what is called personable, not fat—he never was that to the end of his life—but neither was he lanky, as he had been as a youth. He had filled out, as the phrase is, and might be considered in all respects a decidedly handsome man. There was something specially, and more than commonly, upright in the carriage of his person and of his head, which seemed the expression of the uprightness of the man's moral and intellectual nature and character. He always looked straight at you with those large, placid and generally grave eyes of his under their large and bushy brows. They seemed to continue grave, or at least thoughtful, those eyes, even when there was a pleasant genial smile on the mouth. And there was this specialty about his smile—a specialty which may be often observed in subjective natures habituated to original thought and to live in the inner life: it seemed generally to be produced more by the movement of his own inward feelings and thoughts than by what was said by others. Like most dark-haired men, he began to become gray early in life, and for some few years before his death his appearance was venerable in no ordinary degree. He then wore his hair, which had become perfectly white, very long, and a shallow, very broad-brimmed white hat on the top of it. The latter, indeed, was, I think, at all times his universal wear. I do not think that I ever saw him in Florence in that detestable article of apparel called "a chimney-pot hat." But this is anticipating.

Very shortly after our arrival in Florence and the renewal of our friendship with Powers—I think not more than a year—there arrived in Florence, bringing a letter of introduction to my mother, an English gentleman of fortune, Mr. Grant. He was a noted lover and patron of art, and my mother proposed to him a visit to the Studio Powers. The sculptor had then just completed his first imaginative work, the "Greek Slave," which numerous replicas have since made so well known on both sides of the Atlantic. This work had greatly excited my mother's admiration, and it was that he might have an opportunity of seeing the "Greek Slave" that my mother was desirous of taking Mr. Grant to the sculptor's studio. But it was not altogether easy to induce Mr. Grant to accept the proposal. "If there is anything very good, that is the very reason why I must not go there. Lead me not into temptation! I have been spending all my money, and more than I meant to spend, on sculpture in Rome. Don't show me any more statues, for I cannot buy any more." But this confession of fearing temptation was calculated to produce a stronger determination to expose him to it. Mr. Grant was persuaded to visit the studio in the Via Romana: he was as much charmed with the beauty of the conception of the statue as with the conscientious perfection of its execution, and he became the purchaser of it. And it speedily acquired a reputation which led to the execution of as many, I think, as four or five replicas at the request of other lovers of art; and the sculptor's reputation was made.

The practice of the greatest sculptors as regards the degree in which it has seemed desirable to them to take part in that mechanical portion of the business of producing a statue which consists in the manipulation of the marble, has always been very different. Some have subjected the marble to the touching of their own hands more, some less. The work of reproducing a copy of the clay model in marble is a purely mechanical one, and may or may not be in the artist's judgment best brought to perfection by the labor of his own hands. It will readily be believed, however, from what has been already said of the tendencies of Powers's talent and idiosyncrasy, that he was among those who have contributed most of their personal labor to the perfecting of their works. Powers was one of those men whose hands have faculty in them. He was a master in the use of them, and accordingly he loved to use them. It was his practice to go over with his own hand the surface of the marble of every work which left his studio. But he was not contented to do this in the manner and with the tools which had been used by so many generations of sculptors before him. That decided bent of his genius to mechanical invention which has been mentioned at the beginning of this paper led him to perceive that an improvement might be made in this respect. For giving the last finish to the marble, for removing from the surface a quantity so small that no chisel could be trusted to do the work, it is obvious enough to suggest the use of a file. And no doubt files are used for the purpose, but they are liable to a special and very troublesome source of inefficiency. They become clogged with the excessively fine dust of the marble in a very few minutes to such an extent as to be rendered useless, especially as the file must be of an exceedingly fine description. Powers therefore set his mind to the problem of inventing some means or some instrument by which this source of trouble could be avoided; and after considerable vexation, not so much in perfecting his own conception of the thing needed as in getting careless and not very competent workmen to execute his orders, he perfected a file of the necessary fineness upon the principle of a nutmeg-grater. His studio was at all times full of little ingenious contrivances of all sorts—contrivances for readily and conveniently modifying the light in the exact degree desirable; contrivances for the due collocation and distribution of artificial light; contrivances for the more ready moving of marbles, etc. etc.

It is the fashion in Florence and in Rome for artists to open their studios to all visitors. It is a custom which adds much to the amusement of visitors who are really lovers of art; but it must bring with it, one would think, consequences which must sometimes be not a little trying to the painter's or sculptor's temper and patience. Criticism from those who have some little pretension to the right to criticise is not always pleasant when volunteered, but criticism from such Philistines of the Philistines as often haunt the studios must be hard indeed to bear with common courtesy. Powers invariably received such with the most perfect suavity and good-temper, but I have sometimes seen him, to my great amusement, inflict a punishment on the talkers of nonsense which made them wish they had held their tongues. This consisted simply of defending his own practice by entering on a lecture upon the principles which ought to regulate the matter in question. He was, I fancy, rather fond of lecturing, and would rather have liked the work of a professor of the fine arts. I have seen people writhe under his patient and lengthy expositions, which they were as capable of understanding as so many bullocks, and which they had brought down on themselves by some absolutely absurd remark on the work before them. I have seen such delinquents use every sort of effort to put a stop to or escape from the punishment they had brought upon themselves. In vain: the lecture would continue with a placid uninterruptibility which it was amusing to witness.

It was in 1854, I think, or thereabouts (for I have not at hand the means of verifying the date with accuracy, and it is of no consequence), that Mr. Hume, the since well-known medium, came to Florence. He came to my house on the pressing invitation of my mother, my then wife and myself. We had seen accounts of extraordinary things said to have taken place some months previously at the house of a Mr. Rymer, a solicitor living at Ealing near London, and our curiosity and interest had been so much excited that the hope of being able to witness some of these marvels was not the least among the motives of a journey that summer to England. We obtained an introduction to Mr. Rymer, were present at sundry seances at his house at Ealing, made acquaintance with Mr. Hume, and invited him to stay for a while in my house in Florence. He came accompanied by his friend, a son of Mr. Rymer; and both the young men were resident under my roof for about a month, leaving it to accept an invitation from Mr. Powers to make his house their home for a while. The manifestations of phenomena produced, or supposed to be produced, by what has become known to the world as "Spiritualism," were then only beginning to attract in Europe the very general attention which they have since that time attracted. The thing was then new to most people. During the month that Mr. Hume and his friend were in my house we had seances almost every evening, with the "assistance," as the French say, of a rather numerous and very varied circle. For, as may easily be supposed, all our friends were anxious to witness the new marvels, and we, desirous only of as many eyes and as many minds as might be for the better watching and discussion of the phenomena, welcomed all comers to the extent of the capacity of our room and table. I have no intention of troubling my present readers with any detailed rehearsal of the phenomena which presented themselves. The testimony which my observations during this period enabled me to offer has already more than once been given to the world in print, and the catalogue of similar and yet more extraordinary experiences has become too long, and the witnesses to them too numerous and too well known to the public, for such details to have any further interest at the present day. I feel bound, however, to state that no amount of suspicious watching which I was able to exercise in my house, and which Powers was able to exercise in his, enabled us to discover any smallest degree of imposture, or fair grounds for suspecting imposture, as regards the physical or material phenomena which were witnessed. Such is my testimony, and such was that of Powers, who, by his aptitude for inventing and understanding mechanical contrivances of all kinds, was a man specially well fitted for the task of watching the performance of such wonders. I have spoken here, it will be observed, altogether of the material and physical phenomena witnessed. As to what are called the spiritual manifestations, Powers was perhaps not an entirely unbiased estimator of these. He was an eminently sincere, earnest and zealous Swedenborgian, and several of the leading tenets and dogmas of the Swedenborgian faith are calculated to make such communications with the world of spirits as Spiritualists claim to experience much less startling, less strange to the mind and more acceptable, than they usually appear to other people. To a Swedenborgian who is perfectly convinced that the spirits of the departed are ever around him and interested in his welfare, it does not seem a very strange or extraordinary thing that these visitors should under certain circumstances be able to express the interest which they always feel. Powers regarded all the professed manifestations of spiritual communications from that stand-point, and was enabled to accept them therefore somewhat more easily than another person might have done. Yet, despite such predisposing proclivities, and though he was disposed to think a great variety of professed communications from the world of spirits to have been genuinely what they purported to be, the habitual uprightness and truthfulness of Powers's mind led him, as I believe I am justified in saying, to the conclusion that in the case which I am about to mention, at least, there was ground for very strong suspicion of the honesty of the medium. The circumstances of the case were as follows:

I had many years previously lost a brother—the same whom I have already had occasion to mention in the earlier part of this letter. Now, at an early stage of the series of sittings that took place at my house it was intimated that the spirit of this brother was present and wishful or willing to communicate with me. He did, as was proposed, communicate very freely upon subjects of all sorts by means of raps under the table and the letters of the alphabet spread upon it—on all subjects save one. To the often-repeated question, where we had last met in life, I could get no reply. It was constantly promised to me that I should be answered this question at the next sitting. Now, it so happened that my wife had conceived, reasonably or unreasonably, doubts as to the medium's honesty in the matter, and she determined to try him in the matter of this unanswered question. Talking one day with him in tete-a-tete, she turned the subject of maladies of the chest, of which they had been speaking, to the special case of her late brother-in-law, discussing the powerful influence of climate, and remarking that she feared Ostend had been a very bad place for him. And there she left the matter without any further remark, and without eliciting any answer from him. This occurred very shortly before the time when Mr. Hume left my house to accept the hospitality of Mr. Powers. The sittings continued with great frequency in the house of the latter, and my mother and myself were very frequently present at them. As before, the soi-disant spirit of my brother Henry announced his presence, and, as before, I repeated my often-asked question as to the place on earth where he and I had last met. On this occasion the answer rapped out consisted of the word "Ostend." I smilingly replied, "Spirit, you know nothing about what you are talking of: you are wrong." Mr. Hume became immediately very angry, and reproached me vehemently for "interrupting the spirit"—for not waiting for what he was probably going to say. It was likely enough, he added, that the spirit was about to say that Ostend was not the place. I said "Pshaw! In that way he might go through the whole Gazetteer." Thereupon Mr. Hume declared that I was evidently not in a fit frame of mind to be a sitter at such meetings; that my presence would be likely to mar any results to be expected from them; and, in short, if only for the sake of those who wished to continue their experiences, it was necessary that I should withdraw from them. That was the last occasion on which I took part in a seance under Mr. Hume's mediumship. My mother continued her sittings at the house of Mr. Powers, and it is fair to record that she there witnessed material phenomena—some of them closely allied to phenomena only explainable on Spiritualistic theories—of even a more extraordinary nature than any which had occurred at my house; in which neither she, nor Mr. Powers or any of his family, nor any of the others of the party, were able to detect any imposture. And I believe I may add that Mr. Powers fully believed in the genuineness of the phenomena witnessed. It is also perhaps fair to state that had the answer to my question been "On board the steamboat going from London to Ostend," the reply would have been correct. How far it is possible to suppose that the word "Ostend" may have been the first word of an answer about to be completed in that sense if it had not been interrupted, I leave to the judgment of the reader.

For some time after this Powers used to recount to me the marvels which were witnessed at his house. He was not pleased with the medium as an inmate in other respects: he did not form a favorable opinion of his moral character. I am speaking of matters now many years old, and I might not have considered it necessary to record these impressions of a very specially upright and honest man with regard to one who is still before the public were it not that they go to increase the value of Mr. Powers's testimony to the genuineness of the phenomena which he witnessed, by showing that his judgment upon the subject was at least in no degree warped by any prejudice in favor of the miracle-worker.

Meantime, the sculptor, still in the modest tenement which he occupied for so many years in the Via Romana, was growing in fame and reputation from day to day. A visit to the Studio Powers—or Pousse, as the ciceroni and valets-de-place called it—was an obligatory part of the tourist's regular work in "doing" Florence. A large family was, during those prosperous and laborious years, growing up around him—sons and daughters, most of whom he lived to see settled in life and to be justly proud of. Death did not altogether pass his threshold by, but he knocked there but once or twice in all that length of years. At last the time came when the successful artist felt that his position enabled and justified him in moving from his old quarters to more commodious and luxurious ones. He had been but a tenant in the Via Romana: he was now to inhabit a house of his own.

It was the time when Florence was for a few short years enjoying the fallacious and fatal honor of being the capital of Italy. There were some who from the first were fully convinced that that honor would be a transitory one. The greater number thought that the will of France and of her emperor, and the difficulties attending the simultaneous residence of the king of Italy and the pope within the walls of the same city, would avail to make Florence the capital of the new kingdom for at least as many years as human prudence could look forward to. The earthquake-like events which shook down the bases of all such calculations, and enabled Italy to realize her longing desire to see Rome the capital of the nation, are too well known to need even referring to. Florence suddenly ceased to be the metropolis of Italy, and the amount of financial ruin in the case of those who had invested money in building to supply the wants of the capital was very widespread indeed. And there can be no doubt that the houses built by Powers are at the present day worth much less than they were at the time he built them, and still less than they would have been worth had Florence remained the capital. Nevertheless, I do not think that he would have abstained from building from any considerations of this kind. He built solely with a view to residence, and in that respect he could hardly have done better than he did.

He did not move very far. His old lodging and studio were, as has been said, a little way within the Porta Romana, and the villa residence which he built is but two or three minutes' walk on the outside of it. Immediately outside this Porta Romana, sloping off a little to the left from the road to Rome, is a magnificent avenue of ilex and cypress conducting to a grand-ducal villa called the "Poggio Imperiale." To the left again of this avenue, which is perhaps a mile or somewhat more in length, and between it and the city wall, which in that part of its course encloses the Boboli Gardens attached to the Palazzo Pitti, is a large extent of hillside, rapidly rising to the heights crowned by the ancient and storied church of San Miniato, and by the suburban villages of Arcetri and Pian Guillari. This space was, and had been for time out of mind, occupied by fields and market-gardens. But when the new fortunes of the City of Flowers fallaciously seemed to be in the ascendant, it was at once seen that of all the spaces immediately around Florence which were available for that increase of the city which was expected to be urgently required, none was more desirable or more favorably circumstanced than this hillside. A really magnificent carriage-road, ornamented with gardens on either side of it, was led in well-arranged curves up to San Miniato, and down on the other side of the hill till it reaches the Arno at the village of Ricorboli. The entire course of this road commands a series of varied views of the city and the Vale of Arno than which nothing can be conceived more charming. It is in truth the finest city promenade and drive that I know in Europe. Rome has nothing comparable to it. The Bois de Boulogne and Hyde Park are, as far as natural beauty goes, tame and flat in comparison to it. The planning and the execution of it have been alike excellent. The whole of the space up which the road serpentines has been turned into ornamental gardens, and on either side of it, and among its lawns and shrubberies, a large number of villa-sites were reserved to be disposed of to purchasers. Of this singular opportunity Powers was one of the first to avail himself. He selected with admirable judgment three sites in the immediate neighborhood of each other—one for a residence for himself, one for that of his eldest son, a married man, established and doing well as a photographer, and one for that of his eldest daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Ibbetson. The friends of the sculptor thus patriarchally establishing himself said laughingly that the region ought to be called Powerstown. The three houses, each in its own grounds, were built, and excellently good and comfortable residences they are. Powers was almost as much in his own element in superintending them as in his studio with mallet and chisel in hand, as might be surmised. The new studio formed no part of the dwelling-house, but occupied a separate erection in the grounds. Nor did the artist's love for his art fail to show itself in the amplitude and excellent adaptation of the building to all the needs of a studio, properly so called—of work-rooms and exhibition-rooms for the reception of visitors. A more complete sculptor's residence and establishment it would be difficult to imagine. Alas for the shortness of the few years that were allowed to him for the enjoyment of it! Long after the house and the studio were completed, and the marbles all moved thither, Powers was still indulging in the delight of improving his garden; and his plans for such improvement gave striking evidence of that genius and passion for mechanical cleverness and achievements of which I have frequently spoken. He had planned and begun—I think only begun—to execute an artesian well by means of certain newly-invented systems of boring, the details of which, in the absence of all workmen who possessed any knowledge whatever on the subject, had to be wholly superintended, arranged and adapted by himself. He had satisfied himself by observations of his own that water was to be found at a given depth, and had, I believe, prosecuted the work sufficiently to be assured that his judgment in this respect was well founded. In connection with this scheme of the artesian well was a fountain in the garden, which was, I believe, also ultimately brought to perfection.

In conformity with the convenient continental fashion of ladies naming one day in the week for the reception of visitors—a plan which enables them to escape from the interruption to their domestic pursuits on all other days, and which is very generally adopted by those who have large circles of acquaintance—Mrs. Powers used to open the drawing-rooms of her new house on every Saturday, and a considerable crowd was sure to be found there from two to six. But such recent arrivals on the banks of the Arno as paid their respects to Mrs. Powers in the hope and expectation of seeing the famous sculptor were almost, if not quite, invariably disappointed. None of the Florentine colony expected to find Powers in the drawing-room on such occasions. They knew better where to look for him—in his workshop. There he might be found by those who had brought letters of introduction to him, in his usual workman's garb. Powers never made the slightest concession to the necessities of receiving "company" on such occasions. There he was, with his working cap on head, probably in a long light gray coat, not innocent of marble dust, but often in blouse and apron.

In the latter days, when, though we little thought it, the end was approaching, when the night of that long day of continuous activity and labor was at hand, he might as frequently have been found sauntering under the magnificent trees of the Poggio Imperiale avenue in the immediate vicinity of his own house. Upright in figure and in carriage as ever, and with his eye as bright as ever, it was difficult to suppose that the venerable and stalwart figure of the old sculptor was not destined still for years of life and activity. His malady was connected with the respiratory organs; and a specially painful circumstance of it for his friends was, that the loss of voice, which made the effort of talking injurious to him, rendered it a selfish and inconsiderate thing to visit him; for the activity of his mind was still such that in the contact with another mind he could not abstain from the old familiar intercourse which he had loved so well. Like the old camel of the Arabian tale, that, having been all its life accustomed to lead the caravan, died in the effort to keep his old place to the last, Powers, who had been always wont to have rather the lion's share of conversation, could not resign himself to hear another talk, in silence. He would talk, and suffered for it afterward. The result was that his friends felt that they were showing the best consideration for him by staying away.

To look at him, I say, as he would stand in the sunshine at his own gate, it was difficult to imagine that aught of a very serious nature ailed him. But in the case of a man so habitually active his sauntering there was a bad sign. He was emphatically one of those men with whom life and work are the same thing—one whose sun was at the setting when he could work no more, and who would probably have cared little to survive his capacity for working.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.



CORN.

To-day the woods are trembling through and through With shimmering forms, that flash into my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart. The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song, Through whose vague sweet float expirations strong From lithe young hickories, breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of inward spring, And ecstasy of burgeoning. Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry, Come daintier smells, linked in soft company, Like velvet-slippered ladies pacing by. Long muscadines, Like Jove's locks curled round foreheads of great pines, Breathe out ambrosial passion from their vines. I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy That hide like gentle nuns from human eye, To lift adoring odors to the sky. I hear faint bridal-sighs of blissful green, Dying to kindred silences serene, As dim lights melt into a pleasant sheen. I start at fragmentary whispers, blown From undertalks of leafy loves unknown, Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone.

Dreaming of gods, men, nuns and brides, between Old companies of oaks that inward lean To join their radiant amplitudes of green, I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass Up from the matted miracles of grass Into yon veined complex of space, Where sky and leafage interlace So close the heaven of blue is seen Inwoven with a heaven of green.

I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence The march of culture, setting limb and thorn, Like pikes, against the army of the corn.

There, while I pause, before mine eyes, Out of the silent corn-ranks, rise Inward dignities And large benignities and insights wise, Graces and modest majesties. Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield; Thus, without theft, I reap another's field, And store quintuple harvests in my heart concealed.