who deny its efficacy. Some people fancy it | it killed one only, the chief of a famous band attracts the lightning. It is well to know, when of robbers, who was chained by the waist. A these opinions are afloat, that the late Monsieur lady put her hand out of a window to close it; Arago considered it an infallible protector a flash of lightning melted a bracelet she wore, against lightning, and even went so far as to injuring her arm but slightly. Another ladystate that the modern improvements which a friend of the traveler Brydone-was caught have been made in its form, etc., have rather in a thunder-storm, and her hat, the frame of injured than improved the original conductor which was of thin metallic wire, was burnt to as devised by Franklin. It fell to his duty to ashes without injuring her head. It is perhaps examine and report upon several buildings-safe to consider these as exceptional cases. At among others, a Government powder-magazine all events, when we remember how much iron -which, though provided with conductors, had and metal surrounds us on every side, we shall notwithstanding been struck by lightning. In hardly expect that a bunch of keys or a braceevery one of these cases he traced the accident let can exercise much attraction as a conductor. to defects in the construction of the conductor." Avoid fire-places," said Franklin; "sit in the As Monsieur Arago was in his lifetime the highest authority on questions of meteorology, his opinion is entitled to weight. Indeed, until it is shown to be at variance with indisputable facts, it is quite safe to abide by it without reference to other scientific theories.

middle of the room, unless a chandelier hang there; avoid metallic substances, and surround yourself rather with glass, feathers, silk." But does any one believe that a thunder-storm would have driven the philosopher from his printer's "case," if it had been of moment that he should stay there?

After all, as we must die, what objection can there be to the speediest, perhaps to the least painful form of death? There is no trace of agony in the face of a lightning-struck corpse. A black speck or two where the fluid entered, another where it found an exit, and perhaps a dark line or furrow marking its path, are all the evidence of the catastrophe. It has happened that lightning has crushed the bones of its victim as though a celestial giant had felled him with a monstrous club. But on the other

Considering that fifty persons at least are killed annually by lightning in the United States, sixty-nine in France, and twenty-two in England, it is strange that no one has ever devised a conductor to be carried on the person. Franklin certainly did hint that it was rather advantageous than otherwise to be drenched during a storm. But by this he intended merely to deny the popular fallacy that a wet skin increased the danger. A moist coat and breeches might act as a conductor; but few people would be willing to use them as such with out a trifle more isolation from the epiderm-hand, men have been found dead without exis. Monsieur Arago threw out a few sugges-ternal sign of injury, and lightning has only tions on the subject. A crowd, he considered, was more likely to be struck in a storm than an individual, because perspiration and respiration create an ascending column of vapor which is a better conductor than the surrounding air. It has long been known that lightning invariably makes for elevated points: hence the two most dangerous situations for an individual to occupy during a storm are, first, the close neighborhood of a tree, church steeple, or other similar object; and, secondly, the centre of a level plain. Winthrop whose advice is still excellent recommends persons caught in the fields by a storm to station themselves between two tall trees, at a distance of some twenty feet from each. It has been imagined that running increases the danger, because, according to Arago, a body passing rapidly through space leaves a partial vacuum, which is a better con-sors, in the time of Molière, announced that ductor than the air. But as railway trains are hardly ever struck, it may be taken for granted that this maxim has more theoretical than practical value.

A few years ago, it used to be considered very dangerous to carry pieces of metal, such as keys or penknife in the pocket, or even to wear rings or bracelets during a thunder-storm. Latterly this apprehension has lost ground. Some very curious facts are, however, cited in its support. A flash of lightning struck a group of persons in the prison of Biberach, in Swabia;

been suspected of the murder when pieces of metal found on the body were perceived to be magnetic. Men live who have been struck blind or deaf by a lightning-stroke; others, whose limbs have been paralyzed by the same cause. These make cheap acquaintance with the dread destroyer; for they generally recover from the injury, and, by way of compensation, nature usually grants them better health afterward. Rheumatism and nervous complaints seldom survive a smart lightning-shock. Sometimes, when no shock is experienced, persons who have been exposed to a thunder-storm find their hair and beard loose next morning, and in a few days become bald. How are all these effects produced? Science is mute. The doctors can only say that lightning kills by destroying the vital principle-just as their predeces

opium facit dormire, quia est in eo virtus dormitiva.

When Thomas Oliver, who was struck by lightning, and remained senseless for several hours, recovered his wits, he sprang up in his bed, and inquired, with the pugnacity of a true Briton, who knocked him down? Ladies, who start and close your beautiful eyes at a flash of lightning, the story was intended for you. A fatal flash is never seen by its victim. He is struck, and the lightning has gone to its home in the unknown depths of the earth, before he perceives that the clouds have spoken. For the

quickest eye can not mark periods of time much | her favors with impartial hand, has allotted to shorter than a quarter of a second; whereas the one region earthquakes, to another thunderlightning which God shoots forth to the ends of the earth, lasts not for the thousandth part of a second. Long before the ray of light reaches the eye it is gone. It flashes, and the roar of the thunder sets out toward our ear with the wonderful velocity of thirteen miles in a minute, but does not reach us till ten, twenty, thirty, ay even fifty seconds have elapsed; it flashes, and the bright image starts at the inconceivable speed of seven millions of miles in a minute, but does not strike the retina till long after the celestial flame is extinguished, and the clouds

The pious | had traveled a quarter of a million of miles, and finally sought rest on the earth. Even such acute minds as Laplace and Berzelius allowed themselves to believe that the force of those huge gaping volcanoes in the moon was such that they could project a body beyond the limits of its attraction.

of the statues of Castor and Pollux.
Argonauts accepted the omen, and gave thanks.
They were still in prayer when the wind abated,
the sea fell, and the danger passed away. In
memory of that happy escape, antiquity grate-
fully gave the names of Castor and Pollux to
the lambent flames which appear on the tops of
masts and other elevated points during storms.
When Christian saints succeeded to the honors
of the heathen demi-gods, the inheritance of
the twin brothers fell to the lot of the good
Saint Elmo. He it was who, when a fierce
hurricane assailed Columbus, and his vessel
travailed in the trough of the sea, "appeared
at the mast head with seven lighted tapers. . . .
Litanies, prayers, and thanksgivings were then
heard all over the ship, for, as sailors believe,
as soon as Saint Elmo appears, the dangers of
the tempest are past." Sad that science should
demolish so pretty a fancy! But the worthy
saint can not be allowed to maintain a reputa-
tion as a harbinger of fair weather for the simple
reason that he is obliged to be on duty during
all storms, from first to last, on sea or on shore.
He has been seen on steeples and on tree-tops;
he has perched on the bayonet of a sentinel and
on the chimney of a private house; travelers
caught in a storm have even been favored with
his visits, and have started at seeing their com-
panions' heads fringed with fire. A quiet, harm-
less saint at all times; never known to have
been guilty of mischief; if not entitled to the
honors vouchsafed to him by antiquity, at least
claiming our admiration as one of the beautiful
storm-signs which can be contemplated without
dread.

Meanwhile science dug and delved, and new discoveries shed further light on the question. On bright nights, observers of the stars watched meteors flash across the sky and disappear into unknown darkness. Twice a year-about the tenth of August and the middle of November-these meteors were so numerous that the old priests piously suggested that the saints, whose natal days occurred at that period, must be weeping for the sins of mankind. Then some renowned philosopher announced that he had seen a ball of fire, equal in size to the moon, roll swiftly across the heavens, and disappear with a sort of explosion. The ice broken, sev, eral other persons declared that they had seen similar balls, some red, some white, some blue, some green. In one or two instances the fall of thunder-bolts was simultaneous with the appearance of these fire-balls. The great thunder-bolt at Ægos Potamos, which fell in the year 470 B.C., and was described as being equal to a full wagon-load, was certainly accompanied by such a globe of fire. When Livy recounts how "heavy rains of stones fell from heaven," he mentions likewise that strange balls of fire appeared in the sky.

It was with these data to guide him that the great Olbers undertook his calculations. He proved that a body set free in space between the moon and the earth, or the sun and the earth, would not fall to the latter, but would revolve in a regular orbit round the sun, like the planets. On this law rests the modern theory that shooting-stars and fire-balls are in fact independent bodies, moving through space in orbits of their own; that the latter occasionally pass so close to the earth that fragments of their substance, in the shape of aerolites, fall within its attraction, plunge through the atmosphere, and sink to rest on the soil or in the sea.

How different those other heavenly visitors, which the old poets named thunder-bolts, and this prosaic age of science knows as aerolites! When Jupiter was wearied by the perversity of man, he seized his three-pronged thunder-bolt, and hurled it at the earth. The fiery missile blazed through space, lighting up the darkest night, and filling the air with bright coruscations; when it struck, the earth trembled, and mankind acknowledged the sovereignty of Jove. Greek altars rose on the spot it had touched; fences with pious inscriptions warned the Ro- The boy who picks up a meteoric stone in the man not to adventure a sacrilegious foot on the fields-as who has not?-seldom realizes the ground which Jupiter had deemed worthy to wonderful story that stone could tell. A rude receive his messenger of wrath. When the heavy mass-mostly composed of iron, with a Israelites saw "the hail, and fire mingled with little nickel and olivine, with a smooth black the hail"-fire which "ran upon the ground," crust, marking where the metal has cooled soonthey thanked God, who would deliver them out est-it lies peaceably a few inches under the of the hand of Pharaoh. Long and long after-soil, or on the out-crop of a stratum of rock, as ward they remembered it, and their Psalmist though that were its birth-place. But that stone sang: "He gave up their cattle to the hail, and is an alien. Alone of all the objects that hu their flocks to hot thunder-bolts.". man hands have handled, it was born beyond Whence came these fiery visitors? "From the outermost limits of this world. Where its the sun," said the skeptic Anaxagoras. "He is cradle was no man can tell; but this we know, the centre of fire; whatever is heated must pro- that it is not of this earth. It is a link-the ceed from him." "From the moon," said the only one-between us and the worlds without. philosophers of the last century. "A little To grasp it in the hand is the next thing to visknowledge" had shown them the lunar volca-iting a planet or one of the other cosmical bodies. noes, and they questioned not but that thunder- That huge thunder-bolt which fell at Ægos Pobolts had been originally projected from thence, tamos, and of which a careless world has actu

ally lost all trace-that other mighty stone which | flakes. Those of us who live till November, lies on a mountain slope in Brazil, and weighs seven tons, and all the other aerolites scattered in every region from the Pole to the Equator, would tell us, if they could speak, of strange spaces where the earth has never been, where human eye has never penetrated.

1867, will doubtless witness it again-unless some new and mysterious change in the laws of these eccentric bodies-and such changes are constantly taking place in obedience to a higher law yet unlearned by man-should hasten or retard their journey through space.

Whence do meteors come? To say that they are ponderable bodies revolving round the sun, and becoming luminous when they approach within a certain distance of the earth, is to tell us little of their character or origin. Are they star-seed, revolving patiently through space in expectation of the fiat which shall condense them into a planet? Are they wretched fragments of some shattered orb, wheeling sadly in its vacant path, and suffering gradual absorption into the larger bodies of the universe? Or have they no future to hope for, no past to regret? In their simple phrase, the old philosophers said that "Nature abhors a vacuum.” We know that every particle of space within and upon the globe is inhabited; that the solid rock has its lodgers, and the polar ice a race of insect inhabitants which die when the temperature rises above zero. Is it so with the heavens? Beyond this petty globe of ours, in the vast, measureless depths in which the insect planets float, is space wasted, or has every possible orbit its tenant, far beyond the power of telescopes to discover? A few years ago, it was disgraceful not to know that there were seven planets in our system; now, those only who keep the closest watch on the periodical reports of astronomical societies can venture to say how many companions we have. Nature, be it re

One almost forgets the grandeur of their history in the purely human contemplation of the mischief they might do. These fire-balls, which are supposed to launch them earthward, seem far more dangerous neighbors than the comets. With a diameter exceeding a mile, they whirl past us at a distance sometimes not greater than thirty and even twenty miles. Some have been seen to explode like a rocket; oftener they sink into night as noiselessly as they came. Seven hundred of them, according to Olbers, fly close to us every year, and hurl some ponderous fragment contemptuously as they pass. Woe to the man or the house it strikes! "They were more," said Joshua, "which died with the hail-stones, than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword." That deaths were not uncommonly caused in ancient times by thunder-bolts, is proved by the frequent mention of such catastrophes in the Greek and Roman poets. A couple of centuries ago, a monk was struck dead by an aerolite in Italy: one or two other cases of similar deaths have been placed on record since modern history began. Houses have frequently been set on fire by these heated visitors, and ships are said to have been destroyed by the same means. But how trifling the injury actually inflicted in comparison with that which might be caused by seven hundred in-membered, knows no capricious beginnings, or candescent missiles, varying from a ton to a few pounds in weight, and falling with a force which, in the case of the larger ones, would shatter the strongest fort in the world!

Shooting stars-perhaps the most beautiful phenomenon of the celestial world-have no terrors for man. Similes fail to render any adequate idea of these splendid meteors; there is nothing in nature worthy of being compared with them. The lonely star which shoots mournfully downward, threading its way through the heavenly host, and disappearing, apparently without reason, at some point above the horizon, is a sight which fills the sensitive mind with gloom; but the gorgeous star-shower, like a heavy fall of snow, which Humboldt saw in Central America in November, 1799, or that still more famous one which every one in this country watched with rapture in November, 1833, is a spectacle which exhilarates instead of depressing the mind, and fills the soul with joyfulness at the glorious majesty of the Creator. Every November the scene is renewed. On the nights of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth, the heavens are traversed by thousands of shooting-stars, which almost eclipse the fixed constellations. But it is only once in thirty-four years that the earth passes through the great stream of stars which Humboldt has compared to snow

abrupt endings. Every thing in her economy
is graduated from the infinitesimally small to
the infinitely great. A gigantic Jupiter implied
a tiny Flora; the latter may suppose myriads
of aerolites, mere star-dust, yet endowed with.
orbs, volume, and orbits, and even peopled with
new forms of life, as perfect of their kind as any
with which we are acquainted.

SISTER ANNE.

SISTER ANNE sat in the porch watching the

sunset. The luminary whom old-fashioned poets have baptized with all sorts of names, sooner than degrade their verses with the fine old Saxon word "sun"-this planet of many aliases was never more splendid than on the present occasion. There was a purple edge of hill on which he was hovering, red and enormous, as if he was reconnoitering the huge steeps down which he was about to plunge. On the serrated crest of the purple hill waved a few plumy trees, standing blackly against the fiery glow, like watching warriors thrown out against the flame of some besieged and burning fortress. All along the meadows and creeks that stretched from the base of the purple hill to the porch where Sister Anne was sitting, a tide of golden light was slowly ebbing. moment ago it was rippling over the garden

A

walks, making, like a second Pactolus, the very gravel valuable, and now it has receded and washes the edges of the green meadow below, and trickles through the thin, transparent leaves of the motionless maple. Now the old stranded boat on the shore of the narrow creek suddenly glitters like Cleopatra's galley, as the waves of light dash silently over it; and lo! an instant passes, the galley is gone, and the splitting planks and mouldering keel again lie sadly on the sands. So ebbs this wondrous tide, silently but swiftly, until it reaches the base of the purple hill; then, trembling an instant on the grass and rocks, it suddenly sinks, or evaporates, or disappears like a fairy sea, and the shores it washed are cold, and gray, and dull.

and admiration. His elegant shape, his jaunty
swagger, his splendid confidence, his immense
vocal genius, all captivated her, and she would
hide behind a tree and hour after hour watch
his gambols in the branches. I will not say
that the birds knew Sister Anne.
She was no
bird-tamer, like the charming dream-girl in
George Sand's romance of Teverino, and I doubt
if she called ever so long whether any of her
feathered friends would attend to her; but still
I think the birds felt, by a rare instinct, as in-
describable as any of the strange spiritual phe-
nomena that are disclosing themselves nowa-
days, that Sister Anne was their worshiper.
Cat-bird and oriole, it seems to me, permitted
the young girl to come closer than any other
idler in the fields.

It may be supposed that these erratic habits were not very much relished by Sister Anne's family. She was generally up a tree when she should have been mending stockings, and those wild-wood sports of hers did not produce a very favorable effect upon her toilet. Her gowns were sadly rent, and her shoes wore out with the most astonishing rapidity; while the marks of thorns on her small, delicate hands, and the tan on her quiet, dreamy face were not the most favorable additions to her personal appearance. She was a moral weed in a family of thriving and useful plants; a toy in the midst of a whole factory full of industrial machines. In vain did mother and sisters remonstrate; in vain did they point to baskets full of awful shirts yet unsewn, and terrible handkerchiefs yet unhemmed. Sister Anne turned a lazy glance and deaf ear to all, and fled to the fields, when the singing of the birds and the breath of the flowers consoled her for all her troubles.

So Sister Anne sat in the porch and dreamed. Was it of her friend the cat-bird, or her com

Sister Anne loved sunsets. There was an indolent splendor about the hour of evening that suited her temperament-an atmosphere of opiate vapor that seemingly emanated from the retiring planet, lulling her into a dreamy repose. The truth is, that Sister Anne was lazy. When other girls were hemming the edges of mysterious garments, or cutting geometric figures out of linen, or stitching at patterns dimly seen through cambric fastened over the paper on which they were traced; while industrious maidens were doing all these useful and ornamental things, Sister Anne was used to sit in the window if it was summer, and by the fire if it was winter, and dream. She had the air of a dreamer. Her features were still and regular; her eyes large and dark; and when she moved there was a drowsy pliancy in her limbs that made her seem as if she had lived by the fairy lake on the shores of which Tennyson's Lotos Eaters dreamed life delightfully away. Her two sisters looked on Sister Anne as utterly lost. She was altogether useless, and did not contribute one jot to the gen-rade the oriole? Did flowers dance before her eral fund of labor. There was not on all Long mind's eye, or did she wander amidst visionary Island so lazy a maiden. She knew not how forests? Something tells me that Sister Anne to make pastry or butter. Her sewing was dreamed of none of these, much as she loved wretchedly crooked and uneven; and as to them. But two summers ago, a tall young felknowing any thing about cutting out a dress, low, with blue bright eyes, and long dark hair, why Sister Anne might as soon be expected to came to board for three months at the house, draw out the plan of a fortification as to per- bringing with him a small valise and a large form that nice and intricate branch of female sketch-book. He, too, like Sister Anne, wanmechanics. She loved the woods, however, dered all day in the woods and fields, and it and the green leaves, and was very industrious often happened that they wandered together. in the line of gathering wild flowers and at- They explored the pleasant beaches that lie tending on the birds. Sister Anne was a slave along the Sound opposite to the hazy Norwalk to the feathered tribe. She was not black, nor shore. They watched the gambols of the sundid she wear gold rings on her ankles or any shine upon the blue waters and the plumy other sign of serfdom, still she was as much a woods; and that summer Sister Anne heard slave as if she was copper-colored and fettered sweeter music than the song of birds, and had with gold. She followed the oriole from tree other companions than the oriole and cat-bird. to tree anxiously and timidly, as a courtier The young artist, Stephen Basque, was a new haunting the presence of his king. For hours revelation to the young girl. For the first time together she would lie in the high grass of the she had found one who understood her love of fields watching the blackbird with his crimson nature, and did not look upon her adoration of epaulets, keeping watch from a lofty tree over birds and flowers as mere folly. He talked of his wife as she sat in her nest built in the sway-art and beauty, and Sister Anne awakened to ing forks of the golden rod. The cat-bird was poetry, until then a divinity unknown. He lent to her a source of singular and endless delight her a couple of volumes of Tennyson, and she