religious, and social, had caused her to make acquaintance with people of the most different opinions and of all ranks, while amongst the large circle of her personal acquaintance, her motherly qualities, her gentleness, and (on delicate domestic questions) her good judgment, made her the confidant of many persons, especially young people, which enlarged her knowledge of human life to an extraordinary degree. I never knew a woman whose nature was more essentially womanly than that of Harriet Martineau, or one who was more misunderstood in that respect by the world at large. She had excellent friends in her neighbourhood (in particular the accomplished family at Fox Howe), but those who knew her by reputation were afraid of her. At that time, especially, she had fluttered the doves in the conventional cote by the publication of the Atkinson letters' very considerably, and I found myself looked upon with some disfavour as her constant visitor. She was supposed, I think, to be initiating me into the mysteries of Atheism: whereas, unless she was invited to do so, I never heard her utter one word to any human being with respect to her peculiar opinions. It was believed, however, that she was compassing sea and land for proselytes, and people were warned against her from the pulpit. There was even some correspondence in the local paper as to the impropriety of her being buried in the churchyard, which was to say the least of it premature. I suggest the quarry,' she once said to me with a humorous twinkle of her kind eyes; but Mr. Atkinson says that I should spoil the quarry.' She was too used to unpopularity to be disturbed by it, and cared more for what simple ignorant but honest folks said about her, than for what was printed by those who should have known better. 'When you have come to my time of life, and have obtained a reputation (as I hope you will),' she would say, 'you will know how little it matters.'

I have learnt that lesson by this time; but, ah me! what would I not give to have those halcyon days again, when 'the hebdomadal conferrors of Immortality,' as poor James White1 used to call them, could make one wince in every nerve with an unfavourable critique!

'The Rev. James White, author of Nights at Mess, Landmarks of English History, and of the King of the Commons, and other fine historical plays in which Macready appeared with great success: the pleasantest parson that ever filled (or I should rather say avoided) a pulpit.

(To be continued.)

42

EARTHQUAKE WEATHER.

THE world in general and Europe in particular has been lately visited by a marked and unusual spell of tempestuous earthquake weather. During the last twelve months, the unstable crust of this respectable and usually quiet planet, commonly but most untruthfully described as terra firma and the solid earth, has been thrown into a state of spasmodic commotion, shaking and quaking in a tremulous manner quite unworthy of its years and experience; for, as the astronomers have often told us, planets as they grow older ought, properly speaking, to grow progressively steadier, and leave off the undignified pranks and junketings of their fast and fiery adolescence. The past year, however, has been more than ordinarily distinguished by the frequency and scale of its volcanic and seismic phenomena. Without mentioning such common everyday occurrences as an eruption of Vesuvius, and a shake or so at Agram, which may be looked upon as normal, two great plutonic events have illustrated the history of poor old quavering 1883, the Java catastrophe and the earthquake at Ischia. But, besides these two very big things in the volcanic line, there have been lots of minor tremblings everywhere, of purely local interest, some of them apparently connected together in very strange and interesting ways. All Switzerland has been tottering about feebly from time to time; the heart of sentimental Germany has been deeply moved; and Asia Minor has been shaken, literally, to its very base. As if all this were not enough, Signor Bertelli of Florence, and other Italian investigators, have been recently taking the trouble to prove with great persistence that whenever you don't happen to feel an earthquake, you ought to be feeling one; that the fault is all in your own defective human senses; that the earth is in a perpetual state of gentle imperceptible tremor everywhere; and that the soil of Italy, even in districts far removed from volcanic centres like Vesuvius or Etna, goes on vibrating without any intermission all the year round and all day long. If only we were as delicately organised as a seismometer (which, thank goodness, is not usually the case), we might feel ourselves in the full enjoyment of regular earthquake weather from year's end to year's end.

Anybody who has ever lived for any length of time at a stretch in a region where earthquakes are common objects of the country and the seaside, knows perfectly well what earthquake weather in the colloquial sense is really like. You are sitting in the piazza, about afternoon tea-time let us say, and talking about nothing in particular with the usual sickly tropical languor, when gradually a sort of faintness comes over the air, the sky begins to assume a lurid look, the street dogs leave off howling hideously in concert for half a minute, and even the grim vultures perched upon the housetops forget their obtrusive personal differences in a common sense of general uneasiness. There is an ominous hush in the air, with a corresponding lull in the conversation for a few seconds, and then somebody says with a yawn, 'It feels to me very much like earthquake weather.' Next minute, you notice the piazza gently raised from its underpropping woodwork by some unseen power, observe the teapot quietly deposited in the hostess's lap, and are conscious of a rapid but graceful oscillating movement, as though the ship of state were pitching bodily and quickly in a long Atlantic swell. Almost before you have had time to feel surprised at the suddenness of the interruption (for the earth never stops to apologize) it is all over; and you pick up the teapot with a smile, continuing the conversation with the greatest attainable politeness, as if nothing at all unusual had happened meanwhile. With earthquakes, as with most other things and persons, familiarity breeds contempt.

It is wonderful, indeed, how very quickly and easily one gets accustomed at last to these little mundane accidents. At first, when you make your earliest acquaintance with an earthquake country, there is something unspeakably appalling and awsome in the sense of utter helplessness which you feel before the contemplation of a good shivering earthquake. It isn't so much that the thing in itself is so very alarming-nine earthquakes out of ten in any given place do nothing worse than bring down a bit of your plaster ceiling, or wake you up with a sound shaking in your bed at night: it is the consciousness that the one seemingly stable and immovable element in one's whole previous personal experience, the solid earth that we are accustomed to contrast so favourably with stormy seas and fitful breezes, has at last played us false, and failed visibly beneath our very feet. Then, again, there is the suddenness of the shock which goes to increase one's general sense of painful insecurity. For all other

calamities we are more or less prepared beforehand; but the earthquake comes without a moment's warning, and passes away almost before you have had time to realise the veritable extent of its devastations. Yet, for all that, a very short acquaintance with earthquakes as frequent visitors enables you to regard their occasional arrival with a tolerable imitation of equanimity. You even learn to laugh at them, when they come in moderation; though of course there are earthquakes that are no laughing matter to anybody on earth, but quite the opposite. That irreverent Mark Twain once set forth a San Francisco almanac-'Frisco, of course, is a well-known centre of 'seismic activity-in which he ventured to predict the year's weather, after the fashion so courageously and imperturbably set by the Meteorological Office, his predictions varying from 'severe shocks' in December to 'mild and balmy earthquakes' in the best and warmest part of July. Indeed, there is a western story of a fond mother who sent her two dear boys to spend a fortnight with a friend upcountry, on the ground that an earthquake was shortly expected; but before the first week was well over, she received a telegram from the distracted friend, Please take back your boys, and send along the earthquake.'

The origin of earthquakes, like the cosmogony or creation of the world (in the Vicar of Wakefield') has 'puzzled the philosophers of all ages;' and it must be frankly admitted that they have broached a medley of opinions upon it' quite equal to those so learnedly quoted by the astute possessor of the green spectacles. The theory that earthquakes are due to abortive wobbling on the part of the tortoise who supports the elephant who supports the world, is now entirely abandoned by most modern seismologists; and the hypothesis that they are produced by the writhing efforts of Antæus, Balder, or any other suffering subterranean hero has also fallen into deserved contempt. Indeed, no single explanation seems quite sufficient to cover all known cases. The truth about the matter seems to be that there are earthquakes and earthquakes. It is now known, by an ingenious method of which I shall have more to say farther on, that earthquakes originate at very different depths-sometimes quite near the surface, and sometimes at a very considerable distance below it. The great shock which affected Central Europe in 1872 had its centre or point of origin nine and a half miles down in the earth; while that at Belluno in the same year only came from a depth of

four miles. Apparently no earthquake ever starts from a greater distance than thirty miles down in the bowels of the earth; which of course shows that they are, comparatively speaking, mere external surface phenomena. Science moves so fast nowadays, and the conceptions that till yesterday prevailed upon this subject even amongst scientific men were so very erroneous, that it may be worth while to take a brief glance at the present state of the question. It must needs be brief, of course, or else before we have fairly got to the end of it, science may have moved on again to a new standpoint, and our pretty little theory upon the subject be itself shaken down.

Till very lately, then, it was always taken for granted that the crust of the earth was the only solid portion of this planet, and that the whole centre was an incandescent mass of liquid fire, on which the crust gathered lightly like a thin film of floating ice on a pool of water. So long as this conception was rife, and so long as accurate facts about the depth of earthquakes were wanting, it was easy enough to suppose that they were caused by the collapse of a bit of the crust upon the imaginary liquid interior. Quite recently, however, people have begun to discover from a vast number of converging proofs that the earth is not really liquid inside; that it couldn't well remain liquid under the enormous pressure of its own heavy outer mass; that it doesn't behave at all as a mainly liquid globe ought to behave in its relations with surrounding bodies; but that on the contrary it gives every indication of being intensely solid and rigid to the very centre. At the same time, the central portion of the earth is almost certainly at such a white heat that it would be in a molten condition were it not for the enormous pressure of the immense mass that crushes it down from outside; and so, if this pressure is anywhere removed (as it seems to be at volcanic vents) the material at such points would doubtless liquefy, and might be squeezed up through a hole to the surface as a molten outflow.

Now, it is quite certain that some earthquakes have a good deal to do with volcanic eruptions. Such eruptions are generally ushered in by a series of premonitory tremblings, just by way of warning the inhabitants, as it were, to look out for squalls in the immediate future; and there is very little doubt that earthquakes of this sort are due to essentially volcanic explosive action. In all probability, the internal heat causes some subterranean reservoir of water to flash suddenly into steam with rapid violence,