this would have been impossible, and even unnatural. In the course of a few years the tastes of his readers underwent an entire change and he was called upon, like Princess Elizabeth from under an oak at Hatfield, to occupy the highest place in the world's opinion. He published several works of Fiction anonymously, and subsequently studied for the law; but whether his arguments were unreasonable, or whether his inability to overcome a natural shyness compelled him to relinquish his idea of entering the Bar, is not known, suffice it to say he retired from the turmoil of city life and having, out of profits gained from his limited literary career, bought a small cottage, he wooed and won the grand-daughter of a famous English Poet. In the course of time a son was born, and I am undoubtedly that son.

My mother having been called upon by a combination of circumstances to call at the office of a learned Barrister at about the time of my birth, leads me to suppose that I unexpectedly saw the light for the first time, through the dusty windows of a legal Den. That my cradle, which by-the-bye is kept as an heirloom in the old family Place, resembles a waste-paper basket, is beyond all doubt, and hence my conjectures concerning the original nature of the couch on which I first reclined.

At a very early age I was compelled by my father to copy his manuscripts into more legible characters, and I have a distinct recollection of having imbibed many learned notions from the process. Whether I owe my present position to the works of Byron, Longfellow, Scott, Chancer, Shakespere, Milton, or Shelley I cannot tell;-or whether perhaps on the other hand, I owe it simply to the combination of a literary inheritance and an early association with my father's manuscripts, is also an equally difficult matter to decide. Be that as it may, I had no reasons for supposing that I possessed less brain than my father, and I mentally resolved to enter public life in the same manner as my ancestors had done before me.

I was packed off to a private school at a very early age, but I learnt little or nothing beyond the manufacture of Hardbake, and toffy, and when I returned home at the end of my first Half I was ashamed to find that I really knew less than before I went to school. My poor mother!-she burst into a flood of tears at this unexpected display of ignorance, and appealed to me in the name of my great-grand-father, the Poet, to exert myself and make a name as great as his. Of the naiveté of such a remark I shall not now speak-I wept sorely at the time, and I really think that the words of assurance I then uttered, and the promise I then made, together with my sense of the justice of my mother's protestation, were the primary cause of my subsequent exertions which produced such undying results.

The fate of Chatterton was ever before my eyes. I certainly had no intention of following his example, though perhaps the world would not have lost much by my death. The thought never entered my head to commit suicide,— had it done so, I should certainly have driven it out as soon as my blood cooled.

No! on the contrary, I was always anticipating some grand success by which I should set mankind by the ears.

I studied hard at school and, at the end of my second Half, gained a prize for diligence and exemplary conduct. I was apt at quotations from Homer's Odyssey and I actually invented new incidents connected with the wanderings and adventures of Ulysses on his homeward journey from Troy to his Kingdom of Ithaca. I received universal praise, and occasionally the master would descend from his Delphic throne to pat me on the head and encourage a continuation of my wondrous tales. Sad indeed was this display of ignorance on his part, and could he but have found his spectacles at the right moment he would, I now regret to say, have discovered in my performances many an instance of barefaced cribbing.

I tried to think that, like Demosthenes, I studied in a cave. I prosecuted my researches in the deepest recesses of my bed room, and like the great Grecian too, I smelt of midnight oil.

I gained confidence from encouragements I received from the smaller fry, and I know that I was looked upon by the ushers as nothing short of a born genius. The real truth never transpired, and I believe that my name remains to this day deeply carved on the lid of my school desk, and I have heard that the work of my young fingers is looked upon with respect and veneration.

I do not of course wish my readers generally, to suppose that I was an archimposter, for that would be prejudicial to my native talent; nor was I the "ne plus ultra" of deception, for I merely professed to have more learning than I had actually acquired. I saw no harm in thus imposing on my master, more specially as that learned individu al had always been fond of declaring that he "could detect a schemer with the point of his cane." Things went on swimmingly, and I soon became the Cock of the school. I wrote Latin verses with comparative ease, and translated the Sixth Book of Cæsar to the entire satisfaction of the Latin master, whose knowledge of classics, by the bye, was entirely confined to what was within the leathern binding of that compact volume.

When I returned Home I carried with me, besides the regret of my schoolfellows, a Greek Lexicon with which the Head master had incorporated his good wishes, while a line on the fly-leaf expressed an appeal to my better feelings, and a hope that the Lexicon and myself would become the fond companions of many a leisure hour. My mother could not restrain her tears of joy at this triumph, and the shade of her grandfather haunted her no more.

At seventeen, I fell in love, and why not? it was absolutely necessary for my literary reputation.

I wrote verses, and sent them to the young lady, who, at the instigation of her father, folded them up-and returned them. My ancestor's effusions had met with the same fate before me, and I was therefore not in the least disconcerted. I left the country and retired into the bosom of a clergyman's family in Blankshire. Whether that reverend gentleman was possessed of more

perception than my late schoolmaster I know not, but at all events, he looked upon me as a very ordinary mortal indeed. Meeting with so little encouragement I grew proportionably conceited and swore by Castor and Pollux that I would "cut" so common a poltroon. I gave him less of my society every day, and wandered about among the Ferns and Foliage like a very Poet. The rippling waters were music to my ears, and my thoughts were inspired with a sense of Freedom. In a few weeks I had composed a Poem. Yes! and I shall not easily forget the enthusiastic reception it met with at Home! That it boasted only of the smallest merit is beyond all doubt, but was it not my First attempt? My great-grandfather slept quietly in his venerated tomb, and the pen he had used with such overwhelming power, was resting between my fingers! I soon foreswore poems, and wrote a Play; the fever for print was scorching my brain and I forwarded it to a well known publisher in the Strand. Mortification and Despair! it received neither acknowledgement, nor reply. The labour of so many weary hours must have found its way into the Dead Letter Office.

What could I do? I never had but one copy, and that was lost! in time, I recovered from my disappointment, and employed my leisure hours by writing a Novel. It belonged essentially to the "Braddon" class, and was a decoction of sentiment to the very end. Its chief feature was love-making, and as I had had no experience therein, I signally failed in producing anything worthy of a publisher's consideration.

"A mere waste of time, my boy" was the encouraging reply made me by Mr. Dash of Piccadilly, whom I had begged to peruse it at his leisure.

"A mere waste of time!" I inwardly repeated, "inconsiderate publisher, the shades of my great-grandfather shall haunt thee!" Nothing at that moment, would have convinced me that Mr. Dash was not a fool; nothing would have persuaded me to throw my brown paper parcel into the gutter which was near, and consequently, "wrapped in my own conceit," I bore the burden to hug it, and to love it, as a mother does her first born.

In a few months I had returned to my Home, and complying with the earnest supplications of my parents, I continued to labour incessantly.

The time came, and the new work was completed, it was a simple description of a homely life; it bore no trace of false sentiment in its carefully revised pages; it foreswore all grand displays of language, and contained but the true story of a mother's love. Her lips had spoken the first words in its praise, and her lips also were sealed for ever long before the Critic's pen had done its heartless work. She heard it all-from first to last, and during many a long night have I sat by her bedside reading aloud my simple story. The work was finished and I closed the Book, her lips kissed my forehead and her eyes looked into mine, the last look she gave on earth!

How glad I was to think that she had heard it all! How often, and often since, have I recalled that weary time, ever associating my mother's death with the remembrance of, How I Struggled into Print.

THE RIGEDEROS OR EUPLECTELLA.

Twenty years ago a Swiss sailor found floating on the water near Zebu, one of the Phillipine Islands, a bit of old timber, which had attached to it by a sort of root, ten delicate and graceful structures like those in the accompanying photograph. They pleased his sense of beauty so much that he carefully preserved them, timber and all, and took them to Europe, where they attracted great attention from naturalists, and their fortunate finder eventually sold them in Germany for more than two hundred and fifty pounds. Other specimens have found their way to England, and there is one in the British Museum which cost thirty pounds.

A drawing of two indifferent specimens appeared in "Nature and Art" for March 1st, 1867, illustrating an article by Mr. W. B. Lord of the Royal Artillery, who insists that the Euplectella is a sponge, and says that one or more crabs are invariably found in this "Crystal Prison, out of which escape is just as impossible as from a capsuled bottle."

You recollect that Cuvier, when asked by a dictionary maker whether a good definition of a Lobster would be "a red fish that walks backwards' replied that it would be a capital definition except that a Lobster is not red, is not a fish, and does not walk backwards. I may say much the same thing of Mr. Lord's description, above referred to, for the Euplectella is not a sponge, the creature within it is not a crab, and is not imprisoned.

I know that Mr. Lord is supported in his opinion by, or perhaps even recites, that of Professor Owen who, after describing the Euplectella to the Zoological Society as a sponge, said: "To the question put by almost every one to whom the Euplectella is shewn, as to how the threads could have been so regularly, yet intricately, interwoven, I have sometimes replied that there has been no such thing as interweaving in the case; that no thread, as such, was ever laid across another in the construction of the Euplectella. The threads were not first spun and then interwoven but were formed as interwoven, the two processes going on simultaneously. Just as in the structure of bone, the plates of bone are not first formed and then fitted, but the forming and the fitting go on. together. I presume that in this beautiful object we have but its skeleton; and that, in the living state, the exquisite structure of the flinty framework may be veiled by the delicate gelatinous organic tissue."

Professor Owen, when he said this, had seen but one specimen. I venture to differ from his hypothesis that the Euplectella is a skeleton such as he describes, for I have never been able to hear of any "gelatinous organic tissue" attached to it, and I think that he is mistaken in his opinion of the manner in which it is produced.

I believe the Euplectella to be the nest of a kind of Water Beetle, and that it is constructed in the following manner. The Beetle selects a suitable spot, such as a piece of coral, a rock, or a patch of hard sand, at the bottom of

the sea, and begins its work by spinning, as a spider spins its web, a number of fine threads, from twelve to eighteen inches in length, and attached at one end to the rock or sand. The work has, at this stage, the appearance of a long silky tassel of flexible, and slightly elastic threads, one five-hundredth of an inch in thickness. The threads are composed of silica, a little magnesia, and a considerable proportion of animal matter, and are usually from three hundred to five hundred in number.

The next step is to gather the threads into from thirty to forty-five bundles, each containing about ten threads, loosely cemented together; these bundles, or cords, although stiffer than the single threads, are elastic. They can be very distinctly seen running lengthwise in figures 4 and 5.

I am inclined to think that the Beetle now inserts a piece of sponge, or other foreign substance, among the cords, to keep them apart. He then goes inside and begins spinning a thread in a direction traversing that of the cords, and continues spinning round and round until he has made a ring about twothirds as thick as the cords, and to which the cords are attached at regular intervals. Another ring is made at a short distance from the first, and a little larger in diameter, and so on down the whole length of the cords until a structure is completed which is very like an attenuated miniature crinoline.

The Beetle now spins a thread which is harder and less elastic than the others, and which he winds round and about the outside of his habitation until the corners of the square interstices or holes become covered with an inconceivably fine lacework. The holes are now octagonal in shape and not unlike the holes in the old fashioned balls of sewing cotton wound with Brunel's machine. The exterior spinning and winding is continued until every alternate hole is entirely covered by the fairy like network, which is built up in delicate mazes until the nest is environed with spiral ridges of frozen lace, as in figures 1 and 2. These ridges are sometimes continued until they become rugged and sharp as in figure 3 and are doubtless intended to fortify the habitation against enemies. The network at the head of the cornucopea is irregular and clumsy. The threads are cemented tightly together and are very strong.

The Euplectella, although elastic and flexible in the water, becomes as hard as the hardest stone on being dried-the ridges on the outside become brittle, the threads composing the cords and rings alone retain their elasticity. Each nest encloses, in the average, twenty-two inches of space, and weighs rather more that a quarter of an ounce (140 grains). I have rested a three pound iron weight on the side of the specimen shewn in figure 5 without doing it the slightest injury. Graceful in form, in colour a translucent white, and constructed like microscopically delicate lace, apparently so fragile, yet so strong, they are among the most remarkable and beautiful objects in nature.

The Euplectellæ from which the illustration is taken were brought from the bottom of the sea near Zebu, by natives who dived two hundred and fifty feet to obtain them, and demanded for their prizes the magnificent sum of sixpence each.