to surrender it to the Yorkists, after a siege of several months. In the reign of Henry the Seventh, it was held for a brief time by

"That weak prince,

Warbeck, the Flemish counterfeit, Who on the gibbet paid the cheat." He left his wife here for a season, considering the Mount as a place of great security. Upon the suppression of all monastic institutions by Henry the Eighth, it was presented to Henry Arundel, of Lanherne, who placed himself at the head of the Cornish insurgents, in 1549. Lastly, Sir Francis Bassett held it for Charles the First, till he was forced to capitulate to the troops of the Parliament.

The interest with which one regards a picture of a particular locality is considerably enhanced by a knowledge of the events that have transpired therein. Our fancy is at once busy among the groups which in times past have occupied the scene; and thus, while the eye is carried upward to the summit of St. Michael's Mount, and having learned something of its history, we seem to hear the vesperbell of monkish times fading away over the distant waters, and the clashing of the swords wielded by Yorkist and Lancastrian, by Cavalier and Roundhead, when contesting its pos

session; while the "everlasting sea" has ebbed and flowed at its feet, amid the stormy strifes of the one, and the peaceful prayers of the other.

But there is still another legend respecting the Mount worthy of record: it assures us that this very singular geological formation, like most of the curious rocks with which Cornwall abounds, was built by the giants. A remarkable coincidence exists between this tradition and those of many parts of the south of Ireland; and the intimate connexion between the inhabitants of these two portions of the United Kingdom is yet further proved by the fact that nearly all the Cornish churches bear the names of Irish saints. Near St. Michael's Mount, on the land side, is a very large oblong-shaped rock, now called the "Chapel Rock," upon which formerly stood an oratory. The story goes that a giantess was conveying this Cyclopaean mass in her apron, to form part of the Mount; and on her arriving at this spot, the devil, ever intent upon mischief, broke her apron-strings, and it fell to the ground, remaining where it now is, as the giantess was unable, from its position und mighty weight, to lift it again. What occasioned the loss of her power the legend does not inform us.

STRANGE mysteries appear to surround this curious natural production. It long stood between the three kingdoms of nature, like the Egyptian sphynx, an unsolved enigma: hence amber attracted the attention alike of the poet and of the philosopher, and it became the basis of more than one romantic story. Eventually, by subjecting amber to a peculiar kind of optical analysis, the enigma was solved; and, by its action on polarised light, it was determined most certainly to be a vegetable resin.

A fine transparent piece of amber appears as though it were a thing of yesterday-the gathered tears of some oriental gum tree, full of sunlight; yet it is as old, it may be older, than the hills. The flies in amber tell us thus much-there they are:

"We know the thing is neither rich nor rare, But wonder how "

they have become entangled in the now stony resin. It must have been distilled from the

branches of trees, and hanging thereon like honey dews, have enticed, and afterwards entangled them in its viscous mass. Severe has been the struggle, in many cases, by the poor prisoners; they have sought to regain their liberty, and sacrificed their limbs in the effort. It is no unusual thing to find flies of all sizes, and even sturdy beetles, who have been caught in the slimy juice, with their legs and wings torn off and scattered around them; yet was the struggle in vain, they remain entombed, mummified with more than Egyptian art, as beautiful and as delicate as they were in life; dismembered things, preserved to tell the story of a very ancient existence.

The forms are numerous, the varieties of fiies in amber are very various; yet there is scarcely one of them which is identical with any living creature. The entomology of the amber mines informs us that they were the winged denizens of the air, and the creeping things of the earth, at a time when a tropical climate extended as far north as the Baltic

Sea. That indeed they lived in ancient forests, far back in geological time, when south-eastern England had not yet risen from the ocean, and when, probably, a line of cliffs, extending from Weymouth to Scarborough, were still beaten by the waves of a wide-spread sea. Of these imprisoned specimens a curious history is yet to be written; but it is with other flies in amber that we have now to deal-with mysteries more occult than these, and principles which appear to have a world-wide application in each varied form of development.

The study of the psychological phenomena of the Grecian mind brings us acquainted with some beautiful manifestations of that exaltation of human intellect which advances beyond ordinary reason, and assumes many of the characteristics of inspiration.

In the writings of the philosophers of Greece, and in their poetical mythology, we find numerous examples of the outshadowing of philosophic truths, which inductive science has since rendered familiar to the world. It would appear, that by careful culture of the powers of the mind, the lovers of wisdom became enabled to think out great truths, which are now developed to us by the mechanical process of experiment.

The Greek mythical creations display the resistless powers of supreme intellect in developing life, and order, and beauty, out of the chaos which belongs alike to every theogony. They are all sublime outshadowings of the spiritual nature which was seen to exist behind ordinary nature. They show, as through a veil, the workings of those subtile agencies by which the great phenomena of creation are produced. The philosophers taught the people to believe that everything in nature was under the guidance of an especial spirituality; and thus were created those "spirits of air, and earth, and sea," which were the presiding powers of the organic and of the inorganic worlds. Even where observation led to the discovery of a fact, it was clothed in this spiritual vesture, and it became to the Greeks a divinity. Thus, a fine old Grecian, Thales of Miletus, who was probably examining the flies in amber, discovered that when this substance was rubbed, it acquired the power of attracting light bodies; and he interpreted this truth, by supposing amber to possess a spirit, which, being irritated, left its transparent prison, and gathering up all floating bodies near, flew back with them again. Electron was the Greek name for amber, and electricity was the epithet by which Thales and his disciples distinguished the spirit they

had learned to raise. We have lost the history, if one ever existed, of the progress made in tracking out this wonderful spirit in its devious workings and wanderings; we only know that for nearly two thousand years this fact remained barren of all results, and that the mystery in amber was regarded as one of the unknown things which are dreamt of in our philosophy.

Eventually, an English dreamer, a pensioner of the Charterhouse, called Stephen Gray, in 1720, informed the world that something of the mystery of electricity he had solved; and he showed that the same spirit which dwelt in amber was also found in glass, hair, silk, and feathers. Twenty years passed, and some ingenious men at Leyden thought they could devise a plan for eliminating this spirit of the amber, and of collecting and retaining it when once developed. A large glass globe was fixed on an axis and turned rapidly; a gun-barrel, suspended by silken strings, was hung near it, a wire fastened to the gun-barrel, dropping into a glass of water at the other end. The · glass globe was excited, as old Thales excited his amber, by friction with the hands; and the person holding the glass of water, upon applying his finger to obtain the spark from the barrel received a shock, which convinced the terrified experimenters that the spirit was a giant in its wrath. The most exaggerated statements were published in all the large cities of Europe. The glass globe and the Leyden phial, as it was called, was exhibited in Paris and London, and crowds of spectators flocked to witness the discharge, and to feel the "fearful" shock. The spirit of the amber was now fairly developed, and its powers were examined by experiment, guided by the new ideas. Men no longer used thought as the only element in the discovery of knowledge; they had begun to employ their senses and to cultivate habits of observation. At length, a great single-minded man, who had made his home

"In lands which echo further west Than the Greeks' island of the blest," seeing through some of the mystery which enveloped this subtile spirit in amber, resolved on determining by an experiment, beautiful in its simplicity and grand in its danger, the relation which it bore to the awful spirit of the thunder-storm.

The sculptor has idealised the noble form of the impious Ajax defying the lightning: how much more dignified would be a statue of the philosopher compelling the thunder of the

heavens to speak aloud its secrets. Benjamin Franklin stood forth from among men in the boldness of his views, and he saw, or thought he saw, in the attractive principle of electron, a power of universal diffusion, and he resolved to examine for himself. He had previously made himself acquainted with the laws by which electricity appeared to be guided, and availing himself of this knowledge, Franklin devised his grand experiment.

He mounted a kite into the air, insulated its string, which served as a conductor, and waited to see the result. For some time he waited in vain, the evocator received no answer to his call, the spirit refused to obey his summons. But when man calls on nature in the purity of his soul, and solicits earnestly a development of natural truths, nature rarely fails to vouchsafe a reply.

Franklin stood watching his arrangement; presently every, fibre of his kite-string was seen to stand on end, and, on applying a pointer to the ball to which it was attached, he was saluted with a discharge of electric fire of precisely the same character as that which had been previously developed from resin and from glass. Here we had a modern Prometheus, indeed, stealing fire from heaven. Thus it was proved that lightning was only a grand manifestation of the same phenomena which had first excited the attention of Thales of Miletus. The danger incurred by the illustrious Franklin was soon fatally proved by the death of a continental philosopher, who repeated his experiment. Professor Rickmann had reared high in air an electrical conductor, and connected it with some experimental arrangements in his study. Proceeding without sufficient caution, the discharge from a passing thunder-cloud flowed through the conductor, and penetrating the body of the philosopher, destroyed his life. Further researches in the same direction confirmed the great result of Benjamin Franklin, and proved that the earth and the air were equally under the influence of this all-pervading element. It was shown that no body existed in nature through which this subtile principle was not diffused, that changes were constantly being produced by the interference of other physical powers, and that in the effort made to restore equilibrium we had the manifestations of electrical phenomena.

During all the stages of animal and vegetable growth, electricity is either absorbed or given off, and no change can take place in the form of matter without its effecting a corresponding change in its electrical relations. Thus water is converted into vapour, and it

takes from the earth some of its electricity. This ascends into the air, and floats as clouds, accumulating in this way its quantity of electrical power. Circumstances may arise through which the electricity is quietly returned back to the earth, or such as may determine a concentration of the electrical element in the atmosphere. It floats on, dark and lowering, with its stored artillery, until, becoming overcharged, it bursts forth in fury, and too frequently performs the work of devastation.

A hill, a tall tree, a pointed spire, becomes the object of heaven's wrath, and it is torn and splintered by the violence of the disruptive discharge from the cloud. We have learnt something of this, and we are profiting by our knowledge. The electricity does not-it cannot-pass by the solid matter of the object upon which it falls; consequently, it endeavours to find its way into the earth by the intersticial spaces between the particles of the solid matter. These channels being insufficient to convey it, they are split and rended in all directions. There are certain bodies which, by their peculiar molecular constitution, have the property of allowing this fluid to pass through it very freely; and if we place such a mass of matter as is sufficient to convey all the clectricity of a thunder-cloud to the earth, it will pass along it quietly and harmlessly. Hence we raise a little above the highest point of a building a rod of copper, and continue it to the lowest point, connecting it with the moist earth. In our ships we carry a band of the same metal from the topmast to the copper sheeting beneath the water, and thus all is rendered secure.

There has been a popular error that lightning conductors may become lightning attractors. There are no such thing as attractors of electricity; it strikes a tall tree or church spire, because such objects offer the casiest road for it to return to the earth and restore the electric equilibrium. The lightning copper conductor bears precisely the same relation to the atmospheric electricity, that the pipes which we place from the roofs of our houses, and continue to the earth, do to the rain which falls from a condensing cloud. Neither the rain nor the electricity seek the channels, but they are provided, and through these they flow.

By a good system of lightning conductors, any extent of country might be protected from thunder-storms, indeed; science proves that it is within the power of man to establish such channels of communication between the solid earth and the ambient air, as to maintain a constant balance in the electrical conditions