-grown painfully wise, poor girl!-watched something approaching contempt from this a Jewish-looking man hanging about the weak, lightsome nature, broken by the first house, and noticing everybody that went in touch of calamity. or out of it. Now, sitting at Miss Leaf's window, she fancied she saw this man disappear into the gin-palace opposite, and at the same moment a figure darted hurriedly round the streetcorner, and into the door of No. 15. Elizabeth looked to see if her mistress were asleep, and then crept quietly out of the room, shutting the door after her. Listening, she heard the sound of the latchkey, and of some one coming stealthily upstairs. "Hollo!—Oh, it's only you, Elizabeth!" "Shall I light your candle, sir?" "Come, it's no use making things worse than they are. If nobody knows that you are here, lock your door and keep quiet. I'll bring you some dinner when I bring up missis' tea; and not even Mrs. Jones will be any the wiser." The acquiescence was somewhat sullen, and had he watched Elizabeth's face, he might have seen there an expression not too flattering. But she faithfully brought him his dinner, and kept his secret; even though, hearing from over the staircase Mrs. Jones But when she did, the light was not pleasant. Drenched with rain, his collar pulled up, and his hat slouched, so as in some measure to act as a disguise, breathless and trembling-hardly anybody would have recognized in this discreditable object that gen-resolutely deny that Mr. Leaf had been at tlemanly young man, Mr. Ascott Leaf. He staggered into his room, and threw himself across the bed. home since morning, she felt very much as if she were conniving at a lie. With a painful, half-guilty consciousness she waited for "Do you want anything, sir ?" said Eliz- her mistress' usual question, "Is my nephew abeth from the door. "No-yes-stay a minute. are you to be trusted ?" "I hope I am, sir." come home?" but fortunately it was not Elizabeth, asked. Miss Leaf lay quiet and passive, and her faithful nurse settled her for the night with a strangely solemn feeling as if she were leaving her to her last rest, safe and at peace before the overhanging storm broke upon the family. "The bailiffs are after me. I've just dodged them. If they know I'm here, the game's all up-and it will kill my aunt Shocked as she was, Elizabeth was glad to hear him say that-glad to see the burst of real emotion with which he flung himself down on the pillow, muttering all sorts of hopeless self-accusations. "Come, sir, 'tis no use taking on so," said she, much as she would have spoken to a child, for there was something childish rather than manlike in Ascott's distress. Nevertheless, she pitied him, with the unreasoning pity a kind heart gives to any creature who, blameworthy or not, has fallen into trouble. "What do you mean to do?" "Nothing. I'm cleaned out. And I haven't a friend in the world." But all shadow of this storm seemed to have passed away from him who was its cause. As soon as the house was still, Ascott crept down and fell to his supper with as good an appetite as possible. He even became free and conversational. "Don't look so glum, Elizabeth. I shall soon weather through. Old Ascott will fork out; he couldn't help it. I'm to be his nephew, you know. Oh, that was a clever catch of Aunt Selina. If only Aunt Hilary would try another like it." "If you please, sir, I'm going to bed." "Off with you, then, and I'll not forget the gown at Christmas. You're a sharp He turned his face to the wall in perfect young woman, and I'm much obliged to despair. you." And for a moment he looked as if Elizabeth tried hard not to sit in judgment he were about to make the usual unmanupon what the catechism would call her nerly acknowledgment of civility from a "betters ;" and yet her own strong instinct young gentleman to a servant maid—viz., of almost indefinite endurance turned with kissing her-but he pulled a face and drew LIVING AGE. 935 THIRD SERIES. 4 back. He really couldn't; she was so very plain. bered that she really was doing nothing wrong, and so need not be afraid of anything. This was her simple creed, which Miss Hil till she knocked at Miss Balquidder's door. At this moment there came a violent ring, and "Fire!" was shouted through the key-ary had taught her, and it upheld her, even hole of the door. Terrified, Elizabeth opened it, when, with a burst of laughter, a man rushed in, and laid hands upon Ascott. It was the sheriff's officer. When his trouble came upon him, Ascott's manliness returned. He turned very white, but he made no opposition,—had even enough of his wits about him—or something better than wits to stop Mrs. Jones from rushing up in alarm and indignation to arouse Miss Leaf. "No; she'll know it quite soon enough. Let her sleep till morning. Elizabeth, look here." He wrote upon a card the address of the place he was to be taken to. "Give Aunt Hilary this. Say, if she can think of a way to get me out of this horrid messbut I don't deserve it Never mind. Come on, you fellows." He pulled his hat over his eyes, jumped into the cab, and was gone. The whole thing had not occupied five minutes. Stupefied, Elizabeth stood, and considered what was best to be done. Miss Hilary must be told; but how to get at her in the middle of the night, thereby leaving her mistress to the mercy of Mrs. Jones? It would never do. Suddenly she thought of Miss Balquidder. She might send a message. No; not a message for the family misery and disgrace must not be betrayed to a strangerbut a letter, to Kensington. With an effort, Elizabeth composed herself sufficiently to write one-her first-to her dear Miss Hilary. "HONORED MADAM,-Mr. Leaf has got himself into trouble, and is taken away somewhere; and I dare not tell missis; and I wish you was at home, as she is not well, but better than she has been, and she shall know nothing about it till you come.-Your obedient and affectionate servant, "ELIZABETH HAND." Taking Ascott's latchkey, she quitted the house, and slipt out into the dark night, almost losing her way among the gloomy squares, where she met not a creature except the solitary policeman, plashing steadily along the wet pavement. When he turned the glimmer of his bull's-eye upon her she started like a guilty creature, till she remem There, poor girl, her heart sank, especially when Miss Balquidder, in an anomalous costume and a severe voice, opened the door herself, and asked who was there, disturbing a respectable family at this late hour? Elizabeth answered, what she had before determined to say, as sufficiently explaining her errand, and yet betraying nothing that her mistress might wish concealed. "Please, ma'am, I'm Miss Leaf's servant. My missis is ill, and I want a letter sent at once to Miss Hilary." "Oh! come in, then. Elizabeth, I think, your name is ?" "Yes, ma'am." "What made you leave home at this hour of the night? Did your mistress send you?" "No." "Is she so very ill? It seems sudden. I saw Miss Hilary to-day, and she knew nothing at all about it." Elizabeth shrank a little before the keen eye that seemed to read her through. "There's more amiss than you have told me, young woman. Is it because your mistress is in serious danger that you want to send for her sister?" "No." "What is it, then? You had better tell me at once. I hate concealment." It was a trial but Elizabeth held her ground. "I beg your pardon, ma'am ; but I don't think missis would like anybody to know, and therefore I'd rather not tell you." Now the honest Scotswoman, as she said, hated anything underhand, but she respected the right of every human being to maintain silence if necessary. She looked sharply in Elizabeth's face, which apparently re-assured her, for she said not unkindly,— happened, and Miss Leaf would not be frightened by her sudden appearance. "You are a good, mindful girl," said Miss Balquidder. "How did you learn to be so sensible ? " At the kindly word and manner, Elizabeth, bewildered and exhausted with the excitement she had gone through, and agitated by the feeling of having, for the first time in her life, to act on her own responsibility, gave way a little, she did not actually cry, but she was very near it. Miss Balquidder called over the stairhead, in her quick, imperative voice,"David, is your wife away to her bed yet?" "No, ma'am.". "Then tell her to fetch this young woman to the kitchen, and give her some supper. And afterwards, will you see her safe home? Poor lassie she's awfully tired, you see.” "Yes, ma'am." And, following David's gray head, Elizabeth, for the first time since she came to London, took a comfortable meal in a comfortable kitchen, seasoned with such stories of Miss Balquidder's goodness and generosity, that when, an hour after, she went home and to sleep, it was with a quieter and more hopeful spirit than she could have believed possible under the circumstances. the working of iron, and of his failure to derive any pecuniary benefit therefrom. THE NEW PENSIONS IN ENGLAND.-Lord | value and utility of his father's discoveries in Palmerston has just distributed the civil list pensions of England; and among the pensioners is Charles Mackay, the poet, who is at present residing on Staten Island. The following is the list:: admitted excellence. Mr. Leitch Ritchie, £100, in acknowledgment of his labors to enrich the literature of his country, and to elevate the intellectual condition of the poor. Mr. Thomas Roscoe, £50, in consideration of his literary labors. Mr. John Seymer, £100, in consideration of his contributions to literature, and of his career of usefulness at home, and of educational labors among the natives of India, in spite of his being blind from within two years of his birth. Mr. Isaac Taylor, £100, in public acknowledgment of his eminent services to literature, especially in the departments of history and philosophy, during a period of more than forty years. Mr. John Wade, £50, in consideration of his contributions to political literature, more especially during the time of the Reform bill of 1832. SCIENCE. Miss Elizabeth Baly and Miss Marie Josephine Fauvet (a joint pension), £100, in consideration of the late Dr. Baly's long career in the public service, and of the merit of the scientific medical works of which he was the author. Mr. Richard Cort, £50 (in addition to his former pension of £50), on account of the great of Surgeons in Ireland, £75, in consideration Dr. John Hart, Fellow of the Royal College of his contributions to the science of anatomy and physiology, and of his being afflicted with blindness and broken health. Mr. George Rainey, £100, in consideration of his labors in the field of minute anatomy and physiology, and of the many works on the subject which he has given to the public in the Transactions of learned societies without receiving any pecuniary remuneration. Mrs. Janet Wilson and Miss Jessie Wilson, £100 (a joint pension), in consideration of the eminent services of the late Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh, as a public teacher and a scientific man. From The Spectator. MARRIAGES OF CONSANGUINITY. WHAT are the effects of the intermarriage of blood-relations upon their offspring, and how those effects, if they exist, are produced, are questions which have often been debated by physicians and physiologists. They are, moreover, questions which have considerable general interest, in consequence of their direct bearing upon practical family life. Many of our readers know that the opinion of most of those who have paid any attention to this subject has tended rather to confirm the popular belief that such marriages are injurious; but they are, perhaps, not equally well aware that these opinions have been founded for the most part upon isolated facts and observations, and that it is only within the last fifteen or twenty years that any serious attempts have been made to give them a more solid foundation upon a mass of classified instances. Dr. Devay, of Lyons, in his Traité d'Hygiène des Familles, and Dr. Bemiss, of Louisville, U. S., in a paper on the subject reprinted in the Journal of Psychological Medicine for April, 1857, have attempted to show by the method of statistics that such marriages lead to what the latter writer calls " degeneration of race," that is, that they are either unfruitful, or that their offspring are more than usually liable to diseases, amongst which idiocy and scrofula seem to be the most frequent. We intend in the present article to examine the conclusions arrived at by these authors by the help of the light thrown upon them by others. We shall probably show reason for doubting whether their conclusions are fairly borne out by the facts upon which they profess to be founded, and shall at the same time bring home to the minds of our readers the extreme difficulty which exists in deducing trustworthy conclusions from facts of so complicated a character, and the great caution required in applying the statistical method to physiological phenomena. It is to be observed that the controversy, as it exists, is capable of being brought to a very narrow issue. No one denies or doubts that in many instances the marriages of cousins are followed by a variety of ill effects; the real point in dispute is whether their evils depend, as the authors we have mentioned maintain, upon an unknown law of nature which is broken by such marriages, or whether they merely follow the ordinary laws of inheritance by which peculiarities and tendencies existing in the parent are transmitted, in a manner of which we are ignorant, to the child. The distinction here drawn is by no means the trivial matter it may at first sight seem, inasmuch as it involves the question whether marriages between cousins are always, and of necessity, an evil, or whether they merely require the exercise of the same prudence which ought to be used in all other cases, if similar evils are to be avoided. The former of these two views, then, is that held by the physicians to whom we have referred, and Dr. Devay expressly denounces the latter as altogether inadequate to account for the phenomena. Want of space prevents our entering upon an examination of these various statistics at length; but we will take three points-viz., the fertility of the marriages, the infant mortality, and the lesions of the intellect amongst the offspring,-and compare the results given by the two sets of thirty-four and seventeen marriages given by Dr. Bemiss, respectively on his own and Dr. Howe's authority, and the one hundred and thirty-four marriages, the particulars of which are related by Dr. Devay. We find, then, that of the thirty-four marriages, seven were sterile and twenty-seven fertile; i.e., about one in every five were unfruitful; and the total number of children was one hundred and ninety-five, of whom fifty-eight died in infancy or childhood and one hundred and thirty-four grew up. Amongst the latter, ten were either actually defective in intellect or likely to become so, there being four epileptic, two insane, and four idiotic ; there were also two deaf and dumb. In the second case, that of the seventeen marriages, the number of sterile unions is not stated, but the total number of children was ninetyfive, of whom forty-four were idiots and one was deaf. In the third case, that of the one hundred and thirty-four marriages, the total number of children is not stated, but twentytwo were sterile, or about one in every six, and amongst the offspring there appear one deaf and dumb child and not a single idiotic or insane individual. Now "similar causes," we have most of us learned, "produce similar effects," and the chief characteristic of these sets of statistics appears to be their extreme dissimilarity. In the matter of fertility, the first two sets exceed the average to investigate the history of parents and very considerably, and of the last we know grandparents before pronouncing upon the nothing, and in respect of intellectual lesions the first and third contrast very remarkably with the second; of the latter, indeed, we may remark that it obviously proves too much, for no one even gathering his experience from a few isolated cases will believe that almost one-half of the children of cousins are idiotic. In each set of statistics, moreover, it is to be noticed that some one form of degeneracy predominates, and in each case a different form. Thus, in fortyseven cases of disease in the first set twentythree were scrofulous, in fifty-eight cases in the second set forty-four were idiotic, and in thirty cases of deformity or disease, in the third set, seventeen consisted in the development of supernumerary fingers. cause of a special disease appearing in the offspring of a particular family; the other from the closeness with which family secrets are kept, and the consequent difficulty or impossibility of pursuing such an investigation successfully. Only in one instance, as far as we know, has the number of cases made use of to support a conclusion similar to those which we have referred to been sufficient even in any degree to eliminate these sources of fallacy. It is stated that in France one-fourth of the inmates of the deaf and dumb asylums are the children or grandchildren of cousins; whereas, to correspond with the proportion of marriages between such relations there should be only onetwentieth. It is difficult to believe that effects so very The explanation of this fact probably is various are all the natural results of the that we are totally ignorant of the antecesame cause, and until we can obtain far dents in the parents, upon which mutism in more satisfactory evidence than is afforded the offspring depends; and hence, in each by these statistics we shall be inclined to case, it comes upon us as a new phenomebelieve that very similar results might be non, which we had no reason to expect. It shown to occur should any future physiolo- is at least probable that some day a congist choose to adopt marriages between nection may be found between mutism and persons with red hair or hooked noses, as his some other totally dissimilar affection, such bêté noire, instead of those between blood- as is believed by many to exist between relations. One writer, indeed, Mr. Ander-rheumatism and St. Vitus' dance. Howson Smith, in a letter printed in the Lancet, ever this may be, it is certainly questionable for July 5th, has brought forward statistics logic to fix upon one amongst a complex of forty-one marriages between natives of mass of antecedents as the cause of a phedifferent countries of Europe, with a view nomenon which is itself absent in the majorof showing that their effects, too, are of a ity of cases in which that phenomenon most disastrous character. He finds that of occurs. their number ten were sterile; the whole only produced one hundred and six children, of whom fourteen were either idiotic, insane, or of weak intellect, and eighteen died in childhood-results on the whole wo.se than any of the others. Now we cannot say that we are prepared, upon the strength of Mr. Smith's statistics, to believe that any law of nature is broken by the marriage of a Frenchman or a German to an English wife, or vice verså; but the evidence for such a theory is, at least, as good as that upon which we are asked to believe that degeneracy of race, as it is called, is a natural consequence of the marriage of blood-relations. In practice, statistics such as these are liable to two special sources of error, one arising from the hereditary character of many diseases, which renders it necessary There remains a class of facts which may be appealed to to correct the conflicting evidence on this subject thus obtained from observations upon man, that, namely, which is derived from the experience gained in the breeding of animals. Here, we think, it must be admitted that the whole weight of the evidence is against the popular view; for though it may be true that ill effects have been brought about by extremely close interbreeding continued through a series of several generations, yet the pages of the herd-book and the stud-book prove, beyond a doubt, that the very best of our thoroughbred horses and short-horned cattle come of races in which close breeding has been carried to an extent which, in the human race, it is impossible that it ever should be. Dr. Devay and other writers have tried to dis |