spiritual element with the temporal in that court gives to it an unfortunate appearance of undertaking to decide what is the true doctrine, instead of merely giving a legal exposition to the language in which the true doctrine is already defined; and this appearance, unfortunate in even a strictly ecclesiastical court, is absolutely disastrous in the Judicial Committee, which is not an ecclesiastical tribunal, but a temporal court, advising the action of the sovereign, when appealed to as in the well-known "appel comme d'abus," as the supreme arbiter under God in any case of alleged injustice wrought in any court against the subject. We will not stop here to inquire by what legislation this anomaly should be corrected. We now merely call attention to its existence as directly militating against the principle laid down in this judgment and maintained as true by ourselves.

Here, then, for the present we leave this great matter. We see upon the whole many grounds for rejoicing at the course by which

it has travelled to its present posture. For there are many marks that now-as so often before in the Church's history-error has defeated itself. We rejoice in the unambiguous voice it has called forth from our high Ecclesiastical Court. We rejoice in the tone maintained by the Convocation of Canterbury, in the utterance of all our bishops, and in the echo it awoke amongst the clergy. We rejoice in the calm, dignified rebuke administered by the expressive silence of the laity to the promulgers of this new-fangled form of puny unbelief. We may lastly add that we rejoice in the literary issues of the conflict; in the exposure it has made of the shallow, crude, half-learned ignorance of the masters of the new movement; and in the enduring additions to our standard theology of which it has been the cause. And for ourselves, we rejoice that we were amongst the earliest to unmask the pretenders, and draw down upon our head the honorable distinction of their peculiar hostility.

FROGS IN COAL.-To Mr. Punch.-" Sir: I am quite ashamed of my age-I mean of my country-when I find people refusing to believe that the Frog in the Exhibition got into the coal about the period of the creation, and jumped out just in time to be ready for the International Show of 1862. The habit of disbelieving statements is most objectionable. But I hope that I shall be able to convince the most incredulous sceptic that such a thing is perfectly possible, by relating a fact which has occurred in my own family, and, I may say, under my own eye.

"The nights have been cold of late, and on Tuesday last I thought it would be pleasant to have a fire. This was accordingly lighted, and my servant, a most respectable female (duly christened, and with an excellent character), brought up the coal-skuttle. It had remained in an outhouse during the summer. She placed it in one corner of my room, behind my armchair. About an hour afterwards I rose to put on some coals, and I beheld, perched upon a large lump of Wallsend, a remarkably fine frog. It was alive, and did not seem afraid of me, and, indeed, I fancied that it winked at me as I approached it. If there could be any doubt that this frog had been in one of the coals for six thousand years at least (my servant thinks 'nearer seven '), such doubt would be removed by the creature's fearlessness. It was, of course, in the poet's language, 'so unacquainted with man,' upon whom it had never looked since this orb was called into existence.

"I would have stated this convincing circumTHIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 953

stance in addition to the similar evidence which I transmitted to the Times, only it had not occurred when I. wrote. I hasten to complete the chain of testimony to the Exhibition Frog, and am, sir, Yours obediently, JOHN SCOTT." "Lillieshall Coal Depots, Paddington."

DEVOTION TO SCIENCE.-At one of the meetings of the British Association last week, Dr. Edward Smith said,

"In certain cases tobacco acts as a stimulant, and may supply to the literary man the state of system at night which would be induced by a moderate quantity of alcoholic stimulants, but when the body is of full habit it must lead to disturbed sleep and may lead to apoplexy."

Dr. Punch said that as a literary man of full habit (applause) he should like to ask his friend Dr. Smith whether the unpleasant consequences he indicated might not be obviated by taking both the cigar and a moderate quantity of alcoholic stimulants.

Dr. Edward Smith said that he had not directed his attention to that question, and thought that experiments bearing upon it might be conducted with interest and with advantage.

Dr. Punch, in the most liberal manner, immediately undertook to prosecute them, and departed to his hotel with that view. He was shortly joined by Dr. Smith, and the distinguished philosophers pursued their investigations until a late hour.-Punch.

CHAPTER II.

A MILE off, and a thousand feet down. So Tom found it; though it seemed as if he could have chucked a pebble on to the back of the woman in the red petticoat, who was weeding in the garden; or even across the dale to the rocks beyond.

For the bottom of the valley was just one field broad, and on the other side ran the stream; and above it, gray crag, gray down, gray stair, gray moor walled up to heaven.

A quiet, silent, rich, happy place; a narrow crack cut deep into the earth, so deep, and so out of the way, that the bad bogies can hardly find it out. The name of the place is Vendale; and if you want to see it for yourself, you must go up into the High Craven, and search from Bolland Forest north by Ingleborough, to the nine Standards and Cross Fell; and if you have not found it, you must turn south, and search the Lake mountains, down to Scaw Fell and the sea; and then if you have not found it, you must go northward again by merry Carlisle, and search the Cheviots all across, from Annan Water to Berwick Law; and then, whether you have found Vendale or not, you will have found such a country and such a people as ought to make you proud of being a British boy.

So Tom went to go down; and first he went down three hundred feet of steep heather, mixed up with loose brown gritstone, as rough as a file; which was not pleasant to his poor little heels, as he came bump, stump, jump, down the steep. And still he thought he could throw a stone into the garden.

Then he went down three hundred feet of limestone terraces, one below the other, as straight as if Mr. George White had ruled them with his ruler and then cut them out with his chisel. There was no heath there, but

First, a little grass slope, covered with the prettiest flowers, rockrose and saxifrages and thyme and basil and all sorts of sweet herbs.

Then bump down a two-foot step of lime

stone.

Then another bit of grass and flowers. Then bump down a one-foot step. Then another bit of grass and flowers for fifty yards, as steep as the house roof, where he had to slide down on his dear little tail.

Then another step of stone, ten feet high; and there he had to stop himself, and crawl along the edge to find a crack; for if he had rolled over, he would have rolled right into the old woman's garden, and frightened her out of her wits.

Then, when he had found a dark narrow crack, full of green-stalked fern, such as hangs in the basket in the drawing-room, and had crawled down through it, with knees and elbows, as he would down a chimney, there was another grass slope and another step, and so on, till—oh, dear me! I wish it was all over, and so did he. And yet he thought he could throw a stone into the old woman's garden.

At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs; whitebeam, with its great silverbacked leaves, and mountain-ash and oak, and below them cliff and crag, cliff and crag, with great beds of crown-ferns and wood-sedge; and through the shrubs he could see the stream sparkling, and hear it murmur on the white pebbles. He did not know that it was three hundred feet below.

You would have been giddy, perhaps, at looking down: but Tom was not. He was a brave little chimney-sweep, and when he found himself on the top of a high cliff, instead of sitting down and crying for his baba,-though he never had had any baba to cry for,-he said, "Ah, this will just suit me!" though he was very tired; and down he went, by stock and stone, sedge and ledge, bush and rush, as if he had been born a jolly little black ape, with four hands instead of two.

But he was getting terribly tired now. The burning sun on the fells had sucked him up, but the damp heat of the woody crag sucked him up still more; and the perspiration ran out of the ends of his fingers and toes and washed him cleaner than he had been for a whole year. But of course he dirtied everything terribly as he went There has been a great black smudge all down the crag ever since. And there have been more black beetles in Vendale since than ever were known before; all of course owing to Tom's having blacked the original papa of them all, just as he was setting off to be married, with a sky-blue coat and scarlet leggings, as smart as a gardener's dog with a polyanthus in his mouth.

At last he got to the bottom. But, be

hold, it was not the bottom-as people usually find when they are coming down a mountain. For at the foot of the crag were heaps and heaps of fallen limestone of every size, from that of your head to that of a stagewagon with holes between them full of sweet heath-fern; and before Tom got through them, he was out in the bright sunshine again, and then he felt, once for all, and suddenly, as people generally do, that he was b-e-a-t, beat.

You must expect to be beat a few times in your life, little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be as strong and healthy as you may; and when you are, you will find it a very ugly feeling. And I hope that that day you may have a stout stanch friend by you who is not beat; for if you have not, you had best lie where you are, and wait for better times, as poor Tom did.

He could not get on. The sun was burning, and yet he felt chill all over. He was quite empty, and yet he felt quite sick. There was but two hundred yards of smooth pasture between him and the cottage, and yet he could not walk down it. He could hear the stream murmuring, only one field beyond it, and yet it seemed to him as if it were a hundred miles off.

He lay down on the grass till the beetles ran over him, and the flies settled on his nose. I don't know when he would have got up again, if the gnats and the midges had not taken compassion on him. But the gnats blew their trumpets so loud in his ear, and the midges nibbled so at his hands and face, wherever they could find a place free from soot, that at last he woke up, and stumbled away, down over a low wall, and into a narrow road, and up to the cottage door.

And a neat pretty cottage it was, with clipt yew hedges all round the garden, and yews inside too, cut into peacocks, and trumpets and teapots and all kinds of queer shapes. And out of the open door came a noise, like that of the frogs on the Great-A, when they know that it is going to be scorching hot to-morrow-and how they know that I don't know, and you don't know, and nobody knows.

He came slowly up to the open door, which was all hung round with clematis and roses, and then peeped in, half afraid.

And there sat by the empty fireplace, filled with a pot of sweet herbs, the nicest old woman that ever was seen, in her red petticoat and short dimity bed-gown and clean white cap, with a black silk handkerchief over it, tied under her chin. And at her feet sat the grandfather of all the cats, and opposite her sat, on two benches, twelve or fourteen neat, rosy, chubby little children, learning their Chris-cross-row, and gabble enough they made about it.

Such a pleasant cottage it was, with a shiny, clean stone floor, and curious old prints on the walls, and an old black oak sideboard full of bright pewter and brass dishes, and a cuckoo clock in the corner, which began shouting as soon as Tom appeared: not that it was frightened at Tom, but that it was just eleven o'clock.

All the children started at Tom's dirty black figure; and the girls began to cry and the boys began to laugh, and all pointed at him rudely enough; but Tom was too tired to care for that.

"What art thou, and what dost want?" cried the old dame. "A chimney-sweep! Away with thee! I'll have no sweeps here." "Water," said poor little Tom, quite faint.

"Water? There's plenty i' the beck," she said, quite sharply.

"But I can't get there; I'm most clemmed with hunger and drought." And Tom sank down upon the doorstep, and laid his head against the post.

And the old dame looked at him through her spectacles one minute and two and three; and then she said, "He's sick; and a bairn's a bairn, sweep or none.”

"Water," said Tom.

"God forgive me!" and she put by her spectacles and rose, and came to Tom. "Water's bad for thee; I'll give thee milk.” And she toddled off into the next room, and brought a cup of milk and a bit of bread.

Tom drank the milk off at one draught, and then looked up, revived.

"Where didst come from?" said the dame.

"Over Fell, there," said Tom, and pointed up into the sky.

"Over Harthover? and down Lewthwaite Crag? Art sure thou art not lying?"

"Why should I?" said Tom, and leant his head against the post.

"And how got ye up there ?"

"I came over from the Place," and Tom was so tired and desperate he had no heart or time to think of a story, so he told all the truth in a few words.

half asleep he did not know it, "I must be clean; I must be clean."

And all of a sudden he found himself, not in the outhouse on the hay, but in the middle of a meadow, over the road, with the

"No."

"I must be clean; I must be clean." He had got there on his own legs, between sleep and awake, as children will often get out of bed, and go about the room, when they are not quite well. But he was not a bit sur

"I can't."

"It's good enough, for I made it myself." "I can't," said Tom, and he laid his head on his knees, and then asked,—

"Is it Sunday?"

"No, then; why should it be?" "Because I hear the church bells ringing

80."

"Bless thy pretty heart! The bairn's sick. Come wi' me, and I'll hap thee up somewhere. If thou wert a bit cleaner, I'd put thee in my own bed, for the Lord's sake. But come along here."

But when Tom tried to get up, he was so tired and giddy that she had to help him, and lead him.

She put him in an outhouse, upon soft sweet hay and an old rug, and bade him sleep off his walk, and she would come to him when school was over, in an hour's time. And so she went in again, expecting Tom to fall fast asleep at once.

But Tom did not fall asleep.

Instead of it he turned and tossed and kicked about in the strangest way, and felt so hot all over, he longed to get into the river and cool himself; and then he fell half asleep, and dreamt that he heard the little white lady crying to him, "Oh, you're so dirty; go and be washed." And then he heard the church bells ring so loud close to him, too, that he was sure it must be Sunday, in spite of what the old dame had said; and he would go to church, and see what a church was like inside; for he had never been in one, poor little fellow, in all his life. But the people would never let him come in, all over soot and dirt like that. He must go to the river and wash first. And he said out loud again and again, though being

brook, and lay down on the grass, and looked into the clear, clear limestone water, with every pebble at the bottom bright and clean, while the little silver trout dashed about in fright at the sight of his black face; and he dipped his hand in and found it so cool, cool, cool; and he said, "I will be a fish; I will swim in the water; I must be clean; I must be clean."

So he pulled off all his clothes in such haste that he tore some of them, which was easy enough with such ragged old things. And he put his poor, hot, sore feet into the water; and then his legs; and the further he went in, the more the church bells rang in his head.

"Ah," said Tom, "I must be quick and wash myself, the bells are ringing quite loud now, and they will stop soon, and then the door will be shut, and I shall never be able to get in at all."

Tom was mistaken: for in England the church doors are left open all service time, for everybody who likes to come in, Churchman or Dissenter; ay, even if he were a Turk or a Heathen; and if any man dared to turn them out, as long as they behaved quietly, the good old English law would punish him, as he deserved, for ordering any peaceable person out of God's house, which belongs to all alike. But Tom did not know that, any more than he knew a great deal more which people ought to know.

So he tumbled himself as quick as he could into the clear, cool water.

And he had not been in it two minutes before he fell fast asleep, into the quietest, sunniest, cosiest sleep that ever he had in his life; and he dreamt about the green meadows by which he had walked that morning, and the tall elm-trees and the sleeping cows; and after that he dreamt of nothing at all.