skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreadth of the 5 peau de chagrin, disappear with the gratification of a last wish.

Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in this strange story may have been 10 intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is some. what the smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm.

15

Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light-so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure 20 cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs from Balzac's in its capacity of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every exertion,

For example, this present lecture, whatever its intel-25 lectual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end 30 of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By and by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance

commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size. Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less modified, of another animal-a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same 5 matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial operations in the process of cooking.

But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which Io I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man.

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Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the 20 crustacean might, and probably would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the protoplasm of the 25 wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no more trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster.

Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution 30 for protoplasm, and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other

animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal proportion of some other 5 saline matters, contains all the elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An animal can- 10 not make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant-the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is appropriate to itself.

15

Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the vegetable world. A fluid containing carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts, which offers such a Barmecide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, 20 with a due supply of only such materials, many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multiply until it has increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this way building up the matter 25 of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the universe.

Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm; while the plant can raise the less 30 complex substances-carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salto the same stage of living protoplasm, if not

to the same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example, appear to need higher compounds to start with; and no known plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A 5 plant supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplifiIo cation of vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents be supplied except nitrogenous salts, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture 15 protoplasm.

Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, 20 water, and nitrogenous compounds, which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world agoing. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse.*

*The rest of the paper is an argument based upon the exposi zion.

III.

The Character and Policy of Charles the Second.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN, 1837-1883.

This extract follows a passage discussing the changes wrought in England by the Commonwealth and by the Restoration, Chapter I., Book VIII., John Richard Green's "History of the English People." New York, 1880.

The historian, in order to make vivid to the reader his conception of the character and policy of Charles the Second, uses bits of personal description and scraps of narrative, subordinated to the general purpose of exposition; and, in so far as space permits, he shows each trait in the concrete form of word and deed. For example, the attitude of Charles towards the House of Lords is expressed in the king's remark that the debates there "amused" him. This method of Green's is in essence that of the storyteller, who displays a man's character by letting him talk and act before us; and this history is entertaining, partly because Eliza beth, James the First, Cromwell, Charles the Second, and Walpole are made to live in its pages by the same literary device by which Tom Jones, Dr. Primrose, and Becky Sharp live in the pages of fiction.

CHANGED to the very core, yet hardly conscious of the change, drifting indeed steadily towards a wider knowledge and a firmer freedom, but still a mere medley of Puritan morality and social revolt, of traditional loyalty and political scepticism, of bigotry and free 5 inquiry, of science and Popish plots, the England of the