discoveries of science, augmented by the accessions of each succeeding age from Thales and Archimedes to Newton and Davy ;-the practical sagacity and applicative ingenuity of hundreds of inventors like Arkwright and Watt, Stephenson and Wheatstone (to whom we owe the cotton manufacture and the steam-engine, the railway and the telegraph), as well as the humbler and unremembered labours of the thousands whose minor contrivances paved the way for their great completors; the innumerable contributions, age after age, of the professional or speculative men who at last have made medicine and surgery what they now are; finally, the daily, unacknowledged, half-unconscious, because routine, exertions of the rulers and administrators who have rendered these great victories of peace possible because they have enabled those who achieved them to labour in security and in hope. As far as "Time" has made the world, or any nation in it, wiser and better, it is because wise and good men have devoted that brief fragment of Time which was allotted to them here below to the task of enlightening and enouraging their fellow-men, to rendering virtue easier and wisdom more attractive, to removing obstacles in the path of moral progress, to dragging up the masses towards the position which the élite had previously attained. Where nations, once in thraldom, have won liberty and independence, it is not the cold abstraction of "Time" that has enfranchised them, but tyrants that have so misused time as to make sufferers desperate; prophets who have struck out the enthusiasm that makes sufferers daring because hopeful, and patriots who have been found willing to die for an idea and an aim. And, to look on the reverse of the picture, when in its ceaseless revolutions "Time," which once brought progress and development, shall have brought decay and dissolution, the agencies in operation and their modus operandi present no difficult analysis. Sometimes the same rough energy which made nations conquerors at first makes them despots and oppressors in the end, and rouses that hatred and thirst for vengeance which never waits in vain for opportunities, if only it waits long enough; and the day of peril surprises them with a host of enemies and not a single friend. Usually the wealth which enterprise and civilization have .accumulated brings luxury and enervation in its train; languor and corruption creep over the people's powers, exertion grows distasteful, and danger repels where it formerly attracted; degenerate freemen hire slaves to do their work, and mercenaries to fight their battles; and no strength or vitality or patriotism is left to resist the attacks of sounder and hardier barbarians. Occasionally, in the process of territorial aggrandisement, a nation outgrows its administrative institutions; the governmental system and the ruling faculties which sufficed for a small state, prove altogether unequal to the task of managing a great one, and the empire or republic falls to pieces from lack of cohesive power within or coercive power above. Not unfrequently, it may be, the mere progress of rational but imperfect civilization brings with it its peculiar dangers and sources of disintegration; the lower and less qualified classes in a nation, always inevitably the most numerous, rise in intelligence and wealth, and grow prosperous and powerful; institutions naturally

become more and more democratic; if the actual administration of public affairs does not pass into the hands of the masses or their nominees, at least the policy of the nation is moulded in accordance with the views of the less sagacious and more passionate part of the community; the mischief is done unconsciously but irretrievably, and the catastrophe comes without being either intended or foreseen. In other cases, states and monarchies come to an end simply because they have no longer a raison d'être,— because they never had in them the elements of permanence; because destructive or disintegrating causes, long in operation, have at last ripened into adequate strength. The Ottoman Power is falling because the military spirit which founded it has died away, and it has no other point of superiority to the people over whom it rules; because the Turks are stagnant and stationary, and the Greeks are au fond a progressive though a corrupt and undeveloped race. Austria, too, seems crumbling to pieces, because composed of a host of incongruous elements, and because neither the genius to fuse them, nor the vigour to coerce them, can be found among their rulers.

Is there, then, no permanence in any earthly thing? Must nations for ever die out under the slow corrosion of "Time," as surely as men and the monuments men rear? Is there no principle of vitality strong enough to defy at once assaults from without and disintegration from within ;-no elixir vita discoverable by the accumulated sagacity and experience of centuries, by means of which the essential elements of national life can be renewed as fast as they consume, and the insidious causes of decay watched and guarded against the instant they begin to operate, and counteracted pari passu with their operation? In a word, cannot the same wisdom and self-knowledge which tell nations why and how they degenerate and die, discover antidotes against degeneracy and death? Or is fate too mighty for human resistance ;—that is, to speak more piously and definitely, has Providence decreed that the progress of the race shall proceed by a succession of states and peoples, and not by the adaptation and perfectation of existing ones; and must nations perforce forego the noble egotism of immortal life, and be content to live vicariously in their offspring and inheritors? The question is of infinitely small moment except to our imaginations; but there is surely no reason why the dearer and more human hope should not be realised, though we may be ages distant from the day of realisation. We have all the preserving salt that lies latent in the true essence of Christianity, as yet so little understood; we are learning to comprehend, far better than the ancients and our ancestors, in what rational patriotism consists, and wherein lie the real interests of republics and of empires; all the needed pharmacopoeia of policy is within our reach as soon as we thoroughly know our constitutions, and have the virtue and nerve to apply the remedies in time. If there had been conservators of the Coliseum, versed in all the destructive and reparative agencies of nature, vigilantly watching the one and promptly applying the other, the Coliseum would have been standing in its strength and its beauty to this hour.

The Shootings of Kamptally.

THERE is no creature, be it bird, beast, or fish, that exercises such an influence over the destinies of the human race as the species of tetrao which, for some mysterious but doubtless beneficent reason, is confined to limited portions of these little islands. The beneficence evinced in the limitation of the region in which this potent bird flourishes, however, is principally to be appreciated by the Scottish lairds, who have been turning barren moors into gold mines of late years, and who may yet find the more the mines are worked the less they will yield. Let us prove the assertion in this way. The British empire is the most extensive and populous in the world; no throne, principality, or power can vie with it in acreage or population. The British empire is governed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Parliament of the United Kingdom is affected materially in its deliberations and in its legislative functions by the grouse, which, according to law, must be ready for shooting on 12th August in England and in Scotland; but (with manifest unfairness to English and Scotch birds,) are allowed to enjoy longer leases or tenant-right in Ireland. As the beginning of August approaches in each year, the most resolute Minister is made aware, by signs unmistakable, that he must not trifle with the functions of the tetracides, and vex them with attempts at legislation, which are certain to be received with indifference or contempt. It is probable that some Members could sit all the year round, and like it. Mr. Ayrton, Mr. Darby Griffiths, Mr. Whalley, and a few others, would, it is very likely, enjoy perennial séances and speech-makings. Such exceptions prove the rule. Mr. Bright himself would lead off a large section of followers to the side of the salmon-pool, far removed from the patriotic bellowings of Mr. Beales; and Lord Russell would prefer another speech on the hill-sides of Blairgowrie to another debate in the House of Lords. The grouse season rules the Parliamentary recess, and it would be very difficult to find a Member in either House who is not, directly or indirectly, influenced by the opening of the shootings. It is fitly preceded by the "slaughter of the innocents," and if the grouse could know what deeds are wrought in the heated days and hurried nights previous to the holocaust, they might rejoice in the blighted projects, the burked speeches, the quashed motions, the abortive preparations, the defeated ambition, and the abandoned legislation, which mark the advent of their doomsday. The Orissa famine was a cruel calamity-for the people of Orissa at all events, and also for Sir Cecil Beadon. But in his heart of hearts-well, I will not say that. But I wonder if my friend the Laird of Kamptully, who so worthily represents the burghs of Candle and

Wick, could look me in the face, and say he felt as much acute concern and real active grief about the præcordia, when he read of the starvation of these coloured brethren, as he did the day he handed me a yellowish envelope from which he had extracted a sheet of paper, after breaking the wax, on which was impressed the mark of a very fine broad thumbend, exclaiming, "That's from Rory! It's frightful news."

"Who is Rory, my dear Mac?" quoth I, gazing on the envelope, which was inscribed, "The MacBirdie of Kamptully and MacBirdie, M.P., at the Commons Hous of Parlament in London, &c. &c. &c."

dreadful intelligence of which you speak?"

66

"And what is the

"Just take it and read for yourself. O dear me! dear me !"

I read the laboured scroll, which was written on a printed form headed Weekly Report."

"Moors of Kamptully, Tullymore, MacBirdie More MacBirdiebeg and Strathlushy.

"HONNERED SIR,-It is with grate regret I have to enform you that own to some coorse weather and lateness of heather a grate mortallity has come on the broods within the last feaw days. The low grunds by Strathlushy are the warst, and I am feearing we will bee four to five hundreyed brase short of our number or more. Black game is backward. There is not mush tapeworms. The dogs is well worked and will give settisfaction. Angus McMunn reports well of the bastes on Tullymore and rund be the bak of Benbeg-fine heads.

"And wishing you respectkfully safe gurney, I am your honner's most obed., as in duty bound,

"RODERICK MACALLISTER.

"(See remarks annexed.)"

"But you'll come down all the same, won't you?" asked the MacBirdie, entreatingly. "We'll have birds to shoot after all! A pleasant party. There will be Dundrumming, Jack Pintail of the Tenth, and little Girder. General Tuck has made a conditional. I depend on you."

I promised. I felt I was doing a noble deed. The MacBirdie, summoned by the division-bell, went off much relieved in his mind to give a perfectly unbiassed vote on an Irish grand jury, or fishery, or education, or some bill of the kind which the Irish Members will insist on being introduced to be killed ere they depart to the bosoms of their constituencies. It so happened I was bound to that same country, and it occurred to me that it would be a clever thing to go by Fleetwood to Belfast and then cross over to Glasgow from the North of Ireland. Thus could I dodge the limited mail-trains which were already as exclusive as a subscription operabox on a Patti night. The places were booked in advance weeks ago, and I knew the horrors of the middle passage through England by the ordinary mail-trains on the eve of St. Tetracide-the sacciferous camaraderie and the bad tobacco, and the sporting gentry of the carriages. Well, of this route by Fleetwood I would say, if you are a man of the sort of those who sit with Bradshaw in one hand and a watch in the other, and note the time

of actual arrival at each station, and comparing it with the tabulated time get into a passion or make yourself miserable; if you are a man of the sort of those who dislike being late generally, and in a hurry particularly; who are rather disposed to fast as little as possible; who are averse to embarking in small steamers and going out to sea to embark in the royal mail-boats tossed on the wave; who aspire to the comforts of a good berth; who hate crowds, particularly of Belfast linen-merchants and pigjobbers and horsedealers ;-do not go by Fleetwood and Belfast at this time of year unless you are quite certain of being more lucky than I was, and of finding the tide answer and a pause in the migration. The tide rarely does not answer, I am told. So much the better for frequent passengers. But who can hold a fire in his hand,

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ?

Anyway, it was very pleasant next morning to hear the grating of the ship's sides against the quay wall of Belfast, and to think that within a few hours by rail there was a certain stream flowing to the sea where the salmon, as they headed upwards to the gravel-beds, were just jostling each other in the pools. There is no man so persecuted by the weather and so dependent for his pleasure on the state of the barometer as the contemplative angler. The water is too bright and fine, or it is too high and discoloured, or the fish are "waiting for a change," or the wind is in a bad point, or "those white clouds prevent them rising," or "there's thunder in the air;" but something or other there surely is to prevent one's getting half-a-dozen decent fishing days in the year, and when they come he is sure to be away or busy, or to have the wrong fly, or to break his rod early in the morning, or to get his reel out of order. Why pursue the recital of our wrongs at the hands of fortune? Rather let us wonder at our perseverance, and rejoice in the exquisite delights of our rare moments of rewarded skill and indomitable persistence. That second week in this present month of August, however, was under the full sway of some malignant and evil-minded planet. There was the river, in capital order one would think, running swiftly in broad browntinged sheets over the pebbles, or resting its waters in the long pools, swept by a gentle breeze till it rushed forth to meet the breakers which caught it in snowy arms and swept it away in the turmoil of waters at the tiny bar of sand and black rocks covered with seaweed. There in the long reaches now and then a something boiled up from below, and a silver gleam was visible through the waters, and the surface, broken into a circling whirl, indicated the play of "a fash" beneath. What lure of flies was known to the angler's art was all displayed in vain. From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve, three Summer days I toiled or watched the practised hand of the guardian of the waters plying its skill in vain till I had a "crick" in my back from endless wavings of a seventeen-footer and a slight touch of the rheumatics all over, and, full of hatred to all the subtle race of the Salmonide, revolved felon plans of snatching and strokehauling and poisoning in my dreams. It was time to depart at last from the