at last that all lovely things are also necessary :-the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only, but also by the desert manna; by every wondrous word and unknowable work of God. Happy, in that he knew them not, nor did his fathers know; and that round about him reaches yet into the infinite, the amazement of his existence.

Note, finally, that all effectual advancement towards this true felicity of the human race must be by individual, not public effort. Certain general measures may aid, certain revised laws guide, such advancement; but the measure and law which have first to be determined are those of each man's home. We continually hear it recommended by sagacious people to complaining neighbours, (usually less well placed in the world than themselves), that they should "remain content in the station in which Providence has placed them." There are perhaps some circumstances of life in which Providence has no intention that people should be content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole a good one; but it is peculiarly for home use. That your neighbour should, or should not, remain content with his position, is not your business; but it

is very much your business to remain content with your own. What is

chiefly needed in England at the present day is to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well-administered competence, modest, confessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek-not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.

Of which lowly peace it is written that "justice and peace have kissed each other;" and that the fruit of justice is "sown in peace of them that make peace;" not "peace-makers" in the common understanding-reconcilers of quarrels; (though that function also follows on the greater one;) but peace-Creators; Givers of Calm. Which you cannot give, unless you first gain; nor is this gain one which will follow assuredly on any course of business, commonly so called. No form of gain is less probable, business being (as is shown in the language of all nations-wλev from wiλw, #puniç from páw, venire, vendre, and venal, from venio, &c.) essentially restless and probably contentious;-having a raven-like mind to the motion to and fro, as to the carrion food; whereas the olive-feeding and bearing birds look for rest for their feet: thus it is said of Wisdom that she "hath builded her house, and hewn out her seven pillars ;" and even when, though apt to wait long at the doorposts, she has to leave her house and go abroad, her paths are peace also.

For us, at all events, her work must begin at the entry of the doors: all true economy is "Law of the house." Strive to make that law strict, simple, generous: waste nothing, and grudge nothing. Care in nowise to

make more of money, but care to make much of it; remembering always the great, palpable, inevitable fact—the rule and root of all economy-that what one person has, another cannot have; and that every atom of substance, of whatever kind, used or consumed, is so much human life spent; which, if it issue in the saving present life, or gaining more, is well spent, but if not, is either so much life prevented, or so much slain. In all buying, consider, first, what condition of existence you cause in the producers of what you buy; secondly, whether the sum you have paid is just to the producer, and in due proportion, lodged in his hands;* thirdly, to how much clear use, for food, knowledge, or joy, this that you have bought can be put; and fourthly, to whom and in what way it can be most speedily and serviceably distributed in all dealings whatsoever insisting on entire openness and stern fulfilment; and in all doings, on perfection and loveliness of accomplishment; especially on fineness and purity of all marketable commodity: watching at the same time for all ways of gaining, or teaching, powers of simple pleasure; and of showing “ ὅσον ἐν ἀσφοδέλῳ γέγ ̓ ὄνειας ”—the sum of enjoyment depending not on the quantity of things tasted, but on the vivacity and patience of taste.

And if, on due and honest thought over these things, it seems that the kind of existence to which men are now summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, may, for some time at least, not be a luxurious one;— consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world. Luxury is indeed possible in the future-innocent and exquisite; luxury for all, and by the help of all; but luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant; the cruelest man living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold. Raise the veil boldly; face the light; and if, as yet, the light of the eye can only be through tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time come, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of bread, and bequest of peace shall be Unto this last as unto thee; and when, for earth's severed multitudes of the wicked and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation than that of the narrow home, and calm economy, where the Wicked cease-not from trouble, but from troubling-and the Weary are at rest.

J. R.

*The proper offices of middle-men, namely, overseers (or authoritative workmen); conveyancers (Inerchants, sailors, retail dealers, &c.), and order-takers (persons employed to receive directions from the consumer), must, of course, be examined before I can enter farther into the question of just payment of the first producer. But I have not spoken of them in these introductory papers, because the evils attendant on the abuse of such intermediate functions result not from any alleged principle of modern political economy, but from private carelessness or iniquity.

Teather.

TRITE and commonplace as the subject is, there still remains a good deal to be told about the weather, and there is ample reason in the history of the years 1859-60 why the present time should be selected for telling it. Notwithstanding the daily discussion and inquiries, we believe that the most indistinct and confused ideas are still commonly enough entertained about weather. It is often mistaken for climate, and climate is confounded with it; while, although the emblem of change, the numerous and real causes of change seem hardly to enter into consideration.

Let us endeavour to bring together in a narrow compass some of the chief peculiarities of weather and its changes, accounting for them, as far as possible, by some reasonable cause. We may thus obtain an insight into the future of this obscure subject, and perhaps understand how it is that some of our friends are weather-wise. Perhaps, also, some of us may be induced to make observations of our own.

A fine day in a fine season is an event worth recording, and involves a goodly variety of conditions. On such a day we have a bright sun, but the sun's heat is not scorching, nor does its light produce a painful glare; the sky is clear, and the clouds, if any, are light and high, not streaky or in heavy, cumbrous masses during the day, and towards evening they clear away, leaving only a few that are rosy and pink at sunset. The colour of the sky is blue, but not too intense, and not extending quite to the horizon. Distant objects are visible, but not so sharply defined as to appear unusually near. The atmosphere is really heavy, as shown by a high state of the barometer; but to the feelings it is light and elastic. The air feels dry, but not harsh, containing water, but in a state capable of absorbing more than it contains. The temperature is seasonable, not far removed from the average temperature due to the time of year. There is motion in the air, but it is not enough to be called wind. It proceeds from a quarter generally favourable for fine weather in the place of observation. The electricity of the air is in a state of equilibrium. There is a fair supply of that peculiar substance or condition called ozone, and there is no disturbance of the magnetic forces.

An average number of such days as these, occurring at intervals, separated by cloudy and rainy weather of no long duration, and not accompanied by violent and continued wind, electric or magnetic storm, or sudden and frequent changes in the temperature and pressure of the air, characterize a fine season; and several fine seasons following each other, produce a cycle or period of fine weather. A certain amount of electric storm and hail in summer, intervals of heavy rain, wind, and storm near

the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and an average of snow, frost, and magnetic storm in winter, are by no means incompatible with fine seasons. During such seasons the fruits of the earth ripen, and the ordinary crops of the country are obtained.

Bad weather and bad seasons are naturally the converse and opposite of fine. They also recur occasionally in cycles, and alternate with fine weather and seasons. It would be unnatural if this were not the case, for it is the result, inevitable as far as we know, of the laws governing our earth and system; but here are not wanting those who would find a national punishment in the occurrence of a season unfavourable to the growth and ripening of the crops. Such persons practically regard fine seasons as natural and normal, and bad seasons as miraculous exceptions.

The word climate is generally used to express the general average of the weather for a country or a district. In point of fact, hardly any two places a few miles apart have precisely the same climate; but in a general sense the climate of England is spoken of as one thing, that of France as another, and so on. Climate is properly the long average of weather in a single place, while the climate of a country is the average of all the climates of the different places in it, taken on an estimate of as long a period as possible.

Now it is quite conceivable that the climate of a place may in the course of time undergo a change, but it would take a large number of observations to prove it. By removing the trees, draining the land, and altering the crops, a certain alteration of climate is, however, necessarily induced, inasmuch as the average temperature and moisture become altered, and these are climatial essentials.

But though climate may change or be changed, we may almost assert it as an axiom that weather must change. There are districts in the world where these changes are exceedingly small, but such districts are few and exceptional. Generally, in temperate climates more especially, weather is very changeable and climate very uniform.

Climates, as we have said, are different in different places; whereas the weather, though very changeable in any one place, may be the same at the same time in very many places. This has been ascertained by systematic observations, commencing by previous arrangement at the same instant at a number of stations in different parts of the world, and continued at equal intervals. Thus it was found that on the morning of the 3rd of February, 1842, rain was falling at the same time throughout nearly every part of the United States of America, from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to beyond Lake Superior in the north, and from beyond the Mississippi in the west to far out in the Atlantic in the east. Over an area of at least a million of square miles there was for hours identical weather; and there have been other instances recorded where the whole land of Northern Europe has been under the influence of rainclouds at the same instant, and for some time.

But we all know that the weather is often extremely different on the

two sides of a mountain-chain, across a narrow channel occupied by water, or even in two localities on land a few miles distant from each other. It follows that while there are causes which influence weather of exceedingly wide operation, there are others altogether local, and one can readily believe that the indications also will be somewhat different.

The prognostications and causes of change of weather must evidently be studied with reference to this important difference. There is, however, a third condition of weather, when it is neither uniform over a wide tract, nor variable within narrow limits; but when, as in the case of certain storms, it travels over land and sea at a nearly even pace, occupying and affecting a narrow belt, but within that belt producing effects indicating the exercise of enormous mechanical force. During the great circular storms, or cyclones, which have been long known in the West Indies and China Seas, and are there periodical, but which also reach our shores and have been unusually frequent during the past year, the weather travels along in this manner, a desolating hurricane surrounding a comparative lull. While the wind of the hurricane is blowing at the rate of sixty or eighty miles an hour, the whole storm moves on, generally from the southwest towards the north-east, at a rate not often exceeding twenty miles an hour. The signs and causes of this travelling weather are, as might be expected, somewhat different from those of the other two kinds.

The weather is essentially the state of the air at the place and time of observation, and change of weather involves the action of some external causes altering the condition of the atmosphere. But, as the reader will have seen by our account of a fine day, this involves a good deal. The actual weight of the air above our heads is called "the pressure of the air," because the air does really press down upon us in exact proportion to its weight. This is constantly varying from a multitude of influences. The temperature of the air also changes every hour of the day. The moisture in the air varies with the temperature. The electrical state varies from many causes, and affects the others to a marked extent. The direction of the wind frequently changes, bringing new currents of air with altered temperature, and in a different electrical state. Each of these causes and results of change requires a special instrument to measure its amount, and each observation has to be regarded in its bearing on all the others.

There is thus a great complication of phenomena to be noted, and no one instrument alone can be regarded as sufficient. We will consider presently the use and relative value of the various contrivances that have been invented, and are commonly used; but, before doing so, let us see how far we may become weather-prophets without any instruments at all.

We may either trust to our own observations of the external world, or, which is better, combine these with notices of the habits and instincts of animals. In this way any one can, by care and attention, come to possess an almost instinctive perception of weather changes.

The state of the air is one of the first things that we may study with advantage in endeavouring to become weather-wise. Those who live in