just as an ordinary steel magnet, and will deflect a compass needle passed around it in a regular and orderly manner. But if there be breaks of continuity there will be corresponding breaks of magnetism, and the needle will be vagarious in its behavior, always performing some immethodical movement just at the spot beneath which the flaw is situated. Mr. Saxby, R.N., lately proposed to apply the principle to the testing of iron forges and castings His proposal was favorably reported on by the Astronomer Royal, and a series of experiments to determine the validity of the process has been prosecuted at the Chatham and Sheerness dockyards. These have been eminently successful as far as they have gone, and give great hopes that one of the greatest difficulties mechanical engineers have to cope with, that of ascertaining the perfection of a weld or the soundness of a casting will ultimately be removed.

ACCIDENT TO A PRINCESS.-A marriage has been concluded between the Grand Duchess Eugenie Leuchtenberg-Romanowsky, second daughter of the Grand Duchess Mary, eldest sister of the Emperor of Russia, and the second son of the Grand Duke of Oldenberg. The parties are to be married in January next. Though a second son, the bridegroom will be rich, his elder brother having been disinherited for marrying beneath his rank and without his father's consent. The Grand Duchess Eugenie is at present residing at the palace of her uncle, the Grand Duke Nicholas. Last week the aged Princess Potemkin called to congratulate her Royal Highness on her approaching nuptials, and was hoisted up by a lift to the apartments of the bride; but just as the Grand Duke Nicholas was extending his band to assist the Princess out of the lift, the cords of the machine broke and the poor old lady was rattled down to the ground-floor with great violence. In her descent her wrist was broken, and she incurred such severe external and internal injuries that she is still lying in the palace in a dangerous condition."

STEAM ON COMMON ROADS.-Mr. R. W. Thompson, of Edinburgh, has at length to all appearance succeeded in making a steam locomotive fit for common roads. Hitherto it has been very difficult to use steam power on ordinary roads, for this chief reason that it the wheels of the engines are made smooth, they fail to bite the road, and slip instead of rolling, while, on the other hand, if the wheels are roughened by spikes or by other means, they destroy the Macadam. The invention of Mr. Thomson, in his new road steamer, is an exceedingly simple one, and promises to be effective. In a road engine which he has prepared for the island of Java he has made the tyres of vulcanized India rubber. They are twelve inches broad, and five inches thick. The engine to which they are fixed weighs between four and five tons, and yet the wheels, when moving over soft bad roads, or over a soft grass field, do not sink in the slightest degree, and scarcely leave their impress behind, owing to the elastic and cushion-like character of the material forming the tyres of the wheels. The trials that have been made with the road steamer in the vicinity of Edinburgh show that a hard rigid material is not necessary for biting power in the wheel tyres. Also that the rubber has an amount of durability beyond conception. No trace of wear has shown itself on the surface of the rubber, even though the trials have been made over roads laid with material of the most testing character, such as broken and angular flints. The engine was constructed to draw an omnibus weighing (with its load of say thirty passengers) about four tons, on a level road; but, in one of its trials, it ascended a hilly incline of one in twelve, with a huge steam-boiler in tow, weighing, with its truck, between twelve and thirteen tons. Its speed is from nine to ten miles per hour.

JOHN BRIGHT.-The editor of the "Carmarthen Journal" tells the following story:-We have been informed that some time ago a number of gentlemen were conversing in a hotel not halfa-dozen miles from Carmarthen. The subject was a political one, and the conduct of John Bright was condemned in very strong terms. One of the company was a rather short gentleman, who did not join in the discussion, but by and by left the room. Calling the waiter to him, he said, "If any of the gentlemen in the smoke-room ask who I am, tell them that I am John Bright." "Yes, sir," said the waiter, seeing the joke at once. Sure enough, upon his entering the room, the man was asked if he knew who the gentleman was that had left. "The short gentleman who went out just now?" "Yes." "O, that is Mr. John Bright, M.P." The consternation of the party may be imagined. and they were not a whit more comfortable when "Mr. John Bright" again entered the room. Every one apologized, and the honorable gentleman graciously pardoned

Request a lady to lend you a watch. Examine it. and give a guess as to its value; then offer to lay the owner a wager, considerably below the real value of the watch, that she will not answer to three questions which you will put to her consecutively, "My watch." Show her the watch, and say," What is this which I hold in my hand?" She, of course, will not fail to reply, "My watch." Next present to her notice some other object, repeating the same question. If she name the object you present, she looses the wager; but she be on her guard, and remembering her stake, she says, "My watch," she must, of course, win; and you, therefore, to divert her attention, should observe to her, "You are certain to win the stake, but supposing I lose, what will you give me?" and, if confident of success, she replies for the third time, "My watch," then take it and leave her the wager agreed on.

THE DOUBLE MEANING.

Place a glass of any liquor upon the table, put a hat over it, and say, "I will engage to drink the liquor under that hat, and yet I'll not touch the hat." You then get under the table, and after giving three knocks, you make a noise with your mouth as if you were swallowing the liquor. Then getting from under the table, you say, "Now, gentlemen, be pleased to look." Some one, eager to see if you drank the liquor, will raise up the hat, when you instantly take the glass and drink the contents, saying, "Gentlemen, I have fulfilled my promise. You are all witnesses that I did not touch the hat.'

LADIES' TABLE.

INSTRUCTIONS AND TERMS USED IN TATTING

[CONTINUED.]

A STRAIGHT THREAD is instead of commencing a loop, and is used to connect various parts of the pattern together; two threads are always required: with a shuttle for each, or sometimes one end is left attached to the reel; if only a yard or two of cotton is left, the end may be threaded with a sewing needle. The easiest method to describe this will be to fill a red and a white shuttle, knotting the two ends together; hold the knot between the finger and thumb of the left hand, and the thread attached to the red shuttle between the second and third fingers of the same hand, about two inches from the knot; this space of thread is used instead of making a loop; then with the white shuttle in the right hand make a single stitch, pa s it up to the knot, keeping the rgh hand tight; the stitch wil be formed by the space of thread as it would be by a loop; the white shuttle will now be the lower or straight thread in the section.

Continue working double or single stitches according to the direction. In working with straight thread, the purl loops are made by turning the space of thread over the pin.

મેં

(EILLET EDGING.

1st Eillet. Fill the shuttle, and commencing a loop work 5 double stitches, I purl loop 5 double draw the loop quite close; reverse the work so that this willet is under the thumb and the cotton above

2d. Commence a loop close to the last; work 6 double, then make an extra purl by turning the cotton twice round the pin, work 6 double; draw close and reverse the work.

3d. Commence, work 5 double, join to the purl of the 1st œillet; 5 double, draw close.

THE DOT.-Commence, work 3 double, 1 purl and 3 double; draw close. Reverse the work.

THE ROSETTE.-Commence, work 3 double, join to the extra purl; then 1 double (1 purl and 1 double alternately, 10 times); make an extra purl as before; 3 double, draw close; then join the cotton to the purl of the dot. Reverse.

4th. Commence, work 5 double, 1 purl, 5 double; draw close and re

HUMOROUS READINGS.

A correspondent writes to ask if the brow of a hill ever becomes wrinkled? The only information we can give him on that point is, that we have often seen it furrowed.

ARTFUL-VERY.-Mary: "Don't keep crowding me, John.-John: "Who has been crowding you, Mary?" Mary (ingenuously): "Well, you can if you like, John!"

Ar the general sessions four men were indicted for stealing beans. A gentleman present asked another: "What have they been doing?" "Bean-stealing," was the reply.

AN Irish witness in a court of justice, being asked what kind of "ear-marks" the hog in question had, replied:

"He had no particular ear-marks except a very short tail."

AN Irish fair one wrote to her lover, begging him to send her some money. She added by way of postscript, "I am so ashamed of the request I have made in this letter, that I sent after the postman to get it back, but the servant could not overtake him."

"WOULD you like to look at the moon?" asked a professor, who had stationed his spy-glass at the street corner, of an Emeralder.

"To the divil wid ye; would I be afther givin' ye a dime to look at de moon wid one eye, whin I kin see it wid my two and not cost me cint?"

A GOOD anecdote is related of a well-known vagabond, who was brought before a magistrate as a common vagrant. Having suddenly harpooned a good idea, he pulled from a capacious pocket of a tattered coat a loaf of bread and half a dried cod-fish, and holding them up, with a triumphant look and gesture to the magistrate, exclaimed,

"You don't catch me that way-I'm no vagrant! Ain't them wisible means of support, I should like to know?"

THOUGHT HE HAD HER.-An old Dutch farmer had a handsome daughter named Minnie, who lately joined the Methodist church, against which the old farmer was somewhat prejudiced. The young minister under whose instrumentality Miss Minnie was converted, visiting her frequently, excited his suspicion that all was not right. Accordingly he visited the church on Sunday night, and seated himself unobserved among the congregation.

Soon after taking his seat, the minister, who was preaching from Daniel, 5th chap., 25th verse, repeated in a loud voice the words of his text, "Mene, mene tekel, upharsin." Upon which, the old farmer sprang to his feet, seized the affrighted girl by the arm, and hurried her out of the meeting-house. reached the church-yard, he gave vent to his feelings in these words:

Having

"I knows dare vas sometings wrongs, and now I schwares to 'em."

"Why, father, what do you mean?" replied the bewildered and innocent girl.

"Didn't I," shouted the old man, striking his fists together, and stamping with his foot, "didn't I hear de parson call out to you, 'Minnie, Minnie, tickle de parson?"

No. 7.]

POETRY.

ALLAH'S ANSWER.

[FROM THE ARABIO.]

"Allah, Allah!" cried the sick man,
Rack'd with pain the long night through,
Till with prayer his heart grew tender,
Till his lips like honey grew.

But at morning came the tempter,

Said, "Call louder, child of pain! See if Allah ever hear

Or answers, 'Hear am I' again."

Like a stab the cruel cavil

Through his burning pulses went, To his heart an icy coldness,

To his brain a darkness sent.

Then before him stands Elias,
Says, "My child, why thus dismayed?
Dost repent thy former fervor-

Is thy soul of prayer afraid?"

"Ah!" he cried, "I've called so often,
Never heard the 'Here am I,'
And I thought God will not pity,
Will not turn on me His eye.'

Then the grave Elias answered,
"God said, 'Rise, Elias, go
Speak to him the sorely tempted,
Lift him from his gulf of woe.

Tell him that his very longing

Is itself an answering cry,

That his prayer. 'Come, gracious Allah?' Is my answer, 'Here am I.'

Every inmost aspiration

Is God's angel undefiled,

And in every 'O my Father,'

Slumbers deep a Here, my child.'"

THE KEYS OF ST. PETER;

OR,

VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI.

A TRUE ITALIAN HISTORY.

CHAPTER VII. CONTINUE D.

Vittoria and her husband were accompanied on their journey by that Ludovico Orsini of whose dealings with the peace officers of the city the reader has already heard. He, too, as may readily be imagined, found Rome under Sixtus the Fifth no longer a desirable residence. Things were not as they had been. The good old times, when a gentleman could live like a gentleman, were gone.

[VOL. I.

This Ludovico, who had thus fallen on bad times, was a cousin of the prince; and being, as we have seen, a gentleman of high rank and nice feelings when the honor of the family was in question, had been grievously pained and offended by the misalliance made by the head of his race. The enmity arising from this circumstance was not towards the powerful and wealthy head of his house, who had been bewitched, poor fellow!' but wholly against Vittoria, the bewitching. So that, for her at least, this addition to the family traveling party did not promise to alleviate any of the disagreeable circumstances which necessarily attached to it.

Bearing in mind what journeys were in those days. under the best circumstances, one may fancy that Vittoria, with her diseased and shockingly unwieldy husband, and the hostile kinsman, who hated her for the cause not only of disgrace to his family, but for this exile from their homes in the world's capital, did not much enjoy her 'bridal trip.' We are inclined to be decidedly of the opinion of the Roman lady of rank, and to think that there was nothing, at all events yet, to repay one for murdering a husband.

It was in the territory of Venice that Orsini had determined on seeking a safe asylum and a home.— There had been a connection of long standing between the government of the great republic and the Orsini family, more than one of the name having held command of the forces of the Queen of the Adriatic.And when at length the travelers had arrived within a short distance of the city, the senate sent messages to offer Orsini a guard of honor, and a public entry into the city. This, however, the prince declined; and thinking, probably, that under all the circumstances the less of publicity attending his movements the better, he determined on not going to Venice at all.Turning his steps, therefore, towards Pudua, he hired in that city a magnificent palace for his residence during the coming winter, and then moving on in the direction of the Lago di Garda, established himself for the summer at Salo, a lovely spot at the head of a little bay on the western shore of the lake, at no very great distance from Brescia.

Ludovico Orsini, in the mean time, had gone on to Venice; and shortly succeeded in obtaining from the senate the command of the Venetian troops in Corfu.

Orsini and his wife remained during the rest of the summer at Salo; where, says the historian, 'he hired a superb villa, and strove by various pastimes to divert his wife, and his own profound melancholy caused by his infirmities of body, which became more

and more troublesome, and by the memories of Rome, and of his own excesses.' The picture of the 'interior, of Vittoria and her princely husband in their delicious villa in one of the loveliest spots in Europe, is not hard to imagine. Only we should be inclined to suggest, that in all probability the parts sustained in that domestic drama, as far as the efforts to amuse were concerned, were rather the reverse of the cast supposed by the historian. We cannot but suspect that these 'efforts' fell to the share of the young wife, while the all too unamusable patient was the princely husband. Perhaps, also, we might venture to infer that these sweet summer months on the beautiful shores of the lake beloved by poets, were not a period of unmixed connubial felicity to the lady Vittoria. The reward of ambition had not come yet.But perhaps it was coming, and that in no very distant future. That one's newly married husband should weigh twenty stone, and have a "lupa" consuming his bloated limbs, may in one point of view be unfavorable circumstances. But from a different stand-point they may be very much the reverse. After all, a well-jointured widow-hood, to be made the most of while yet in the flower of her age and the pride of her beauty, with the rank of a princess, and the revenue of one, might be a better thing than to be the wife of either a pope's nephew or a great prince. We can understand that the position of a wife may well have begun to show itself to the beautiful and accomplished Vittoria as not the most desirable in the world.

Still Vittoria could not disguise from herself that she had rather difficult cards to play. The whole of the great Orsini clan were her enemies, for the same reason that moved the enmity of Ludovico. From the Pope she had little reason to expect either favor or protection. The Duke of Florence, and the powerful Cardinal dei Medici, his brother, were hostile to her, on the grounds which have been explained. Her own eldest brother, the only one of them who had such a position as could have enabled him to afford her any support or protection, had also been estranged from her by the marriage she had contracted in despite of his prohibition. It was a dreary out-look into the future for a young beauty only a few years out of her girlhood. And as her husband's increasing malady brought the consideration of it more closely before her, she felt that she should need all that the most cautious prudence and self-possession could effect.

Orsini, to do him justice, seems to have been anxious, when the conviction of the great precariousness of his life forced itself on him, to make the best provision he could for her who had been either the partner or the victim of his crime. About the beginning of November in that autumn of 1585, he made spontaneously, as the historians especially assure us, a will bequeathing to Vittoria a hundred thousand crowns in money, besides a very considerable property in plate, jewels, furniture, carriages, horses, etc. It was further ordered that a palace should be purchased for her in any city of Italy she might select, of the value of ten thousand crowns, and a villa of the value of six thousand. Moreover, a household of forty servants was to be maintained for her. And the Duke of Ferrara was named the executor of this will.

Having made this provision, the prince determined

on a journey to Venice in search of better medical aid. But a journey in this direction did not by any means suit the plans which Vittoria had determined on. Reflecting on the dangerous amount of hostility which would surround her on every side as soon as her husband should have breathed his last, and conscious that this would be increased by the exorbitancy of the provisions of the will in her favor, she had made up her mind that her only safe course was to get her husband out of Italy while it was yet possible, over the Swiss frontier, which is at no great distance from Salo, so that at the moment of his death she and her property might be in safety under the protection of the Cantons. But the journey to Venice threatened to destroy this scheme, for it became daily more evident that the end was not far off.

Vittoria, therefore, strove to pursuade him, before they had got far on their way, to return to Salo.And, as the sufferings of the invalid in traveling were greater than he had anticipated, she had not much difficulty in doing so; though the difficulty of moving, which drove him back, seemed to promise ill for the scheme of getting him to travel very far in the opposite direction.

On the twelfth of November, however, Orsini felt a little better. On the thirteenth his physicians bled him, and left him with somewhat of better hope that, by strict attention to a severe system of diet, and extreme temperance, some degree of restoration might be looked for. To Vittoria this reprieve was all-important, as promising a possibility of putting her plan for escaping into a secure asylum into execution.The noble patient only knew that he felt better than he had for many days; and, little in the habit of suffering a denial to the demands of any of his appetites, and delighted to find that any of them were still suf ficiently alive to afford him the means of a gratification, he ordered, as soon as ever the doctors were out of the house, that dinner should be served him. body dared to disobey or to remonstrate; so fine a thing is it to be too great a man to be contradicted.The dinner was brought, and once again the gross body had the pleasure of swallowing. The prince, says the historian, ate and drank as usual. But, scarcely had he finished his repast, before he fell into a state of insensibility; in which condition he remained till two hours before sunset, when he expired.

CHAPTER VIII.- -WIDOWHOOD IN THE SIXTEENTH
ITS PROS AND CONS.

No

CENTURY:

'As

This sudden catastrophe was a terrible blow to Vittoria, who seems to have been perfectly well aware of all the dangers and difficulties of her position. soon as she saw that the prince was dead,' writes the monk Tempesti, 'the ill-advised Vittoria fell into a swoon; and when she recovered from it, gave way to utter despair, oppressed by the tumult of thoughts which all at once rushed to her mind. She thought of the loss of her present grandeur, of the necessity of returning to an obscure life without protectors and without support, exposed to the rage of the Orsini, detested by Ludovico, by the Cardinal dei Medici, and by all that royal family. She saw vividly before her, her first murdered husband, who upbraided her with the great love he had borne her. And this painful thought was rendered more insupportable by the incomparable greatness of the Peretti family, now that Sixtus was pope.-[TO BE CONTINUED.]