yere House have long received every care and attention from that estimable lady, his room being now vacant and available for some other boarder-" Here the gushing eulogist was interrupted by a member, "who thundered from the benches of the opposition," 66 Mr. Speaker! I rise to a p'int of order." The Speaker requested Mr. Stumpy to state his point of order. "I want to know, Mr. Speaker, if it is in order for any member of this yere House, in his speech unto the memory of a departed member, to ring in a boardin'-house kep' by his aunt, and furnished by himself, on sheers? It may be parlormentary, but I doesn't see it." The Speaker deciding that the point was not well taken, the eulogist continued "Ah! this is too sollum a occasion, Mr. Speaker, for me to notice any sich imperdence and side remarks as that air. I thought some infamous hyena would be out here to-day, howlin' round the grave of our departed friend, foamin' at the mouth, gnashing his toothless jaws, and droolin' out his ineffectual and impertent rage. With his hide all kivered over with welts, all sore and disgustin' from the lash and hot poker of terrewth, he rolls over and over, and bites and tears and soils himself, till he is justly offensive to this House. But to resoom my melancholy subjeck. The deceased, Mr. Speaker, intrenched in the glorious armor of patriotism, with his hand on this yere record of his'n, could look the Amerikin eagle proudly in the eye, and defy chain lightnin' in any shape, or from any quarter it might come-and when prostrated and emaciated, he died at last on his prostrated bed at the pleasant boardin'-house of Mrs. Jones, on the hill, the thoughts of this yere armor, and that air record of his'n, come to his wounded sensibilities like a heavinly angel, and even Death himself couldn't set him half a turn back." And so on. It is but just to say that such harangues are not fair samples of Western legislative eloquence; but they do occur, and this is repeated without exaggeration. Another class of Western orators whose harangues are often extravagant and original, is the Methodist Revivalists: some of these possess an inexhaustible well of rhetoric, from which they seem to be able to draw to any extent, and on the slightest provocation. Principal among the Methodist Revivalists of the South are the negro preachers. The negro is naturally highflown and extravagant, and is seldom wanting in "the gift of gab." Mrs. Stowe, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, has truthfully illustrated how even the lowest slaves were sometimes endowed with a rough and homely, indeed, but really pathetic and touching eloquence. The negro preacher, in the midst of his sable flock, seldom fails to produce the ecstatic effect which he desires. The words roll out of his mouth in a continuous and enthusiastic stream, he warms with his subject as he goes on, and his own zeal becomes rapidly contagious among his ignorant but keenly feeling audience. The scene which occurs in a negro Methodist meeting-house, on the occasion of a revival, is a most interesting, and would be, but for the solemnity of its purpose, a most amusing one. The preachers and elders get to speaking, and shouting, and throwing up their arms, and spasmodically grasping their heads, at the same time; here and there an inspired negress jumps upon the benches and launches forth in a hysterical confession of her sins, or a fervid exhortation to her neighbours, and the scene is a perfect pandemonium of howling and shouting, crying and hysterical laughter, of impulsive embracings and wretched grovellings, in the midst of which the torrent of the preacher's exhortation rolls on more and more impetuously, till he falls exhausted on his seat. We have tried to illustrate briefly the two extremes of American oratory; between them there is every variety in the quality and style of American speech-making, not differing materially from those of any other country. In a young country there is always an exuberance of everything which calls for the action of imagination; and out of this exuberance it can hardly be denied that America has produced some orators who may be favourably compared with the greatest in the European world. H JOHNNY MACRAW. E came to the gate of the Manse, And he stood there, sae bonny and braw: The words I sing are in the book, I trembled, and caught at the post, (Aside.) Now, Johnny, though you looked so sly, He looked at me gentle and true, And muckle he liked what he saw : A lady is allowed, as such, How it happened, I never could tell, For the stars were alive in the sky, And the moon was so lovely, and-pshaw, (Aside.) Come, Johnny, don't take that amiss; (In strictest confidence) was this, We talked of it there on the green, And crept very close, for the awe; Because of the many cold figures between Young Mr. and Mrs. Macraw. (Aside.) Oh, Johnny, in those days of old, And yet there was a "ring of gold " My father is hard to persuade, And still harder my mother-in-law: But though I must argue and wait, (I'm afraid),- (Aside.) Dear John, with all my heart I did, And never have repented; They declare he is not of our ways, But I care not a bawbee what one of them says, - They could not keep from you your wife, A NEW STAR. due to a French engineer, M. Courbebaisse, who has already, as an amateur astronomer, acquired some distinction, as having called attention to the fact that one of the stars of the third magnitude, in the constellation known as the Northern Crown, increases occasionally in brilliancy until it becomes worthy to be ranked as a star of the second magnitude, diminishing again in splendour until it almost, if not entirely, disappears from view. The newly discovered star was first observed by M. Courbebaisse in the Balance, early in the morning of the 20th November, 1868; and, knowing how many watchful eyes are continually scanning the heavens at every favourable moment, he lost not an instant in announcing his discovery to the astronomical world. From the period when the Magi were attracted to Bethlehem, by what was, doubtless, the appearance of a new star in the heavens, there seems to be no well-authenticated record of the recurrence of a similar phenomenon until some thirty-six years before the invention of the telescope, when Tycho Brahe, the renowned astronomer, was surprised at the sudden appearance, in 1572, of a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia. This apparition was followed, in the year 1600, by that of another discovered by Kepler, in the constellation the Swan; and, four years later, the same philosopher had the good fortune to make a similar discovery in the Serpentbearer. All three attained great brilliancy, surpassing even that of Sirius; and the first discovered is stated to have been visible in broad daylight in a cloudless sky. It continued to attract attention with gradually diminishing lustre, until it finally disappeared from view, after shining for nearly seventeen months. That which appeared in 1600, held its place in the heavens for twenty-one years; that discovered in 1604, for about one year. The interest excited by these discoveries kept astronomers, throughout succeeding ages, on the qui vive for similar demonstrations, without rewarding them, however, by like advantages for a period of nearly two centuries and a half; when our distinguished countryman, Mr. Hind, was delighted by the discovery of a new star, unfortunately of very inferior magnitude, again in the constellation the Serpent-bearer, which was lost to view some nine years later, and has not since been observed. Although so long a period elapsed between Kepler's discoveries and that made by Mr. Hind, the stimulus The honour of this interesting discovery is given to a more regular and exact examination A FEW words about the new star, which suddenly appeared, or rather, was suddenly observed, in a portion of the heavens where it was known that no such star was visible up to a very recent period. of the stars was in the interval kept up, by the discovery of some stars, the intensity of whose light was seen to vary, and by the discovery of negative facts, so to speak, namely, the disappearance of other stars which had previously been included in the heavenly charts. The question naturally arises, to what cause are we to attribute these wondrous appearances and disappearances? To this, unfortunately, astronomers, as yet, are unable to give any other than the most vague reply-but little, if any, advance having been made beyond the hypothesis of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, that the appearance is produced by the condensation of a cosmical vapour filling the regions of space; the disappearance being ascribed to the redissolution of the bodies thus formed. In this age of discovery, however, such a method of accounting for these phenomena must be regarded as, to say the least, unsatisfactory, if not empirical. By means of that subtle power lately placed in the hands of man, the spectrum analysis, we are not without hope that even this difficult point may receive a solution more worthy of acceptance than the speculation promulgated in the seventeenth century. The Leaving for the immediate future the consideration of this interesting point, another subject which the recent discovery brings under our notice is the propagation of light. Could we but ascertain the distance of these stars, we should be in a position, from our knowledge of the laws governing the rapidity of the transmission of light, to tell when these bodies had their birth, or the converse. stupendous facts upon which we are thus led to reflect fill the mind at once with awe and astonishment. It has been established, by well-grounded reasoning, that light travels at the enormous speed of nearly ten millions of miles in a minute. Astronomers tell us further, that the distance of some of the visible heavenly bodies is such, that a ray of light from them requires two millions of years to reach this globe; so that the extraordinary fact is presented to us that countless ages before the appearance of these starry phantoms upon this our earth, their bodies may have passed into space and have ceased to have their being; and, as a necessary corollary, the whole of the star-spangled vault may be but the image of that which has been. Truly, if astronomical science is well calculated to excite our admiration of the power of man's mind, it is just as well calculated to impress us with a sense of his littleness. TABLE TALK. THE Parisians have, within the last few sea. years, had opportunities of acquiring lessons in political economy likely to make a more enduring impression on their minds than if they had read a score of treatises on the subject. Everybody knows that a great part of Paris has been rebuilt at an enormous cost. The last statement of the Prefect of the Seine says, that from the 1st October, 1867, to the 30th September, 1868, the number of newly-built houses amounts to 3685, and the number of houses demolished to 1764. Of the number of houses demolished, 717 were taken from the owners under the power possessed by the minister, the others were pulled down voluntarily by the proprietors. The value of the 717 houses thus thrown down by the prefect for the purpose of widening and constructing new boulevards and streets is as completely thrown away as if the money had been tossed into the No doubt, in some cases, the increased rent that will be obtained from the superior class of houses erected on sites formerly occupied by mean buildings will go far to pay the cost of the houses demolished, but a large number of the houses taken were fine mansions built of stone, and calculated to last for centuries. The entire number of houses demolished from 1852 to 1868 is 23,711. What amount of money these houses represent is not stated, but it must be enormous. It was said that the house accommodation would be greatly increased, and consequently that rents would become lower rather than the reverse, but the actual fact is that they are nearly double what they were formerly. The rent question has, in fact, become a great grievance which affects every person in Paris who has to pay it; and people complain bitterly, attributing the increase entirely to the proceedings of M. Hausmann, which is hardly just, considering that if he had not pulled down a single house the growth of the population would have caused a rise of rents, though, perhaps, not to the present height. SOME weeks ago we were startled by an announcement in the Military and Naval intelligence of the Times, that an instrument which could measure the hundred-thousandth part of a second, was employed by the authorities at Woolwich, in experiments on gunpowder. At the time, one might have thought that the leading journal was merely labouring |