ONCE upon a time, as the legends say, there lived in good old Spain a poor workman, to whom destiny had given twelve children, and nothing for them to live upon. Now his wife was expecting a thirteenth, and perhaps with it would appear a fourteenth also, to run about loved but unclothed and unfed, as the others had before them. The bread was almost gone, work not to be had, and the poor man, to hide his sighs and his misery from the patient partner of his misfortunes, wandered far from home and into the

woods, calling upon paradise to assist him, until he came to the ill-reputed cavern and stronghold of the bandits.

He almost fell over their captain, and came very near receiving a sabrethrust for his pains; but his extreme misery made him no object for a robbery, so he was simply catechised as to his condition.

He told his story, moved even the brigand heart to pity, and was invited to supper; a bag of gold and a fine horse were given him, and he was sent. home with the assurance that, be the

new-comer boy or girl, the robber-chief would stand as god-father. The poor man, in ecstasy at such good fortune, flew rather than rode to his well-filled dwelling, and arrived there just in time to welcome number thirteen.

A boy! He gave his wife the money and a caress, and, although the night was far advanced, mounted his charger and galloped back to the cave. The brigand was astonished at his speedy return; but true to his word, appeared with him in the neighboring church in disguise of a rich old gossip, made every requisite promise for the new-born babe, and disappeared, leaving a bag of golden crowns and another purse of gold.

The angels, however, claimed the baby, and the brigand's god-child flew to paradise on golden wings, and in the splendid swaddling-clothes that his charity had provided for it.

St. Peter, porter at the gates celestial, stirred himself to welcome the little fellow to heaven; but no! he would not enter unless accompanied by his god-father.

"And who may he be ?" asked St. Peter.

"Who?" responded the god-child; "The chief of the brigands."

"My poor little innocent," said the saint, "you know not what you ask! Come in yourself; but heaven was not made for such as he."

The child sat down by the door resolved not to enter, and planning in his little head all sorts of schemes to accomplish his purpose, when the Blessed Mary passed that way. "Why do you not enter, my angel?" she said.

"I would be ungrateful," he answered," to partake of heavenly joys if my good god-father did not share them with me."

St. Peter interposed, and appealed to the Holy Mother, saying,

"If he had only been a wax-carrier! but this man, Satan's own emissaryimpossible! An incarnate demon; a robber, healthy and robust, who has taken every opportunity to do mischief! Holy Mother! could such a thing be thought of ?"

But the god-child insisted, bent his pretty blonde head, joined his little hands, fell on his knees, prayed and wept. The Virgin had compassion on him and bringing a golden chalice from the heavenly inclosure, said,

"Take this; go and seek your godfather; tell him that he may come with you to heaven; but he must first fill this cup with repentant tears."

Just then, by the clear moonlight, reposing on a rock, and fully armed, lay the brigand. In his dream his dagger trembled in his hands. As he awoke, he saw near his couch a beautiful winged infant. With no fear of the savage man, it approached and presented the golden chalice. He rubbed his eyes, and thought he still dreamed; but the infant angel reassured him, saying,

"No; it is not a fancy. I have come to invite thee to go with me. Leave this earth. I am thy god-child, and I will conduct thy steps."

Then the little fellow related his marvellous story: his arrival at heaven's gate, St. Peter's refusal, and how the Blessed Mother, ever merciful, had come to his assistance and granted his request. The bandit listened, and breathed with difficulty, while, bewildered he gazed on the angelic figure, and held out his hand for the golden chalice.

Suddenly his heart seemed to burst, two fountains of tears gushed from his eyes. The cup was filled, and the radiant infant mounted with him to the skies.

Into heaven the little one entered, carrying the well-filled cup to St. Peter-who was astonished to see who

followed him-and proceeded to offer it at the feet of the beautiful Queen.

She smiled on the sinner who through her compassion had been saved, while he threw himself in reverence at her feet. God himself had

acquitted the debt of the child. Besides, we know that to the repentant there is always grace-and the infant had declared it would not enter alone.

AMONG the theories proposed to explain the constitution of material substance, and to account for the facts relative to it disclosed by modern science, one developed in a recent work with the above title, by Rev. Joseph Bayma, of Stonyhurst, is specially worthy of notice for its ingenuity and the field which it opens to the mathematician. Whether it be true or not, it is at any rate such that its truth can be tested; and though this may be somewhat difficult, on account of the complexity of the necessary formulas and calculations, still the difficulty can probably be overcome in course of time, should the undertaking seem promising enough.

It is briefly as follows. Matter is not continuous, even in very small parts of its volume, but is composed of a definite number of ultimate elements, each of which occupies a mere point, and may be considered simply as a centre of force. This force is actually exerted by each of them following the law of gravitation as to its change of intensity with the distance; but is attractive for some elements and repulsive for others, which is obviously necessary to preserve equilibrium. These elements are arranged in regularly formed groups, in which the balance of the attractive and repulsive forces is such that each

group, as well as the whole mass, is preserved from collapse or indefinite expansion; these are what are known chemically as molecules; and in the simple substances they probably have the shape of one of the five regular polyhedrons.

The simplest possible construction of a molecule would be one of the polyhedrons, with an element at each vertex, and one at the centre, whose action must be of an opposite character to that of those at the vertices; for these last must all exert the same kind of action, attractive or repulsive, for any kind of equilibrium to be maintained, and the centre must act in the opposite direction to prevent collapse or expansion of the mass. Furthermore, the absolute attractive power, or that which the molecule would have if all collected at one point, must exceed the repulsive, slightly at any rate, since the force exerted at distances compared with which its dimensions are insignificant is known to have this former character.

This system admits of two varieties, according as the centre is attractive or repulsive. In either case, for the maintenance of equilibrium the force of the centre must always be less than half that of the vertices combined, as the author shows, (giving the values for each polyhedron ;) and it would seem that the first sup

position would therefore be untenable, since the attractive force in each molecule, as just stated, necessarily exceeds the repulsive. Equilibrium certainly cannot be maintained in this case; but this will not involve the permanent collapse of the molecule, but merely a continual vibration of its elements back and forward through the centre.

The second hypothesis, on the other hand, requires either a centre so weak as to produce very little repulsion outside of the molecule, or else a continual tendency to expand under a central power too great for equilibrium. Both will tend to bring the molecular envelopes near to each other, and produce adhesion or mixing among them; also, it may perhaps be added, that the envelopes themselves will, on account of the mutual attraction of their elements, be unstable.

Of these two constructions, then, the first would seem most probable; but both are open to objection on account of there being no internal resistance in the individual molecules to a change of diameter proportional to a change produced by external action in that of a mass of them; and if such a change should take place, the mass would be in just the same statical conditions as before, only differing in the relative dimensions of its parts, and the resistance to pressure which is exhibited more or less by all matter would not be accounted for. But it does not seem quite certain that pressure or traction of the mass would operate upon the separate molecules in the same sense.

We are not, however, restricted to such a simple structure; for there may be several envelopes instead of only one, and of these some may be at tractive and others repulsive; the centre also may be repulsive. There would have to be an absolute predo

minance of attractivity, of course, as in the previous more simple supposition. It seems probable that in this supposition the envelopes would be all tetrahedric, or that either the cube and octahedron, or the other two, which are similarly counterparts of each other, would alternate. Many of these forms are examined mathematically by the author, as to their internal action.

The exact discussion of their external action, however, would be exceedingly intricate, and would not be worth undertaking without a more definite idea than we yet have of the actual shapes presented by the molecules of the various known substan

ces.

The forms of crystallization may throw some light upon this, and they seem to indicate, as the author acknowledges, that the elements are not always grouped in regular polyhedrons; if they are not, they must have unequal powers, and this may be sometimes the case. But irregular crystalline forms are not impossible, or even improbable, with regular molecules. He also suggests and applies a method for obtaining the forms of the simple chemical substances by considering what combinations with others each polyhedron is capable of, and comparing these results with the actual combinations into which these various substances are known to enter, and deduces the shapes, with some plausibility, of the molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, chlorine, sulphur, arsenic, and iodine. Whether we shall ever be able to obtain more positive proof of these interesting conclusions remains to be seen; but if any molecules have really the number of envelopes that would be indicated by their chemical equivalents, the perfect determination of their exact mechanical conditions of combination, and even of their separate construction,

will probably, as F. Bayma remarks, be a problem always above the power of the human mind. If mathematicians are at all inclined to plume themselves on having unravelled the complications of the solar system, they can find sufficient matter for humiliation in not being able to understand the status of a material particle less than the hundred millionth of an inch in diameter; for to this extent subdivision has actually been carried. One of the most remarkable points in this theory is that part of it which relates to the ethereal medium which seems to pervade all space, if the undulatory theory of light is true, as is now perhaps universally believed. Instead of assuming it to be extremely rare, as is usually done without hesitation, the author regards it as excessively dense; "immensely denser than atmospheric air," to use his own words. Of course this seems absurd at first sight, as such a medium apparently would exert an immense resistance to the movements of the heavenly bodies, and in fact to all movements on their surfaces or elsewhere. This would certainly be the case if it were similar to ordinary matter; and to avoid this difficulty, it is assumed to be entirely attractive. The reason for supposing a great density for this substance is its immense elasticity and power of transmitting vibrations; which seems incompatible with great distances between its particles, unless these particles are extremely energetic in their action, which comes to the same thing; and this argument has considerable force.

But it does not seem evident that an attractive medium would not also interfere with the passage of bodies through it, though not in the same way as a repulsive one; and the oscillation through its centre necessary for its preservation complicates the theory somewhat. Also, any marked

accumulation of a powerfully acting medium round the various celestial bodies would cause, if varied in any way by their changes of relative position, perturbations in their movements. The very fact, however, that its own action was so energetic might make the disturbance in its arrangement produced by other masses small, especially if it penetrates those masses, as is probably generally maintained. The subject is, of course, one of great difficulty, and objections readily suggest themselves to any hypothesis regarding it; still, it would appear that on some accounts it might be better, instead of assuming the medium to be wholly or predominantly attractive or repulsive, to suppose it to have the two forces equally balanced in its constitution; and if it be, like other matter, grouped in molecules, the balance would naturally exist in each molecule, making it inert at any but very small distances, and exerting at these very small distances a force the character of which would vary according to the direction.

We have said that the discussion of the exterior action of the moleculesthat is, of their action on each other, or on exterior points in generalwould be exceedingly complicated. The only way in which it seems practicable is that in which the mutual actions of the planets have been investigated, namely, a development of the force in the form of a series; but this cannot be done advantageously unless the distances between the molecules are considerably greater than the molecular diameters. If, however, we make the development of the ratio of the attraction (or repulsion) exerted by the vertices of a regular polyhedron in the direction of its centre, to what it would exert if concentrated at that centre, in a series of the powers of the ratio of the molecular radius to the distance of