Ar about two o'clock, Mr Twaddleton joined the children and their parents on the lawn.

"Why, vicar, what on earth is the matter?" asked Mr Seymour, who perceived, at a glance, that something had disturbed the usual equanimity of the worthy clergyman.

"The matter! why the matter is, that your 'Botanical Horologe' is sadly out of its reckoning, and that Flora must have cruelly jilted old Time, for, on just now passing it on my way hither, I found the Yellow Goatsbeard had closed long before the hour indicated by its allied figure of Box."

"Well, there is at all events an acknowledged precedent for such irregularity. The old watchman of bygone days, when he should have been telling the hour, was not unfrequently found asleep in his Box."

"That Saxon monosyllable, Box,* from its numerous equivocal meanings, has, I verily believe, given rise to more villanous puns and quibbles than any other word to be found in the English language."

"If so," replied Mr Seymour, "it must have proved an interminable Box upon the ear."

*With what humour have the 'Twenty in the confusion and dismay of M. Vensignifications of the word Box' been il- triloque!-See Mathews' Life, vol. iv. p. lustrated by Mr Mathews (At Home'), 172.

"There again! there again!" shouted the vicar; "oh! Mr Seymour, if the Box of Pandora ever gave flight to a troop of malevolent spirits, so surely has the Box of the punster let loose a no less pestilent storm, for the annoyance and distraction of every grammatical ear."

How little was the good vicar aware of the oracular import of a sentiment so soon destined to be verified in the figurative construction of the Kite's Tail!-but of that hereafter.

“Well, well, be pacified, and let it kindly pass," said Mr Seymour, in a tone of conciliation. "If the points of my jests have acted as spurs to your classical reminiscences, and elicited illustrations so gratifying to yourself, and so amusing to your friends, you, surely, can have but little cause for complaint; and if my puns have occasionally trenched somewhat rudely upon your prejudices, they have at the same time called into play your more cherished sympathies, and left you well pleased with yourself. Is it not so are you ever so happy as when you rebuff a verbal quibble by a classical repartee? So that these shafts of mine, as it is your good pleasure to call them, carry with them a balm for any scratch they may occasion."

"Oh, I guess your allusion-you would no doubt compare your weapon to the spear of Achilles that wounded Telephus, and then, by its own inherent virtue, healed the very wound it had inflicted," observed the vicar.

"Had I required any further support to my argument, you have now undoubtedly afforded it," said Mr Seymour.

"You mistake me, and deceive yourself," retorted the vicar. "It was not, sir, either for pleasure or for triumph, but for shelter from your merciless inflictions, that I took sanctuary in classic ground.”

“I have ever maintained, what I now repeat," said Mr Seymour, "that however disdainfully you repel a succession of puns, they have ever been the promoters of your liveliness, and the source of a pleasing activity. I can only compare you to the overshot water-wheel, which casts off the stream in useless foam, but not until it has acquired an impetus for its motion and activity. Let us, then, without further ado, proceed."

"Now, Tom, are you ready to commence the proposed trial?" asked his father.

"Quite ready, and impatient to begin," was the boy's answer.

"Then you must first inform me," said Mr Seymour, taking the ball out of Rosa's hand, "why this ball falls to the ground as soon as I withdraw from it the support of my hand?"

"Because every heavy body that is not supported must of course fall.” "And every light one also, my dear; but that is no answer to my question; you merely assert the fact, without explaining the reason,' "Oh! now I understand you; it is owing to the force of gravity;

the earth attracts the ball, and the consequence is, that they both come together ;-is not that right?"

66 Certainly; but if the earth attract the ball, it is equally true that the ball must attract the earth; for you have, doubtless, learnt that bodies mutually attract each other: tell me, therefore, why the earth should not rise to meet the ball ?"

"Because the earth is so much larger and heavier than the ball.” "It is, doubtless, much larger; and since the force of attraction is in proportion to the mass, or quantity of matter, you cannot be surprised at not perceiving the earth rise to meet the ball, the attraction of the latter being so infinitely small, in comparison with that of the former, as to render its effect wholly nugatory; but with regard to the earth being heavier than the ball, what will you say when I tell you that, in the ordinary meaning of the term, it cannot correctly be said to have any weight?"

"No weight at all!"

Tom begged that his father would explain to him how it could possibly be that the earth should not possess any weight.

"Remember that I qualified the assertion by saying, that 'according to the meaning generally attached to the word weight;' which you will readily perceive can only apply to bodies on the surface of the earth, and is totally inapplicable to the globe itself; for, after all, weight is nothing more than the measure of a resistance opposed to the attraction of a body for the earth; and how can the earth attract itself? You have just now very correctly stated that all bodies have a tendency to fall, in consequence of the attraction of gravitation; but if they be supported, and so prevented from falling, whether by the hand, or a dish, called a scale, or by any other means, this tendency will be felt or perceived, and the amount or measure of such resistance is said to be the weight of the body in question. I am, at the same time, bound to admit, that if you regard the earth as a mass in space, obedient, however, to the law that governs all bodies on its surface, you would then have a right to talk of its weight."

"And has not this been actually accomplished?" asked the vicar. "Undoubtedly, thanks to Sir Isaac Newton ;* and wonderful as it may seem, the astronomer has not only ascertained the weight of the earth, but of that of the planets also, ay, and with as much certainty as the farmer weighs a truss of hay: when our pupils are a little farther advanced, I shall be happy to tell them the means by which this has been effected (4), but at present it would be imprudent to confuse them by a too rapid influx of ideas, at once so new and startling."

* On the monument erected to Sir | in their hands the emblems of his prinIsaac Newton, in Westminster Abbey, are cipal discoveries, one of whom is weighsculptured, in bass-relief, youths, bearing ing the sun and planets with a steelyard.

Tom understood this explanation of weight, and observed, that "since attraction was always in proportion to the quantity of matter, so, of course, a larger body must be more powerfully attracted, or be heavier, than a smaller one."

"Magnitude, or size, my dear, has nothing whatever to do with quantity of matter: will not a small piece of lead weigh more than a large piece of sponge? In the one case, the particles of matter may be supposed to be packed in a smaller compass; in the other, there must exist a greater number of pores or interstices."

Mr Seymour proceeded to put another question: "Since," continued he, "you now understand the nature of that force by which bodies fall to the earth, can you tell me the velocity with which they fall?"

Tom asserted that the weight of the body, or its quantity of matter, and its distance from the surface of the earth, must, in every case, determine that; but Mr Seymour excited his surprise by saying, that it would not be influenced by either of those conditions; he informed them, for instance, that a cannon-ball, and a marble, would fall through the same number of feet in a given time, and that, whether the experiment were tried from the top of a house, or from the summit of St Paul's, the same result would be obtained.

"I am quite sure," exclaimed Tom, "that in the Conversations on Natural Philosophy, it is positively stated, that attraction is always in proportion to the quantity of matter."

"Yes," observed Louisa, "and it is moreover asserted, that the attraction diminishes as the distances increase."

Mr Seymour said, that he perceived the very common error under which his children laboured, and that he would endeavour to remove it. "You cannot," continued he, "divest your minds of that erroneous but natural feeling, that a body necessarily falls to the ground without the exertion of any force: whereas, the greater the quantity of matter, the greater must be the force exerted to bring it to the earth: for instance, a substance which weighs a hundred pounds will thus require just ten times more force than one which only weighs ten pounds; and hence it must follow, that both will come to the ground at the same moment; for although, in the one case, there is ten times more matter, there is, at the same time, ten times more attraction to overcome its resistance; for you have already admitted that the force of attraction is always in proportion to the quantity of matter. Now let us only for an instant, for the sake merely of argument, suppose that attraction had been a force acting without any regard to quantity of matter, is it not evident that, in such a case, the body containing the largest quantity would be the slowest in falling to the earth?"

"I understand you, papa," cried Tom: "if an empty waggon travelled four miles an hour, and were afterwards so loaded as to have its weight doubled, it could only travel at the rate of two miles in the

same period, provided that in both cases the horses exerted the same strength."

"Exactly," said Mr Seymour; "and to follow up your illustration, which is not a bad one, it is only necessary to state, that Nature, like a considerate master, always apportions the number of horses to the burthen that is to be moved, so that her loads, whatever may be their weight, always travel at the same rate; or, to express the fact in philosophical instead of figurative language, gravitation, or the force of the earth's attraction, always increases as the quantity of matter, and, consequently, that heavy and light bodies, when dropped together from the same altitude, must come to the ground at the same instant of time." Louisa had listened with great attention to this explanation; and although she thoroughly understood the argument, yet it appeared to her at variance with so many facts with which she was acquainted, that she could not give implicit credence to it.

"I think, papa," said the archly-smiling girl, "I could overturn this fine argument by a very simple experiment."

66

Indeed, Miss Sceptic: then pray proceed; and I think we shall find that the more strenuously you oppose it, the more powerful it will become: but let us hear your objections."

"I shall only," replied she, "drop a shilling and a piece of paper from my bedroom window upon the lawn, and request that you will observe which of them reaches the ground first; if I am not much mistaken, you will find that the coin will strike the earth before the paper has performed half its journey."

Tom appeared perplexed, and cast an inquiring look at his father. "Come," said Mr Seymour, "I will perform this experiment myself, and endeavour to satisfy the doubts of our young sceptic; but I must first take the opportunity to observe that I am never better pleased than when you attempt to raise difficulties in my way, and I hope you will always express them without reserve."

“Here, then, is a penny-piece; and here," said Tom, "is a piece of paper."

"Which," continued Mr Seymour, "we will cut into a corresponding shape and size." This having been accomplished, he held the coin in one hand and the paper disc in the other, and dropped them at the same instant.

"There! there!" cried Louisa, with an air of triumph; "the coin reached the ground long before the paper."

Mr Seymour allowed that there was a distinct interval in favour of the penny-piece; and he proceeded to explain the cause of it. He stated that the result was not contrary to the law of gravitation, since it arose from the interference of a foreign body, the air, to the resistance of which it was to be attributed: and he desired them to consider the particles of a falling body as being under the influence of two opposing