movement which the Phantom of the Alabaster Valley instantaneously imitated! It was indeed his own shadow--and a shadow he was not to recall, even when he turned away to journey homewards. There, in that lonely place, it seemed to him to remain for ever--a link connecting him with the spirit of nature, and ever and anon drawing him back into her domain from the meanness, and folly, and wickedness of the world. DECIMAL SYSTEM OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. The state of our national weights and measures has been a fertile subject of legislative enactment ever since the signing of the Magna Charta, which proclaims that 'there shall be one weight and one measure.' 'We will and establish,' said an act of Edward III. nearly 500 years ago, 'that one weight, one measure, and one yard, be used throughout the land.' Act has followed act from that time to this, and still we have not only different weights and measures for different commodities, but for the same in different parts of the realm. An ounce means one thing to the grocer, another to the apothecary. A stone is 8 pounds to the London butcher or fishmonger, 14 to the provincial; 5 pounds to the dealer in glass, 16 to the cheesemonger, and 32 to the dealer in hemp. The corn-trade exhibits still greater varieties. Prices are quoted in official circulars in every fashion, from the Mark-Lane quarter to the Scotch boll, the firlot, the load (which may be of various dimensions), the coomb, the last, the barrel (which also may be various), the ton, the hundredweight, and the pound. We have seen an extract from an actual account-sales, by which it appeared, that at the same port the merchant had sold a cargo of foreign wheat by five different bushels according to the customs of the buyers. In paying the duty, these various bushels had to be converted into imperial quarters, and in calculating tonnage and other dues, it was necessary to reduce all to tons! Here is surely a source of endless confusion, if not an opening for fraud. Our legislature has gone on from century to century, mending or mutilating the statutes as the case might be, but laying down no principles scientific enough to command the approval of the educated, or simple enough to prevail over the established usages of the commonalty.