and I was shocked by the self-complacent irreverence of its professors. Better, thought I, than these were the astrologers of yore, with their statistical ignorance, their spiritual insight, and their humble faith. They, at least, appreciated the awful solemnity that should attend the thought of other worlds, material, perhaps, as our own, yet for ever separated from us by a chasm as profound and as mysterious as death. Away with the modern man of science, ready primed with his dapper theories, who cares not to meditate upon the divine reason which placed that eternal gulf between the moon and us, but fancies he has disposed of the whole matter by informing us just how many miles and furlongs it measures across! Can he learn no loftier lesson from the ghastly majesty of that weird sphere? With such prejudices against astronomy as distinguished from astrology, it is no wonder that I shunned the former as much as possible, both at school and at college. Though I could not avoid acquiring a certain familiarity with the phraseology and the general principles of the science, what I learned took no root in my mind, but remained lifeless and barren. It was my intention to improve the earliest opportunity of clearing it out altogether, and then to endeavour to regain, so far as might be possible, the poetical superstitions of my earlier time. Deliberate recantations of this kind are not, however, so practical as we fain would have them, and, until I read that chance sentence about the stars in my uncle's letter, I had really bestowed little or no serious consideration upon the matter. But his words, and the memories and reflections to which they gave rise, produced in me a singular excitement, which my abnormal state of health doubtless did much to foster. My sleep that night was more than usually disturbed, and when, the next day, I started for my uncle's house, I was in a tremor of indefinite expectation that was anything but healthful. II. The railway station at which I alighted was, the porter told me, about seven miles distant from Mr. Norman's place. This information rather staggered me, as there were no cabs in that part of the world, and walking, for one in my state of health, was quite out of the question. Just then, however, a country waggon drove up to the station door, with a stout, serviceable bay mare between the shafts. The elderly farmer who handled the reins threw them on the mare's back, and, clambering to the ground, faced about and abruptly asked me whether I were William Maybold. 'Yes,' I said, amused at his rustic bluntness; 'were you sent here by Mr. Philip Norman?' 'I'm to drive you to his house,' replied the man, gruffly. 'Get up, sir. Got any luggage?' 'Only that trunk; can you lift it?'