This has happened too often. It is in the interest of superstition that it should happen again; and the best way to prevent it surely is to tell the masses, Scientific method is no peculiar mystery, requiring a peculiar initiation. It is simply common sense, combined with uncommon courage, which includes uncommon honesty and uncommon patience; and if you will be brave, honest, patient, rational, you will need no mystagogues to tell you what in science to believe and what not to believe; for you will be just as good judges of scientific facts and theories as those who assume the right of guiding your convictions. You are men and women: and more than that you need not be. THE SORROW OF THE SEA. By ALEXANDER ANDERSON. A day of fading light upon the sea; Of sea-birds winging to their rocky caves; And ever with its monotone to me, The sorrow of the waves. They leap and lash among the rocks and sands, White lipp’d, as with a guilty secret toss’d, For ever feeling with their foamy hands For something they have lost. Far out, and swaying in a sweet unrest, A boat or two against the light is seen, Dipping their sides within the liquid breast Of waters dark and green. And farther still, where sea and sky have kiss’d, There falls, as if from heaven’s own threshold, light Upon faint hills that, half enswathed in mist, Wait for the coming night. But still, though all this life and motion meet, My thoughts are wingless and lie dead in me, Or dimly stir to answer at my feet The sorrow of the sea. ANECDOTES OF FASHION. By I. D’ISRAELI. The origin of many fashions was in the endeavor to conceal some deformity of the inventor; hence the cushions, ruffs, hoops, and other monstrous devices. If a reigning beauty chanced to have an unequal hip, those who had very handsome hips would load them with that false rump which the other was compelled by the unkindness of nature to substitute. Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward VI by a foreign lady, who in this manner ingeniously covered a wen on her neck. Full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, one Duviller, whose name they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing an elevation in the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII of France introduced long coats to hide his ill-made legs. Shoes with very long points, full two feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet. When Francis I was obliged to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he received in the head, it became a prevailing fashion at court. Others, on the contrary, adapted fashions to set off their peculiar beauties; as Isabella of Bavaria, remarkable for her gallantry, and the fairness of her complexion, introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered.