After dinner, he mounted his horse, and rode several miles. When he returned, one would not have known, to look at him, that anything unusual had happened. * * * * * During the nest week Hiram was occupied in making his will. A new and important idea seemed to have possession of him. * * * * * From that period he never permitted his daughter's name to be mentioned, and would receive no communication from her. Arabella's hysterics continued, at intervals for several days. Her husband, in view of his violence toward her, was very considerate, but the affair was never alluded to by either. Arabella, perhaps, felt that she deserved some punishment for tolerating the 'Count in disguise;' and Hiram never got over a certain feeling of mortification when he thought of the scene in the parlor. Here we leave all the parties for the present. THE MECHANICAL TENDENCY IN MODERN SOCIETY. There is no greater absurdity than the attempt to demonstrate anything from historical evidence, or to frame from it an argument whose cogency shall even approach to a demonstration. Granting the hypothesis that like causes will always produce like effects, we find ourselves unable to show that the cases are exactly, or even proximately, the same. History is not a record of every circumstance, but of those only that were deemed worthy of perpetuation; and even were all circumstances known to us, we must receive them as seen through the opinions of the historian, while the present is as it seems to us; so two cases, while appearing to agree, may in reality be very unlike. And, in addition to this, so many are the events that precede any given effect, that it is impossible to determine which is the cause, and which only the circumstance attending that cause. So, while our literature is flooded, with so many 'demonstrations from history,' many a philosopher finds himself in the situation of the sage who demonstrated that 'Tenterton steeple' was the 'cause of Godwin Sands.'