a very noble elevation above the wild and unclassified miscellany of men and women who, with cries, denunciations, nostrums, whims, hallucinations, guesses and queries, deluged the pages of the _Times_, stood at the corners of the streets, where such standing was possible in the hard weather, and preached their fantastic mental wares. A still more obvious and ear-assailing group were the religious zealots, who thrive at moments of peril, filling the brains of their listeners with adjurations, exhortations, prayers, pictures and prophecies, for one moment doleful with wailing execrations of past wickedness, and the next piteously shrieking eloquent appeals for repentance and confession. The singular and amazing thing in all this was the convinced assent given to the prediction of Science. Whereas at first the geologists and the meteorologists belittled and ridiculed the warnings of the President, they now enlarged, extended and enforced them with a greater authority, and more illuminated reasoning. Hardly believing that the people of England would realize this approaching disaster, what it meant, what steps should be contemplated to escape its worst effects, how permanent and deep-seated were its causes, the British Association for the Advancement of Science had resolved itself into a body of educators. Lectures were given where practicable, leaflets circulated, letters published in the leading dailies, and a comprehensive educational crusade started--and with one object--to instill a deeper dread of the future, a distrust of the possibility of the longer occupancy of the British Islands, and yet a firm reliance that under changed auspices of place, the same civilization, with unchanged features, would still continue to rule the world. Parliament was constantly in session, and to it the worshipful English householder and pew-renter looked with unwavering faith, waiting for its sublime wisdom and intrinsic patience, to devise ways and means, and some safe policy of safety. Even the King became earnest, perhaps a little anxious, as among the most popular doctrinaire plebiscites was the reiterated need of an abolition of the discarded system of the royal household.