He called in Mistress Best, however, and told her that if during his absence Sir John wished her to read to him, it would be a great kindness to read certain passages of Scripture which he pointed out in the house Bible. The good woman very willingly undertook the task, and shortly after the clergyman was gone John Ayliffe applied to hear the words of that book against which he had previously shut his ears. He found comfort and consolation and guidance therein; for Mr. Dixwell, who, on the one subject which had been the study of his life was wise as well as learned, had selected judiciously such passages as tend to inspire hope without diminishing penitence. FOOTNOTES: [1] Continued from page 488, vol. iii. THE CASTLE OF BELVER. AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF ARAGO. The castle of Belver is the state prison of the island of Majorca. The Rev. Henry Christmas, F.R.S., has just published in London three volumes entitled _The Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean_, in which he gives the following account of the confinement within its walls of the illustrious Arago: "Charged by the Emperor Napoleon with the admeasurement of the meridian, Arago was in 1808 in Majorca, and occupying a cottage on the mountain called Clot de Galatzo, when the news came to the island of the recent events at Madrid, and the carrying away of the king. The populace of Palma, never very favorably disposed towards the French, and altogether incapable of comprehending either the merits or the mission of Arago, easily mistook the great astronomer for a political spy, and exasperated at the insult offered to their king and country, determined to take a signal vengeance on the only Frenchman within their power. They took their way in great numbers towards the mountain on which Arago had taken up his abode, fortified in their belief of his evil designs by the fact that he frequently made fires on the mountain-side, and which they took for signals to an imaginary French fleet just about to land an army for the reduction of the island. "The mountain rises just above the coast on which Don Jaime the Conqueror made his descent, and thus it will seem that the islanders were not destitute of some grounds for the suspicions which they entertained, nor without some palliating circumstances in the outrage which they contemplated. It was, however, happily only a design, for M. Arago, warned in time, left his mountain, and directed his steps towards Palma. The person who advertised him of his peril was a man named Damian, the pilot of the brig placed by the Spanish Government at the disposal of the philosopher. Himself a Majorcan, he was taken into the counsel of the plotters, and was thus enabled to save the life of his master.