rdship. He meant well by all parties,--himself, who would share the
glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an
heroic opportunity,--his own country, which would continue to get cotton
and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with
and wear.

As soon as the Lord-Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it
gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas.
I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all
beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it
would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to
one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable
flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest,
to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once
afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder
ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to
the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his
office was held--at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm
in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or
no--was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I
liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily
slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England
and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion.

Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three
friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or
perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and
suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a
position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage
policy here to close the sketch, leaving myself still erect in so heroic
an attitude.

* * * * *

THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE.

I shall pass lightly over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more
nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with
which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in
succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of
animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less
significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not
be supposed that the