ng forth heat, and therefore, affirms
this law, the sun must be shrinking in size. We have learned the rate
at which this contraction proceeds; for among the many triumphs which
mathematicians have accomplished must be reckoned that of having put a
pair of callipers on the sun so as to measure its diameter. We thus
find that the width of the great luminary is ten inches smaller to-day
than it was yesterday. Year in and year out the glorious orb of heaven
is steadily diminishing at the same rate. For hundreds of years, aye,
for hundreds of thousands of years, this incessant shrinking has gone
on at about the same rate as it goes on at present. For hundreds of
years, aye, for hundreds of thousands of years, the shrinking still
will go on. As a sponge exudes moisture by continuous squeezing, so
the sun pours forth heat by continuous shrinking. So long as the sun
remains practically gaseous, so long will the great luminary continue
to shrink, and thus continue its gracious beneficence. Hence it is
that for incalculable ages yet to come the sun will pour forth its
unspeakable benefits; and thence it is that, for a period compared
with which the time of man upon this earth is but a day, summer and
winter, heat and cold, seedtime and harvest, in their due succession,
will never be wanting to this earth.

HALL CAINE.

STORY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK, DERIVED FROM CONVERSATIONS.

BY ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD.

Extreme dignity is the leading characteristic of Thomas Henry Hall
Caine as a man, just as extreme conscientiousness is his leading
characteristic as a writer. He possesses in a high degree the sense of
the responsibility which an author owes to the public and to himself.
It is on account of these facts that the story of his uneventful life
and brilliant literary career is a highly interesting one. It shows
how, by firmness of principle and a high respect of the public and
himself, a man of undoubted genius has been enabled to raise himself
to a position in the English-speaking worlds to which few men of
letters have ever attained--a position which may be compared to that
of a _vates_ amongst the Romans, of a prophet in Israel.

Hall Caine, as his double name implies, comes of the mixed Norse and
Celtic race which constitutes the population of the Isle of Man. Hall,
his mother's name, is Norse, and is common to this day in Iceland,
from which the Norsemen came to Manxland. Caine, which means "a
fighter with club