facts to work upon, and little experience of
accurate observers to fall back upon. Everything
around them was equally new and wonderful,
and if they had not generalised by instinct they
never could have arrived at the useful conclusions
that we frequently meet with, and the
suggestions that abound in their works. Step by
step knowledge has advanced; one after another
the various sciences and departments of science
have taken their natural place in the great series.
At one time minute accuracy of detail, and at
another broad generalisations, have marked the
advance, but those have not been the least
valuable friends to scientific research who have
collected the facts and suggested the practical
applications that might possibly result from
them. There was something of prophecy even
in the scientific dreams of Dr. Wilkins, because
he loved truth, and pursued science for its own
sake. The difference between the habit of thought
in such a man two centuries ago and at the
present time is not greater than the difference that
exists between the early and later memoirs
published in the Transactions of that learned body
of which Bishop Wilkins was a founder.

SANDS OF LIFE.

THERE are two (if not more, for there are
thirty-six Montreuils in all) well-known
Montreuils in France. One, inland, near Paris,
Montreuil-aux-Pêches, is distinguished by the
peaches for which it is famous. The other, a
small fortified sous-prefectoral town on the top
of a hill, overlooking the valley of the Canche,
is called Montreuil-sur-Mer, although it is several
miles distant from the English Channel. This
is the Montreuil of which Nelson wrote, "We
lodged in the same inn, and under the auspices
of the same cheerful landlord who supplied
Sterne with his servant Lafleur. We would
gladly have remained at Montreuil, but neither
good lodgings nor good company are to be had.
There is no middle class at all; the town is
inhabited by some sixty noble families, who are the
owners of great part of the neighbouring country,
while all the rest are very poor. Very few
places have such good shooting. Partridges are
twopence-halfpenny the brace; pheasants and
woodcocks, as well as poultry in general, are
equally cheap. Thirty-six hours spent at
Moutreuil made us regret that we had to leave it."

Since Nelson's letter was put into the post,
Montreuil has made great advances in everything—
the price of partridges included. Without
any dearth of landed proprietors, there is
also a middle class, besides good lodgings and
good society, with good fish and good fowl, and,
above all, a good physician, Doctor Paul
Perrochaud, who is the hero of the following story:

The doctor was once a little boy, perhaps
not a little spoiled, and doubtless given to
house-building with cards, and to peopling small
wooden mansions with dolls. Such must have
been the pursuits of his childhood, for the child
is father to the man. The only difference now,
is that instead of a wooden Swiss farm and its
appendages, which may be taken to pieces and
put into a box, he has a wooden hospital with
wooden offices, and a wooden chapel, which he
can undo, and shift about, and put together
again, as whim or wisdom may direct; also
that, instead of wooden haymakers and
shepherds and sheep, he has a staff of Sisters of
Charity really alive and active in their black
and white costume: with a collection of one
hundred boys and girls who squeak, make faces,
and float in the water, as naturally as the most
expensive doll to be found in all London.

Everybody has his hobby; Dr. Perrochaud's
hobby is SCROFULOUS CHILDREN. And why not?
A scrofulous child is far more interesting than
a healthy child. In fact, a healthy child is
uninteresting. It never gives you the excitement
of fearing that it should go blind, or should
melt away to nothing, or become frightful to
behold with abscesses and scars, or be a cripple
for life with white swellings and stiff joints,
if consumption do not shorten its sufferings.
With a healthy child, you have no need to sit
up o' nights, watching whether the flame of life
is to go out speedily or to flicker on a little
longer. A healthy child never gives you the
pleasure of observing the results of successful
treatment—the look that assures a fresh hold
on existence, the increasing flesh, the clearer
complexion, the smile.

But if the scrofulous child be also a poor
child—the child of parents confined within large
cities, or a foundling child in a foundling
hospital, fatherless and motherless—our interest in
the child increases tenfold. It is a romance in
one volume, whose tedious chapters we cannot
skip and turn to the end to satisfy our curiosity.
Actual life is an unflinching reader; we must
follow every individual page before we can
arrive at the conclusion. How strong the
interest, is proved by the way in which the
appetite grows with the indulgence. Dr.
Perrochaud began with nursing one scrofulous
child; he now has one hundred under his wing;
he hopes in a year or two to get some four
or five hundred together in his expansive and
movable hospital.

France is not ravaged with scrofula so severely
as several other countries of Europe. There is
more scrofula in England than in France, and
still more in Holland than in England. But
there is yet enough scrofulous disease in France
to put a medical man upon his mettle. Ever
since popular credulity withdrew its faith from
the touch of kings, the Faculty have been
anxiously inquiring, Where is the remedy, what is
the specific, against that dreadful disease the
King's Evil?

According to Michelet, it was reserved for
England to solve the problem. One of the most
striking features of England at the present day
are her innumerable marine villas, the love of a
sea-side residence, and the bathing continued
late into the autumn; all which are modern,
premeditated, and intentional habits. The Duke
of Newcastle asked Dr. Russell why, in so many
of the fairest forms, rottenness lay hid beneath