immense property awaited him in right of his mother, if he still survived. To crown the whole of the evidence, the baroness's attorney, on a careful examination of the miniature, when unset, discovered the nearly obliterated name of General Count de Mireville, Conrad's father by his second wife.

Nothing now remained but to conclude, after the fashion of those who write novels in imitation of real life, (not confining themselves to plain matters of fact as we have done) but to add, that Madame la Baroness de Sérilly became the happy wife of the happy Mr. de Néri, and the solemn musician married the pretty niece Emily. How they then stood in legal relationship may puzzle some to discover, as well as what family each had, for “further this deponent sayeth not.”

MECHANICAL GENIUS.

In these days so much is written, that it is almost impossible either for the writer or the reader to pay proper attention to what is written; especially when the author is taxing his wits to invent novelties. It is a pity that the flowers of fiction should be cultivated in preference to the fruit of truth. On that account, the following plain matter-of-fact narrative will not probably be so much relished by many of our fair readers, as the highly-spiced draught of wild effusions, so easily swallowed by the lovers of romance. It is, therefore, extremely advisable to copy the original as closely as possible, whenever any object presents itself somewhat out of mother Nature's usual productions, without seeking for the rules of composition,-arrangement of dramatic effect, or a magnificent wound-up catastrophe.

After all, there is nothing so charming or so durable, so simple or so valuable, as truth; though casuists say, it should not always be spoken. My father often spoke to me of a distant relative, considered by many of his friends, not quite compos mentis-and by others, a great genius, whom he had not seen for nearly twenty years,-circumstances having placed them, during that period, widely apart; and no congeniality of sentiment offering the slightest inducement to keep up a regular epistolary friendship: all they knew of each other was confined to a pretty certain conviction, that both were living. He was a cousin to my father -somewhere about the last link in the chain of relationship,—and certainly a very extraoadinary man-a genius sui generis,-the most inventive of human beings, and the most unsuccessful in his results, I have ever heard of; which latter circumstance mainly tended to occasion the evil report of his having a certain weakness of judgment, unkindly designated insanity;-monomania was not then the word in fashion. In in Cumberland, spite of this prevailing opinion, the village of was one day somewhat astounded at beholding young Harry C.———

emerge from his house with two trumpet-formed small tin funnels. affixed to his nostrils, by certain springs passing round his head,-one of his theories being, that as every thing in creation required air, one could not have too much of it; and life depending upon it, a prolongation of that coveted blessing to the few must ensue, from each extra voluminous inhalation of the component parts of air, or any other chemical combinations. Our remote cousin never troubled himself about mathematics, mechanics, or optics; hydrostatics, pneumatics, or any other of those old fashioned sciences never troubled his attics. He adhered religiously to the doctrine, that persons who read much, cannot possibly find time to do much else; and practice, after all, was better than precept. His funnel plan did not obtain any encouragement; and, like all his other schemes, soon died a natural death. His neighbours, with good logic inferred, Master Chad not calculated, that exactly in the same proportion as pure air entered into the vacuum of the head, so did the noxious gases; and it was a query to them, if the latter would not predominate in the close suburds of Whether C was the original inventor of braces, or, as they have since been called, suspenders, is not known; but he certainly was the first who introduced their very general use in Cumberland, where, heretofore, the nether garment was strangely left to its capricious movements, and perpetually exhibited a strong propensity to natural gravitation, in defiance of the twitching and hitching of its owner. In this improvement, Master C - greatly and deservedly glorified himself; it was, indeed, one of the benefits his genius had bestowed upon mankind'; up to that period, India rubber web, or springs, applied to these conveniences, were not known.

It is difficult to enumerate all the surprising proofs of genius his early life betrayed; suffice it to say, that he made his clothes and his candles; his tin pots and pans; his bread and his beer; his tools and their handles. Unlike any other man, year after year, every thing possessed some new feature of invention: but these were minor attempts-far short of these great results he felt a certainty of attaining, if time permitted: and on this account he was so over cautious in the preservation and prolongation of his health, that he was constantly a martyr to some nostrum of his own compounding; and practically discovered, that nature does not much relish being fettered by genius, whether it be the art mechanical or the art medicinal.

How, when, or where, cousin Harry discovered that such a work existed, or by what means he ever found time to read it, does not appear: but he unluckily met with Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyage to the States of the Sun. In this the author very philosophically, and, no doubt, very luminously, to his own satisfaction, proves, that in order to travel in that warm climate, it is first necessary to reach it-" Catch your hare before you cook it," says that culinary philosopher, the late amiable Mrs. Glasse; to accomplish this first step, and "ce n'est que le

premier pas qui coute." How the enterprising traveller was to reach this worshipped planet, would have puzzled many; but Cyrano de Bergerac was a genius not to be daunted by such a trifling difficulty; and somewhat after our cousin's fashion, averred, that where there was a will there was a way; and that way, simply this: to fill a sufficient number of bladders for the purpose required, with morning dewnot what the Highlanders call by that poetic name (whiskey);-and the heat of the glorious orb of day, by the well-known process of evaporation, must of necessity take place, bearing the travellers' weight on its expansion. The ærial navigation of modern days was not even thought of, therefore could not be expected to be brought to the perfection it has since attained, or will attain, when nothing remains undone to render the system completely perfect.

This theory of the author's firedC—'s imagination, it was so simple; but whether bladders were scarce, or too expensive in the village of I cannot say; but the experiment was never exhibited, though many months were passed in preliminary preparations. It is, however, most likely that cousin Harry was too noble-minded, too delicate in his ambition, to confine himself entirely to servile imitation, and he therefore only partially applied the morning dew to the completion of a winged apparatus. Not that it formed any portion of his intention to take a voyage to the sun or moon; his only desire was to realize some ærial progression for man; who, though tolerably accomplished in animal motion, yet could not fly. Railroads and steam-boats were then so much in their infancy, that it could not be rationally imagined they would ever supply a substitute for wings. In three months, cousin Harry had perfected his flying machine. The long looked-for hour arrived, and behold him clad in flappers,-to which the condors were a goose's; he looked like one of Milton's fallen angels, and, indeed, soon exhibited himself a fallen man; for taking a leap from the top of his own house to begin with, he forgot to turn an indispensable screw, so, instead of ascending through the ambient air, he descended to mother earth at the expense of a broken leg and fractured collar bone, the effects of which yet remain to attest his aspiring genius. This caused him to halt in his progressive movements, and he has since hesitated to repeat the experiment,-very likely, too, some good-natured sceptic mentioned the fate of Icarus to him; at all events his hot ambition was completely cooled down, and not finding any neighbour at all disposed, for the sake of science or the lucre of gain, to risk his neck in such a lofty flight-the flying machine helped to make the fire burn, and the bladders to cover pickles and preserves. A loss of time or money go for nothing with men of extraordinary genius; but cousin Harry's father prognosticating his only child's future career, had so bequeathed a moderate independence, that his son could not, with all his genius, experimentalize the capital; he quarterly received its interest, and it only required some occasional pinching to make both

ends meet at the period of payment. Time, the other crutch to genius, was always at Harry's command; that was a thing he could always make, for any benevolent project that entered his fertile imagination.

During the period of our cousin's confinement in consequence of his fractures, his mind did not on that account remain inactive; he arranged the plan of a locomotive carriage, far more practicable in execution than wings, and more generally useful to mankind, as society was then constituted. By a nicely calculated combination of springs and levers, to be wound up previous to starting, a commodious seat could be propelled at a given rate to a given distance, and so being rewound ad infinitum, conduct the wayfarer to his journey's end. No sooner was cousin Harry enabled to execute this machine, than he very properly was the first to try its effects. How much wisdom might be gained if all projectors would do the same! Off went Harry in his arm-chair, at about ten miles an hour down the crooked high street of, and it was only by running his vehicle into a grocer's shop window that he discovered he had not provided any means of stopping his rapid course, should that convenience be required, before the springs had spent their vis inertiæ. The experiment, however, perfectly succeeded so far; and what prevented its being amended was never known; for a time, however, cousin Harry seems to have confined himself to planning rather than executing; it is more than probable the quarterly domestic pinching exceeded former periods, and compelled him to think more seriously of creature comforts for himself, rather than the comforts of his fellow creatures. A lapse of invention certainly occurred,—a hiatus of genius was manifest; but talent, like murder, will out; and his was, during a short repose of mechanical rest, engaged in hatching eggs by steam. Some promise was held forth by the plan; but not having quite ascertained a mode of regulating the equiform heat of vapour, he became satisfied with par-boiled eggs; and the village fowls, fatigued with the constant consumption of their embryo families, positively refused to supply his daily demand. To surmount this difficulty, about twenty loads of earth were laid in the loft, the roof of which was partly uncovered, and our cousin purchased some dozen right good partlets, with their lords and masters, to crow and strut about in their newly-discovered colony. Here again something always interfered to retard success. The founder of the colony procured eggs for his use, but he also obtained wind and water in larger proportions, through the unroofed portions of his house, than he required for the experiment of incubation; an event not to be wondered at, when we give a slight picture of the domicile in question.

At his father's death, cousin Harry purchased a freehold tenement situate at the bottom of a thoroughfare or passage at the extreme end of the village. The place was selected in preference to greater conveniences, in consequence of its stilness-it being free from overlookers. It was an eight-roomed house, squeezed by its avaricious builder into JANUARY, 1845,

D

the back premises of four other houses. It looked as if it dropped ready made into that space from above, leaving only a narrow access to it at one of the angles. The lower part was devoted entirely to domestic offices, rather darker and somewhat damp. The first floor contained what was intended for sitting-rooms, having more light, and the occasional visit of a broken sunbeam; but the second floor was the spot which cleared one of the corner houses, and gave a cordial invitation to old Sol whenever he passed that way.

Here cousin Harry had established the theatre of his genius,-here was the temple dedicated to the amelioration of human suffering. It was a long narrow chamber with one window at the end opposite the entrance, the floor covered with half finished machines of most grotesque appearance; the chairs, the shelves, piled up with nameless tools, all the things of his own creation,-inventions, the children of necessity, or economy, and totally unknown to any other workman under the canopy of heaven; equally is it true, that no other man could by possibility make use of them. These mechanical emblems were interspersed with tin boxes, unfinished bird cages, candle moulds, pots, pans, jars, gallipots, distilling apparatus, iron ladles, glue pots, saws, scythes, wheels, springs, leather, lasts, looms, lathes, and an infinity of other things, forming a chaos of genius, whose interminable length of catalogue alone prevents being more minutely described; nevertheless, the great mind which had discovered all the uses of all these various matters, also possessed the faculty of instantly finding in the midst of all, what must appear to a man less enlightened, confusion more confounded, the smallest object he required, if not altogether hid beneath the accumulation of dust and the fragments of shavings; these, when they obscured too many of the piles of mechanical curiosities for Harry not conveniently to step over, were, by his own hand, conveyed to the door, from whence they were removed by the stout lass, who was his housekeeper and servant. She was never allowed to penetrate into the sanctum; and it could not be remarked of her as a reproach, that she was what is called a tidy servant, —that is, always displacing in order to put a place in order; by which ceremony many masters never know where to find anything they most particularly want.

Next this room was the master's sleeping apartment, scarcely less encumbered; above these perched the servant with the before-mentioned cocks and hens. Without going more at large into the arrangements of the house, I shall merely add, that no twenty times toed and heeled, darned worsted stocking, ever exhibited greater proofs of industry than did the interior of our cousin's dwelling. He disdained the aid of workmen to repair the ravages of time; and the greater the difficulty he had to encounter in fighting against the inroads of the elements, the greater became his energy. The staircase was doubled and trebled with all kinds of wood, presenting a rude tesselated appearance; it was propped