d into each other's faces by the early
sunlight which streamed through the closed shutters of their room, and
gleamed on the brazen clasps of the Coverdale Bible, still lying
between them on the table where they had fallen asleep.

Such is the account of the affair given by themselves; although more,
it is believed, to suit the taste and belief of the time they lived
in than their own. The two brothers had passed many hours silent and
in the dark; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the visionary
world, into which they had unconsciously slipped, presented to both
such phenomena--founded on the meditations and recollections in which
both had been immersed--as were easily rendered in the exoteric types
of romance. The brothers talked long over the vision, and could
scarcely satisfy even themselves that it was indeed a dream; but they
agreed on its use of wisdom and warning, and disputed no more. The old
house was not sold, nor the types divided. It is even affirmed that
the bookseller's daughter and the Catholic widow lived there as right
friendly sisters-in-law; and after many a broadside and folio page,
the press they had worked for so many years at length struck off the
tale we have just related--the German brothers supposing that some
honest men in England might profit, as they had done, by a look upon
Life's Highway.

DUST-SHOWERS AND RED-RAIN.

Recent scientific investigations in Europe and America have thrown
some interesting light on the nature of these very curious phenomena.
The results arrived at may be brought familiarly before our readers.

Mr Charles Darwin, in the narrative of his voyage in the _Beagle_,
states that while he was at St Jago, one of the Cape de Verd islands,
in January 1832: 'The atmosphere was generally very hazy; this appears
chiefly due to an impalpable dust, which is constantly falling, even
on vessels far out at sea. The dust,' he goes on to say, 'is of a
brown colour, and under the blow-pipe, easily fuses into a black
enamel. It is produced, as I believe, from the wear and tear of
volcanic rocks, and must come from the coast of Africa.' The same
opinion was held by scientific men generally, as well of the dust met
with in the North Atlantic, as of that which sometimes falls on the
islands and shores of the Mediterranean: Africa was supposed to be the
original source of the air-borne particles. Some of the dust, however,
having been sent to Ehrenberg of Berlin, that ce