hat round in his two great hands; sleek, humble, and respectful; utterly different from what he had been at half-past two o'clock that morning.

He made a very elaborate and round-about apology, with a cringing politeness of manner, but with a sulky face and an ominous glitter in his deep-set grey eyes. He seemed as if he had been tutored in what he was to say, or almost as if he had been repeating something learned from a book. But the ground of his excuse was, that he had been drinking, and was a little off his head, as he called it.

Mrs. Carleon bowed gravely when he had finished.

"Then you will look over it, Jenny ?" asked her husband.

"Oh, certainly," she replied, coldly, turning away her head-for she hated to feel the glittering eyes of the bailiff fixed upon her face.

"If Agnes had told me that man was a poisoner, I could almost have believed her," she thought, as Ralph left the room.

Jenny's cold lasted for some days, and at her husband's request the surgeon from Olney rode over one morning to see her.

"A slight attack of influenza," he said, "nothing more; Mrs. Carleon is a little debilitated; I will send her some strengthening medicine." "It is not ague, is it ?" asked Jenny, anxiously.

"Ague! oh dear no, nothing of the kind."

"Nor fever?"

No, you are not in the least feverish.”

"Why, Jenny, what are you thinking of?" asked her husband.

"I was thinking of your brother Martin's death, and wondering whether any of my symptoms resembled his."

Dudley Carleon started half out of his chair, and looked earnestly at his wife's face; then sighing deeply, he said, as he reseated himself,— "Heaven forbid, Jenny! One such death as poor Martin's is enough in a family."

Mrs. Carleon was seated opposite to one of the windows; and looking up at this moment, she saw the dark face of the bailiff between herself and the winter sky.

He was standing on a short ladder, busy, snipping the branches of a creeping plant that grew over the house; and she saw that he had opened the window a couple of inches at the top, in order to extricate a branch that had been shut in.

I wish you would send that man back to your othe arm, Dudley," she said; "he is always hanging about the house."

The medicines did not come till rather late in the evening. In spite of herself, Jenny could not forget what Agnes Marlow had said, and she wondered whether her husband would offer to administer them to her.

He was seated at his desk, writing, when the maid-servant brought in the bottles; and he did not even look up as Jenny took them from their paper coverings.

"I am going to take my medicine, Dudley," she said.

"That's right, Jenny," he answered, without raising his head.

She felt an intense relief at finding him so indifferent; she had never allowed to herself that she could possibly be brought to suspect him; but a load seemed lifted from her mind by this most simple circumstance.

The next day, and the next, she continued to take her medicines without the slightest notice from her husband. He was kind and attentive, asked often after her health, but said nothing about the medical treatment; he evidently attached very little importance to this slight attack.

On the third day the surgeon called again at the Grey Farm. He found Jenny in her old place by the fire, Dudley reading the newspaper opposite to her, and Ralph Purvis mending the lock of the door.

The bailiff was very handy as a smith, carpenter, or painter, and there always seemed something for him to do about the house now. This time the surgeon looked grave, as he felt his patient's pulse. "You have not been taking my medicines, Mrs. Carleon," he said. "Yes, indeed, I have taken them very regularly; have I not, Dudley?" "Why, to tell you the truth, I haven't watched you closely enough to be able to vouch for your integrity, Jenny," said her husband.

"Then there is more debility than I thought, Mrs. Carleon. We must try and set you up again, however."

Jenny's eyes wandered involuntarily to the portrait of Martin Carleon. "Is there any fever ?" she asked, looking up anxiously at the surgeon's face, as he stood before her, with his fingers on her wrist.

Why-yes, I think there is a little," he said, with some hesitation. Her face grew suddenly white; she rose from her chair, and seemed as if she was going to run out of the room. Ralph the bailiff, on his knees at the threshold of the half-open door, rattled away at the lock he was mending. Kneeling where he did, he seemed to present an impassable barrier between the mistress of the Grey Farm and the world without,

Dudley Carleon dropped the newspaper, as he started to his feet. "Jenny! Jenny! what is the matter with you?"

"I want to get out of the house," she said, looking about her wildly; "I want to run away. I know that if I stay here I shall die as he did!" She pointed to Martin's picture on the wall before her.

"Jenny Carleon !"

"Oh, forgive me! forgive me, Dudley!" she said, throwing herself into her husband's arms, and sobbing hysterically: "I do not doubt you -I esteem, respect, and love you. I know how foolish I am, and hate myself for my folly; but I am frightened !-I am frightened!"

BRITISH DIAMONDS.

THE Diamond is not merely interesting on account of those qualities which render it the most costly of jewels-it has been the means of teaching us, that, out of the same substance, the Creator can make things differing widely one from the other.

The Diamond is a beautifully-transparent body, possessing a very elegant geometric figure; it has the power of breaking up a beam of light, and sending forth a sheaf of rainbow rays, and no ordinary fire will effect its combustion.

Graphite, Plumbago, or Black Lead, is an opaque substance, having, • occasionally, a crystalline structure. It is used in the manufacture of drawing-pencils, and in the construction of crucibles which are intended to resist the most intense heat of our furnaces.

Charcoal is a well-known body, black in colour and irregular in form, which burns with great facility.

Dissimilar as those three natural products are, in external appearance, and in physical properties,-in chemical constitution they are the same.

The diamonds from Golconda, in the East Indies, or from Mandarga, in the Brazils, which shine in the Monarch's crown or glisten on the neck of Beauty, are closely related to the black British Diamonds of Gloucestershire or Monmouthshire.

The diamond is pure carbon, and plumbago and coal are carbon, with some slight accidental impurities; the best anthracite coal of South Wales containing less than five per cent. of these adventitious matters.

The prophet-philosopher, Newton, said, ere yet the diamond had been assayed by the chemist, "That it must be a combustible body, because it refracted light so powerfully." Eventually, this statement was confirmed. By the advance of science, man learnt to produce heat of sufficient intensity to burn the diamond; and the product of its combustion was found to be, like that of charcoal, Carbonic Acid, and nothing else.

By carefully coking coal we produce a substance so hard that it has been used in the place of the diamond for cutting glass; and by placing

this

gem in the centre of the Voltaic arc of light, it is presently converted into a lump of coke. The manufacture of coke from diamonds is a very easy, though by no means an economical process; but we have not yet succeeded in actually converting coke into diamond, although we have advanced a little way on the road to this desideratum.

The Koh-i-Noor, or Mountain of Light, has a value represented by a few thousand pounds sterling; and our annual importation of diamonds does not exceed £100,000. But in our mountains of darkness we have a hoard of black diamonds, from which we draw annually the vast sum of eighteen millions of pounds sterling.

The

is the

gems in the circlet of the British crown are rare and costly; but it gems which exist beneath the British soil that gives to our Queen

the title of the "Sovereign of the Seas," and which secures to us that sovereignty.

Though the diamonds of India and Brazil were to be found no more, England would remain the first amongst the nations of the earth; but were our British diamonds to be exhausted, our commerce and our manu. factures would perish, and Great Britain would sink in the scale of kingdoms. Of these all-important treasures, the British Diamonds, it is our purpose to write; believing that the story of "a sea-coal fire" cannot fail to be interesting to every one who reads the ST. JAMES'S MAGAZINE by the genial warmth it produces-who partakes of the food cooked by its agency-who enjoys the luxuries brought to us from far-distant climes by its power, or who wears the fabric woven by its means.

Our coals occur at various depths beneath the surface of the earth; the deepest workings for coal in this country, at the present time, being a little above 2,500 feet. We know that the coal-beds extend much deeper than this, reaching, in the South Wales coalfield, in all probability, to nearly 10,000 feet. Notwithstanding the enormous depth at which the lowest known beds of coal exist, the geologist is in a position to prove to us that these beds were once on the very surface of the Earth, shone on by the brightest of suns, and bathed in the winds of heaven. In numerous places, however, the coal is discovered at much less depths; and often it appears "cropping out," as it is called, at the edges of the coal-basins, or on the sides of the upheaved hills. This must be explained. A coal-basin may be represented by a lake, which has gradually been filled in with detrital matter. It will be at once perceived that a section made through the strata so produced would present some such appearance as that shown in the accompanying figure, which is a section across the Forest of Dean, on the scale of about three miles to the inch.

D

A A is the Old Red Sandstone; BB the Mountain Limestone; CC the Millstone Grit; D the Coal Measures; the black bands representing various beds of coal, the strata between these being either sandstone or a clay-like shale. It is not always, however, that the coal exists in this basin-like form. At its first deposit, the coal-bed may have been spread out in a nearly horizontal plane, or it may have been formed at a considerable angle, or its present position may be due to violent disturbances which have taken place since the coal was formed. In any case, however, the coal-bed will approach towards, frequently appearing at, the surface.

To those who have not studied the great phenomena which are involved in geological changes, it is not easy to impart a correct idea of the vast movements which have taken place in the masses forming, what we call,

the crust of the Earth. A few words are, therefore, necessary in explanation of these mutations.

It must not be forgotten that the position of the Earth in space is determined by its weight. The mass of this planet is exactly balanced against its motion. The gravitating force of that immense globe, the Sun, is continually pulling the Earth towards it; the force being regulated by the relative masses of each orb. Swung off into space by the Creator's fiat, this star has a tendency, in virtue of its motion, to fly from the Sun; but, by gravitation, this is restrained. Thus, this space-pervading force acting in one direction, and motion acting in another, the Earth is compelled, between them, to move in a fixed orbit.

He hath weighed the Earth in a balance," truly; and, if but a pound weight of matter could, by possibility, be removed, the position of our globe in space would be changed. From the beginning, then, the mass of the Earth has remained the same; but the matter constituting this mass has been constantly undergoing alterations in its chemical constitution, and in its physical characters.

The lower of the rocky massess-exposed then, as now, to the disintegrating influences of the atmosphere and waters, of sunshine and frosts— were worn down, and from this débris, other rocks were slowly formed. Geological science, looking into the arcana of time, has taught us that rock upon rock, stratum upon stratum, has been thus produced-each from the ruin of some older member of the stony Earth-crust. To understand the position of our coal, it is necessary that we should very briefly describe the relative positions of these great rock masses.

A class of rocks commonly known as Igneous-upon the hypothesis that they have all been produced by the action of fire-forms the foundation on which all the others rest, as bricks piled one on another in a building. In these rocks there are no evidences which lead to the inference that any organized forms existed when they formed the Earth's surface. This fact is certainly in favour of the hypothesis of the existence of a temperature higher than that which would admit of life.

Resting on those igneous rocks, we have others which are unmistakably sedimentary. Every indication proves them to have been formed by the gradual subsidence of matter suspended in water. A very extensive group has been classed as Paleozoic (meaning ancient life). This group includes the Cambrian rocks of Wicklow, Shropshire, and North Wales, the Silurian formations-taking their name from the prevalence of these rocks over all that district formerly inhabited by the Silures-then the Old Red Sandstone, or Devonian series; and reposing on these the Carboniferous Strata which include our coal measures. Above these are the secondary or Mesozoic (middle life) series, which embrace the New Red Sandstones of Cheshire and elsewhere; the Oolitic rocks of Bath and Portland; the vast Chalk formations, and several others. Then we arrive at the Tertiary or Cainozoic (recent life) strata, in which are comprehended the