"I didna want to blame my ain son,' whispered the old man. "What is your son's age?" "He's forty years auld, but he has a muckle want, ye can see that," pleaded the father. Dr. Fraser now made a signal that the examination should end. "Just one thing more," said Mr. Bruce. "When you said that no one had struck you, and attributed your injury to an accident, you were not stating the truth?" "I was not." "And you declare what you have now told me is the truth?" 66 Ay," repeated the old man, with a heavy sigh, "it is the truth." Again the faintness overcame him, and he was longer in coming round. "This faintness will probably recur, Miss Grant," said Dr. Fraser as they waited, "and I must not conceal from you that I fear your father has only a few hours to live, at most. I may be wrong I hope I am but apparently the end is near. These attacks of faintness will probably recur; but as far as I can judge there will be no suffering, which would distress you more. I shall stay all night if you wish it." "Oh, if ye wad be so kind, sir," said Meg. As she spoke, the hand she was holding stirred a little. "He's comin' roun' noo, sir." The sheriff and Dr. Fraser signed the declaration, and as her father clasped her left hand tighter when she tried to withdraw it to go to the table, the doctor brought the paper, and held it steady while she added her name. "They winna tak' Wullie wi' them the nicht?" she whispered to him. 66 No, no,” said Mr. Bruce, who heard what she said; "nothing will be done to agitate or distress Mr. Grant. I am only sorry that my coming should have been unavoidable. I sympathize with you very much in your trouble. Good-bye." 66 Good-bye, sir, and thank ye kindly." Her father lay in what appeared to be a heavy sleep, only showing consciousness of her presence by holding her hand more firmly when she tried to withdraw it. After an hour of watching, the doctor bade her go and get some food, as she would need her strength through the night. She rose obediently, and he took her place. The old man opened his eyes drowsily when he felt the hand that held his changed. "Are ye awa'?" he whispered. She looked appealingly at the doctor, "Yes go," he said. 66 Ay, fader, but I'll no be lang." She made up the fire, and set the room straight again, moving the candles so as to shade her father's face; then she hurried away. Kirsty was out about the doors, — Willie was just going to bed. "Tak' off yer sheen here," said Meg, "and dinna mak' mair noise than ye can help; an', Wullie, if fader wants ye I'll come for ye." "What sud he want me for?" said Willie, staring at her. "The doctor says he's gaun to dee," said poor Meg, with a choking sob. "Oh, Wullie! Wullie!" and she threw her arms round his neck in a passion of weeping. Willie stood motionless for a minute, and then began with clumsy caresses to soothe her. "Dinna greet, Meg, dinna great,' he said; and then, "Maybe he wunna dee." But she could not at once stop her tears, and when Kirsty came in she turned to her and they wept together, as she told the doctor's opinion. "I maun gang to him," said Meg, suddenly springing up. "Oh, wait a wee, mem," cried the old woman, holding her. "He cudna hae a better body wi' him than the doctor, he's jist as kind and conseederate a man as there is. I maskit a cup o' tea for ye as sune's they gaed awa', but I didna like to come ben, it was sae quaite, I thocht maybe he was sleepin'.' "Sae he is," said Meg, drying her tears, and accepting the proffered tea; but she could not eat, the bread seemed to choke her. Kirsty promised to make supper for the doctor, and have a bed ready and with a kindly "Ye maun bear up for a' our sakes, mem," from the sympathetic old servant, she went back to her long night watch. The doctor came back from his supper, and sat with her for a time, but there was no visible change. Hour after hour passed by. The old man's breathing was quiet and regular, and they hoped he slept; but he always seemed conscious of any movement of Meg's hand clasping his. At last she begged the doctor to go and rest. "I wad ca' up the stair gin he needs ye; an' ye maun be weary, sir,” she urged. He had been up almost all the previous night, and was very tired, so he said he would go. "If he wakens, get him to take a few spoonfuls of the wine," he said; "it will be better than anything else." Meg promised, and he left the room. She heard his footsteps going softly up | Emile de Laveleye congratulated Italy, in the little stair, and then the door over- that her statesmen would be compelled, head closed, and all was silent. however unwillingly, to yield to physical facts, and would learn to recognize the spirit of disease as a blessing in disguise, that would preserve its public men from contact with the jobbery and speculation so rampant in other capitals, and its legislature from the risk of being dictated to by revolutionary mobs. The fire had burnt very low, and she could hardly see her father's face. She knelt by the sofa, and laid her cheek softly against his wrinkled hand as it lay above the blankets, clasping the other in both of hers. There was rest and quiet now, after the distraction and grief of the day. He slept peacefully, and his peace comforted her heart. "This is what deith will be tae him," she reflected - "a peacefu' sleep efter the burden an' heat o' a lang, lang day." She remained kneeling by him for a long time. The candle burnt down, flickered, and went out; the fire was out too, but the growing light from the window which faced the east revealed more and more plainly the face she loved. As she knelt, at length her father's eyes opened, and looked at her with quiet recognition. He smiled a little, and, raising his hand, stroked her hair tenderly. "I'm gaun awa' to yer mither, Meg," he said; and after a pause, laying his hand again on her head, he added dreamily, "Ye'll min' an' say tae them 'at they maunna be hard on Wullie." Then he slept, and Meg knew it was now no passing slumber, but the rest so long and quiet, undisturbed by earth's many voices the sleep which only death can give to the weary children of men. From The National Review. ROME AND MALARIA. A CONSIDERATION of the causes and treatment of the malarious infection that desolates the greater part of the Roman Campagna, involves a statement of one of the most interesting medical and social problems which the Italian government has to face. At one time, indeed, when it was still questioned by many whether Rome could ever become a healthy residence, the mode in which that problem should be met promised to determine political consequences of the greatest moment. Rome, it was said by many, could never be more than a mere political capital of Italy, as Washington is of the United States, and must in other respects continue to be as before, a glorified but sleepy cathedral town, dear to travellers and artists, far removed from the track of commerce and manufacture. A few years only have passed since But whatever wisdom there might be in the philosopher's warning, many motives combined to induce Italians, as soon as they had recovered the ancient seat of empire, to make it their capital not only in name but in fact. Much had to be done in many ways to adapt the medieval city to the requirements of a modern capital, but among the problems for which the government had to provide a solution few were more urgent, few more arduous, than those raised in dealing with the sanitary condition of the town and its suburbs, if, indeed, we may give that name to the uninhabited and uninhabitable waste that surrounded the city of the popes. From the gates of the Quirinal to the Alban Hills, from the Forum to the desolate site of Ostia, malaria reigned supreme. Of the old hills of Rome, the Palatine, the Aventine, the Cælian, the Esquiline, the Janiculan, and the greater part of the Quirinal were, during half the year, shunned like the fever ward of a hospital. To try to build a healthy town on this site seemed to many a hopeless, to all an arduous, undertaking, and the various plans for the expansion of Rome were eagerly and acrimoniously discussed. The knowledge available on the subject in the years immediately succeeding 1870 was very vague. Theories were abundant, but for the most part crude and unverified; and at first unscientific nostrums were proposed and tried, not so much from any real belief in their utility, as from a desire to make some show of activity. Some among the proposals that were seri ously entertained can now hardly be mentioned without a smile. First came the sunflower period. It was asserted, with all the confidence that ignorance inspires, that sunflowers were the one thing needful. Only plant sunflowers enough, said the advocates of this theory, and ague will disappear. The roots, through some virtue yet unexplored, will medicate the soil, while the multitude of birds attracted by the seeds will no less mysteriously purify the air. For a time large fields in the Campagna blossomed with gorgeous bloom, that would have gladdened the eye of Postlethwaite; but the sunflower theory had but a short vogue, and was soon banished to Astolpho's lunar valley, there to lie buried among The courtier's promises, and sick man's prayers, Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea, Then some historically-minded person suggested that the old Romans kept their town healthy by the sacred groves planted in it, and by the gardens of their great mansions. Trees now took the place of sunflowers, and, as the new Via Nazionale was then being laid out, trees were planted on each side of the first section of that fine street. But again the wind veered. A new ædile arose, who, accepting in part the current theory, followed it out to a different conclusion. Trees, he argued, have a sanitary value because their boughs act as a trap or filter, stripping the air of its poisonous principles. What, then, could be worse than to plant trees in the middle of the town, where they would only retain the miasma and propagate the disease? So he stayed the planting, and to make sure that no less logically-minded successor should ever be tempted to lapse into the arboreal heresy, he diverted the line of sewers and water-pipes from the centre to the sides of the road, so that, if his fellow-citizens lost the advantage of shade, they need at least never fear a upas shower of pestilence from the treacherous trees. After this came the eucalyptus epoch, which even now is hardly ended. "Plant gum-trees" was the new cry. Their roots and spreading branches will act as a sort of automatic draining-shafts, and the aromatic leaves carpeting the soil beneath will provide an antiseptic veil checking the miasmatic exhalations. Extensive plantations were accordingly made, especially at the Tre Fontane, round the scene of St. Paul's martyrdom, and about the stations of the Roman railways. It was then suggested that some of the most malarial spots in Australia are in the midst of primeval forests of gum-trees, and this fact seemed to cast some doubt on the practical value of the remedy. About this time more scientific investigation began to be made, both into the nature of malarial fevers generically, and more particularly into the special conditions of the Roman Campagna which favored their development. Among the men who have devoted themselves to this subject, Dr. Tommaso Crudeli stands quite in the front rank; and though some of his theories may eventually be superseded, there can be no question that the monograph which he has recently published on the subject holds the field so far, no less facts, than as a sober inquiry into their as a careful exposition of the ascertained significance. The burning question that first demanded solution after the occupation of Rome in 1870 was this: Should the expansion of the city take the direction of the hills on which republican and imperial Rome had stood, or should it develop over the plain, where the medieval town had sprung up among the ruins of baths and temples and tombs of the classical period? Both alternatives had eager supporters. On the one hand, it was maintained that the hills had been abandoned when, owing to the growing insalubrity of the surrounding Campagna, as it fell out of cultivation, the air that swept up from it became so pestilential as to make life on them impossible. That the plain below was healthy was indeed undisputed, and necessarily, seeing that almost the entire town, in which people managed to live from year to year without ague, was built on it; but the cause assigned for that healthiness, namely, that the quarter is sheltered by the hills from the noxious south winds, and the inference that the expansion of Rome ought therefore to be directed exclusively over the plain, was demurred to. "No," said the hill party; "the upper ground was not abandoned because unhealthy, but it became unhealthy because, after all the aqueducts has been breached during the sieges of Rome by the Goths and Lombards, and the surviving population had, perforce, moved down into the level where wells could easily be sunk, and where at the worst the Tiber was always within reach, that once populous district became a wil derness. Cover that district again with houses and paved streets, and it will again be as salubrious as when it was the favorite quarter of the patricians of Rome. It is only because it is so covered that the Campus Martius is habitable. The fever germs are still in its soil, but they are innocuous beneath their covering of masonry. Malaria, said the former party, is wafted to you from the outlying breedingground in the swamps and wastes of the Campagna; you can only hide from it by cowering beneath the hills. It is autoc thonous, replied the others; it is bred in the soil at your feet, and must be stamped out by the street surveyor and builder. One fact, very curious, and at that time unaccounted for, was used as a conclusive argument in favor of the latter theory. Between the Quirinal and Esquiline, and almost surrounded by its larger neighbors, stands the Viminal Hill, which has always been reckoned among the healthy parts of Rome, even when the adjoining ridges were absolutely pestilential. This relative salubrity, the cause of which was at that time unknown, is, as Dr. Crudeli has clearly shown by charts and sections annexed to his volume, due to the low level of the subterranean water-line on that hill. The depth to which a well-shaft must be sunk before water is reached on the Viminal is, on an average, fully double that which is necessary in other parts of Rome. And this is owing to an artificial lowering of that level in ancient times by an elab orate system of drainage to be described further on. This observation, rightly interpreted, supplies the key to the whole problem. To understand the full significance of it, it will here be necessary to say a few words on the geological formation of the country round Rome. ure into all the strata below. Here and there this water comes to the surface in springs, such as the one which yields an abundant supply to the Trevi aqueduct; another portion wells out into the bed of the Tiber, so copiously that even in summer that river, at a season when higher up it is reduced to a mere mountain torrent, flows with a full flood as soon as it enters the Roman territory. But a great portion of this water is retained in the porous subsoil of the Campagna, which is thus, even during the driest seasons, saturated with moisture at a very small depth below the surface. A wet sponge set out to dry in the hot sun gives a fair idea of the condition of the Campagna during the summer. The outer surface is dry and sunburnt, while the mass of the interior reeks with water; thus, throughout the hot season, however dry the air may seem during the day, at night a heavy mist, "like a facecloth to the face, clings to the dead earth." You may walk through this mist with your head and shoulders free, while up to your Speaking roughly, the Roman province, waist your clothes are soaked as they giving it its geological or scientific fron- would be by fording a river. Under these tier, resembles a large scoop, open towards conditions rapid and dangerous changes the sea, bounded on the east by the Sabine of temperature are inevitable at sunrise hills, and on the north and south by the and sunset. In July and August the thervolcanic ranges of the Sabatine and Álban mometer will often show a variation of systems. The geological structure of this thirty-five degrees or more within a couple district is exceedingly complicated, but, of hours. We thus have a thin crust of without going into details, it may be de- sun-baked soil full of decaying vegetable scribed as a volcanic formation of all matter, lying on a mass of porous rock degrees of permeability, from sandy puzzo- which is charged with stagnating water, lana to the hardest peperino, superim- and alternately throws out its moisture in posed on clay or marls which here and the shape of vapor and reabsorbs it as there crop out to the surface, and overlaid condensed dew. It would be hard to find by a thin bed of vegetable soil. The conditions more favorable for the devel whole of this basin, contrary to the gen-opment of malaria or more difficult to eral idea, is, with the exception of the remedy.* narrow alluvial valley of the Tiber, very far from being a level plain. It is every where broken up into groups of low bluffs ranging from a dozen acres to several hundred in extent. These are separated from each other by an intricate system of gullies, with precipitous banks from thirty to sixty feet high, many of which have no natural outfall for the surface drainage that runs into them. Before dealing with the modern aspects of the problem, it may be interesting to see by what means the Romans endeavored to ameliorate the condition of soil on which they lived. It has long been known that remains of ancient drainage works exist at different points in the Campagna, but it is only of late years that it has been possible to examine in detail the system of their construction. During the buildThe problem of dealing with the "boni-ing of the new forts which surround Rome fication" of such a district would, in any case, present serious difficulties, but these are here further intensified by another factor. The extinct craters to the north and east are occupied by several lakes, the largest of them being those of Bracciano and Albano, the surface of whose waters is some hundred feet above the Campagna level, and which inject water at high press A similar formation has produced analogous results in "the Palisades" that overlook the Hudson above New York. There, at an altitude of five hundred feet on a wind-swept ridge, one would, if anywhere, have looked for a healthy site; but the hollows in the rock there collect and hoid stagnant water near the surface, breeding so malarious an air that wealthy New York which the beauty of the spot had tempted them to build there. merchants have had to abandon the country houses deep trenches have been cut into the soil, and by these old drains have been exposed in many parts, in sufficient numbers to throw light on the method followed by the designers of them. On this hint, and taking advantage of the excavations, further search has been made, and it is now clear that a great part of the Campagna was in the distant past sanitated by systems of local drainage. Each hill or bluff on which a house or village was built was intersected by a network of drains, that often rose above each other in two or three tiers, and finally either carried the water away to the nearest outfall, or stored it for agricultural or domestic use. One of the most perfect examples of the latter form was discovered in a hill on which the fort outside the Porta Portese stands. At a short distance below the surface of this hill, which was once occupied by an important Roman villa, the workmen came across the upper tier of drains. A system of tunnels about four feet high and nearly two feet wide has been cut through the porous rock, the top being strengthened by pairs of large tiles meeting in the centre and forming a gable roof. All the galleries of this tier converge with a very gentle slope to a common outfall, which leads the collected water to a second tier, that spreads its passages through the rock a few feet lower. The outfall of this second tier differs from the first in being narrowed to a small gullet, which was closed by a sheet of lead some eighteen inches square pierced with numerous holes so as to act as a strainer. This sheet of lead was found in situ. The third tier of galleries, about forty feet from the surface and cutting the hill in cross lines directly beneath the upper systems, differs from these in three respects. Its floor is perfectly level, it has no outfall for its water, and it has a far larger section, being six feet high and nearly three feet wide. It was designed to serve for the storage of the water flowing into it from the upper drains, and was like them connected with the surface by a perpendicular shaft up which the water could be raised. All the shafts were provided with steps in their walls, traces of which still remain, for the use of workmen employed in cleaning the drains. As soon as these drains had been cleared of the accumulated deposit of centuries, though it was then a dry summer season, the water began to flow again and the cistern soon filled. The drains still discharge, as well as when first built, their double function of sanitating the soil and providing a constant sup ply of water for the use of the villa that stood above. Other drains, similar to these, have been found burrowing beneath the hill on which ancient Antemnae was built, and it was in the same manner that the Viminal Hill was, as stated above, made a healthy site. The tools employed by the patient burrowers of these drains have been found in more than one deserted tunnel. They are of the simplest description, a short-handled pick with a cutting edge, and a lamp which was hung to an iron rod driven into the rock. With no more elaborate instruments than these, the old workmen cut the many hundred miles of drains with which, as is now known, the Campagna is undermined. More curious still, this mode of drain-digging is still practised in some parts of the neighboring province of the Abruzzi, where the art has been handed down in certain families from immemorial time as a traditional heirloom, and a skilled workman will dig a drain of form and dimensions similar to those adopted by the old workers in the Campagna, advancing in rock of moderate hardness at the rate of three feet a day, using tools identical with those of his far-off predecessors, and keeping to the determined slope and direction with surprising accuracy. The theory on which this system of sanitary drainage was based, unless we are to assume that it was carried out according to mere empirical rule of thumb, could be no other than this that malarious miasma is of strictly local origin, developed on the spot where its pernicious influence is felt, and not wafted over the country from distant foci of infection. Till quite recently, modern observers held an opposite belief, and but a few years ago the Italian government ordered the expensive drainage works now being carried on at Ostia and Maccarese, in the hope of thus improving the climate of Rome. More recent observations would seem to throw much doubt on the wisdom of this action, and to lead us back to the practical sagacity of ancient days. If we may believe Dr. Crudeli, whatever may be the effect on the immediately adjacent district, the drainage of these distant swamps can have no beneficial effect on the air of the city. Whatever be the origin of malarious fever and the bacillus theory, though it has eager supporters, is certainly very far from being established, and does not even account for many of the phenomena of the disease the more closely the available |