Secret Sciences Of The Ancients.

or excited his distrust of their good faith and their secret intentions . The priestesses of Diana Parasya , in Cappadocia , walked with bare feet over burning coals . The same miracle was annually gone through by the priests in the temple of

Apollo , on Mount Soracte . Their supposed hereditary incombustibility which exempted them from military service , and other public imposts , Varro attributes to a drug' with which they rubbed the soles of their feet . In the Asiatic Researches ,

various ordeals are recorded as having taken place in Hindostan , which could only have been undergone by the use of some analogous secret . The miracles , Avhich depended for their performance upon a knowledge of hydrostatics , from

the accounts that have come down to us , appear to have been so extremely simple , that the mere elementary principles of the science would have been all that was required . Pliny speaks of a fountain which discharged .

wine during seven days , and water the best of the year . In one of the towns of Mis , during the annual feast of Bacchus , three empty urns were closed , and , on being opened at the appointed hour , were full of wine . By employing a machine ,

to which we give the name of Hero's fountainwhich , although probably it was only described , and not invented , by this mathematician—a more striking miracle might have been performed . Under the eyes of the spectator , the water passed

into a reservoir would have been emitted changed into wine . According to Otesias , when Xerxes caused the tomb of Belus to be opened , the body was found in a glass coffin almost full of oil . " Woe , " said an inscription , " to him who having

opened this tomb shall not fill the coffin . " Xerxes ordered that oil should be poured into it . Still , let them pour what quantity they might , the coffin was not filled ., This prodigy presaged to Xerxes the disasters Y » dnch signalised and terminated his

life , "he supposition of a syphon , concealed by the body , solves the mystery . No one now would consult a heathen oracle with the hope of receiving a response to his inquiries that might be relied on . The abstruser

sciences are pursued for other purposes ; and no one would repose on dreams to furnish a system of truth which would meet the wants of man . ( To lie continued . )

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WHEN dunces call us fools , without proving ; us to be so , our bestretortis to prove them to be fools , without condescending to call them so .

Summer Rambles.—The "Real Natives."

SUMMER RAMBLES . —THE "REAL NATIVES . "

Few districts in England exhibit more strikingly the changes which have taken place within the last few centuries in the political and social life of the people than the country round Canterbuiy . Scarce three hundred years have elapsed since ecclesiastical rule was all-powerful in these regions . Like

the kings of old , the grand archbishops , with their immense retinue of priests , knights , and squires , kept moving up and down the country , from one palace to another , sojourning alternately at Maidstone , Oxford , Knole , Lambeth , Charing , Croydon , and Wingham , and on high occasions holding Court at Canterbury , with such pomp and dignity as befit few other sovereigns but those of Holy Mother Church . It is sad to think that all this

grandeur should have gone to such prosaic ends in the course of a few generations . Canterbury still has her Archbishop , and he still is Primate of All England , and still holds precedence next to the Royal Family , and still enjoys a salary of £ 18 , 000 per annum for his services : but for all that he has

fallen deep indeed . No cavalcade of mitred abbots and mailed knights surrounds his chariot when going from Lambeth to Canterbury ; there is nothing but the train at Charing Cross , into which he is hustled by an unceremonious porter , who slaps the door in his faceand threatens him with

, the by-laws of " the company /'' if he move hand or foot beyond prescribed bounds . And even when the Archbishop has arrived in his own city , the matter is not much mended , for there , too , the visible railway porter and the invisible "company " are beings much superior to the successor of St .

Augustine , For has not Canterbury two railway stations , ever filled with snorting steam-engines , whose noise will drown the chant of a thousand priests , and is enough to startle Thomas a Becket himself from his bepainted tomb ? And has not the once Royal castle of Canterbury been turned

into a very useful gas-work , from which floatinglight is dispersed at 4 s . 6 d . per 1 , 000 cubic feet ? And has not the palace of Ethelbert , which the King gave up to St . Augustine and the first apostles of Christianity on these shores , been converteduntil recentlyinto a very attractive

ale-, , house , tea-garden , and skittle-ground ? Surely if there is a city in all England which has seen changes it is old Canterbury . But it is non only to the city itself , but almost more so to its neighbourhood , that the spirit of innovation has extended . There is a few miles

from Canterbury , at the mouth of the Thames , a singular little place called Wkitstame , which has actually grown into a social republic , upheld by communistic doctrines , and utterly unmindful of hereditary or other authority . Whitstable once was the port of the great ecclesiastical city , where

the ships lay at anchor which brought to the archiepiscopal table the luxuries of France and Italy , and which carried back the golden Peter's pence