At last it came. Not less than eighteen times had El Re charged home, and eighteen times had the spear-point been planted with cruel exactness, until the gore poured down from one great wound above the shoulder, to leave a ruddy trail upon the sand. Then, as the combatants stood facing each other, Mendez felt La Perla sway beneath him, and knew that the critical moment had arrived.

For the first time he took the initiative. And now began an exhibition of skill and daring never surpassed. With the garrocha held low in rest, and his eye fixed on the blood-shot orbs which followed his slightest movement, slowly, almost imperceptibly, so as to avoid provoking a charge, he backed La Perla in a half-circle, until the point of the spear lay at an acute angle behind the shoulder of the bull. Those only who were nearest, straining over the barrier to catch, like true aficionados, the niceties of the combat, could hear the words, Ahora o nunca, por mi vida, o por mi muerte;' and lifting La Perla with spur and hand and will, with the inexplicable sympathy which exists between a true rider and his horse, he hurled her at the bull. So rapid was the dash, that before El Re could make a half-turn to meet it, the spear was in his shoulder, driven with the full weight of man and horse, with the full vigour of that tremendous arm. Beneath the terrific impulse the blunt point burst through the lacerated hide, and irresistible as the keen blade of the matador, the huge shaft followed, boring through flesh and brawn and muscle, right down into the very heart of the mighty bulk; the mass still surged and heaved and struggled against the mortal agony, the tough garrocha bent like a wand, and La Perla reeled and tottered like a drunken man, but the arm of Mendez was as a bar of steel. You would not have said that the horse was supporting the rider, but that the rider, holding by the spear-shaft, was sustaining the horse between his knees; and so the three remained, until the last convulsive throe died out of what was once El Re, and La Perla, though shivering in every limb, had recovered from her exhaustion; then with one mighty effort Mendez drew out the garrocha, and removing his mask, again saluted the royal box.

And you ask, my gallant Mendez,' said Ferdinand, you ask

for-?'

That which I have risked, your Majesty, my life.'

'Your life, man; por Dios, how is your life in danger now?' I have had the misfortune to kill two of your Majesty's guards at P. Santa Maria.'

'Two of my guards!' thundered Ferdinand; two of my guards! and you come here expecting to save your own miserable life. Ah, scoundrel! you have laid a trap for me. Had I but known before I pledged my word, not if you had killed fifty bulls with your

naked hands, should you have escaped. Vengo sofocado! Begone, rascal! out of my sight, and let me never see or hear of you again!' But after Ferdinand's first passion had subsided he did see and hear of Mendez again; for with the despatch from P. Santa Maria came a petition, signed by the principal inhabitants, against the general conduct of the guards, and the King inquired carefully into Pinto's case; and finding that there had been provocation enough to justify, at all events in Spanish eyes, the cutting of at least halfa-dozen throats, and that the double homicide was more the result of an unfortunate superfluity of strength than of malice prepense, inasmuch as probably any other man in the kingdom of Spain might have knocked together the heads of two of his Majesty's guards without producing any material effect: considering all this, he not only forgave Pinto, but rewarded him liberally. Nay more, he insisted that Gomez and his daughter should be sent for, in order that the latter might be married to her lover in Madrid, and bask in the sunshine of royal favour. Which was done accordingly. But the volatile monarch being deeply smitten with the fair Andalusian, the sunshine of royal favour waxed so warm, that old Gomez, who was sufficiently loyal not to desire his sovereign's head to be broken, one fine day persuaded Pinto to undertake the return journey to P. Santa Maria, somewhat more slowly and comfortably than he had come. So the three went back to their native town, where the family of Pinto still flourishes in the bullfighting line, though no member of it has hitherto equalled the exploit of their grandfather with El Re.

THE METAMORPHOSES OF WORLDS

BIRTH, life, death, decay, and re-creation from the results of decay through these stages of existence it would seem that all things must pass, in obedience to an immutable law. Mundane examples of this sequence are familiar enough: we will not allude to them. But, following a philosopher, whose name we shall presently mention, we would ask whether it is not more than probable that the same sequence occurs in a far grander order, and upon a far grander scale, in the development of worlds. Are not worlds born? Do they not exist as worlds, and die, and dissolve? and out of the results of their dissolution do not new worlds come into existence? An inquiry of this kind occupied the learned Academicians of Paris for several evenings during the city's winter of misfortune. It was raised by M. Stanislaus Meunier in connection with a very comprehensive examination of the phenomena of meteorites considered with reference to their original formation. We propose to spend a few minutes with M. Meunier, whose speculations, though they at first sight seem to border on the poetical, are yet legitimate, because they are based upon facts and general laws; and if time should prove some of the links in his chain of reasoning to be erroneous, nevertheless is that reasoning worthy of popular exposition as a sample of deductive philosophy. The fact that the essay which embodies the hypothesis of M. Meunier is referred to a commission for examination of its claims to be rewarded with the astronomical prize of the Academy, is a proof that it is not lightly esteemed by the French savans.

M. Meunier maintains that the meteoric masses, great and small, which fall upon our earth, are the débris of a globe that was once a perfect planet. There is nothing novel in his theory so far; this thought has occurred to scores of minds before. But some novelty enters his speculations when he declares that by a minute. examination of the characteristic features of meteorites, we may reconstruct the planet of which they are the vestiges, just as the paleontologist can restore an extinct animal from its exhumed remains; and more novelty when he endeavours to define the place in our system which the perished globe occupied, and the period to which its disaggregation may be assigned.

Meteorites, meteoric stones,' as they are sometimes called (and called erroneously, seeing that many of them are principally metallic), are not all alike in constitution: they are of different structure and of different material. Some are stratiform and of differ