violent earthquakes. I saw at once that the earth was about being blown up. I hurried to the other side of the globe, and WORLD MIGHT HAVE there boring a somewhat smaller hole, let the water out again with a terrible commotion and steam—it

BEEN BLOWN UP.

was all I could do.

But notwithstanding the trouble, it taught me one fact in agriculture -Never to drain an estate by merely carrying the water into the `next parish, but to pass it right through the world at once, and get it out of the way.

Luckily, neither earthquakes, ditch-water, nor any other mishaps have yet extinguished the Great Fire, and although I sometimes fancy the earth is cooler than it used to be, I yet draw upon it for the ready means of carrying on my many and wonderful schemes.

A SEWING MACHINE, that cuts out, bastes, sews, stitches, herringbones, turns down, brushes, and sends home.

USEFUL LIST.

A BEATING FRAME for carpets.

A CARDING ENGINE for address cards.

A DRAWING, SLUBBING, and ROVING FRAME for artists on sketching tours.

A THROSTLE SPINNING FRAME for music-halls.

A SELF-ACTING MULE for costermongers.

A HAMMERING MACHINE to hammer fat men thin.

A DRILLING MACHINE for the Volunteers.

A PUNCHING MACHINE for Tom Sayers.

A PLANING MACHINE for levelling Switzerland; and

A NEWSPAPER MACHINE for printing three hundred thousand copies in five minutes, and delivering them at the door of the retailer before he is out of bed in the morning.

:

But of all my Central-Heat inventions none at all approached my establishment of automaton servants, formed on the following plan A BUTLER who bottled in, laid down, took up, and AUTOMATON ESTAB- put on the table at the right moment the most delicious wines known in Europe, without ever tasting

LISHMENT.

or spilling a drop.

A FOOTMAN, with calves and irreproachable manner, who waited at table, cleaned plate, and adorned the hall-door without either making love to the cook or flirting with the housemaid.

A Cook, equal to Francatelli and modest as Soyer, without a trace of bad temper.

A HOUSEMAID, could sweep, scrub, and dust without insolence or disdain.

A SCULLERY MAID who was clean.

A PAGE who never cut off one of his hundred buttons.

A GROOM who used good language, and never stole the oats, because there were none to steal.

A HORSE which never ate, drank, jibbed, reared, or stumbled.

A Dog who only barked at thieves and German bands; and

A CAT who could catch the mouse without murdering the canary bird-all worked by machinery set in motion by Central Heat, brought from the depth of a hundred leagues in buckets of asbestos.

up

I turned my attention to house-building once-began with glass houses, but suffered from heat and the tendency of every inmate to grow tall, like flowers under a frame; be

GLASS HOUSE.

WHEEL HOUSE.

FLAT HOUSE.

sides, as everybody could see what we were doing-here was, even to Munchausen, another drawback. My house on wheels was the next attempt, but as it was put about that I travelled in a house on wheels for the sole purpose of evading my incometax collector, I gave it up to Wombwell, who turned it into a menagerie, and set to work on a folding house, which would lay flat and free from housebreakers while we were at Scarborough for the season-still, as the postman could not find the slit in the door after the house was packed up, and I thereby lost so many letters, I was obliged to make an accordion house, that pulled in and out at discretion, playing operatic music meanwhile; but Mr. Balfe, who paid me a visit, getting up in the middle of the night to play "See, he comes !" I got so badly squeezed in one of the folds, that I could only find comfort in the idea for a telescope house,

MUSIC HOUSE.

built in accordance with my means at that time, but TELESCOPE HOUSE. so constructed as to pull out like a telescope, as my fortune and its incumbrances increased upon me. This plan, founded upon so much foregone experience, is quite the best yet known, and has already given rise to that new style for which architects have been so long gazing. It is called "The Floriatelescopicwithawinchausen style."

Out of this house I pulled my well-known laboratory, where my toofamous experiments in chemistry, electricity, magnetism, and spectrum analysis were carried on.

Here I invented my soluble electro-magnet, for drawing iron into the human system. This alone has brought me more honours than I can tell, save in an appendix. It has given iron constitutions to all the peoples of Europe, and already enabled the Italians to free themselves from their worst oppressors, who failed to

SOLUBLE MAGNET.

swallow my magnet. My speaking electric telegraph, which delivers messages in the exact tone of voice in which they are given, is not yet allowed as a witness in our law courts, but its general utility has long been admitted.

VOICE PHOTO.

Of course you have heard (talking of human voice) of my photographic invention, by which not only are features and form indelibly impressed upon the collodion, but words spoken at the time of operation are printed on the background in clear legible Roman characters. It is not within the limits of probability that any one but Munchausen could have prepared a film so sensitive; it has been made in connection with a galvanic battery, which so shocks the feelings of dishonest persons, shopkeepers, tickets-of-leave, and the like, that they at once return to upright and irreproachable lives, taking with them thereunto photographs of the last wicked words they dared

to use.

It was through my microscope that the ultimate ATOM was descried -I say no more! With my telescope I have held conversations with the man in the moon-my combined thermobarometer gives the weather for a year to come-never fails-has done away with all chance of shipwreck; but, alas! ruined my friend, poor Admiral Fitzroy.

THE MUNCHY."

My safety-lamp, now used in preference to either "Geordie" or "Davy," is called the "Munchy." In addition to giving a light more brilliant than the so-called electric light, it cooks a joint, boils a kettle, bakes a pie, and roasts a potato, while the miner is quietly getting on with his work. It is lighted with a gas non-explosive, non-conductive, free from smell, self-generative, and made for nothing; the only cost is first hand for the lamp itself, sold by Deane & Co., price sixpence.

I discovered Aluminium, Thallium, and the water-glass process. In this top chamber of my telescopic house I distilled a poison so strong and so tasteless, that an accident happening in its wholesale manufacture at my works at Sheffield, we were forced to attribute the enormous number of deaths to the bursting of a reservoir, for fear of the fury of the populace, who, had they but known the truth, would have killed the innocent Munchausen with a dose of his own extract; luckily since then I have discovered that cold water is the antidote, so in case of accident it is best to run to the water-butt.

NARROW ESCAPE.

When I tumbled on the philosopher's stone, I broke it into three pieces one I sent to Baron Rothschild, the second to Lord Palmerston; but the third I kept. The Jew has wealth, the statesman health, and the philosopher perpetual youth.

A COMPLIMENT.

"A very sensible division," said Pam, in reply, for which compliment I here publicly thank him. While the philosopher's stone was engaging my attention, I found, quite by accident, the universal solvent, by means of which I restore geological specimens to their original state. I cannot yet get them to speak, or even to walk, but as a young megatherium squeaked like a sucking pig yesterday, on being put into the pot for my dinner, I have hopes of restoring these gentle creatures to the world in time, if I have but patience.

The price of coals has gone up this year considerably, but I don't wonder at that, for as I have found that my carbon

DIAMONDS FROM COAL. refiner consumes upwards of a ton of Wallsend to make but one Koh-i-noor, you may guess that I use a large quantity of coal in the course of a year.

I keep all the hospitals of England well drenched with oxygen gas, by means of my oxyvaporiser. Indeed, what with galvanism, mesmerism, cayenne pepper, and common soda, I am enabled to send out as cured ninety-nineths of every hundred patients received into these establishments. This is gratifying, and as my

OXYVAPORISER.

Geyser pipes have just been laid on, and a plentiful supply of hot water will be spread from Iceland all over the world, I look even to a more complete result in time.

My guillotine amputator, for taking off limbs, has a compensation movement, by which the ends of the nerves and arteries are all caught up, a piece of my artificial epidermis spread over, and an acorn planted in the hollow of the bone, so that in a few weeks the patient finds that he has grown his own wooden leg.

My artificial eyes enable people to see so keenly that Lord Shaftesbury came to me only last week and implored me to take out the pair I had given him, as they forced him to see so clearly the faults of other people that he could not bear it any longer.

EYES AND VOICE.

That my artificial voices are a great success, may be settled at once by any one who cares to take the trouble of listening to either Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bellew, or Mr. Spurgeon.

Of my centrifugal railway "all round the world in half an hour;" of my fire-escape, a kind of bellows, blowing the fire away from the person wearing it, I say nothing. I will only remind you that I invented spectrum analysis, and the art of procuring endless supplies of emerald green cheese from the moon at the full.

ST. JOHN'S EVE; OR, THE FOUR DESTINIES.

A LEGEND OF PORTUGAL.

Told by FATHER MANUEL, Monk of the Order of St. Francis, to

WILLIAM H. G. KINGSTON.

IN TWO PARTS.

THE

PART I.-THE FOUR DESTINIES.

HE following events occurred during the most glorious days of the Lusitanian Monarchy, when the victorious fleets of Portugal extended their renowned voyages, as well to the far-off lands of the ancient East, as to the distant shore of the New World, lately discovered by the enterprise of the daring Genoese, Colombo. Those were the days when our foes crouched humbly before us, and when by the power of our conquering swords we compelled the hapless heathens to believe in our Holy Church-that Church now trampled on and despised by the infidels and political economists of the present generation, that Church which established the Holy Inquisition, and more than all was the firm protector of the pious monks of St. Francis. Ah me! Ah me! But to my story. Not far from the renowned and ancient city of Oporto, on the south bank of the gold-bearing Douro, was and still exists in all its beauty the picturesque village of Avintez, embosomed in groves of orange, olive, and almond trees, while the heights around are covered with tall and umbrageous woods. It is indeed a lovely spot, and worthy of the fair damsels inhabiting it, who have ever been celebrated in the neighbouring districts for their beauty. Among the prettiest maidens in the village were two sisters, Rosa and Maria by name, daughters of an honest lavrador well to do in the world, who esteemed his children—and therein he was right-not the least valuable portion of his possessions. It was on the Eve of the Festival of St. John, that day so celebrated throughout the whole of Christendom, and Rosa and Maria, dressed in their festa costume, were about to set forth to a merry-making which was to take place at the house of a relation who lived at the other end of the povoa (village). How pretty they looked with their large broad