Victoria clung to the projecting walls of the castle, having fixed her fingers within a clamping-iron, and hung to it with the tenacity of one who clings to life; while her screams and lamentations filled the air. Albert heard it, and judged of the cause. He applied the match to the mine he had pierced through the stones of the tower. With a tremendous crack and explosion, the ancient walls opened, shook, collapsed, and fell. The tower was shattered to its foundation; and prisoner and dungeon, turret and battlement, fell down in one prodigious ruin, and with an uproar that shook the city.
Montalbert lay dead among the ruins. The faithful Victoria was miraculously saved, and Albert rose from the fallen stones uninjured. He clasped his beloved wife to his heart, and without losing a moment’s time, both escaped in the confusion and consternation that followed.
They soon proceeded far from Italy, to a land where imprisonment for conscience sake is unknown, where spiritual domination cannot usurp nature’s rights; and where the children of God can walk in security and peace; and that land was England. Here they lived the remainder of their days in all the enjoyment which this country of true liberty always affords to the fugitive and stranger.
A Pointed Blow.—An invalid sent for a physician, the late Dr. Wheelman, and after detaining him for some time with a description of his pains, aches, &c., he thus summed up with—
“Now, Doctor, you have humbugged me long enough with your good-for-nothing pills and worthless syrups; they don’t touch the real difficulty. I wish you to strike the cause of my ailment, if it is in your power to reach it.”
“It shall be done,” said the Doctor, at the same time lifting his cane, and demolishing a decanter of gin that stood upon the sideboard!
Inhabitants of an Oyster.—Observations with the microscope have shown that the shell of an oyster is a world occupied by an innumerable quantity of small animals, compared to which the oyster itself is a colossus. The liquid enclosed between the shells of the oyster, contains a multitude of embryos, covered with transparent scales, which swim with ease; a hundred and twenty of these embryos, placed side by side, would not make an inch in breadth.
This liquor contains besides, a great variety of animalculæ, five hundred times less in size, which give out a phosphoric light. Yet these are not the only inhabitants of this dwelling; there are, also, three distinct species of worms.