218 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



on the under side of the animal. The so-called eyes would be 

 at the ends of the rays, the madreporic plate being the only 

 element left near its original position. This arrangement is 

 exactly that found in the star-fish, or asterias. 



The asterias, however, presents many points of dissimilarity 

 from the echinus, especially in relation to its alimentary canal. 

 Canal it is not in the proper sense, for it has only one opening, 

 through which the food is both received and ejected. Ten organs 

 two lying in each ray empty themselves into the sides of the 

 stomach, but whether these are only radial extensions of the 

 stomach, or represent a liver, is a matter of speculation. The 

 most singular thing is, that the star-fish, although so nearly 

 allied to the echinus, presents not a trace of the singularly com- 

 plicated apparatus of jaws and teeth, which we have described, 

 as found in the latter animal. We have described the sea- 

 urchin, because it is the typical animal of the class, and there- 

 fore occupies a central position in this arrangement of orders. 

 Above the echini come the sea-cucumbers, which resemble the 

 echini in having avenues of tubular feet to walk with, but differ 

 from them in having soft elongated muscular integuments, by 

 the contractions of which they move. Sometimes the avenues 

 of suckers in these animals are all brought together to one side, 

 on which the creature crawls. We have thus an approach to 

 the two-sided arrangement found in the snail. These animals 

 have a curious system for effecting the function of respiration. 

 This is not done by exposing the juices of the body to the 

 influence of the oxygen of the water by protrusions of their 

 membranes externally, but the water is forced into two organs 

 which run up into the body, and which are so branched as to be 

 called . the respiratory trees. The water is forced into the 

 branches of these trees by means of a muscular bulb at the end 

 of the alimentary canal, into which the sea-water is received 

 from behind by a wide opening, and then injected into the 

 organs. This arrangement is the aquatic representative of the 

 tracheal system in insects. In a yet higher order the tubular 

 feet entirely disappear, and the body is constructed at intervals 

 so as to form rings, and this, combined with the worm-like 

 motion of the animal, suggests that it is a connecting link 

 between the echinoderms and the annelids. 



We have no space left to dwell upon the nervous system of 

 these animals, or on the curious development of many of them 

 from larval forms quite unlike in shape from the mature animals, 

 and which forms, contrary to what we might have expected, 

 present a perfect two-sided symmetry. 



The orders into which the class is divided, and which we have 

 cursorily described, are thus named : 



1. Crinoidese = stone-lilies. 



2. Ophiuridse = brittle-stars. 



3. AsteriadaB = star-fish. 



4. Echinidse = sea-urchins. 



5. Holothuridse = sea-cucumbers, 



6. Sipunculidee. 



HISTORIC SKETCHES. XX. 



HAELES EDWARD STUAKT AND THE EEBELLION OF 1715. 

 IT is difficult to realise the idea of disloyalty in Scotland to the 

 royal family of Great Britain, and still more difficult to realise 

 the idea of a claimant to the crown finding favour in any part 

 of the kingdom. Happily, the time has long since gone by 

 when a disputed succession, and the numerous disorders to which 

 it gave rise, compelled the people of these kingdoms not only 

 to realise such ideas, but to feel the effect of realisation every 

 day of their lives. The time has gone by let us hope, never 

 to return and we find it hard to recall, with any distinctness, 

 so much as the memory of it. Yet there are many now living 

 whose grandfathers might have fought at Culloden, might have 

 been in the squadron which brought Charles Edward Stuart to 

 Lochaber, or have been among the spectators when the heads 

 of Lord Lovat, Lord Balmerino, and Lord Kilmarnock fell on 

 the scaffold for the part they had had in armed rebellion 

 against the Government. 



England has suffered pretty severely at one time and another 

 from disputed successions. The three immediate successors of 

 William the Conqueror, including two of his own sons, were 

 usurpers, and maintained their position, more or less, by the 

 strong hand. Richard II. was deposed and supplanted by 

 a prince of the House of Lancaster, whose bad title to the 

 crown in presence of heirs of the House of York was the 

 fruitful source of long and bitter trouble to England, which was 

 not ended till the completion of those matrimonial alliances which 



were made after the Battle of Bosworth Field by Henry VII., in 

 whose reign two cheats succeeded only too well in disturbing 

 the peace of the country, which was not again broken by pro 

 tenders to the throne till after the death of Edward VI., when 

 Lady Jane Grey asserted, through her husband and father-in- 

 law, the right to be Queen of England which the late king 

 had given her by his will. This claim having been drowned 

 in the blood of those who advanced it, no other question 

 arose about the right to reign till the few adherents of Lady 

 Arabella Stuart ventured to put forward her title in bar of 

 James I.'s succession. But this claim was almost bloodlessly 

 set aside, and the land had peace from the like of it till 

 those circumstances presented themselves which induced 

 the English nation to drive away from their throne the line 

 of Stuart princes who had proved themselves so unworthy to 

 fill it. Those circumstances, and the last public events to 

 which they gave rise, will be the subject of the present historic 

 sketch. 



Whatever wrong had been done by the English nation to 

 Charles I. (the nation, be it remembered, had only striven to 

 bind him to his duty by constitutional means ; it was Cromwell, 

 with the army, who put him to death), had been amply com- 

 pensated by its restoration of Charles II. That prince, by his 

 consummate indifference to the national honour, by his reckless 

 extravagance, his inordinate self-indulgence, and the con- 

 temptible condition to which he reduced the nation that a few 

 years before ha.d been second to none in Europe, almost con- 

 vinced the people of the impossibility of allowing the Stuarts 

 to remain on the throne ; but it was reserved to his brother, 

 James II., to convince them thoroughly, and to compel them to 

 act upon their convictions. 



James II., who had come to the throne with strong pre- 

 judices against him in the popular mind, proceeded to set those 

 prejudices at defiance, and to conduct himself according to 

 those maxims of government which had proved fatal to his 

 father the maxims which looked upon the kingdom as the 

 private property of the king, held by an indefeasible right from 

 God himself, and in the administration of which he had but 

 to consult his own fancies. He had no notion of an obligation 

 binding upon him as king, correlative with the allegiance which 

 he demanded of the people ; and the people, who had never 

 before the advent of the house of Stuart seen such a flagrant 

 disregard of this moral obligation in their kings, were compelled 

 to change the moral obligation into a legal one before they 

 admitted another king to reign over them. James ran counter to 

 the national wish, and through the declaration he had voluntarily 

 made, in restoring the State use of the Koman Catholic religion, 

 his popularity suffered mortally in the matter of the Duke of 

 Monmouth's rebellion (see Vol. II., p. 85); while his despotic en- 

 croachments upon the liberties of the Church of England, and 

 his assumption of independence on the national will as repre- 

 sented by Parliament, completed the measure of the national 

 wrath. The leaders of parties in England treated secretly with 

 the king's son-in-law, William of Orange, who agreed to come 

 over and help them. 



William issued a proclamation containing an elaborate 

 account of all the illegal acts done by the king, declared that 

 he should bring with him only such a force as he deemed 

 necessary to guard him against the kind's evil counsellors, and 

 that his sole object in coming was to restore the rights and 

 liberties of the country by means of a free Parliament, and to 

 inquire duly into the claims of the Prince of Wales to be what 

 he was represented to be the king's son. For a rumour had 

 got about that the heir-apparent was a changeling, or, at all 

 events, not the son of the king and queen. The rumour sprang, 

 no doubt, from the ready malice of the king's many enemies ; 

 and there is every reason to believe, at this distance of time, 

 that it was entirely false and unfounded. Many, however, 

 at that time accepted it as true, and gladly believed what 

 they heartily wished for. There was a genuine doubt in 

 the mind of the people whether the Prince of Wales had 

 any right to be so called, still more whether he had any 

 prospective right to the nation's allegiance as their lawful 

 sovereign. This doubt William declared, in his manifesto, he 

 would clear up. 



On the 5th of November, 1688, William landed at Brixham, 

 in Torbay, with his small army of Dutch troops, and marched to 

 Exeter, where, after a short delay, for the people remembered the 



