stead of coat and unmentionables, to be put off and on and renewed at such inconvenient expense, a self-renewing tegument of cleanly feathers brushed and washed in the common course of nature by wind and rain -no valet to be paid and drilled—no dressing-case to be supplied and left behind no tooth-brushes to be mislaid-no tight boots-no corns— no passports nor post-horses! Do you know, Phil, on reflection, I find this mortal coil' a very inferior and inconvenient apparatus!"

"If you mean your own, I quite agree with you."

"I am surprised, Mr. Slingsby, that you, who value yourself on knowing what is due from one highly-civilized individual to another, should indulge in these very disagreeable reflections !"

Maimuna did not quite comprehend the argument, but she saw that the tables were turned, and, without ill-will to Job, she paid me the compliment of always taking my side. I felt her slender arm around my neck, and as she got upon her knees behind me and put forward her little head to get a peep at my lips, her clear bird-like laugh of enjoyment and triumph added visibly to my friend's mortification. A compunctious visiting stole over me, and I began to feel that I should scarce have revenged myself for what was, after all, but a kind severity.

"Do you know, Job," said I (anxious to restore his self-complacency without a direct apology for my rudeness), " do you know there is a very deep human truth hidden in the familiar story of Beauty and the Beast?' I really am of opinion, that, between the extremes of hideousness and the highest perfection of loveliness, there is no face which, after a month's intercourse, does not depend exclusively on its expression (or, in other words, on the amiable qualities of the individual) for the admiration it excites. The plainest features become handsome unaware when associated only with kind feelings, and the loveliest face disagreeable when linked with ill-humour or caprice. People should remember this when selecting a face which they are to see every morning across the breakfast-table for the remainder of their natural lives."

Job was appeased by the indirect compliment contained in this speech; and, gathering up our kibaubs, we descended to the caique, and pulling around the easternmost point of the Symplegades, bade adieu to the Orient, and took the first step westward with the smile of conciliation on our lips.

We were soon in the strong current of the Bosphorus, and shot swiftly down between Europe and Asia, by the light of a sunset that seemed to brighten the West for our return. It was a golden path homeward. The East looked cold behind; and the welcome of our far-away kinsmen seemed sent to us on those purpling clouds, winning us back. Beneath that kindling horizon-below that departed sun-lay the fresh and free land of our inheritance. The light of the world seemed gone over to it. These, from which the day had declined, were countries of Memory-ours, of Hope. The sun, that was setting on these, was dawning gloriously on ours.

On ordinary occasions, Job would have given me a stave of "Hail, Columbia!" after such a burst of patriotism. The cloud was on his soul, however.

"We have turned to go back," he said, in a kind of musing bitterness, "and see what we are leaving behind! In this fairly-shaped boat you are gliding like a dream down the Bosphorus. The curving shore

of Therapia yonder is fringed for miles with the pleasure-loving inhabitants of this delicious land, who think a life too short, of which the highest pleasure is to ramble on the edge of these calm waters with their kinsmen and children. Is there a picture in the world more beautiful than that palace-lined shore? Is there a city so magnificent under the sun as that in which it terminates? Are there softer skies, greener hills, simpler or better people to live among, than these? Oh, Philip! ours, with all its freedom, is a 'working-day' land. There is no idleness there! The sweat is ever on the brow, the serpent of care' never loosened about the heart! I confess myself a worshipper of Leisure : I would let no moment of my golden youth go by unrecorded with a pleasure. Toil is ungodlike, and unworthy of the immortal spirit, that should walk unchained through the world. I love these idle Orientals. Their sliding and haste-forbidding slippers, their flowing and ungirded habiliments, are signs most expressive of their joy in life. Look around, and see how on every hill-top stands a maison de plaisance; how every hill-side is shelved into those green platforms*, so expressive of their habits of enjoyment! Rich or poor, their pleasures are the same. The open air, freedom to roam, a caique at the water-side, and a sairgah on the hill-these are their means of happiness, and they are within the reach of all they are nearer Utopia than we, my dear Philip! We shall be more like Turks than Christians in Paradise!"

"Inglorious Job!"

"Why? Because I love idleness? Are there braver people in the world than the Turks? Are there people more capable of the romance of heroism? Energy, though it sound a paradox, is the child of Idleness. All extremes are natural and easy; and the most indolent in peace is likely to be the most fiery in war. Here we are, opposite the summer serai of Sultan Mahmoud; and who more luxurious and idle? Yet the massacre of the Janissaries was one of the boldest measures in history. There is the most perfect Orientalism in the description of the Persian beauty by Hafiz :

'On

'Her heart is full of passion, and her eyes are full of sleep.' Perhaps nothing would be so contradictory as the true analysis of the character of what is called an indolent man. With all the tastes I have just professed, my strongest feeling on leaving the Symplegades, for example, was, and is still, an unwillingness to retrace my steps. ward! onward!' is the perpetual ery of my heart. I could pass my life in going from land to land, so only that every successive one was new. Italy will be old to us; France, Germany, can scarce lure the imagination to adventure, with the knowledge we have; and England, though we have not seen it, is so familiar to us from its universality, that it will not seem, even on a first visit, a strange country, We have satiety before us, and the thought saddens me. I hate to go back. I could start now, with Maimuna for a guide, and turn gipsy in the wilds of Asia."

* All around Constantinople are seen what are called sairgahs-small greensward platforms levelled in the side of a hill, and usually commanding some lovely view, intended as spots on which those who are abroad for pleasure may spread their carpets. I know nothing so expressive as this of the simple and natural lives led by these gentle Orientals.

"Will
you go with him, Maimuna ?”
Signor, no!"

I am the worst of story-tellers, gentle reader; for I never get to the end. The truth is, that, in these rambling papers, I go over the incidents I describe, not as they should be written in a romance, but as they occurred in my travels: I write what I remember. There are, of course, long intervals in adventure, filled up sometimes by feasting or philosophy, sometimes with idleness or love; and, to please myself, I must unweave the thread as it was woven. It is strange how, in the memory of a traveller, the most wayside and unimportant things are often the best remembered. You may have stood in the Parthenon, and, looking back upon it through the distance of years, a chance word of the companion who happened to be with you, or the attitude of a Greek seen in the plain below, may come up more vividly to the recollection than the immortal sculptures on the frieze. There is a natural antipathy in the human mind to fulfil expectations. We wander from the thing we are told to admire, to dwell on something we have discovered ourselves. The child in church occupies itself with the fly on its prayer-book, and "the child is father of the man." If I indulge in the same perversity in story-telling, dear reader,—if, in the most important crisis of my tale, I digress to some trifling vein of speculation,-if, at the close even, the climax seem incomplete, and the moral vain, I plead, upon all these counts, an adherence to truth and nature. Life-real life-is made up of half-finished romance, The most interesting procession of events is delayed, and travestied, and mixed with the ridiculous and the trifling, and, at the end, oftenest left imperfect. Who ever saw, off the stage, a five-act tragedy, with its proprieties and its climax ? For another month, gentlest reader, adieu !

SLINGSBY.

SONNET TO SLEEP.

SOFT! not a breeze is stirring in the trees!
Oh! gently breathe, sweet Sleep, upon mine eyes:
Each outward object from my vision flees,

And nothing answers to my inward sighs.

I am a wanderer in an alien land,

A lonely watcher by the fold of years!

Weigh down my lids with thine untroubled hand,
And gently dry upon my cheek the tears.
Though oft I chase thee with unquiet thought,
I do remember in the nights o'erpast

How sweet it was to find thee whom I sought,-
How sad at morn to part with thee at last,
When, ah! I felt thee from my spirit flown,
And I was left unto the world alone!

G. L. MONTAGU.

THE DREAM.

"Sleep hath its own world,

And a wild realm of wide reality;

And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears and tortures, and the touch of joy.
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts."

Or thee, love, I was dreaming
Beneath the moon's pale light;
The trees were silver seeming,
And the meadow grass was white.
The lark below was sleeping,-
He asks, whene'er he springs
From the dewy clover's keeping,
For sunshine on his wings.

The leaves hung dark and shivering
O'er the colourless dim flowers;
And the aspen's restless quivering
Alone disturbed the hours.

Pale were the roses, stooping
Beneath the heavy dews,
And the wan acacia drooping
Forgot its morning hues.
Perhaps my sleep might borrow
Its likeness from the shade;
For the shadow of some sorrow
Upon my soul was laid.
We seem'd to be together,
And yet we seem'd apart;
In sleep,-I question'd whether
Mine was the sleeper's part.

Pale faces gather'd round us,-
The faces of the dead;

With cold white wreaths they bound us,

We shudder'd, and they fled.

Next came a crowd; I lost thee
Amid the rapid throng,

While hurrying strangers cross'd me,
And forced my steps along.

Strange mirth was there,—but lonely;
It was not made for me:
I sought for thee-thee only,-
I sought in vain for thee !
Again we met,-but alter'd:

Thy brow was not the same:
I strove to speak, but falter'd,-
I could not breathe thy name.
And then I saw thee leave me,
And wear another's yoke!
In sleep thou couldst deceive me!
But ah! at once I woke.

L.E. L.

PRECEPTS AND PRACTICE.

LIFE AFTER DEATH.

HAPPINESS in marriage, according to the proverb, is most likely to be attained by an equality of age, rank, and fortune on both sides-an axiom, to be sure, militating in no small degree against the principle of "bettering one's self" by matrimony.

This phrase "bettering one's self" is at all times a very doubtful one. A pampered footman, who is found in every comfort and almost luxury in life," betters himself" by marrying his mistress's maid, and setting up a public-house, where, in the course of a couple of years, he drinks up his profits and constitution, and is found figuring away in the "Gazette" as a bankrupt; while the housemaid of the family "betters herself" by leaving service and marrying a journeyman painter, who, after having stocked his garret with three small children, either pitches head-foremost from a three-pair of stairs window which he is cleaning, or sinks into pallidity and paralysis, arising from the use of white lead :—so much for bettering one's self! And if we look through the ranks of bettermost life, we shall find that all marriages made with the same view, however exalted one of the parties may be, and however exigeant the other, are equally disappointing to the "high contracting powers," with the inferior pursuits of the publican or the painter.

So thinking, it must be gratifying to a reader to know that he is about to peruse the history of two lovers whose parents were equals in rank and station, and fortune-assimilating in their pursuits-congenial in their characters and dispositions-both excellent and amiable men. Their wives were equally agreeable persons, and people who knew them best, said that the Rue St. Honore never had two families more closely allied by sympathies and friendship than those of Claude St. Pierre and Joseph Desbrouillan.

St. Pierre was a clothier, well to do in the world, who lived on the right-hand side of the street, in a shop the admiration of Paris. Desbrouillan was a silk mercer, and lived on the left-hand side of the same street, in a magazin of first-rate character-St. Pierre had a son— Desbrouillan had a daughter-the families were upon the most intimate terms-need I say another word? Adelaide Desbrouillan and Florence St. Pierre were in their hearts affianced.

"Florence St. Pierre," said Madame Desbrouillan to her husband,

" is a very nice young man."

"Adelaide Desbrouillan," said Madame St. Pierre to her husband, "is a very nice girl."

Nobody-the most fastidious critic alive-could have dissented from these two propositions.

"He is twenty-four," said M. Desbrouillan to his wife.

"She is nineteen," said M. St. Pierre, to his.

And so they went on; and while the old ones seemed tacitly to agree to the union, the young ones, who really did love each other, saw no great reason for depriving themselves of the pleasure-above all others in the world-derivable from the sweet and enthralling interchange of hopes and wishes, doubts and fears, with which such an intimacy is so thickly studded.