thought'had I deigned to tell them I had come to her bedside merely to catch 'rats-it was out of my power to divine: however, the fact was, I cared not a straw what they thought; but, seeing that my presence was not requisite, I gravely left the poor sufferer to tell her own story. "Ratten!" Ratten!" was its theme; and, long before her fears subsided, my mind, as well as its body, were placidly entranced in sleep.

THE CROSS OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

To an old man, one of the most delightful features in a German watering-place, is the ease with which he can associate, in the most friendly manner, with all his brother and sister water-bibbers, without the fatigue of speaking one single word.

Almost every glass of water you get from the brunnen adds, at least, one to the list of your acquaintance. Merely touching a man's elbow is sufficient to procure from him a look of good-fellowship, which, though it does not inconveniently grow into a bow, or even into a smile, is yet always afterwards displayed in his physiognomy whenever it meets yours. If, as you are stretching out yourglass, you retire but half a stride, to allow a thirsting lady to step forwards, you clearly see, whensoever you afterwards meet her, that the slight attention is indelibly recorded in your favour. Even running against a German produces, as it were by collision, a spark of kind feeling, which, like a star in the heavens, twinkles in his serene countenance whenever you behold it. Smile only once upon a group of children, and the little urchins bite their

lips, vainly repressing their joy whenever afterwards you meet them.

Shrouded in this delightful taciturnity, my list of acquaintances at Langen-Schwalbach daily increased, until I found myself on just the sort of amicable terms with almost everybody, which, to my present taste, is the most agreable. In early life young people (if I recollect right) are never quite happy, unless they are either talking, or writing letters to their fellow-creatures. Whenever, even as strangers, they get together, everything that happens or passes seems to engender conversation-even when they have parted, there is no end to epistolary valedictions, and creation itself loses half its charms, unless the young beholder has some companion with whom the loveliness of the picture may be shared and enjoyed.

But old age I find stiffens, first of all, the muscles of the tongue; indeed, as man gradually decays, it seems wisely provided by Nature that he should be willing to be dumb, before time obliges him to be deaf: in short, the mind, however voraciously it might once have searched for food, at last instinctively prefers rumination, to seeking for more.

By young people I shall be thought selfish, yet I do confess that I enjoy silence, because my own notions now suit me best; other people's opinions, like their shoes, don't fit me, and however ill-constructed or old-fashioned my own may really be, yet use has made them easy: my sentiments, ugly as they may seem, don't pinch, and I therefore feel I had rather not exchange them; the one or two friends I have lost, rank in my memory better than any I can ever hope to gain: in fact, I had rather not replace them, and at Langen-Schwalbach, as

there was no necessity for a passing stranger like myself to set up a fine new acquaintance with people he would probably never see again, I considered that with my eyes and ears open, my tongue might harmlessly enjoy natural and delightful repose.

But there is a perverseness in human nature, which it is quite out of my power to account for; and strange as it may sound, it is nevertheless too true, that the only person at Langen-Schwalbach I felt desirous to address, was the only individual who seemed to shun every human being.

He was a withered, infirm man, who appeared to be tottering on the brink of his grave; and I had long remarked that for some reason or other he studiously avoided the Brunnen until every person had left it. He spoke to no one-looked at no onebut as soon as he had swallowed off his dose, he retired to a lone bench, on which, with both hands leaning upon his ivory-handled cane, he was always to be seen sitting with his eyes sorrowfully fixed on the ground. Although the weather was, to every person but himself, oppressively hot, he was constantly muffled up in a thick cloak, and I think I must have passed him a hundred times before I detected, one exceedingly warm day, that underneath it, there hung upon his left breast the Cross of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. As, ages ago, I had myself passed many a hot summer on the parched, barren rock of Malta,-always however feeling much interested in the history of its banished knights, I at once fully comprehended why the poor old gentleman's body was so chilly, and why his heart felt so chilled with the world. By many slow and scientific approaches which it would be only tedious to detail, I at last managed, without

driving him from his bench, most quietly to establish myself at his side, and then by coughing when he coughed, sighing when he sighed, and by other I hope innocent) artifices, I at last ventured in a sotto voce to mumble to him something about the distant island in which apparently all his youthful feelings lay buried. The words Valetta, Civita Vecchia, Floriana, Cottonera, etc., as I pronounced them, produced, by a sort of galvanic influence, groans-ejaculations--short sentences, until at last he began to shew me frankly without disguise the real colour of his mind. Poor man! like his eye it was jaundiced-"nullis medicabilis herbis!" I could not at all extract from him what rank, title, or situation he held in the ancient order, but I could too clearly see that he looked upon its extinction as the Persian would look upon the annihilation of the sun. Creation he fancied had been robbed of its colours, Christianity he thought had lost its heart, and he attributed every political ailment on the surface of the globe to the non-existence of the knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem.

For several hours I patiently listened to his unhappy tale; for as lamentations of all sorts are better out of the human heart than in it, I felt that as the vein was open, my patient could not be encouraged to bleed too freely: without therefore once contradicting him, I allowed his feelings to flow uninterrupted, and by the time he had pumped himself dry, I was happy to observe that he was certainly much better for the operation. On leaving him, however, my own pent-up view of the case, and his, continued for the remainder of the day bubbling and quarrelling with each other in my mind. Therefore, to satisfy myself before I went to bed,

I drew out in black and white the following sketch of what has always appeared to me to be a fair, impartial history of these-Knights of Malta.

THE Mediterranean forms a curious and beautiful feature in the picture of the commercial world. By dint of money and shipping we laboriously bring to England the produce of the most distant regions, but the commerce of the whole globe seems to have a natural or instinctive tendency to flow, almost of its own accord, into the Mediterranean Sea. Bèginning with the great Atlantic Ocean, which connects the old world with the new, we know that, over that vast expanse, the prevailing wind is one which blows from America towards Europe; and moreover, that the waters of the Atlantic are without any apparent return, everlastingly flowing into the narrow straits of Gibraltar. When the produce of America therefore is shipped for the Mediterranean, in general terms it may be asserted that wind and tide are in its favour.

Across the trackless deserts of Africa caravans from various parts of the interior are constantly toiling through the sand towards the waters of this inland sea. The traveller who goes up the Nile is doomed, we all know, to stem its torrent, but the produce of Egypt and the triple harvest of that luxuriant land is no sooner embarked, than of its own accord it glides majestically towards this favoured sea, and there is truth and nothing speculative in still further remarking, that this very harvest is absolutely produced by the slime or earth of Abyssinian and other most remote mountains, which by the laws of nature has calmly floated