near the river, that the Howadji fears the final triumph of the desert. Like a line of fortresses stretched against the foe, stand the sakias-the allies of the river. But their ceaseless sigh, as in Egypt, only saddens the silence. Through the great gate of the cataract, you enter a new world, south of the poet's "farthest south." A sad, solitary, sunny world; but bravery and the manly virtues are always the dower of poor races, who must roughly "rough it" to exist. In appearance and character, the Nubians are the superiors of the Egyptians. But they are subject to them by the inscrutable law that submits the darker races to the whiter, the world over. The sweetness, and placidity, and fidelity, the love of country and family, the simplicity of character and conduct which distinguish them are not the imperial powers of a people. Like the Savoyards in Europe, the Nubians go down into Egypt, and fill inferior offices of trust. They are the most valued of servants, but never lose their home-longing, and return into the strange, sultry silence of Nubia, when they have been successful in Egypt. Yet the antique Ethiopian valor survives. Divers districts are still warlike, and the most savage struggles are not unknown. The Ethiopians once resisted the Romans, and the fame of one-eyed Queen Candace, whose wisdom and valor gave the name to her successors, yet flourishes in the land, and the remains of grand temples attest that the great Rameses and the proud Ptolemies thought it worth while to own it. The Nubians bear arms, but all of the rudest kind-crooked knives, iron-shod clubs, slings and a shield of hippopotamus hide-and in the battles the women mingle and assist. Yet in the five hundred miles from Syene to Dongola, not more than one hundred thousand inhabitants are estimated. They reckon seven hundred sakias for that distance, and that each is equal to one thousand five hundred bushels of grain. These shores are the very confines of civilization. The hum of the world has died away into stillness. The sun shines brightly in Nubia. The sky is blue, but the sadness of the land rests like a shadow upon the Howadji. It is like civilization dying decently. The few huts and the few people smile and look contented. They come down to the shore, as the Ibis skims along, wonderingly and trustfully as the soft-souled southern savages beheld, with curiosity, Columbus' fleet. They are naked and carry clubs, and beg powder and arms, but sit quietly by your side as you sketch or sit upon the shore, or run like huntingdogs for the pigeons you have shot. If there be any impossible shot. the Howadji is called upon with perfect confidence to execute it; for a clothed Howadji with a gun is a denizen of a loftier sphere to the nude Nubians. Why does the sun so spoil its children and fondle their souls away? How neat are their homes, like houses set in order! For the mighty desert frowns behind, and the crushing government frowns below. Yet the placid Nubian looks from his taxed sakia to his taxed palms, sees the sand and the tax-gatherer stealing upon his substance, and quietly smiles, as if his land were a lush-vineyarded Rhine-bank. The Howadji had left the little, feline reis at Syene, his home; for the indolent Nubian blood was mingled in his veins, and made him seem always this quiet land personified. The Ibis flew, piloted by a native Nubian, who knew the river through his country. For here the shores are stony, and there are two difficult passages, which the natives call half-cataracts. Hassan was a bright-eyed, quiet personage, who discharged his functions very humbly, sitting with the Ancient Mariner at the helm, who seemed, grisly Egyptian, half jealous of his Nubian colleague, and contemptuously remarked, when we reached Philæ, returning, that no man need go twice to know the river. The men were uneasy at the absence of their head, nor liked to be directed by the Nubian, or the Ancient Mariner; but Hassan sang with them such scraps of Arabic song as he knew, and regaled them with pure Nubian melodies, which are sweeter than those of Egypt, for the Nubians are much more musical than their neighbors, and in a crew, they are the best and most exhilarating singers. He sat patiently on the prow for hours, watching the river, calling at times to Grisly to turn this way and that, and Hassan was uniformly genial and gentle, pulling an occasional oar, returning. For the rest, he was clothed in coarse, white cotton, haunted the kitchen after dinner, and fared sumptuously every day. Then begged tobacco of the Howadji, and smoked it as serenely as if it were decently gotten. At Kálabsheh we passed the Tropic of Cancer. But are not the tropics the synonym of Paradise? The tropics, mused the How- | smoking, and self-involved, as if he heard adji, and instantly imagination was entan- all the white Nile secrets, and those of the gled in an Indian jungle, and there strug mountains of the moon. The Ibis spread gled, fettered in glorious foliage, mistak- her white wings to the warm wooing wind, ing the stripes and eyes of a royal Bengal and ran over the water. Was she not well tiger for the most gorgeous of tropical flow called Ibis, with her long, sharp wings, ers. But escaping thence, imagination loved of the breeze, that toys with them as fluttered and fell, and a panorama of stony she flies, and fills them to fullness with hills, a cloudless, luminous sky, but bare in speed? brilliance, enlivened by no clouds, by no far-darting troops of birds-a narrow strip of green shore-silence, solitude, and sadness, revealed to the Howadji the dreamland of the tropics. Yet there was a sunny spell in that land and scenery which held me then, and holds charmed my memory now. It was a sleep -we seemed to live it and breathe it, as the sun in Egypt. There was luminous languor in the air, as from opiate flowers, yet with only their slumber, and none of their fragrance. It seemed a failure of creation, or a creation not yet completed. Nature slept and dreamed over her work, and whoso saw her sleep, dreamed vaguely her dreams. Puck-piloted and girdling the earth in an hour, would not the Howadji feel that only a minute's journey of that hour was through the ripe maturity of creation-the rest embryo-half conceived or hopeless? "The world" is only the line focus of all the life of the world at any period; but, O Gunning in blue spectacles, picking gingerbread nuts off the Dom palm, how small is that focus! One Nubian day only was truly tropical. It was near Derr, the chief town, and the azure calm and brilliance of the atmosphere forced imagination to grow glorious gar dens upon the shores, and to crown with forests, vine-waving, bloom-brilliant, the mountains, desert no longer, but divine as the vision-seen hill of prophets; and to lead triumphal trains of white elephants, bearing the forms and costumes of Eastern romance, and giraffes, and the priestly pomp of India, through the groves of many-natured palms that fringed the foreground of the picture. It was summer and sunshine -a very lotus day. I felt the warm breath of the morning streaming over the Ibis, like radiance from opening eyes, even before the lids of the dawn were lifted. Then came the sun over the Arabian mountains, and the waves danced daintily in the rosy air, and the shores sloped serenely, and the river sang and gurgled against the prow, whereon sat the white-turbaned, happy Hassan, placidly The sky was cloudless and burningly rosy. To what devote the delicious day? What dream so dear, what book so choice, that it would satisfy the spell? Luxury of doubt and long delay! Such wonder itself was luxury-it rippled the mind with excitement, delicately as the wind kissed the stream into wavelets. Yet the Howadji looked along the shelves and the book was found, and in the hot heart of noon, he had drifted far into the dreamy depths of Herman Melville's Mardi. Lost in the rich romance of Pacific reverie, he felt all around him the radiant rustling of Yilah's hair, but could not own that Polynesian peace was profounder than his own Nubian silence. Mardi is unrhymed poetry, but rhythmical and unmeasured. Of a low, lapping cadence is the swell of those sentences, like the dip of the sun-stilled, Pacific waves. In more serious moods, they have the grave music of Bacon's Essays. Yet who but an American could have written them? And essentially American are they, although not singing Niagara or the Indians. Romance or reality? asked, dazed in doubt, bewildered Broadway and approving Pall Mall. Both, erudite metropolitans, and you, O ye of the warm slippers. The Howadji is no seaman, yet can he dream the possi ble dreams of the mariner in the main-top of the becalmed or trade-wind-wafted Pacific whaler. In those musings, mingles rare reality, though it be romantically edged, as those palms of Ibreem, seen through the glass, are framed in wondrous gold and purple. — On, on, deeper into the Pacific calm, farther into that Southern spell! The day was divine-the hush, the dazzle, the supremacy of light, were the atmosphere of the tropics, and if, toward evening, and for days after, the anxious North blustered in after her children, she could never steal that day from their memories. The apple was bitten. The Howadji had tasted the equa tor. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. THREE SONNETS. THE SONG OF STEAM. I. TO AILSA ROCK. Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid! Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowl's screams! Thou answerest not, for thou art dead asleep; The last in air, the former in the deep; First with the whales, last with the eagle skiesDrown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep; Another cannot wake thy giant size. II. GLENCOE. JOHN KEATS. Keep silence, lest the rocks in thunder fall; The melancholy mountains loathe the sun, III. BEN NEVIS. We climb, we pant, we pause; again we climb: Frown not, stern mountain, nor around thee throw Thy mist and storm, but look with cloudless brow O'er all thy giant progeny sublime; While toiling up the immeasurable height We climb, we pant, we pause: the thickening gloom A cap [G. W. CUTTER. Born in Cincinnati in 1818. tain in the United States army during the invasion of Mexico.] Harness me down with your iron bands, Be sure of your curb and rein; For I scorn the power of your puny hands, How I laughed as I lay concealed from sight At the childish boast of human might, Or waiting the wayward breeze; When I measured the panting courser's speed, As they bore the law a king decreed, I could not but think how the world would feel, When I should be bound to the rushing keel, Ha, ha, ha! they found me at last; They invited me forth at length, And I rushed to my throne with a thunder-blast, And laughed in my iron strength! Oh, then ye saw a wondrous change On the earth and ocean wide, Where now my fiery armies range, Nor wait for wind or tide. Hurrah, hurrah! the waters o'er The ocean pales where'er I sweep, I carry the wealth to the lord of earth, In the darksome depths of the fathomless mine, Where the rocks never saw the sun's decline, Or the dawn of the glorious day. THE GOOD TIME COMING. [CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D., an industrious and successful writer in prose and poetry, was born in 1814. He edited the Glasgow Argus, 1844-47; published Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, 3 vols., 1841, and several volumes of poems, besides editing or writing numerous other works. He died in 1889.] There's a good time coming, boys, We may not live to see the day, Of the good time coming. There's a good time coming, boys, A good time coming: The pen shall supercede the sword, Worth, not Birth, shall rule mankind, There's a good time coming, boys, War in all men's eyes shall be In the good time coming. Nations shall not quarrel then, To prove which is the stronger; Nor slaughter men for glory's sake;Wait a little longer. There's a good time coming, boys, Hateful rivalries of creed Shall not make their martyrs bleed In the good time coming. Religion shall be shorn of pride, And flourish all the stronger; And charity shall trim her lamp ;Wait a little longer. There's a good time coming, boys, And a poor man's family In the good time coming. To make his right arm stronger; The happier he the more he has :— Wait a little longer. There's a good time coming, boys, Little children shall not toil In the good time coming; Till limbs and mind grow stronger; And every one shall read and write ;Wait a little longer. There's a good time coming, boys, In the good time coming. There's a good time coming, boys, Let us aid it all we can, The good time coming. MY CHILD. [JOHN PIERPONT. Born at Litchfield, Conn., April 6, 1785, died at Medford, Mass., 1866. Educated at Yale College. Began life at the Bar; but became subsequently a merchant; afterwards a minister of the Unitarian Church.] I cannot make him dead! His fair sunshiny head Is ever bounding round my study chair; Yet when my eyes, now dim The vision vanishes-he is not there! I walk my parlour floor, And through the open door, I hear a footfall on the chamber stair: To give the boy a call, And then bethink me that he is not there! With the same beaming eyes and coloured hair; And, as he's running by, Scarcely believing that he is not there! I know his face is hid Under the coffin-lid, Closed are his eyes; cold is his forehead fair: My hand that marble felt, O'er it in prayer I knelt; Yet my heart whispers that he is not there! I cannot make him dead! So long watched over with parental care, Seek it inquiringly, Before the thought comes that he is not there! When, at the cool, grey break With my first breathing of the morning air, To Him who gave my boy; Then comes the sad thought that he is not there! I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer, I am, in spirit, praying For our boy's spirit, though he is not there! The form I used to see Was but the raiment that he used to wear. Upon that cast-off dress, Is but his wardrobe locked-he is not there! He lives! In all the past He lives; nor, to the last, Of seeing him again will I despair: In dream, I see him now; And, on his angel brow, I see it written, "Thou shalt see me there!" Yes, we all live to God! Father, thy chastening rod So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear, That in the spirit land, Meeting at thy right hand, "Twill be our heaven to find that he is there! THE BIRDS. [ARISTOPHANES, the only writer of Greek Comedy, of whom any works are left in full completeness, was born at Athens, 444, B. C. and died 380, B. C. His best known works are "The Knights," ""The Acharnians," "The Peace," ," "The Clouds," "The Wasps," "The Frogs," "The Birds," and "The Women's Festival." From the two latter we give extracts.] "Our antiquity proved, it remains to be shown You have learnt from the birds, and continue to learn, We give you the warning of seasons returning; The sail, the rope, the rudder, and oar Translated by JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. FROM "THE WOMEN'S FESTIVAL." They're always abusing the women, |