appearance, neat and precise as usual, but there was such a want of that alertness he used to display in his movements, that it seemed to me as some change in temperament. Passing over the immediate cause of our meeting as of no moment here, he asked me, in the course of conversation, whether I had seen the last volume of the despatches of the Duke of Wellington, published by his son. The room in which we were seated was a book-room well filled. He sat with his left to the fire; on his right hand was a table-desk, where he had been just before busily at work. When we had finished the subject which led me to call on that occasion, Sir Emerson began a conversation regarding the imprudence of the son in publishing the correspondence of his father. The truth was that I had not read the volume, and, as it sometimes happens, I mistook Tennent's censure, under the idea that the volume alluded to was connected with the measure of Catholic emancipation in Ireland, in place of its relating to the period long ago, when the late Duke was secretary there. The censure of Tennent applied to the present duke was not unnatural with one a native of Ireland, who was opposed to the conduct of the late Duke being known in his despatches. They exhibited scenes of corruption that then prevailed. My replies were made in the Duke's defence for his conduct in the affair of Catholic emancipation, not for acts of his secretaryship so many years before. Tennent was attacking the present duke for "letting the cat out of the bag," as the proverb goes. On reading the despatches subsequently, I was much surprised at Tennent not correcting me in mistaking one period of office for another. He was so full of indignation that he did not perceive my error, and could find no excuse for the present duke, who had only displayed an honest candour. Tennent was indignant that the scenes in Ireland should have been exhibited so openly without any occasion. But the late Duke of Wellington was not an official likely to evade any point in which he was concerned. He was too candid and plain-spoken, the marks of a naturally powerful mind.

Still while we conversed thus in mutual error, Tennent did not correct me, nor show that we were speaking of different periods in the Duke's public life, separated by a long interval of time. I allude to the circumstance only because I imagined he was not quite as clear in intellect as he had been before. Else he would have been alert, and pleased to expose my error. He seemed unusually heavy and opposite to his natural character. There was about him a more "staid" manner than customary, which leads me to think since that some change of health, some cloudiness of perspicacity, which affects the intellect before it becomes clearly perceptible, was even then taking place in his constitution, or he would have done then as of yore, caught at my error and

been pleased to display it. His heaviness, I must again repeat, struck me at the time. He was not as active as usual on my leaving him, as he accompanied me to the door-showing a manner and want of alertness which I had not seen when I met him a short time before. In fact, after I had passed a little distance towards home, I began to account for it by asking myself mentally how old he was, as if age had been the cause of the change I imagined I saw about him. It was the last time I ever did see him. Sir Emerson Tennent, after forty-six years of acquaintance, I was to see no more. I had a note from him in relation to the topic upon which we had met. In that he closed with a compliment to myself in the affair, that it would be too like egotism to repeat in his words, which comprehended my "high-mindedness," as he termed it. It was an affair very peculiar, but which it is not of any moment to gratify mere curiosity by relating. It concerned other parties, too, one of whom was an individual of note.

Never were there two men of the "Green Island" less alike than Wyse and Tennent, and the third that might complete the trio, before alluded to, from the same pleasant island, William Henry Curran, all have alike passed away, as ere long their remembrances must do with myself. In ability, Tennent was the least able of the three, but their native land need not have blushed for either of them. Tennent's age was about midway between threescore and the period said to be allotted as that to which man in general has a chance of attaining. He appeared fully what men in general are at sixty-six. The most extraordinary change in relation to him was in his handwriting. I have notes of his written at both early and late periods of our intimacy, and not the remotest resemblance exists between them; to such an extent, indeed, was this the case, that I doubt whether it can be paralleled.

I do not imagine the political opinions of Sir Emerson were deeply grafted in his nature, for I never knew him violent in those he professed. In fact, I doubt whether he had trained his mind to any political colour. He seemed rather to attain his personal objects by the support of his party, than to view the field of politics with a broad glance for the sake of any intrinsic excellence in this or in that particular measure which is supported abstractedly from the perception of its superiority. In action as a man of business he was ready, and fulfilled his duties with diligence and perspicacity. Cut off from existence when his friends had a reasonable ground to expect its protraction, it is the more painful to contemplate, as a Spanish wit and renowned satirist remarks, though it strikes us too seldom from that feeling which makes us repel through deceptive hope thoughts which are not of a pleasant character, ever crediting that death is elsewhere, and not within ourselves.

Sir Emerson was not a deep thinker, and had too much of the impress of the mode to be singular in his opinions, or, in other words, to think and act upon conviction alone where that conviction was not in assent with the mode. He was not one, therefore, who was calculated to lead upon any question as a writer, or to act as a politician. He was a man of the world. There are those yet surviving who can remember pleasant moments passed in his society, and recal them not without regret; for though by no means a distinguished leader in political life, in the social circle, particularly before he embarked in politics, he was an exceedingly pleasant companion, and society might have better spared a better

man.

Yours very faithfully,

CYRUS REDDING.

THE RUINED CITIES OF ZULU LAND.*

A GALLANT captain of the 105th (Madras) is supposed, to the delectation of all amateurs of adventure and sport, to forego his hard-earned leave, and spend it in Zulu Land instead of England, shooting elephants, lions, and antelopes, and visiting the mysterious ruins of Ophir of old. The work is not one of mere fiction, we are told, as the materials upon which it is founded were furnished to Captain Walmsley, government agent, Zulu frontier, Natal, by those enterprising German missionaries to whom, as we have previously had occasion to describe at length, we were first indebted for a knowledge of the ruins of olden times in the interior of the country in question, as it is also to a German mineralogist that we have been since indebted for the discovery of extensive gold-fields in the same little explored regions.

A first acquaintance with Wyzinski, as the German missionary is dubbed, is picked up under peculiar circumstances. A melancholy cry, as that of a person in pain, attracts the attention of the hunters; guided by the ominous sound, the missionary is discovered, his bones being crunched by the powerful teeth of two lion cubs. Captain Hughes, the supposed hero of the work, in his anxiety to save him, is himself tumbled over and nearly killed by the feline maternal. Both, however, get safely to camp, and, despite their wounds, relate their history very unconcernedly, and enter into a compact to proceed together to Moselkatse in order to obtain his pass to visit the ruins of the Zulu cities.

*The Ruined Cities of Zulu Land, by Hugh Mulleneux Walmsley, Colonel Ottoman Imperial Army, with Illustrations by Martinus Kuijtenbrouwer. Two Vols. Chapman and Hall.

Together, then, they proceed up the valley of the Limpolulo to Zoutpansburgh, a native kraal on a spur of the Drakenburgh range, where they had an interview with the formidable chieftain, and obtained his aid and protection towards continuing their journey to Manica. A chief, Masheesh by name, was appointed to accompany them, and after some well told and spirited hunting scenes, the tents were pitched on the Suave river, in the country of the Batonga. Here they heard of ruins in a range of mountains to the northwards called Gorongoza. The dreaded tetse-fly obliged them, however, to part with the waggons, and they proceeded down the Saba Ouro, or Golden River in canoes. They were thus led to mounds and fragments of fallen masonry, the spot being tenanted by an Arab tribe. The ruins were those, we are told, of the Portuguese fort of Sofala, but the missionary declared the stones with which they had been constructed to have been brought from older stone ruins in the interior.

Returning up the Golden stream, without, strange to say, visiting apparently the Portuguese town of Sofala on their way to the territory of Machin, the chief of Manica, they pitched their tents in the hills of Gorongoza on the third afternoon. They are represented as being on these journeys never in want of food; game, birds, and fruit indeed abounded. One sportsman sufficed to supply the wants of a dozen persons. The natives, called Macombé, brought gold in quills to barter for calico. On the mountain side they found a kind of cairn, and beside it lay six slabs of stone. Crossing hence the Mahongo river, they proceeded, at the invitation of the natives to Busi, to a kraal of Amatongas under one Umkleswa, a sub-chief of Machin's. He was a villainously ugly fellow was this Umkleswa, and his portrait might be said rather to disfigure than to adorn the work. It and the portrait of Sgalam are, however, great ethnographical curiosities. The chief declared that there were no ruins in the neighbourhood, nothing but caves; and as to the slabs on Gorongoza, they were, he said, "the graves of those who served the white man's god." His object was, however, to deceive them, for it was a superstition among the Amatongas that if the white man visited. the ruins it would not rain for three years. On one of their hunting excursions, they came, however, to a spot where the river banks were clear of forest, and the river had been once dammed up, for there were traces of masonry. Fallen masonry also lay along the banks of the river, looking like masses of rock, and scattered as far as the eye could reach. Two massive ruins of pyramidal form, which must at one time have been of great height, rose out of these. Even now, broken and fallen as they were, the solid bases only remaining, they were noble and imposing. Part had come tumbling down, in one jumbled mass, into the bed

of the river, while the dwarf acacia and palm were shooting up among the stones, breaking and disjointing them. Well might those who contemplated these curious relics in an unknown country have exclaimed: "Here are vast ruins among the goldfields of King Solomon; here the source of the Saba or Golden River, down whose stream the boats of bygone days floated gold, cedar-wood, and precious stones!"

"Overshadowing the fallen blocks of stone, the date-tree and palmyra waved their fan-like leaves. Dense masses of powerful creepers crept up the ruins, rending the solid masonry, and the seeds of the trees dropping year by year had produced a rapid undergrowth, these, which had once been valuable fruit-trees, having degenerated into wild ones. Chaos had, in a word, reappeared, where once trade and prosperity, order and regularity reigned."

A closer examination showed that the whole mass appeared at one time to have been encircled by a wall now fallen, but the entrances to which could be distinctly traced. A crowd of halffallen passages led away to right and left, terminating in what appeared to be a court-yard, in which were the remains of pillars of stone. No mortar of any kind had been used, the massive stones fitting into one another exactly. A temple or palace, the missionary remarked, had stood upon a kind of platform of masonry, with steps leading up to it. Standing on this platform, they could make out below them a maze of crumbled galleries and court-yards; and wherever the eye could penetrate, mounds of fallen masonry cropped up amidst the dense forest growth. The vast ruin itself was, however, a shapeless mass, being utterly broken and defaced. The top of the mound was overgrown by bush, interlaced with creeping plants, and a way could only be obtained by using knives.

The missionary felt for a moment dispirited. "The day-dream of my life realised," he exclaimed, "I stand among the ruined cities of old; but where they begin, or where they end, I know The forest has re-asserted her old rights, torn from her by the hand of civilisation. Look where you will, there is nothing to be seen but broken mounds and tottering walls; it would require a brigade of men and years of work to clear these ruins."

not.

Finding a ruined chamber, they penetrated within, bats in vast numbers coming sweeping along, raising, as they did so, a fine dust, which was nearly blinding. Here they found a worn arabesque representing the process of maize grinding, as also carvings representing serpents, birds, and beasts of uncouth form, but there were not any remains of a purely Egyptian character-a statement which, in as far as these ruins are concerned, is totally opposed to what has been said of others.