struction, which overlooked the harbour, and stood on a rock like a tower of strength, to awe any foreign sail which might approach. The quaint Dutch buildings could be traced, as they approached nearer, with their low verandahs, and the gardens surrounding them stocked with bread-fruit trees, plantains, and all the numerous plants for which Ceylon is famous.

In the harbour the outrigged canoes, that curious craft peculiar to this island, were skimming along before the wind with prodigious swiftness-the body of the canoe being made of one solid tree, and though long, like the cigar ship, only broad enough for one man to sit in, and having benches ranged along separately for five; the huge sail, which had its sheet and tack held by one of the men inside, and for its boom a beam of wood laid on the water outside the canoe equal to it in length, and parallel, at the distance of about two feet. I pass over the detail of what gave the major and the three captains and officers the greatest part of their care. This was getting the troops up on deck, parading them in proper order, and apportioning them their places in the different shore boats, which were to take them by companies across. But though this procedure, conducted as it was by those having command of young soldiers, the proper disposing of whom with due regularity involved a world of trouble, especially as the going ashore in that most tempestuous harbour required that they should keep their seats and trim the boats most steadily, it was effected without accident; and I shall ask the reader to picture a description of the scene himself to his own fancy, and, as Don Quixote said to Sancho, when the latter asked him to keep an account carefully of the number of goats that passed over the river, to imagine them all passed over at once, and officers, troops, and all installed in their quarters at the fort of Point de Galle. Then they saw the native modliars, with their long hair dressed up behind like a woman's (bedecked either with pearls or precious stones), a huge comb of tortoiseshell stuck, surmounting the back of their heads; their long blue coats, with their double range of gilt buttons, larger than are seen in any other garment worn by any one, or in any coat; their curious kilt, which looks like a petticoat. The simply dressed, copper-coloured, and slender bodied natives brought in assortments of numerous sorts of precious stones, sapphires, cinnamon-stone, garnets, rubies, topazes, beautifully polished. Their long black hair, their mild dark eyes, their soft and feminine features, their glossy white teeth as they smiled in offering their trays of stones and their specimens of workmanship to the European strangers, were all objects to strike the fancy of the foreigner. The exquisite workmanship of the cases, the writing-desks, the specimens of ornamental work, the boxes made of porcupines' quills, of elephants' grinders, the neatness of their execution, the models of primitive ingenuity, which not any

workman in civilised Europe could ever compete with. The cunning of hand which the Asiatic craftsman had been bequeathed by his father, who had it from his, and which had come down in descent from time immemorial in its rude integrity unimpaired by any shortcomings in those who practised it, and unimproved by the introduction of any foreigner's invention, was shown in all the specimens of Cinghalese ornaments, here in abundance displayed to

view.

ECHO AND NARCISSUS.

OVID'S METAMORPHOSES, BOOK III.

BY ISIDORE G. ASCHER.

A WHIRLING, heedless wind, that wastes its strength
Upon the dreary stubble of a field,

When livid suns grow dim in ashen skies—
November presages of wintry gloom

So moved the desolated-hearted Echo's steps,
Treading the tangled wildness of the woods,
Darkened with cumbrous shadows of her woe,
And silent grief, that finds no vent in tears,
And dread despair, consuming all her speech,
Like worms that prey upon a rose's heart.
Imperious Love, whose wanton tyranny
Makes thought an abject vassal to his will,
Had charged the life of Echo with his fires,
Smiting her heart, until its depths were stirred,
As streams are wildly stirred by sudden gales.
Then like a wounded deer maddened with pain,
Flying in quivering terror from its foes,

She rushed abroad in restless search for him,
The graceful-limbed and lovely-featured boy,
Whose beauty once unconsciously had thrilled
Her soul to wonder, worship, and to love!
The sheathed, dimpled grass, beneath her tread
Did seem to whisper that her quest was vain;
The butterflies, the children of the flowers-
Earth's gaudy messengers of transient joy-
Cleaving the air, to chase the sunbeam's motes,
Flashed near her gaze and seemed to mock her search;
The majesty of richly-purpled clouds,

Resting above in loveliness of calm,

Seemed to rebuke her vain and restless quest;

The golden-tinted ears of crested wheat,

Waving beneath the breath of fervid June,
All murmured that her seeking was in vain.
Though Nature sang pure harmonies of peace,
In Echo's breast dwelt discords of the strife
That owed its birth to unrequited love,

And through her soul there swept unresting cares,
And heaving sorrows, never to be hushed,
That wasted as they shaped themselves in speech,
And dwindled to an echo as they died.

Far from the breathless calm of happy fields--
Far from the coverts of the peeping ferns-
Far from the solitude of lulling knolls-
Far from the dallying laugh of limpid rills—
Away from Nature's music and her smile,
The desolate-hearted Echo wildly roamed,
And sought the sheltering deeps of yawning caves,
Bordered by naked, angry precipices,

Where mad winds break the teeth of splintered stones,
That plunge and dash themselves against the gorge,
And with a wild and reverberating roar

Disturb and startle Silence on her throne!
Oft near this rocky haunt, where crouching shades
Invoke the gloom of direful solitude,

The weary-hearted Echo tarried long,

To hide her woe from heaven's azure eyes,
And in the darkness of this callous haunt
She strove to bury it for evermore.

The stony steeps were not so dark or bare
As Echo's barren hopes, and not so icy cold
As the calm glance of him who loved her not.
So lacking that endurance of the mind-

The mail which Patience shields a woman's heart,
To battle and to vanquish merciless Fate-
And lacking strength to shatter to the winds
The feeble shackles of a misplaced love,
By living in serenity of soul,

Deep rooted to a constant, vigorous aim,
That draws its sustenance and joys from earth,
And waxes strong amid the stedfast light
Of bright accomplishment-she pined in death.
The mute ears of the wind harboured her sighs-
The brief, uncertain memories of despair-
Until she faded to an empty sound,
The hollow echo of our human speech
That still pervades the lonely calm of caves,
And unfrequented rocks, and hollow steeps.
Jan.-VOL. CXLIV. NO. DLXXVII.

I

WHICH SHALL IT BE?

A SEQUEL TO WORTH THE WINNING."

I.

POOR LADY!

AUSTIN was able to leave his brother for a short time and appear in the drawing-room after dinner. He got Kate to sing all her best songs to him, and she in her turn insisted upon his taking her place at the piano and performing something in his mellow tenor.

"You don't like Censure and her frowns, Mr. Reefer," she said, after she had finished a bantering criticism on his effort. "I know you don't, in spite of what you say to the contrary. Now I do; I like her a thousand times better than Commendation and her compliments. Let us make a bargain, Mr. Reefer; you shall do all the censure, and I'll do all the commendation. Going on Friday, are you? Oh, well, then, there won't be much time for you to see if I improve, and to give me raps over the knuckles. I suppose you can't stay longer because of your brother?"

Austin had also a few minutes talk with Maud before saying good night. He had noticed her from his window returning home alone in the misty winter twilight with a basket on her arm, and he had felt sure in his own mind that she had been to Archer's, attending to her two protegés; but it was only after the most earnest pressing on his part that she would admit that he had guessed aright.

"Is

"And what earthly good does it do you, now that I have told you what you want?" she asked, with her usual manner. your interest excited in the wretched creatures? What would you say if I told you I had had them both sent to the workhouse ?"

"I don't think I should believe it. You are not the person to do that after what you have already done."

"People in general would say that it ought to have been done at once that charity required nothing more." "I don't class you with people in general. Allow me to say -though it is at the risk of displeasing you that your cynicism cannot impose upon me; I can see under it larger and stronger impulses towards genuine humanity and beneficence than I see in one person out of a thousand whom I meet."

"I think you have expressed as much at least half a dozen times within the last two days. If it affords you any amusement

to pull me to pieces, and to dissect and analyse me, I have nothing to say against it, but I think I would rather not hear the results. I never expected to have such heavenly qualities ascribed to me."

"Well, you mustn't quarrel with me for my indiscretion," he replied, with a smile; "and, as a pledge of amity, be sure and not refuse the favour I am going to ask. I want you to let me help you in any further plan you may have for assisting your two protegés. I assure you I am interested in the matter." "What would you say to advertising for subscriptions in the Ferneyhurst Chronicle, or to sending round a hat among the people here, or to getting up a joint-stock philanthropic company? One might surely contrive in that way to get enough to buy a piece of bread and cheese for a couple of miserable paupers, and send them home to their native village. We can't talk about your offer at present, for here come the servants."

"You resent my interference now," he replied, laughing; "but, perhaps, you may find a use for me in the end."

That night was a night of anxiety and unrest to Mrs. Treeby. Her husband followed her up to bed almost immediately in a state of great excitement. He wanted to hear from her about the Jenkinsons, and to tell her the good news respecting Kate and Austin. He chuckled in his dressing-room, after his boisterous fashion, when he was informed what kind of people the new comers were. Mrs. Treeby ventured to express the opinion that she did not quite like their tone, upon which he took her violent to task for setting up to be grand and fastidious on such matters, declared that the tenants of Fairlawn Villa were just the sort of neighbours he wanted (Trotter had told him lots about 'em), and vowed he would go and pay his "devours" the very next day.

"I knew it was a case, Mrs. Treeby. Didn't I tell you all along they had gone plump into it at first sight, and were billing and cooing like Juno's doves? Didn't I keep saying it was come, see, and overcome with Reefer, and you wouldn't believe it? Ha! ha!" he continued, alluding to the matter which lay nearest his heart.

"Why, what do you mean, Augustus?" cried his wife, looking in upon him from the bedroom, with an alarmed face. "Has Mr. Reefer

"Been popping the question to your daughter, Mrs. T. T.? No, it's not come to that yet. Reefer's not half a lover, or he'd have done it by this time. What the deuce are you looking so scared about? Hang it! your face is as white as my nightcap. It's not news to make your cheeks blench and whiten, but to make 'em red and rosy with delight, as the poets say. Not nineteen yet,