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himself that she was sound and active: 'How much dost thou ask for the slave?' he demanded of her master; and after some bargaining, he 'covenanted with him' for a few pieces of silver, and went his way, taking the girl with him. The voices of the almuedens now greeted my ears for the second time; and again the followers of the Prophet, looking toward the 'holy city,' prostrated themselves on the earth; the Parsee, too, knelt as, with arms outstretched, and body inclining slightly forward, he fixed his ardent gaze on the expiring orb of day; the Hindoo, laving his hands and face in water brought from the sacred Ganges, implored the protection of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; while the Catholic and the Buddh ist, counting their prayers upon their respective rosaries, chanted a hymn of thanksgiving-this to Gaudama, that to the Virgin: 'Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer.' A Protestant and a Jew stood a little apart: the one called upon Jesus; the other upon Moses and Father Abraham; and both thanked God in their hearts that they were like none of these!' And so, under different forms and with various ceremonies, Jew, Christian, and Gentile scrupled not with one accord to invoke the blessings of HEAVEN upon their heads, and they had but just executed the decrees of hell!

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The captive, the while, stood conversing among them, with her eyes fixed steadfastly on the receding figure of her little girl. Her 'soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.' She uttered no groan, she shed no tear; the heart of the negress was broken!

'Come,' said my mess-mate, laying his hand on my arm, and awaking me from a revery into which I had fallen; it is time to return to our vessel. So, bidding Mahomet 'good-night,' we departed: and thus ended my wanderings in Zanzibar.

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And by craft ye've maintained what bluff daring began,
Your grasp on the fairest and best;

Consuming the cates, and commending the bran
To your equals in all that is noblest in man,
As your consciences needs must attest.

We are told that of old there was one of your line
So proud of his pomp in the east,

That he deemed himself worthy of homage divine,
Till the LORD turned him out to eat grass with the kine,
And grow a respectable beast.

KORNER.

New-York, 1853.

Perhaps, by the year Nineteen Hundred or so,
We DEMOS may come to such pass

As to rise and bid Messieurs Divine Right and Co.,
Czar, Bourbon, Braganza, Guelph, Hapsburg, all go,
Like the great king aforesaid, to grass.

Then 'l'état, c'est moi,' shall be 'l'état, c'est nous,'
The dictum reversed for the nonce:

Having had quite enough of grand units like you,
We fain would just see how King MILLION will do,
Both as sovereign and subject at once.

W. P. P

THE NOON-TIDE GUN AT THE PALAIS ROYAL.

THE sun is the symbol of utilitarianism; the moon that of romance. It is the blazing light of the present age of rail-way and telegraph, compared with the clear-obscure of the past age of stage-coaches and chivalry. But, as that very clear-obscure is, in itself, a material element of the ars poetica, it is but right and natural that the moon should continue to enjoy a monopoly of all that constitutes romance: and certainly, she has contrived to appropriate to herself a pretty good share of all the compliments, oaths, and epithets that have been lavished from any date you please up to the present. The chaste moon, the yellow moon, the silver moon, the new moon, the full moon, the horned moon, the harvest moon, the May moon, the crescent moon, Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear;' (Shakspeare :) 'the Devil's in the moon for mischief;' (Byron.) Her nomenclature is endless: great is the countenance afforded by her to the lover and the poet; and this, coupled with a certain quiet mystery which enshrouds her, has rendered her immensely popular with the contemplative. But the practical man of progress says: Give me the sun; the matter-o'-fact, work-a-day sun.' Perhaps the practical man of progress is right. An excellent authority states that the moon was caught 'sleeping upon a bank at Belmont, over the water from bridge-linked Venice.' Probably the bank at Belmont was robbed that very night. But who ever heard of a bank being robbed while the sun was up and watching it? No body. He is the Chief of Police, is the sun; and although his epithets may be few, and some of them the reverse of flatteringColeridge, for instance, calls him 'the bloody sun'-yet even as old Sol Phoebus, the tanner, has he acquired an undying reputation. Jack-of-alltrades, from hatching egg of 'pluméd estridge' in the burning sands of Africa, to breaking up the ice-riveted lakes of the polar regions; from lighting up the landscape of Italy in tones but feebly to be imitated even by a Claude, to knocking off in less than two minutes a family-group of yourself, your wife, and your seven blessed babes, with a truth not to be touched even by a Vandyke. Great master of chiar'oscuro! But policeman, tanner, incubator, engineer, artist, and artillery-man, are only a few of the phases under which the versatile, work-a-day sun runs daily his career of ages. At present, however, we have only to do with him in

his military capacity. As an artist he partly owes his reputation to a Frenchman, the late ingenious Daguerre, who first employed him upon the lucrative branch of portraits; and it is in the French service, also, that he daily takes up his position as an artillery-man in the Palais Royal. Let us draw upon the French, then, for a few words respecting his military career, some account of which is to be found in the Nouveau Tableau de Paris.

In the garden of the Palais Royal there stands a small cannon, mounted upon a pedestal. Over the touch-hole of this gun a burning-glass is placed, so regulated as to give fire the moment the sun reaches the meridian a service which, of course, can only be counted on when the sun chooses to shine; so that he is, literally, a volunteer artillery-man, and, like most volunteers, comes or stays away, just as he pleases.

On a bright morning, this garden is a place of very general resort. People go there to read the newspapers, which you can hire at the pavilions that stand at either end of the garden. You can get a chair there, too, and place it to suit your convenience; or you may read standing up or walking about, if you like it better; but you must pay for the chair all the same. As noon is drawing on, if the sun shines out, people begin to throng round the gun, waiting for his report on the time of day. One gentleman there looks very much interested indeed. Probably he does not possess a watch, and depends, therefore, on the gun for a time-piece. That stout individual has a watch, though, stout like himself, and nearly the size of an average warming-pan; and with this in one hand, and the key in the other, he stands ready to set it to a second, so that he may be able to state with confidence, 'I am with the gun,' which, in this case, is equivalent to being with the sun.

Yonder waits a country-gentleman, who has never seen the sun in his artillery-uniform, but has determined to enjoy the sight during his present visit to the great city. This is the fourth time he has come to the garden for that purpose; but the weather has been cloudy, and the gunner was not at his post. On every one of these occasions he has forwarded a dispatch to his wife in the country, stating that the sun had missed fire; upon which she answer makes: If that's all you want to see in Paris, I think the sooner you come home, the better; the old sun-dial in our garden never misses fire.' But brighter days come at last, and our country-gentleman rushes once more to the garden, in the full expectation of being able, this time, to obtain matter for a more encouraging dispatch to his wife.

Now come the gamins, closing about the gun; gentlemen, for the most part, to whom the time of day must be a matter of utter indifference, but who like to hear a cannon go off, simply because it makes

a noise.

Next swagger in some of the men about town; walking gentlemen, who follow no particular occupation, but who enter the garden by chance, and remain until gun-fire, because they want something to distract them. Perhaps they think, also, that time may be killed by a cannon-shot.

Lastly flock in the nursery-maids, with their young charges. Young Harry with his beaver on' insists upon getting as near the gun as possible, because papa says the smell of powder will make a soldier of him;

while little Mademoiselle Louise wants to run away, and pulls her bonne by the skirt, to keep her from going near the nasty great cannon. But Jeannette, the bonne, magnetized by the basilisk eye of a trooper in the crowd, stands her ground, and says, as she administers a wholesome shake to little missy: 'We must stay here, because people must n't be cowards; and beside, when the gun shoots off, there is no more fear of thieves nor nothing.' Just as Jeannette has arrived at this logical conclusion, the gentlemen who do a conveyancing business in watches, handkerchiefs, and snuff-boxes, and who never lose an opportunity of exercising their professional abilities, enter the garden, and mingle with the crowd assembled about the gun.

The moment arrives; every body is on tip-toe; and just as every body is about to give it up, bang! goes the gun. Then the gamins jump and shout for joy; and the stout gentleman who has his watch out returns it complacently to his large fob, and smiles with satisfaction as he says to himself: Just with the gun: I have the sun in my pocket.'

A fat old lady who is passing through the garden with her poodle, never thinking about the time of day, starts with a shriek, and cries in faltering accents: 'Heaven preserve us! what on earth can that be!' The poodle yells, and runs a short way with his tail down: then stops short, out of wind, and barks wheezily at himself for being such a fool.

A cynical-looking elderly gentleman turns, pulls out an ancient chronometer of the fashion known as 'Nuremburg Eggs,' and finding it about ten minutes slow, makes a face up at the sky, and says: 'How fast the sun is to-day!'

Look at Jeannette, the pretty nursery-maid, who insisted upon remaining near the great gun with her little charge. She is so intent upon the shot, or upon that basilisk of a trooper, that she is quite insensible to the neighborly attentions of a chevalier who has just helped himself to her pocket-handkerchief; and so she leads the children away, saying: 'Ha! ha! that was a fine shot. I hope you a' n't afraid of thieves nor nothing after that!'

A SERENADE.

BY COLONEL EIDOLON.

'Tis mid night hour: the world in sleep
Is gently borne through empty space,
Whilst I a restless vigil keep,

Still haunted by thy face.

But, dear one, rest, and dream that we
Are arm-in-arm in yonder grove,

Whilst I am whispering low to thee

My simple tale of love!

"Tis mid-night hour: the breezes sigh;

The rippling stream glides smooth along,

And seems to murmur sweet reply,

To cheer my lonely song.

Then, dear one, rest, and dream that we
Are arm-in-arm in yonder grove,

Whilst I am whispering low to thee
My simple tale of love!

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ALL books, like the languages in which they are written, may be divided into two classes: the living and the dead; into those which, at their birth, became 'living souls' by the inspiration of their creators, and those the far greater number—that have nothing but a 'name to live,' without a solitary spark of inherent vitality, and incapable even of galvanic life; mere mummy-forms, appearing above ground only to burden the earth with their presence, when they ought rather to be quietly sleeping in their proper place below it. Truth compels us unwillingly to say, that too large a proportion of our books of history belong to this latter class. Hitherto, Dr. Dryasdust has been suffered to stand as the representative of the great body of historical writers and antiquaries, and it is high time for him to yield his place to a more genial successor. We can discover no valid reason for the common dryness and dusty deadness of historical literature. It is not evident to us that even a genealogical tree, for example, should so uniformly stand a sapless congeries of naked branches, with neither leaf, nor flower, nor fruit, save always a super-sufficient quantity of dates, very hard and very dry, and not easily digestible by the most eupeptic' intellectual stomach. The historian, assuming as he does the office of Recording Angel, should go farther

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HARTFORD IN THE OLDEN TIME: Its First Thirty Years. By SCEVA. Edited by W. M. B. HARTLEY. With Illustrations. Hartford: F. A. BROWN. 1853.

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