ous extent of view, both seaward and landward, consists, to our thinking, the real charm of Nice. For the town, though generally considered very airy and well built, lies much too low to be thoroughly agreeable or healthy. Even the best localities are subject to noisome effluvia from bad drainage. The sunny and fashionable Promenaud des Anglais suffers greatly in this respect-un wholesome vapours arising also from the canal-like little brooks that creep 'down to the bay, where, as they sluggishly permeate through the shingle, a new combination of smells, equally trying to the olfactory nerves, as hurtful in a sanitary point of view, is caused by the admixture with the brackish water of the soap the washerwomen rub for so many hours daily into these prosaic streams. It is consequently not surprising that there have been in past winters numerous dangerous fever cases in this quarter, though the spacious houses wherein the epidemic chiefly prevailed, look so bright and healthful among their gardens of oleander, orange, and myrtle, with clear fountains falling into marble basins, and the gleaming expanse of the Mediterranean close in front. Yet people who have lived in Rome or Naples laugh at the fastidiousness that can complain of Nice, which, in comparison with these famed Italian cities, seems to be clean and tidy á mervielle. There are villas on charming sites on almost every wooded knoll around, but they are not often chosen for residences by English families. Gentlemen must have their reading-room-invalids, their doctoryoung ladies, their balls-children, their daily masters-mammas and elderly spinsters, their morning visits and evening parties; thus, with few exceptions, everybody congregates in the town, as being more convenient, lively, and sociable. Whether Sardinian noble or merchant, there is scarcely an owner of these country mansions who does not throw open with liberal courtesy his garden and pleasure grounds to the public, a privilege of which strangers gladly avail themselves. Yet with all their decorations of statues, seen through the soft gloom of spreading foliage: their long alleys of trellised vines, jasmine and rose-covered arbours, broad flights of steps with massive balustrades; fountains, summer houses among citron and lemon trees; the generality of gardens here have an unkempt, neglected, air, appreciable in free forest or tangled glen, but sorely at variance with English notions of trim, well-kept garden or shrubbery. Then, as if to mock the natural beauty around, there is too often a

profession of daubing in the most ludicrously bad taste; walls, for instance, at the entrances to gateways and elsewhere, being painted to represent venerable rough-casting, or cement fallen off in some places to show flaring red brick-work, as exact as course colour-brush can make it; with fern, moss, or bright green leaves depicted as growing in tufts from crevices between the imaginary bricks. Were the time wasted on such mean forms of art, employed in making nice gravel walks, giving an orderly aspect to the borders, arranging flower beds, and training pretty climbing plants to droop over blank walls, it would be a great improvement to many ornamental grounds here. Still their galaxy of blossom exhaling delicious perfume, the cool shade of their rare trees, and above all, the lovely little glimpses of sea and mountain fitly framed in by arrowy cypress, evergreen ilex, or stately platanus just beginning to give promise of rich leafage, render these half wild gardens very delightsome after their fashion. Many rejoice in large deep reservoirs, filled from some distant source among the hills, and distributing their liquid crystal store by means of little mill-streamlike conduits. Some gardens have huge ungainly erections of wheel machinery, with ropes and earthen pots for raising water. Here, with the simple bent pole and stonepoised bucket, are open circular wells; and there you see others, with white domes of mason-work over-head, that eastern travellers say remind them of Sheikh's tombs. Running brooks and gushing springs are very scarce throughout this district with its parched calcareous soil. Instead of these familiar features of English or Scottish rural landscape, here in your country rambles you constantly see the tiniest stone-paved canals or wooden aqueducts, perhaps only a foot broad, sometimes open, sometimes covered, conveying the precious element to tanks and cisterns, to be further trammelled into obedience in its progress to some artificial fountain; where the water, whether forced upward in fantastic jet, or dispensed by gracefully-hewn dolphin, triton, or mermaid with dripping tresses, flashes in the sunlight like a shower of diamonds, and murmurs soothingly through fervid noonday or hushed eventide. If singing birds are rarely heard in the gardens round Nice, other music of nature blends with the voice of fountains, the air being at times filled with a sound resembling the drowsy cawing of rooks, but really proceeding from the innumerable frogs which have their abode in the tanks and reservoirs.

WILD FLOWERS.

CULTIVATED FLOWERS.

OF A. VON PLATEN.

1. READ frequently the following precepts, impress them carefully upon your mind, and let your purpose of living by them ever grow firmer and livelier, and let them be to you more inviolable

than an oath.

THE art of phonographic reporting is the best RULES OF LIVING.-ADAPTED FROM THE GERMAN ever invented, but nevertheless leads sometimes to mistakes. Not long since, a member of Congress made a speech, quoting Latin, "Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato est, sed major veritas." (Socrates is my friend, Plato is my friend, but truth is much more my friend.) This appeared in the report next day as follows:-"I may cuss Socrates, I may cuss Plato, said Major Veritas." "WHY do you wink at me, sir?" said a beautiful young lady, angrily, to a stranger at a party an evening or two since.-"I beg your pardon, madam," replied the wit, "I winked as men do when looking at the sun-your splendour dazzled my eyes."

A YOUNG lawyer who had long paid his court to a young lady, without much advancing his suit, accused her one day of being "insensible to the power of love." "It does not follow," she archly replied, "that I am so, because I am not to be won by the power of attorney." "Forgive me," cried the suitor, "but you should remember that all the votaries of Cupid are solicitors!"

PATIENCE.

"WHO is that pretty miss, I wonder,
Tripping along the garden yonder?"
"Ho! ho! what a query your's is now, my patron,
To mistake for a miss what I've took for a
matron ;

Yet women are so much alike, I don't wonder At all that you've made such an innocent blunder."

'Stop friend! Take the mote from that vision of thine,

Before you impugn the correctness of mine; Though pleasant your aim as a dirk-bearing cateran,

Yet pointless and wide flies the dart of your wit,

Since you cannot distinguish a maid from a matron,

No wonder you mistake a miss for a hit;

2. Let your religion be that of sensible and reasonable men. Let it consist in faith in the goodness of the great all-pervading Spirit-in a Providence, whose guiding and directing presence is clearly manifested in all the events of your life. 3. Permit no doubt, nor doubter to perplex you. It is neither possible nor conceivable that you, with human understanding, should be able to comprehend the Deity and the original creation of things, since you can survey only so small a part of the universe, and can perceive that only through the senses, and externally.

4. Communicate your principles only to those who are animated by similar views. You will convince no one who does not convince himself. The reformation of the world advances at a slow pace: let time perform its work. All projects of sudden enlightenment have proved abortive.

5. Never engage in so-called religious disputes; break off such a conversation as soon as an opportunity of doing so is presented.

6. The idea of a Supreme Being will necessarily lead you to the belief of the spirit's immortality, without which life would be without meaning.

7. Neglect not the body, upon which your whole earthly existence depends. Inform yourself of what is beneficial, and what is pernicious to it. Despise it not; but on the other hand also consider what an inert, useless, and mouldering mass it is, as soon as it lacks life, its animating principle.

8. Let the object of your life be, improvement in what is good. All is good which contributes to the health of your own body and mind, and that of others.

On the white breast of either you can't stain a sire is sufficient. But it is only by reflection and feather,

Your hit, man of Uz, is a miss altogether."

JOB.

9. For the perception of the good, a sincere deobservation of ourselves, that we attain to that rapid penetration and that nice power of distinction, which are so necessary in the manifold and complicated events of life.

"GENTLEMEN of the Jury," said a western lawyer, "I don't mean to insinuate that this man is 10. Never lose sight of that aim of life, not a covetous person, but I will bet five to one that, even in little things. Believe that no action is so if you should bait a steel trap with a new three-insignificant that some virtue may not be propenny piece and place it within six inches of his mouth, you would catch his soul."

A MAXIM BY A MISANTHROPE.-The last place in which I should look for the milk of human kindness is the pale of civilization.

IN a case trying to prove a man drunk, an Irish witness was asked by the Judge if he thought the man the worse for liquor? He replied, "No in faith, he thought him the better for it."

DR. JOHNSON left it on record, that as he was passing by a fishmonger who was skinning an eel, he heard him curse it because it would not lie still!

IT WASN'T FOR WANT.-An Irishman being asked why he left his country for America? replied "it wasn't for want, for he had plenty of

that at home."

moted by it. In bodily suffering and disagreeable occupations, exercise at least patience, of which man stands so much and so frequently in need, and which is the best safeguard against illhumour.

11. The good man contributes to the welfare of others not alone by positive act and instruction; but his life resembles a fruit-bearing shade tree, by which each passer-by finds shelter and refreshment, which disinterestedly and even involuntarily scatters happy germs upon the surrounding soil, whereby it produces what is like and similar itself.

12. Whatever you do, trust in Providence, and also in yourself. Both united, will extricate you from every dilemma, encourage you in every undertaking.

As far as it is possible, have bits of bread eaten TO PROMOTE THE GROWTH OF THE HAIR.-up before they become hard; spread those that Mix equal parts of olive oil and spirits of rose- are not eaten, and let them dry, to be pounded for mary, add a faw drops of oil of nutmeg. If the puddings, or soaked for brewis. hair be rubbed every night with this, and the proportion be very gradually increased, it will answer every purpose of facilitating the growth of the hair.

THE HIVE.

THE TAYLOR THAT MADE THE BREECHES.The Duke of Wellington was remarkable for the coolness with which he gave his directions. Eveu in the heat of an engagement he has been known to give vent to a humourous observation, especially when it seemed to raise the spirits of his men. Thus, when the British were storming Badajos, his Grace rode up while the balls were falling around, and observing an artilleryman particularly active, enquired the man's name. He was answered "Taylor."-"A very good name, too," remarked Wellington. "Cheer up, my men; Taylor will soon make a pair of breeches-in the walls!" At this sally the men forgot the danger of their situation, a burst of laughter broke from them, and the next charge carried the fortress.

THE "VENUS OF THE FOREST" is simply the ash-tree, which has gained that title from the graceful height of its curved trunk, from the elegant sweeps of its abundant branches, and from the feathery lightness of its drooping foliage, which is of most harmonious tints of green. The ornamental character of these trees is strikingly recognised in many parts of Wales, where the "Venus of the Forest" appears in all her beauty. THE WYCH ELM is the same as that called by botanists the Broad-leaved Elm. The leaves are twice the size of those of the common elm, and resemble those of the hazel. For this reason, the tree has been sometimes called the Wych Hazel. Long-bows were made of the wood of this tree, when those weapons were in use in England, and it is recommended for that purpose in old statutes. It is found in shady lands, and the outskirts of woods in most parts of England, and is considered to be indigenous. Some old writers-for instance, Ray, Evelyn, &c., spell the name "Witch," but the prevailing mode now seems to be Wych, and the tree is occasionally called by that name alone, without the adjunct either of Elm or Hazel. When at full growth, it is not above a third of the height of the common Elm.

harness and draw to a purpose. When "The
Professor" was declined for want of "startling
incident" and thrilling excitement," she sat
down there and then to write a book which should
be more to the public taste. Her object was to
find not "fit audience though few," but a pur-
chasing publisher and a reading public; and she
went straight to her object. If she thus wrote
worse than she might have done had she been
more independent, the fault was not hers, but that
of her necessities and of the public taste.
DURING each interval of time that our pulse
beats, we are carried twenty miles from that por-
tion of absolute space we occupied before; and
during the seven hours' sleep we enjoy, we are
carried four hundred and seventy thousand miles
through space.

HOOD'S AFFECTION FOR THE CHOICE OF HIS YOUTH.-I never was anything, dearest, till I knew you-and I have been a better, happier, and more prosperous man ever since. Lay by that truth in lavender, sweetest, and remind me of it when I fail. I am writing warmly and fondly; but not without good cause. First, your own affectionate letter, lately received-next the remembrances of our dear children, pledges-what darling ones!-of our old familiar love, then a delicious impulse to pour out the over-flowings of my heart into yours; and last, not least, the knowledge that your dear eyes will read what my hand is now writing. Perhaps there is an afterthought that, whatever may befal me, the wife of my bosom will have this acknowledgment of her tenderness, worth, excellence, all that is wifely or womanly from my pen.-Memorials of Thomas Hood.

THE STATESMAN'S LIFE.-When English statesmen were responsible to the king or nobody, they lived a different life from their successors who had a parliament to manage, and from those modern successors who are responsible to parliament in a fuller sense than at any former time. Ancient statesmen had an easier life of it-in all respects, perhaps, but that of dependence on the favour of the monarch. Modern statesmen have more wear RIFLES The forefathers of the riflemen of our and tear to endure, with less showy and more rare own day, were as famous for the use of the long-bow rewards, but not less substantial and heart-felt as their successors are now becoming for that of satisfactions. The anxieties to which they are their scarcely more deadly weapon. Their bows subject are different from those of old times; were always made of the wood of the Yew, which and so are their maladies and modes of living and has so much toughness and elasticity of fibre, as dying. It may indeed be doubted whether the to fit it for the most heavy strain. The tree is life of the British statesman of the nineteenth slow of growth, but will stand for centuries with-century has ever been lived in any former time or out showing signs of decay, while the durability of its verdure, joined to its peculiar shade, has made the melancholy yew the appointed mourner of the churchyard, In the country, it is a common saying that a post of this wood will last longer than a post of iron.

MISS BRONTE.-Strong as was her fancy, Miss Bronte's was an eminently practical mind. She seemed to have the power of reserving her imaginative faculties for a sphere of their own, and excluded them almost too entirely from the domain of actual life. Though her limited experience of the world may have betrayed her into some blunders-they were wonderfully few-a sound practical judgment distinguishes her; her letters to her publishers are perfectly business-like, clear, succint, and direct to the purpose. She has the whip-hand of her genius, and compels it to go in

other country. The vocation is as peculiar as the character and function of the English aristocracy which usually furnishes the supply of statesmen. -Miss Martineau.

IN the Indian Lancet is a communication from Dr. Donaldson, recommending the web of the common spider as an unfailing remedy for certain fevers. It is stated to be invaluable at times when quinine and other ante-periodics fail in effect or quantity, not only from its efficacy, but because it can be obtained anywhere without trouble and without price. This remedy, it was observed, was used a century back by the poor in the fens of Lincolnshire, and by Sir James M'Gregor in the West Indies. The doctor now uses cobweb pills in all his worst cases, and is stated to have said that he has never, since he tried them, lost a atient from fever."

FAMILY COUNCIL.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COUNCIL. The "Conglomerations" are becoming important exercises in composition, to which we heartily invite all our subscribers, as calculated to promote facility of expression, as well as to brighten the imagination, and give force and clearness to the understanding. Our survey of this month's performances, leads us to make one remark upon the whole, which we should like each writer to observe. The interest of the papers is the weak point. The triumph of the art would be to combine the words given out in a neat composition, brief and sparkling, having one strong point of

interest well-worked out. Our friends have done

"How much

And now to a merrier party: a young man with two or three merry chattering sisters, who are surrounding an elderly lady and gentleman and a very pretty, bright-eyed girl. "We thought you'd be too late, Cousin Mary," says the young man, as he shakes hands; but he is interrupted by his Uncle's inquiries about the luggage, and the Porter requesting them to take their seats. much to achieve this result, but not enough. and all;" and he prepares to help Cousin Mary" "Oh, it's all right," says the young man, "books Like the celebrated Knife-grinder, most of them into the next carriage to ours. "have no tale to tell," or tell it too carelessly. Books! Reading!" exclaims that young lady, as "Oh you scholar! Yet there is undoubted cleverness and spirit in she turns round to adjust her crinoline, which is their productions. We can but mention a few. Marguerite's is one of the very best of all the extensive and rather refractory. large number before us; Statira, James D., and reading do you intend to do, I wonder?" (Not Narcissa are also very good, but wanting in point; side.) But the bell rings; there is a rush; they much, we suspect, Cousin Mary, with you by his (we wish the latter would oblige us next time by à more readable handwriting), F. S. Mills conare all seated; the doors are shut, and nobody is tributes the most original this month in idea, but left behind except two youthful members of some defective in working out. Irene, Little Giggie, Es-Rifle Corps, who rush up just too late. Oh! this telle, Stephanie, Marie and Elise, and F. H. Knapp, wanting in freshness of thought, but very clever. Illa shows herself a good painter of character. Captain J. R., our old friend, is thanked for his kindly efforts. Aline (like all our correspondents) is terribly severe on crinoline; but have our fair friends really set their faces against it-or do they rail against it, and wear it the while? Annie Linton has done well, but she can do better. From all those we have mentioned here, and from the many others who may consider they have deserved equally well, we shall be most happy to hear again.

CONGLOMERATIONS.

FIVE MINUTES TO SPARE AT A RAILWAY STATION.

Now that everyone everywhere is going away somewhere, and we amongst the number, it is, of course, rather difficult to turn our thoughts from travelling business, even to fix them on our family pastine; so we will conglomerate these rival topics of interest by writing our conglomeration on five minutes to spare at a railway terminus, supposing, of course, that our luggage is safely ticketed and placed in the van, and we ourselves are comfortably seated, and next the window, too-which is such a luxury! The first group that attracts our attention is a jolly farmer, his wife, and half-a-dozen juveniles, who have apparently been enjoying their holiday to town before the busy harvest time; and the children are staring about, and the mother is begging them to get in, and the guard is asking for their tickets, and the farmer in his confusion can't remember in which pocket he has stowed them. away.

But our attention is called away from them by the well-known figure of our county member. Parliament is sitting no longer, and both he and his lady look pleased to leave the hot and dusty

unsoldierike, incorrigible habit so many young men have of" cutting it fine." And now we are away from the station, and ever and anon we hear the chattering and the ringing laughter of 'la belle cousin" in the next carriage. And this evening-(oh this wonderful power of steam!)shells and sea-weed, in a pretty little village of we shall be in the north of England, picking up

no, we won't tell the name even of the county, for our favourite retreat is so pretty and so quiet, we wouldn't for the world see it changed to a town. We are selfish? Perhaps so, and we acknowledge our error and close our desk.

MODERN WITCHCRAFT.

IN a poor little mud cabin under a hill,

In the county of Cork, an old woman dwelt,
Shun'd by all as a witch, and neglected alone,
She lived there, and hardship and solitude felt.
But a railway was made through that county of
Cork,

And strangers arrived Ireland's country to see;
At the fall of the year, when the harvest was ripe,
To partake of her fare, though homely it be.
There were members of Parliament wanting a
change,

A felon disguised, and a hypocrite fine;
With christian, and scholar, and ladies so grand,
In youth, and in beauty, and broad crinoline.
Then the little old cabin was pass'd and re-pass'd,

And many would pause at the wide open door; And the witch she told fortunes to both old and young,

And obtained silver pieces, score after score.
Then came there a couple both lively and young,
The youth wore the dress of a brave rifle corps;
The maiden was fair as an angel in dreams-
The old woman rose from her seat on the floor.