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ployed, for even the slaves of the gover-churchman, dissenter, learned or unlearned, nor knew that they were doing wrong, and liberal or bigoted, would certainly become fled, leaving the whole of the captives on a blessing by introducing a better system our hands. Bishop Mackenzie received than that which has prevailed for ages. them gladly, and in a fertile country, with land free, in the course of a year or two, might, by training some sixty boys to habits of industry, have rendered his mission independent, as far as native support was concerned. Having been engaged in the formation of two missions in another part of the country, and having been familiar with the history of several, I never knew a mission undertaken under more favorable auspices. This would be the opinion of all who have commenced similar enterprises in other parts, and it was that of the good bishop himself. He was so thoroughly unselfish, and of such a genial disposition, that he soon gained the confidence of people, and this is the first great step to success. The best way of treating these degraded people must always be very much like that which is pursued in ragged schools. Their bodily wants must be attended to as the basis of all efforts at their elevation. The slave trade is the gigantic evil which meets us at every step in the country. We cannot move through any part without meeting captured men and women, bound, and sometimes gagged; so no good can be done if this crying evil is not grappled with. The good bishop had some two hundred people entirely at his disposal, and would soon have presented to the country an example of a free community, supported by its own industry, where fair dealing could be met, which undoubtedly would have created immense influence; for wherever the English name is known it is associated with freedom and fair-play. Some seem to take a pleasure in running down their fellow countrymen, but the longer I live I like them the better. They carry with them some sense of law and justice, and a spirit of kindliness, and were I in a difficulty I should prefer going to an Englishman, in preference to any other, for aid. And as for English women, they do, undoubtedly, make the best wives, nothers, sisters, and daughters in the world. It is this conviction that makes me, in my desire to see slavery abolished, and human happiness promoted, ardently wish to have some of our country women transplanted to a region where they would both give and receive benefit, where every decent Christian Englishman, whether

VOL. LXIII.—NO. 3

We conducted Bishop Mackenzie and party up to the highlands, and, after spending three or four days with them, returned, and never had any more connection with the conduct of that mission. We carried a boat past Murchison's Cataracts. By these the river descends at five different leaps, of great beauty, 1200 feet in a distance of about forty miles. Above that we have sixty miles of fine deep rivers, flowing placidly out of Lake Agassa. As we sailed into this fine freshwater lake, we were naturally anxious to know its depth ten, twelve, twenty, thirty fathoms-then no bottom with all our line, and John Neil, our sailor, at last pronounced it fit for the Great Eastern to sail in. We touched the bottom in a bay with a line of one hundred fathoms, and a mile out, could find no bottom at one hundred and sixteen fathoms. It contains plenty of fish, and great numbers of natives daily engage in catching them with nets, hooks, spears, torches, and poison. The water remains about 72°, and the crocodiles, having plenty of fish to eat, rarely attack men. It is from fifty to sixty miles broad, and we saw at least 225 miles of its length. As seen from the lake, it seems surrounded by mountains, and from these furious storms come suddenly down, and raise high seas, which are dangerous for a boat, but the native canoes are formed so as to go easily along the surface. mountains on the west were ascended last year, and found to be only the edges of a great plateau, three thousand feet above the sea. This is cool, well watered, and well peopled with the Manganja and the Maori, some of whom possess cattle; and I have no doubt but that, the first hardships over, and properly housed and fed, Europeans would enjoy life and comfort. This part of Africa has exactly the same form as Western India at Bombay, only this is a little higher and cooler. Well, having now a fair way into the highlands by means of the Zambesi and Shire, and a navigable course of river and lake of two miles across, from which all the slaves for the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, as well as some for Cuba, went, and nearly all the inhabitants of this denselypeopled country actually knowing how

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The apparent

to cultivate cotton, it seemed likely that | Viscount Lavridio, the Viscount de-lu-da their strong propensity to trade might be Bandeira, and others, are as anxious to easily turned to the advantage of our own see the abolition of the slave-trade as country as well as theirs. And here, I could be desired; but the evil is done by beg to remark, that on my first journey, the assertion in Europe of dominion in my attention not having then been turned Africa, when it is quite well known that to the subject, I noticed only a few cases they were only a few half-castes, the chilof its cultivation, but in this I saw much dren of converts and black women, who more than I had previously any idea of. have actually to pay tribute to the pure The cotton is short in the staple, strong, natives. Were they of the smallest and like wool in the hand-as good as benefit to Portugal; if any one ever upland American. A second has been made a fortune and went home to spend introduced, as is seen in the name being it in Lisbon, or if any pleasure whatever foreign cotton, and a third variety of very could be derived by the Portuguese govsuperior quality, very long in the fibre, ernment from spending £5000 annually though usually believed to belong to on needy governors, who all connive at South America, was found right in the the slave-trade, the thing could be undermiddle of the continent, in the country of stood. But Portugal gains nothing but a the Makalolo. A tree of it was eight shocking bad name, as the first that began inches in diameter, or like an ordinary the slave-trade, and the last to end it. To apple tree. And all these require re- us it is a serious matter to see Lord Palplanting not oftener than once in three merston's policy, which has been so emiyears. There is no danger of frosts either nently successful on the west, so largely to injure the crops. No sooner, however, neutralized on the east coast. A great had we begun our labors among the Man-nation like ours cannot get rid of the obganja than the African Portuguese, by ligations to other members of the great instigating the Ajawa, with arms and community of nations. The police of the ammunition, to be paid for in slaves, produced the utmost confusion. Village after village was attacked and burned, for the Manganja, armed only with bows and arrows, could not stand before firearms. The bowman's way of fighting is to be in ambush, and shoot his arrows unawares, while those with guns, making a great noise, cause the bowmen to run away. The women and children become captives. This process of slave-hunting went on for some months, and then a panic seized the Manganja nation. All fled down to the river, only anxious to get that between them and their enemies; but they had left all their food behind them, and starvation of thousands ensued. The Shire valley, where thousands lived at our first visit, was converted into literally a valley of dry bones. One cannot now walk a mile without seeing a human skeleton; open a hut in the now deserted villages, and there lie the unburied skeletons. In some I opened, there were two skeletons and a little one, rolled up in a mat, between them. I have always hated putting the blame of being baffled upon any one else, from the conviction that a man ought to succeed in all feasible projects, in spite of everybody; and moreover, not to be understood as casting a slur on the Portuguese in Europe, the

sea must be maintained, and should we send no more cruisers to suppress the slave-trade, we would soon be obliged to send them to suppress piracy, for no traffic engenders lawlessness as does this odious trade. The plan I proposed required a steamer on Lake Nyassa to take up the ivory trade, as it is by the aid of that trade that the traffic in slaves is carried on. The government sent out a steamer which, though an excellent one, was too deep for the Shire. Another steamer was then built at my own expense; this was all that could be desired, made to unscrew into twenty-four pieces; and the Lady Nyassa, or Lady of the Lake, was actually unscrewed and ready for conveyance, at the foot of Murchison's Cataracts, when, the people being swept away in the manner I have mentioned, a work was hindered which I confidently believed would have entirely changed the state of the country. It was the steamer Lady of Nyassa that took me across the Indian Ocean, and in it I purpose to try again. Were I young again I would gladly devote my time to the missionary work; but that must be done by younger men, specially educated for it-men willing to rough it, and yet hold quietly and patiently on. When I became consul it was with the confident hope that I should

be able to stop the slave-trade. I do not mean to give up. If being baffled had even made me lose heart, I should never have been here in the position which by your kindness I now occupy. I intend to make another attempt, but this time in the north of Portuguese, and I feel greatly encouraged by the interest you show, as it cannot be for the person, but from your sympathy with the cause of human liberty throughout the world. It startles us to see a great nation of our own blood despising the African's claims to humanity, and drifting helplessly into a war about him, and then drifting quite as helplessly into abolition and slavery prin

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ciples; then leading the Africans to fight. No mighty event like this terrible war ever took place without teaching terrible lessons. One of these may be that, though on the side of the oppressor there is power, there be higher than they." With respect to the African, neither drink, nor disease, nor slavery, can root him out of the world. I never had any idea of the prodigious destruction of human life that takes place subsequently to the slave-hunting till I saw it; and as this has gone on for centuries, it gives a wonderful idea of the vitality of the nation.

POETRY.

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Little Bell sat down amid the fern"Squirrel! squirrel! to your task returnBring me nuts!" quoth she.

Now away! the frisky squirrel hies-
Golden wood-lights gleaming in his eyes-
And a-down the tree,

Great ripe nuts, kissed brown by July sun,
In the little lap drop one by one-
Hark! how blackbird pipes to see the fun!
"Happy Bell!" quoth he.

Little Bell looked up and down the glade"Squirrel, squirrel, from the nut-tree shade, Bonny blackbird, if you're not afraid,

Come and share with me!"
Down came squirrel, eager for his fare-
Down came bonny blackbird, I declare;
Little Bell gave each his honest share-
Ah! the merry three.

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The rocks sit gray and lone;

The shifting sand is spread so smooth and dry,
That not a tide might ever have swept by,

Stirring it with rude moan:

Only some weedy fragments idly thrown
To rot beneath the sky, tell what has been;
But Desolation's self has grown serene.

After the mountains rise,
And the broad estuary widens out,
All sunshine; wheeling round and round about
Seaward, a white bird flies;

A bird? Nay, seems it rather to these eyes A spirit, o'er Eternity's dim sea

Calling "Come thou where all we glad souls be."

O life, O silent shore,

Where we sit patient: O great sea beyond,
To which we turn with solemn hope and fond,
But sorrowful no more;

But little while and then we too shall soar Like white-winged sea-birds in the Infinite Deep; Till then, thou, Father, wilt our spirits keep. -Miss Muloch.

Wert thou the spoil of some loved playmate's hand?
Or did mine own thus bind and prison thee
In bondage grim and fast? so shrunk, so sear
Is all thine aspect now? Yet can I trace
In its wan lineaments the form of grace,
And can imagine the bright sapphire hue
Of each small petal, when the calyx burst
And gave its incense to the morning air.
How many a time hath Spring awoke the woods,
And Summer to the blue perpetual skies
Unfolded all her flowers; how many a time
Hath morn succeeded night, the sunbeam waned,
And the cool air condensed itself in dew,
Since thou, their nursling, in thy beauty blooming,
Wert here entombed, to fade and be forgot!

Sleep on, poor flow'ret; softest showers of spring,
And all sweet influences of nature, now were vain
Thy colors to revive, or bring to thee
The loveliness of life; as vain, alas,
As wishes are to fill the longing heart—
As vain as bitterest tears or deepest sighs

To bring again the lost. Ah, could we turn
And search the storied pages of the heart,
What withered flowers were found. Fair buds of
Hope

Gathered in dewy hours of life's young morn,
And garnered in their freshness, faded now
And bleached by disappointment; cherished joys
Shrunk into memories that awaken tears-
And loves, and friendships, once expanded flowers
Roseate and beautiful-all, all are there!
Sleep on, poor flow'ret; not unmarked from hence
Thy place of sepulture: with loving hands,
And chastened thought, reluctantly once more
I close the book upon thy faded form.

-Chambers's Journal.

THE MOTHER TO HER CHILD. "THEY tell me thou art come from a far world, Babe of my bosom! that these little arms, Whose restlessness is like the spread of wings, Move with the memory of flights scarce o'er

ON A DRIED WILD-FLOWER IN AN OLD That through these fringèd lids we see the soul

SCHOOL-BOOK.

RELIC of early days! My casual hand
Hath made discovery of thy long retreat,
As carelessly I turned the time-worn page,
Unconscious of its import; for my thoughts
Were idly roving-not on learned lore,

Or marked and measured task. I look on thee,
Poor withered thing! and memory's current flows
Back, back upon the past. Shrivelled and sear
Is all thine aspect now, pris'ner of years!
Yet hath it woke remembrance of bright days
And sunny scenes of nature, trodden oft
By my free feet in childhood; it hath woke
The echoes of sweet voices in my heart—
I see again the light of happy eyes-
I mingle with the early loved, and tread
With them familiar pathways. Where, O where
Hast thou been gathered? Was't in the shady walk
Far in the woodlands, where the beech-trees stretch
Their long embracing branches, forming there
A cool continuous arbor? Grewest thou
Beside that stately stem, whose graven bark
Tells of its frequent loiterers? Or didst
Thou spring from some small cleft upon the rock
That venturous steps were needed to attain ?

Steeped in the blue of its remembered home;
And while thou sleep'st come messengers they say,
Whispering to thee-and 'tis then I see
Upon thy baby lips that smile of heaven.

"And what is thy far errand, my fair child?
Why away, wandering from a home of bliss,
To find thy way through darkness home again?
Wert thou an untried dweller in the sky?
Is there, betwixt the cherub that thou wert,
The cherub and the angel thou mayst be,
A life's probation in this sadder world?
Art thou with memory of two things only,
Music and light, left upon earth astray,
And, by the watchers at the gate of heaven,
Looked for with fear and trembling?
"God! who gavest

Into my guiding hand this wanderer,
To lead her through a world whose darkling paths
I tread with steps so faltering-leave not me
To bring her to the gates of heaven, alone!
I feel my feebleness. Let these stay on-
The angels who now visit her in dreams!
Bid them be near her pillow till in death
The closed eyes look upon thy face once more!
And let the light and music, which the world
Borrows of heaven, and which her infant sense

Hails with sweet recognition, be to her A voice to call her upward, and a lamp To lead her steps unto thee!"

BY THE RIVER.

WE went wandering down through the woodlands,
In the autumn-Alice and I.
How clearly before me that memory stands,
From the old times long gone by!

We pushed our way through the tangled wood,
Where the birch-stems glittered white,
Until close by the river-side we stood,
Where the rowan-berries hung bright.

All the brown woods were silent overhead;
There was never a breeze to quiver
The birchen boughs and the rowans red,
As they hung above the river.?

The gold moss that clung on the gray rock's side,
Where only the moss could grow,

And the dark-green ferns dripping into the tide, Lived again in the stream below.

And she twisted the berries into a crown

For her gleaming gold-bright hair;

To him that comes darkling along the rough steep.

Ah, my sailor, make haste,
For the time runs to waste,
And my love lieth deep-

"Too deep for swift telling: and yet, my one lover, I've conned thee an answer, it waits thee tonight."

By the sycamore passed he, and through the white clover,

Then all the sweet speech I had fashioned took flight;

But I'll love him more, more
Than ere wife loved before,
Be the days dark or bright.

-Miss Ingelow.

APPARENT FAILURE.

"WE shall soon lose a celebrated building."
-Paris Newspaper.

No, for I'll save it! Seven years since,
I passed through Paris, stopped a day
To see the baptism of your prince;

Saw, made my bow, and went my way:
Walking the heat and headache off,

I took the Seine-side, you surmise, Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff, Cavour's appeal and Buol's replies,

And the face from the bank looked laughing down So sauntered till-what met my eyes? At the face in the water there;

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From sycamore blossoms, or settle or sleep:

Only the Doric little Morgue!

The dead-house where you show your drowned Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue, Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned. One pays one's debt in such a case;

I plucked up heart and entered-stalked, Keeping a tolerable face

Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked: Let them! No Briton's to be baulked!

First came the silent gazers; next,

A screen of glass, we're thankful for; Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text, The three men who did most abhor Their life in Paris yesterday,

So killed themselves: and now, enthroned Each on his copper couch, they lay

Fronting me, waiting to be owned.

I thought, and think, their sin's atoned."

Poor men, God made, and all for that!
The reverence struck me; o'er each head
Religiously was hung its hat,

Each coat dripped by the owner's bed,
Sacred from touch: each had his berth,
His bounds, his proper place of rest,
Who last night tenanted on earth

Some arch, where twelve such slept abreastUnless the plain asphalte seemed best.

How did it happen, my poor boy?
You wanted to be Bonaparte

And have the Tuileries for toy,

And could not, so it broke your heart?
You, old one by his side, I judge,
Were, red as blood, a socialist,

A leveller! Does the empire grudge
You've gained what no republic missed?

You glowworms shine out, and the pathway discover | Be quiet, and unclench your fist!

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