Would that I were enough of a botanist to describe them! But there, in the hedge, is the singular tree of the Three Dresses! First it cometh forth like a fairy, all in a garb of green, covered from top to toe, with a leafy robe of that loveliest color; presently, ere many weeks have passed, it suddenly droppeth its emerald raiment, and, all leafless and barren, appeareth in deep mourning, a black and funereal thing: by-and-bye, however, buds of unseen flowers deck the squalid branches, and lo! all at once, in one night, arrayed in a stole of scarlet glory, our cardinal of trees-a vegetable Proteus-blazes forth upon the sight, a tree of harmless lightning! It has just assumed its third costume; and that hedge looks, in the distance, like an avenue of fire. There is not a green leaf nor brown bud to vary the crimson splendor of its pride; for every capsule has burst forth into a blossom of unexampled brilliancy. This tree is the Butea frondosa.

Yonder, in the corner, near the margin of the neglected bowry (reader, bowry is not a little bower, but a large well), are the apples of the racy tomata. Beside them, in dangerous proximity, droop the superb corollæ of the deadly stramonium-so nearly neighbored are the useful and the hurtful in this world! Here, close to the veranda, is another poisonous plant of extreme beauty; it is thorny, its leaves resembling those of a thistle; but they are of a delicate sea-green, and each stalk is surmounted by a flower, which is a perfect gem of elegance. It is of bright yellow, looking like a golden chalice; has six petals surrounding many stamens and pistils, for the plant is polyandrous; while a pyramidal germen is crowned by a ruby-colored stigma. It is the Argemone Mexicana, and it is said that the Bheels and wild septs of our Northern Circars poison their kreeses and arrows with a preparation from its viscid juice In spite of its winning beauty, the weed exhales a fetid odor, indicative of its hurtful propensities.

HARMONY RUN MAD.
A WRINKLE FROM GERMANY.

flutes and Flageolets occasionally filled the whole room with their naive, childish strains.

a sudden, the morose Contra-basso, accomAll appeared very comfortable; when, on panied by a couple of kindred Violoncellos, burst into the room, and threw himself passionately into the director's chair. Then did the Pianoforte, together with all the catgut instruments present, involuntarily sound in accord from terror.

"It were enough," he exclaimed, "to play the deuce with me, if such compositions were to be given daily. Here am I, just come from the rehearsal of a symphony of one of our newest composers; and, although, as is known, I possess a pretty powerful nature I could scarce hold it out longer. strings of my body ran a risk of being torn for ever! If any more such work goes on, I will positively turn Kit, and gain my livelihood by the performance of Muller and Kauer's dances!"

The

First Violoncello (wiping the perspiration from his brow) "Certainly, old dad is right; I am so fatigued that, since the opera of Cherubini, I don't recollect any such échauffement!"

All the instruments together.-"Explain! explain!"

Second Violoncello. --" What! the symphony? It is inexplicable, and unendurable. According to the principles my divine master, Romberg, instilled into me, the production we have just executed is a sort of musical monster, which can boast of no other merit than originality! Why, it makes us climb up aloft like violins."

First Violoncello (interrupting him pettishly)." As if we could not do it as well!'

A Violin." Let each class keep within its due bounds."

Bass Viol.-"Aye, or what will remain for me to do? I who stand between the two?"

COMPLETELY SATISFIED with the performance of a symphony which I had just heard as well as with an excellent dinner, I fell asleep; and beheld myself, in a dream, suddenly transported back into the concert room. Here I found the whole of the instruments in motion-holding grand council, under the presidency of the sweet-breathed Hautboy.

First Violoncello.-" Oh, you are out of the question! Your ability is only to support us, or to produce a few quavers and turns; as, for instance, in the Pelican; but as to what regards fine tone-"

Oboe." None can compete with me, in that respect."

Clarionet." Madam, you will surely allow us to notice our talents!"

Flute.-"Yes; for marches and festivals." Bassoon." Who resembles the divine tenore more than I?"

To the right, a party had arranged themselves; consisting of a Viol d'amour, Viol di Gamba, Flute, &c. Each of these sounded melancholy complaints as to the degeneracy of the present era of music. To the left, the Lady Hautboy was haranguing a circle of Clarionettes and Flutes, both young and old, with and without keys. In the centre was the courtly Pianoforte, attended by several graceful Violins, who had formed themselves after Pleyel and Gironetz. The Trumpets and Horns formed a drinking conclave in the corner; while the Piccolo-tongue! you cannot even hold a single note."

Horn. "Why, you surely won't pretend to so much delicacy and power as I have?"

Pianoforte (with dignity).—" And what is all this, compared to the body of harmony possessed by me? Whilst you are, severally, parts of a whole,' I am all-sufficient."

All the others (vociferously).-"Hold your

OUR ENEMIES, THE KAFFIRS.

AT THE PRESENT MOMENT, it may not be uninteresting to give our readers a graphic sketch of the men who have so long been a terror to us, but who now have good reason to fear us. The description is furnished by the Rev. Francis Fleming, M.A.

their national character, and has usually to be found out by some dear-bought experience, does not at first sight impress a stranger.

The common color of the eye is black, or dark brown, somewhat in harmony with that of their skins, which are however darker in some tribes than in others, especially in the In personal appearance and formation, Amampondo and more northerly ones. The the Kaffirs are a race of the most manly and nose also varies in form-in the T'Slambie handsome people known among savages, tribes being broader and more of the negro and in many of their points resemble the shape, than in the Gaikas or Galekas, while New Zealanders. In stature they are gene- among the Abatembu and Amampondo, it rally tall, their height varying from five feet assumes more of the European character. eight or nine inches to upwards of six feet. In many of them, the perfect Grecian and Their muscular frame is remarkable for Roman noses are discernible. These latter symmetry and beauty, as well as great tribes appear, in all other respects, to strength; but their arms, from want of retain their original nationality of appearproper exercise to develop the muscles (owing probably to their usual indolent mode of life), appear small and disproportioned in size to the legs and body.

ance.

In all of them the lower limbs are strikingly robust and fine, and cases of deformity are very rarely to be noticed amongst them. Their carriage is stately and upright—in many even majestic; and this is particularly observable in their chiefs, whose habitual attitudes of ease, and abrupt yet graceful actions in giving their commands, are truly elegant and imposing. They are haughty and proud in their bearing, and carry the head erect and thrown back. The left arm is usually laid across the chest, to support the blanket or kaross, which, carelessly slung over the left shoulder, is their only covering or article of clothing. This, when moving quickly, they gather closer around them; and then, throwing the second corner of it over the right shoulder, they leave it to hang in negligent folds across their fine expansive chests, reminding the beholder much of the Roman toga of old.

THE ART OF SUCCESS.

IN EVERYTHING WE DO (6 WELL," FAITH must be the ladder that raises us up. If we would progress, let us resolve to please. Nothing is more easy, if we set rightly about it. In all that we undertake, towards whatever object we direct our ambition-to please is to succeed, and the art of succeeding is no other than the art of pleasing.

What is it that pleases? Is it a little man, or a tall man? Is it a bountiful share of embonpoint, or a slender form? Is it a black moustache, or a blonde one with large whiskers, if one is not in the army, or a face carefully shorn of every hair? Is it a timid look, or a tempting eye? an air of confidence, or of modesty? the candor of a young Englishman, or the petulance of a Frenchman, a simple attire, or a dress of magnificence?

To render a woman pleasing, must she appear a goddess to our eyes? Ought she to have ebon locks, or golden tresses? the nose of Roxalana, or of Aspasia ? a passionless languor, or an impetuous vivacity? Shall we prefer the warm tint of the Spanish woman, or the delicate complexion of the English woman?

The reply to all these questions is, that every thing pleases in its kind, when you find in it that je ne sais quoi which cannot be expressed, and which makes an impression we know not how. That which pleases,

Their shoulders are square and firmly set, and, like the chest, very broad. Their heads are large, but not disproportioned to their bodies; the forehead being elevated and intellectually formed, and in many cases very high, and finely developed in a phrenological point of view. Their hair is woolly, although not so thick and matted as in either the negro or Hottentot races, from whom the Kaffirs widely differ in all points of personal appearance. Their ears are large, but well made, and seem generally to have become is not always regular beauty; but never elongated by the weight of their pendant ugliness. It is often maliciousness, but never ear-rings and ornaments. Their features, wickedness; it is at times good-nature, although much varied, are fine-particularly never silliness; it is a modest reserve and the eyes, which are keen and piercing; and, not affected prudery; the abandon of an although always unsteady, wandering and affectionate heart, and not the artful advances stealthy, yet from their large size and great of a coquette; ingenious sallies, and not brightness, and from their being well set pedantic bon-mots. It is sometimes the under their broad deep brows, the idea of self-love of a giddy youth, never the precunning and deceit, which undoubtedly is sumption of a man vain of his learning. We

could continue these antitheses till to morrow, and many would be less ridiculous if they spent some hours in considering them attentively. In works of literature, what pleases, is what touches the heart, or amuses the mind, and occupies it without fatiguing it. It therefore is not those kind of compositions in which the whimsicality of terms, the use of obsolete expressions, the combinations of the most uncouth words, the amalgamation of the most unsuitable ideas, occasion you all the labor of painful study; or, in which, without suffering you to breathe, picture after picture is presented to the imagination, as if it were not necessary to take time to comprehend what is before our eyes, in order to be affected by it; in which the fogs of the marshes, the ferns, the moonbeams, the heaths, the meadows, the streams, the burning sands, the birds of the desert, the fowls of the court-yard, the mountains, the streets, the valleys are mixed pell-mell, in the same page, as if one could contemplate a hundred points of view at once, and have at the same time eyes to the right and left, behind and before. Were they as numerous as those in the tail of the peacock, they would be insufficient for this; and even then it would require as many minds as eyes!

COLD AND THIRST.

DR. SUTHERLAND, in his "Voyage of the Lady Franklin and Sophia," gives us some very interesting particulars of the cause and effects of cold and thirst.

his boots, after a walk in the open air at a low temperature, and the accumulation of condensed vapor which he finds there will convince him of the active state of the skin. I often found my stockings adhering to the soles of my Kilby's boots after a walk of a few hours. The hoar-frost and snow which they contained could not have been there by any other means except exhalation from the skin."

With reference to this, Dr. Sutherland observes, "I believe the true cause of such intense thirst is the extreme dryness of the air when the temperature is low. In this state it extracts a large amount of moisture from the human body. The soft and extensive surface which the lungs expose, twentyfive times or oftener every minute, to nearly two hundred cubic inches of dry air, must yield a quantity of vapor which one can hardly spare with impunity. The human skin throughout its whole extent, even where it is brought to the hardness of horn, as well as the softest and most delicate parts, is continually exhaling vapor; and this exhalation creates, in due proportion, a demand for water.

"Let a person but examine the inside of

THE POETRY OF GRIEF.

Poetry from the soul of a mourning parent must be exquisite; though it requires the lapse of some interval ere the reality of grief can be suited for, and transmuted into poetry.

So

Dr. Johnson's objection to elegies has some elements of truth. A relation or friend will not, in the first troubled moment after the bereavement, think of pouring out his sorrows in melodious verse. far we agree with the doctor; but that that friend cannot afterwards, when the troubled soul is composed into a melancholy mood, bewail his loss in song, is egregiously untrue. He may produce the finest elegy without being exposed to the vile charge of counterfeiting grief. Who would doubt the sincerity of Milton's attachment to "Lycidas ?" We should not expect a mother to plant a rose over her son's grave on the day of burial; but if some weeks afterwards she should do this, would she forfeit the character of being an affectionate mourner?

Captain Penny's party, it appears, had an abundant experience of the intensity of cold. At one time the temperature fell below the freezing point of Mercury. Nor is exercise any complete cure for this evil. Exercise, in what an Arctic voyager would call cold weather, produces extreme thirsting an image to be cherished as the substitute of and abundant exhalation from the skin, the lost one, when thus the process of imaginawhich, of course, freezes in the shape of tion is being begun upon the anguish, then flows freely the exquisite poetry of grief.

The broken heart does make melody; and under the immediate and crushing pressure of grief the which fills the soul is the cold face-as unsuggestive harp is hung upon willows. Then, the only vision of poetry as a mask. Genius is altogether inactive beside the unburied, beloved dead. But when the grief is becoming calm-when it can be studied as well as felt-when the soul is set free from the death chamber, suns itself in the past, and can go backwards gleaning fondly the memorials of the precious life which has been withdrawn, and form

hoar-frost under the clothes.

THE OLD THORN.
BY CHARLES SWAIN.

Thou art grey, old thorn, and leafless-
Leafless, though the Spring be near ;
But "my love "hath sat beside thee,

And each branch of thine is dear!

Thou art small, green cot, and humble;
Little in thy looks to cheer;
But my true love dwells within thee,

And each stone of thine is dear.

Love makes all things sweet and holy,
All things bright, however drear;
All things high, however lowly;
WHAT WERE LIFE WERE LOVE NOT
THERE?

A CHILD'S HEART.

We make these few remarks for the purpose of introducing a somewhat similar case

That heart, methinks.

Were of strange mould, which kept no cherish'd print recorded in " Villette," an unusually interest
Of earlier, happier times, when life was fresh,
And Love and INNOCENCE made holiday.

ing novel, by Currer Bell. Here, however,
a little girl was the heroine, and her age did
not exceed six years. With her, as with us,

66

contact" had worked the spell; albeit the object of her affection-a handsome schoolboy, named Graham, was of a cooler temperament than herself. He liked Paulina, but did not love her; whereas she doated on him with all the fondness of a grown-up woman.

HILLHOUSE. ALF THE ENJOYMENTS OF LIFE, -aye, at least one half of them, consist in a retrospect of those by-gone happy hours when INNOCENCE held possession of our gradually expanding ideas, and we impulsively obeyed the dictates and promptings of honest old NATURE. Alas! how soon is an air-tight stopper put upon us, ere yet we are well out of our nurse's arms! No sooner do we begin to ask questions, than we are silenced by a freezing "H-u-s-h!"

In spite of this, we are determined to turn over to-day one of the first pages of our Book of Life, and to let our thoughts find vent in print. There is a charm about little children which delights us; and the absence they evince of all guile causes us often to make them our companions, whilst we turn in disgust from the world at large. Little goodfellowship is to be experienced there!

Mousie, I shall be sorry to lose her. She must 'Polly going? What a pity! Dear little come to us again, mamma.'

There is nothing in Nature more susceptible than the heart of a child, be it in boy or girl. Few of us care to inquire deeply into its joys and sorrows, though occasionally they will force themselves upon us; yet do we all marvel now and then at what we both hear and see. If we would think more, we should know more.

And, hastily swallowing his tea, he took a candle and a small table to himself, and his books, and was soon buried in study. Little Mousie crept to his side, and lay down on the carpet at his feet, her face to the floor. Mute and motionWe have been highly delighted of late, less, she kept that post and position till bed-time. whilst perusing in its progress the transOnce I saw Graham-wholly unconscious of her lation of the works of Dr. GALL, now receded an inch or two. proximity-push her with his restless foot. She appearing in our pages. We have pondered hand stole out from beneath her face, to which it A minute after, one little much on his observations of the human had been pressed, and softly caressed the heedless heart in its early stages of life-showing foot. When summoned by her nurse, she rose and how much more "forward," from circum-departed very obediently, having bade us all a stances, some children's animal passions are subdued good-night. than others-partaking, to a certain extent, of the emotions generally known by adults only. In our youth, WE were ourself a most singular example of this curious fact, as we shall presently explain. Our heart was no stranger to hope, fear, and love, ere we had reached the age of seven years. The thoughts that then passed through our mind, and the scenes of excitement to which, from circumstances, we were at that time subjected, have often recurred to us since; and do often recur to us now. We fell in love with the sweet face and person of a most lovely girl in her seventeenth year, before we had numbered seven summers. We loved that face, that figure, far better than our own life. Yes, we lived upon her smile. We grew upon the words that fell from her cherry lips. We were thinking of her, morning, noon, and night.

I will not say that I dreaded going to bed an hour later; yet I certainly went with an unquiet anticipation that I should find that child in no peaceful sleep. The forewarning of my instinct was but fulfilled, when I discovered her, all cold outside of the bed. I scarcely knew how to accost and vigilant, perched like a white bird on the her. She was not to be managed like another child. She, however, accosted me. the door, and put the light on the dressing-table As I closed she turned to me with these words: 'I cannotcannot sleep; and in this way I cannot-cannot live!'

I asked her what ailed her. 'Dedful miz-er-y!' said she, with her piteous lisp.

VOL. III.-14.

sode has its origin in fact.
We cannot but believe that this little epi-
gospel truth.
It reads like
Lucy Snowe, the teacher in the family, whilst
Let us then listen to Miss
she tells us all about Paulina and Mrs.
Bretton's handsome son Graham :-

In the evening, at the moment Graham's entrance was heard below, I found her at my side. She began to arrange a locket-riband about my neck, she displayed and replaced the comb in my hair. While thus busied, Graham entered.

'Tell him by-and-by,' she whispered; 'tell him am going.'

I

In the course of tea-time, I made the desired communication.

Shall I call Mrs. Bretton?'

reply, and indeed, I well knew that if she had "That is downright silly,' was her impatient heard Mrs. Bretton's foot approach, she would have nestled quiet as a mouse under the bedclothes.

P