of insects, and the ease with which the eye can wander from one object to another, each in itself, perhaps, worthy of equal attention, divert the unpractised eye from that undivided attention to some small spot or confined nook which the more experienced eye and hand of the real painter at once comprises and transfers with living truth to the canvass. How often we feel convinced of this when we see the simple scenes, which we with careless eye neglected, brought before us in the limited space of landscape painting! Some scenes there are, however, which speak home alike to the feelings of the artist and the uninitiated. Our "Ford" is one of these. The younger branches of a peasant family, united in the bonds of love and radiant with the buxom health of youth, cross the shallow waters of the clear and bubbling brook. The sun-burnt youth, the brown but more delicate features of the maiden, with the still fairer complexion of the infant, which with sisterly care she has swung aloft, contrast pleasingly with the colour of the stream, and bank, and trees. The dog has crossed the ford already more than once, and now stands barking with delight, as if good-humouredly chiding their lagging pace. Behind the figures the knotty roots stand darkly out amidst the lighter colours of the bank, whilst from above the towering trees raise their lofty heads. In the distance the cottages of the village to which our young friends are bound close the view; their gable-ends enlightened by the sun.

An abler hand than ours has touched so eloquently on these simple landscape scenes that we cannot refrain from bringing some of his remarks before the reader. "Rivers," says the sketcher," are always poetical; they move, or glide, or break into fall and rapid through their courses, as if they were of life, and were on nature's mysterious errands. The sunbeams gleam upon them with messages from heaven. Trees bend to them, and, receiving freshness and fragrance, grow in their music; flowers kiss them; love haunts them; silence keeps awake in their caverns and sequestered nooks, and there the nightingale sings to her; the bright and manycoloured bow arches their falls, and the blessed and blessing moon gifts them with magic.

"Let us take the simplest subject—a by-road or hollow lane. I write this in a country parish that abounds with such. I pass through them daily; some of them extremly beautiful; but, to me, they owe all their beauty to the sentiment-the poetical sentiment-they convey. They always set the imagination at work. Simply as colour they would move me; as light and shade they would not be without their effect. As to forms and objects, they, too, convey something more to the mind than the eye sees; for fancy extracts much from them: and I have often seen such subjects, and in good hands, too, spoiled for want of a little examination into the nature and cause of the pleasure arising from them. Here is a deep hollow lane, very rich in colours, simple in the general, but varied in the individual forms of the

objects. Here are brown earth banks, with old roots, curiously twisted, shooting out, and again hiding themselves in the deeper holes. Here are various greens, all blending into masses; the road, rugged enough, leads down, rather steep, and in consequence at an edge, not much beyond a stone's throw, is lost; and from thence rises up the foliage of trees below, and the silver boles of the young beech shoot up through it. All this part, from the edge of the road formed by its descent, is illuminated, but tenderly, by the sun; but the light comes not direct, but through the leafage of other trees higher up on the bank. All else is in shade-not all equally dark; for, from the irregular depths and hollows of the banks, some parts are very dark, excepting near the foreground at the edge of the road, where the sunbeams, flickering through and coloured by the foliage above, play among loose stones and dead leaves, and slightly running up the opposite bank, just gild a few leaves and a single white, half-blown flower of a brier-rose. All is still, perfect silence, all motionless, save the slight play of the sunbeams on the stones as mentioned. And see! a weasel, or some such little creature, is running across the road, and is gone. The road itself is in perfect accordance with all else. It is broken in ruts, indeed; but they seem as if dug deeper and desperately broken up by nature's myriads of unseen sappers and miners, to defy the irruption of cart-wheels. You would wonder how you came there, for it seems charmed against intrusion."

Now who would wish to enlarge the scale? Is it not perfect as it is? Does not even many a homely scene as this-a common lane-become sublime to the "cultirated eye" of the poet or painter.

OMBI, OR OMBOS. THE VALLEY OF THE NILE.

We have often in these pages directed the attention of our readers to the great features of physicial geography, and more particularly to the very interesting subject of the great influence which rivers exercise on the welfare and prosperity of the country through which they flow. There is scarcely a district or a city of any importance which does not suggest instructive reflections on this head; but there is certainly no country in the world in which they are so remarkably exemplified as in the land of Egypt, which may be said to owe not only its fertility, but its very existence to the classic waters of the Nile. The extraordinary periodical overflowings of this river form the great event of the year; the rise or fall of a few feet is productive