race and ball." How glad she was to have it to say, particularly now that she found he was going away! It would show him she would not be watching and waiting on the hill for him, or that all the spirit had not gone out of her. Her eyes filled with tears.

"Confound his impudence," said Vincent. "The Derby and the Oaks indeed; he won't look at the stars, I suppose, because they are not all moons I saw the Derby as well as he, and that won't destroy my enjoyment of Beltard, I hope.'

"My dear boy, I verily believe you would get excited over a race between two broken down asses," answered Mr. Taylor. "Don't be too hard on other men who have not such a large capacity."

(To be continued).

A

FROM THE ARABIC.

BY THE LATE PROFESSOR PAalmer.

FOOLISH Atheist, whom I lately found,

Alleged Philosophy in his defence.

Said he, "The arguments I use are sound".
"Just so," said I, "all sound and little sense.
"You talk of matters far above your reach,

You're knocking at a closed-up door," said I.
Said he, "You do not understand my speech."
"I'm not King Solomon," was my reply.*

* An allusion to the Mahometan tradition that Solomon understood the language of beasts.

OU

AMONG THE PEAR BLOSSOMS.

"Sweet is his note as the rose in June,
Quainter than any old poet's rune,

Wild as the water that wanders o'er
Hill and dale to a far sea-shore ;-

Softly, oh! softly he says his say,

"Twixt the dawn and day, 'twixt the dawn and day!"

'My Blackbird," by Rosa Mulholland.

UR garden is not very large but is full of fruit trees, and and some fine, wide-leaved sycamores cast a pleasant shade at the further end where there is an open stretch of smooth, green turf powdered with daisies. In the spring this lawn is surrounded with a border of delicately coloured flowers, every sweet and early blossom, and its velvetty greenness lies in the midst of an encircling crowd of swaying, nodding flower heads. Daffodils and jonquils, hyacinths of "purest virgin white, low bent and blushing in ward," lilies of the valley, the light of tremulous bells shining through broad sheltering leaves of tenderest green, narcissi rising above, tall and slender, their starry flowers opening wide petals and disclosing rings of ruddy gold, sweet alyssum spreading in drifts of whiteness, auriculas and anemones.

At this season our garden seems all green and white, for not only have delicate pale flowers the pre-eminence, but the cherry and pear trees are now in fullest bloom, whilst leaves unfold on every side in sprouts and shoots of exquisite freshness. It is beautiful to see the waving branches covered with blossoms, white as driven snow, yet full of the warm life and promise of the Spring; and when in early morning a dewy mist hangs above the garden there is something almost unearthly in the loveliness of those floating sprays of fairy-like flowers, in the vague and tender verdure.

The cherry-trees lift themselves high against the greyness of the vaporous, low lying clouds, their graceful blossoming boughs glimmering with a pearly radiance, the blossoms of the medlar open singly, shining in soft crumpled whiteness from the midst of downy leaves, many-stamened plum blossoms make frostwork, as it were, upon the walls, whilst great pear trees with unpruned, far-up

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reaching branches, and wonderful masses of bloom, crown them with living beauty.

There is something strangely fascinating about our garden at this time, and those fresh Spring robings of purest white and green have always seemed the best of all robings; but another delightful feature is the constant twittering and chanting of the birds, and indeed it has become impossible to dissociate the thought of blossoming fruit trees from the airy, happy chirruping of the robins, sparrows, titmice and bullfinches who so persistingly haunt their flower-laden boughs.

Very early in the morning are they to be heard drowsily murmuring their songs; but nothing ever made so great an impression on my mind as the clear, sonorous singing of a blackbird, coming direct from among the pear-blossoms and beginning whilst all the smaller birds were still asleep.

For many hours I had been lying awake, suffering both in mind and body, and, when the active suffering was over, an almost complete discouragement and depression had taken possession of me. The obscurity of the night had entered, as it were, my very soul; no faintest gleam of comfort or of hope could be discovered anywhere; and with aching, sleepless eyes I watched for the coming morning which would indeed bring me neither happiness nor relief, but which would at least make a change in the monotonous outer darkness.

Slowly, very slowly, the hours passed by, but at length a sort of luminous greyness appeared in the horizon and almost simultaneously a burst of melody rang through the stillness, startling me from my apathy.

At first I almost thought I must be dreaming; but still the` song was continued, and, listening in awe and wonder, it seemed to me that no bird had ever sung before as this bird was singing.

There were thrilling, gurgling notes of deepest tenderness-low murmurs of joy-and now and again came strange, whistling, flute-like cries of rapture long drawn out, and full of soul-piercing sweetness. No lark ever sang more exultantly or nightingale warbled a tenderer love song.

"Also into the throat of the bird is given the voice of the air. All that in the wind is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit together in its song. As we may imagine the wild form of the cloud closed into the perfect form of the bird's wings, so the

wild voice of the cloud into its ordered and commanded voice; unwearied, rippling through the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all intense passion through the soft spring nights, bursting into acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat of day, like little winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the petals of the wild rose.

The singing I was listening to surely combined all these characteristics: for sometimes it rose strong and high, keen and pure as the mountain wind blowing over the mountain tops or stretches of wild moor, and, whilst again it would sink into a low, rich warbling key, gentle as the breezes sweeping through fields of clover. But so fearful was I of disturbing the sweet singer that I scarcely dared to breathe, and, as I stood at the open window drinking in the almost angelic strains, the whole sky was gradually illuminated with a pale glow that was neither like moonlight or sunlight, but which just enabled me to distinguish the whiteness of the pear blossoms crowning the garden wall, the dim outline of the sycamore trees in the distance and of the lilac bushes with their pointed clusters of flowers.

The scent of the jonquils mingled with the indescribable and most ethereal fragrance of the blossoming trees, the cool air laid calm, reassuring touches upon my forehead; and still the wonderful song rang on through the dewy quietude of the garden, seeming to breathe a new meaning into life, and filling the grey dawn with warmth and colour.

Like a glow worm golden

In a dell of dew

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a high born maiden

In a palace tower

Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

* Ruskin,

It is difficult to explain all that the song of a bird may mean to one-difficult to explain it even to oneself yet it is quite certain that the most ordinary and prosaic people, as well as those who are highly poetical and imaginative, have been strangely moved, and are still moved, to joy or sadness by the carolling of some wild, woodland creature.

On this particular morning I gave myself up to the delight of listening to the sweet singing of the hidden blackbird, and it was wonderful what new feelings and thoughts were aroused. Each moment I became less depressed—each moment the weight of care and anxiety seemed easier to bear.

Only a bird singing. But so much was expressed in the throbbing ecstacy of those liquid notes-such boundless joy, such exultation and rapturous anticipation. It was impossible not to feel the cheering influence of that happy song-the very spirit of hope seemed, as it were, to have become embodied, to be uttering its message and to be drawing all hearts upwards.

A more precipitated vein

Of notes, that eddy in the flow

Of smoothest song, they come, they go,

And leave their sweeter understrain

Its own sweet self-a love of thee

That seems yet cannot greater be! *

The understrain of the blackbird's song was the hope of the coming summer-the promise of the shy brown-plumaged mateof the tender fledglings in their warm hidden nest. Feelings, instincts such as these were swelling the heart of my bird as he sang among the pear blossoms, but as his song came to me it was translated into a higher, wider meaning and became, as it were, the utterance of a Credo belonging to all the world.

It has been said that there is nothing in this world so necessary as hope the hope anchored in eternity-and it was of this wonderful hope the bird was singing. I felt it through and through me! The passion and the life whose fountains are within found utterance-and the hope given to a bird became my hope, in this higher degree, whilst the dismal despairing thoughts of the night were banished as I realised that it was after all only temporal things that were giving me so much anxiety,-that it was but the frail, evanescent hope of the passing moment, the friendship of an * Coleridge