terms, 'I will say the severest of all the things which can be said, and yet most true-Italy never produced such a monster before. What shall I say of his avarice? what of his rapacity? what of his cruelty? Although, in all these things, he has surpassed all others, he is still inferior to yourself."* What if the scope of such sentences be founded, historically, on truth, is there not a wrong animus about them? Nor do matters improve as we go on. The quarrels between the Lutheran and Reformed abroad, between Churchman and Puritan at home, are branded sadly with the same mark. The Arminian litigations were a hotbed for the same rank weed. Look again at that towering genius and sublime poet, John Milton. His prose works are shaded, as his editor, Bishop Sumner, remarks, with much that is coarse and intemperate-at least, in the controversial portions-in which very portions Mr Macaulay accounts the fervid author to rise as high as in even the earlier books of the Paradise Lost.' Another of Milton's editors, Mr St John, who enthusiastically venerates him with passionate 'hero-worship,' says in his preface-It must be admitted-for I love truth still more than I love Milton-his language is, in many places, coarse and offensive, such as I read with pain, and sincerely wish away.' One who has become conversant with the poet, through his poetry alone, will hardly credit the flippant irritability and crabbed abuse-for so it seemsin which his prose is so prolific. One whose thoughts of him are identified with the grand imagery which depicts man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our wo-one who thinks of Milton as wandering where the Muses haunt clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, smit with the love of sacred song-a nightly visitant of Sion, and the flowery rocks beneath, that wash her hallowed feet, and warbling flow-one who thinks of him as the blind old man, equal in fate and renown with blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, feeding on thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers, as the wakeful bird sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid tunes her nocturnal note; one who so thinks of Milton will find it a hard thing to believe that he is one and the same with the boisterous assailant of Salmasius and hot champion of Puritanism. It is confessed that Salmasius transgressed all the bounds of courtesy and decorum in his attack upon the people of England, and it was generally, in those times, considered part of a man's duty, when engaged in any important controversy, to blacken and vilify his adversary to the utmost extent of his capacity; but, of a man so great and wise as Milton, better things might have been expected.'+ Salmasius is written down ass and knave, in capital letters, page after page. Alexander More is adjured to essay a little rationality, in such polite appeals as this: 'Speak, if you can, three words that have an affinity to common sense; if it be possible for the tumid pumpkin of your skull to discover for a moment anything like the reality of intellect.' He is twitted with 'egregious folly,' treacherous and inveterate indignity of disposition,' the worst of men and the basest of enemies,' 'the effrontery of your assertions and the profligacy of your character,' 'notorious mercenary and most unprincipled of hypocrites, those hands so foully stained with lust and rapine,' base miscreant, and so on, usque ad nauseam. Whatever be the cause, the fact is self-evident, that our standard literature has become largely, if not wholly, purged of this dross. It may be said that these are quiet haleyon times, compared with those of the Reformation and the Commonwealth. But even were such times again to occur, we have good hope that antagonism of principles would not be disgraced by that bitter, acrimonious, almost brutal ferocity which raged in days of yore--and that men would have a little more respect for one, if not for both clauses of the monition to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. * Remarks on the Letter of Pope Paul III. By Julin Calvin. Defence of the People of England, passi n. THE TASKS OF THE FLOWERS. With radiant blossoming. The glad bee on the sunny bank Shine star-like in their bowers: And sunshine, joy, and song. The homes and shrines of earth. Around each saddening scene, Like mourners o'er the dead; Where forms, too fair and loved for earth, How certain is the tomb; And earth, our loved and lovely earth, With all of joy or gloom- BECHUANA PROVERBS, RIDDLES, AND TALES. minding him of the proverb, The point of the needle should always go first.' The frontier is always the most exposed portion of a country; and to discontented spirits who, wherever they may be, are dissatisfied and murmur, or in speaking of such, they say, 'Oh, yes, all the country is frontier; in other words, wherever you go you will find perils and discomforts. There are babblers there as well as here. In regard to these, their proverb is, 'The water is never tired of flowing.' MUCH interesting information in regard to the physical and the moral condition of heathen tribes has been diffused by details of observations made by Christian missionaries, who have resided amongst them, and made themselves thoroughly acquainted with their mode of life, and with their religious sentiments. But the information which has thus been obtained, has not unfrequently awakened a desire to They have a fable to the effect that when the king of the know something of the intellectual condition of people in animals distributed to them their tails, the hyrax, or Cape such a state of society as prevails amongst the smaller cavy, being too lazy to go for his, desired one of his heathen tribes of the present day. The French mis. friends to bring it to him. This he promised to do, but sionaries, labouring amongst the Basutos of South Africa, he completely forgot the commission with which he had have not been unmindful of this natural desire, and they been intrusted: and so, up to the present time, the whole have done all that could be expected of them to make family of the cavies have had to do as they best could Europeans acquainted with what it would perhaps be a without the unspeakable advantages they might have enmisnomer to call literature-seeing that the use of let-joyed, in common with others, from the possession of a tail. ters is only being introduced amongst the people-but what without presumption may be called the poetry and tales of the people amongst whom they are labouring. There is reason to believe, however, that the information they have supplied has been thus far confined in a great measure to France. In a work by M. Casilis, entitled, Etudes sur la Langue Sechuana,' there are numerous translations of the productions of the native mind; and many others are found dispersed over the pages of a work by M. Arbousset, entitled,' Relation d'une Voyage d'Exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de BonneEsperance'-a translation of which into English has, we learn, just been published in this country. The moral of the fable is good-have you any busi ness of importance to transact, do it yourself, or you may have cause to repent trusting another. But this would be too tame for Bechuana taste, and they have a proverb, borrowed from the fable-their proverb being, "The poor cavy lost its tail by sending another beast in its stead.' About fifty or sixty of these proverbs are given by M. Casilis. The following are not unlike some which are current amongst ourselves : 'Cunning devours its own master,' corresponding with the proverb of Solomon, Whoso causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit.' There are straps for everything but the The Bechuanas constitute one of the three great divi- tongue,' similar to the statement of James, The tongue sions of the native tribes in South Africa. Not only in can no man tame; it is an unruly evil.' The old bowl geographical situation, but in physical, in intellectual, and always smells of the milk,' similar to the French proverb, in moral development, they occupy an intermediate posi-smells of the herring. Reason has no age:''Better,' 'La caque sent toujours le hareng- The barrel always tion betwixt the other two great divisions, the Hottentots says Solomon, is a poor and wise child than an old and and the Caffres. The tribes belonging to this division may foolish king. The month of seedtime is the season of be distinguished at once by their designations, as these, according to the genius of their language, are found inva headachs;' i. e., the lazy always find some excuse for neriably with the prefix ba or be-Baperi, Batlapi, Basutos, glecting duty-The slothful man saith, There is a lion Baharutsi; while those of the Caffres, according to the without; I shall be slain in the streets.' 'The trap has genius of their language, use the prefix ama-Amapondas, taken two birds: Fell two dogs with one bone.' Amazulas, Amakosas; and those of the Hottentots used to dogs do not let a fox escape:' Union is strength.' 'Death does not know kings:' employ the affix quas-Gonaquas, Griquas, Namaquas. In the case of the Bechuanas, the prefix mo indicates an individual, the prefix ba or be the people, and the prefix se the language-whence we have Mochuana, Bechuana, Sechuana; Mosuto, Basuto, Sesuto; and a similar usus loquendi holds in the case of every other tribe of this people. It would appear that the Bechuanas have a relish for intellectual pastime similar to that with which many of the present generation of our countrymen used to amuse themselves in the days of their youth. They seem to be capable of quoting proverbs with as much skill as our scholars capped verses of guessing guesses with as much zest as our girls did at an evening party-and of telling stories with as much effect as ever boys did sitting around a smithy fire; and the scintillations of Bechuana genius are such as may light up a smile on whiter countenances than the countenances of those for whose amusement or instruction they were originally designed. BECHUANA PROVERBS. Their proverbs are not amiss. We are told by M. Casilis that their language, by its energetic precision, adapts itself admirably to the sententious style, while the metaphorical elements enter so largely into its formation, that one can scarcely speak it without accustoming himself to invest his ideas with some image which may tend to make them remembered. In regard to a vain man, their proverb is, ' A man may be tripped with his own shadow;' intimating that, while the vain man admires his shadow, he forgets to look to his feet, and he may thus fall into a pit. Should a man be detected disguising the truth by evasive words, they will counsel him to be straightforward in his discourse, by re Pallida mors æquo pulsat pcde pauperum tabernas, RIDDLES. Two In the riddles of the Bechuana tribes, there is much simplicity, but the hidden meaning is sufficiently deep to conceal it from the truth-finder, who is unwilling to search for it as for hidden treasure; and the effort he is required to put forth must both task and tend to develop his ingenuity. Nor is it difficult for one acquainted with their habits of life to picture to himself, as one of the missionaries suggests, a dozen black faces grinning with delight, when, after having knit their brows and scratched their ears in vain, they have had to confess themselves unable to solve the enigma, and he who proposed it tells them they are a parcel of simpletons, seeing they could not tell that that which throws itself down from the top of a mountain without being injured is the water of a cataract; or that that which, though possessed of neither legs nor wings, travels very quickly, and neither precipice, nor river, nor wall can stop it, is the voice; or that the ten trees, on the tops of which are placed ten flat rocks, are the fingers with their nails! Such are a few of their enigmas, and they are a fair specimen of those which are current amongst the people. Perhaps some ambitious youthful reader would be happy to have an opportunity of exercising his powers of peneItration on a few more of their riddles. If so, let him, if he can, solve the following, for which we are indebted to M. Casilis :-What is that which goes and returns always by the same road? Do you happen to know a peaked mountain which overhangs a deep ravine? What thing is that which does not walk on the earth, does not fly in the air, and does not swim in the water, and yet walks, mounts, and descends? What little boy is that who, motionless and mute, is warmly clad by day, but is left naked by night? This last, no one unacquainted with the manners and customs of the people can be expected to answer-it is the peg on which the Bechuanas hang their bedclothes during the day. And, lest any one should be annoyed at being unable to answer the others, we may whisper in their ear, that the answer to the first of those given above is a door;' the answer to the second is the nose; and the answer to the third is 'a spider.' From the specimens of the Bechuana riddles which have been given, it will be seen that the people are by no means insensible to the pleasure afforded by jeux d'esprit, and we are thus prepared in some measure to appreciate their TALES. The tales of the Bechuanas, or their surprises, as they are called by them, are many of them not unlike in matter to the monstrous and supernatural' Adventures of Little Red Riding Hood,' of Jack and the Beanstalk,' and of other heroes of the olden time, to which, when children, we used to listen with gaping mouth and staring eyes; but in general the moral is not so far to seek and so ill to find as in these. And there are others in which there is nothing of the grotesque and unnatural, while occasionally they assume the regular form of the legend or of the fable. Such is the characteristic of the following: as he was put upon the ground, he asked his friend for the knife which he had, that he might cut open the antelope. But, before giving him the knife, the blind man asked, "Whose will it be when you have skinned it? To whom does it belong?'-'It will be mine,' answered the lame man. 'Does it not belong to me of good right, since it was I who discovered it?'' Should it not rather belong to me, who carried you to it, tell me that?' replied the blind man. And thus they disputed for a time, till the blind man asked, 'Where about is it?' Upon which the cripple, not a little piqued at him, said, 'Yes, go away as quick as you can and skin, for I cannot see it now. It is out of my sight.' After thus jangling with one another for a time, they were forced to make up matters, and they set them selves to work to cut it up together, saying, 'Since together we make but one complete body, the one is as good as the other.' The animal served them for provisions during the rest of their journey; and, by short stages, they at length arrived at the place whither their companions had gone. What is more beautiful than men rendering mutual assistance! This is given by M. Arbousset as a fable of the Barolongs, a tribe of Bechuanas, and, as he himself suggests, it reminds one at once of the similar tale given by Florrian as a fable of Confucius. The remarkable coincidence excites our wonder. It seems to be impossible that either party could have borrowed from the other. It is very improbable that the very same idea, that being such as it is, should occur spontaneously to different men, living in countries so far apart, and in circumstances so totally different, as those of the people amongst whom the fable is current. Can it be that both have received it from a common source? Can it be that the birth of the fable dates far back in the ages of the past? The mind is lost in its own imaginings. The following, entitled the Story of the Wretched Little Hare,' is one more highly spiced with the grotesque and the monstrous. It is not without its moral, however; and its whole structure is in keeping with the designation given by the Bechuanas to such tales: The Helpful Travellers.—It is said that once upon a time a band of robbers, travelling in quest of plunder, found their way, without baggage and without noise, to the land occupied by a tribe of shepherds. They crept on their bellies like serpents-like them, full of cunning, and having each, like them, a fatal dart, in the shape of an assegai. The moon was yet young; it had long set, and the fourth watch of the night drew on, darker than ever, and not less fatal than usual to the shepherds.* Several of the herdsmen, surprised in their sleep, were slain; others, somewhat more fortunate, made their escape, dragging with them their wives and children. The huts were soon pillaged and burned, and the flocks were carried off from their old kraals to the horrible dens of the robbers, who The Story of the Wretched Little Hare.-Once upon a time, hastened home, as usual, at a running pace, and with a a woman took a great longing to eat of the liver of a niatthousand shouts of joy. In the morning, when the eye matsany.* Her husband said to her, Thou art crazy, woof day threw light upon the scene, there were two man. The flesh of the niatmatsany is not for eating; and wretched men to be seen left behind-the one blind, the who is he who can catch one? At one bound, it will clear other lame. The latter, on perceiving his companion in a man's three days' journey.' The woman, however, permisfortune, called to him, 'So you, too, have been left!' sisted in her wish; and her husband, fearing the conse 'Yes,' was the reply, they have left me without re- quences to her health if he did not gratify her, set off to source. But who are you?'-'A lame man without re- the hunting. At length he saw, at a great distance, a herd source. I was just thinking to myself,' said the blind of niamatsanies, and he saw their backs and their legs man, that if I had had eyes, I could have followed those glowing like red-hot embers. He followed them for many who got away from the danger by flight.'-' As for me,' days, and at last he had the happiness to surprise them said the lame man, 'I had eyes, and I saw where they asleep in the sun. He got near them; he cast on them went; but I cannot move. However, as you are blind, a powerful spell; he then killed the prettiest of the whole, but have feet, if you will take me upon your shoulders, cut out the liver, and set off for his home, carrying with I give you the use of my eyes, and will not that be as good him the tid-bit so greatly desired by his wife. This she as if we were one man, possessed both of eyes and feet?ate with great gusto; but in a short time she felt as if her The blind man assented; the arrangement was made; bowels were being consumed by burning fire. Nothing and on they went together, each confiding in the other. could now quench her thirst. She ran in desperation to the They soon came to a river, which crossed the path; but great lake of the desert, drank up its waters, and lay the lame man said, 'There is the ford; let us cross there.' stretched on the ground unable to move. The next day, Farther on, he said again, 'There is a precipice; let us the elephant, the king of beasts, learning that his lake was turn to this side;' and farther on still, he directed his dry, called to him the hare, and said, 'Thou art a fleet companion to a spring of fresh water, at which they stop-runner. Go, see who hath drunk up my waters.' The ped to drink, and to rest awhile, after which they resumed their travels. Prosecuting their journey, they came to a place where an antelope was expiring, having either been wounded with a deadly dart by some huntsman, or brought there by the gods, in kindness to the travellers. When the lame man saw it, he said to his companion, 'There is a dead beast; put me down; we must skin it.' As soon The attacks of hostile bands are generally made during the first quarter of the moon, and about three or four o'clock in the morning. + The Malagasy thus designate the sun (mazo andro). It is an expression beautiful and full of poetical associations, like our own daisy. The hare set off with the fleetness of the wind, and, soon re- * A fabulous animal. pierce the stomach of this woman.' But the hyena answered, No; thou knowest I am unaccustomed to attack people in front.' The king then called the lion, and said to him, Thou hast a good sharp claw. Go, tear up the stomach of this woman.' But the lion answered, No; thou knowest I hurt none but those who first attack me.' The animals then set themselves again to jump, and frisk, and run, and gambol around their prince, and again they make the very desert to shake. They cry altogether, 'Nobody will go to seek the waters of the king. The elephant then called the ostrich, and said, Thou art a good kicker; go thou, seek my waters.' The ostrich at once set off. Now leaning to the one side, she strains to the utmost a wing spread out to the wind; now leaning to the other side, she does the same, and makes the dust to fly, and, passing near the woman, she gives her a kick so violent that the water spouts aloft into the air, and, in great waves, returns to the lake. Upon which, all the beasts set themselves to frisk around their prince, crying out, 'The waters of the king are found again! The waters of the king are found again!' By this time, they had slept three nights without tasting water. This night they laid themselves to sleep in the neighbourhood of the lake, without daring, however, to touch the waters of the king. But in the course of the night, the hare arose and drank. He then took mud, and put it upon the nose and the knees of the jerboa, which slept near him. In the morning, the beasts saw clearly that the water was diminished, and they all cried out together, Who is it that has drunk the water of the king?' Upon which the hare said, 'Do you not see it must have been the jerboa. Her knees are covered with clay she has knelt down to reach the water, and she has drunk so much that the very mud of the lake is sticking to her lips.' And all the beasts arose, frisked round their prince, and cried, 'The jerboa deserves to die; she has drunk the waters of the king.' Some days after the execution of the jerboa, the hare, believing himself to be alone, began to sing to himself- Well done, little hare! Thou art a cunning one. Thou art the cause and occasion of the jerboa's death.' He was overheard, and the others set out in pursuit of him. But he escaped, and kept himself concealed. After some time, the hare went in quest of the lion, and, having found him, he said to him, Friend, thou art getting rather lean; the beasts are all afraid of thee, and it is but seldom that thou succeedest in killing any. Enter into an alliance with me, and I will provide thee with game.' The alliance was made, and, in accordance with directions given him by the hare, the lion surrounded a large piece of ground with a strong pallisade. In the middle of this park he dug a pretty deep hole, in which he lay down, and the hare covered him with earth in such a way that nothing was seen but his teeth. The hare then went forth into the desert, and cried, Beasts, beasts, come here and I will show you a prodigy! Come, see a jawbone growing in the earth like a plant.' The beasts, too credulous, came running thither from all quarters. First came the gnus, who, entering the enclosure, kept wheeling about, all crying out in chorus, A prodigy! a prodigy! Here are teeth growing out of the ground.' Then came the quaggas--a striped race are they-and at last even the timid antelopes allowed themselves to be drawn in with the rest. But the baboon having entered, with his little one clinging to his back, he goes up straight to the spot, gets hold of a sharp-pointed stick, and gently scrapes away a little of the earth. 'Holloa!' cried he, what kind of a dead body is this? Child, cling fast to my back! It is a formidable dead body this!' And, crying thus, he climbed the pallisade, and made his escape in double-quick time. And well it was for him, for at the same time the lion sprung from the hole, and, the hare having previously blocked up the entrance to the enclosure, all the beasts were slaughtered. But the friendship of the lion and the hare did not last long. The lion presumed on his superior strength, and his little ally resolved on revenge. 'My father,' said he to the lion, we are very much exposed to the rain and the hail. Let us build a hut for shelter.' The lion, too lazy to labour, was content to let the hare do it; and the cunning little runner, taking hold of the lion's tail, so dexterously interlaced it with the stakes and reeds of the hut, that there it remain ed fastened for ever, and the hare had the pleasure of seeing his rival die of hunger and rage. He afterwards flayed the carcase, and disguised himself with the lion's skin. Forthwith the trembling beasts, on all hands, brought him presents, prostrated themselves before him, and loaded him with honours. But the hare, treated thus, became proud, and, forgetting the disguise, boasted of his cunning. Thenceforth all is changed: he is pursued, driven from the society of beasts; he is detested, and he is cursed of all; and whenever he shows face they cry out, See, there is the murderer of the jerboa, the inventor of the teetto-pit, the cruel servant who caused his master to perish of hunger! Thus the execrated wretch saw himself reduced to the necessity of cutting off his ears, in order that he might enjoy some little repose in his old age, and it was not until after he had subjected himself to this painful amputation, that he could risk appearing among his fellow-citizens without fear of being recognised. If the former fable reminds one of a similar fable of Confucius, this resembles the German tale of Reynard the Fox;' and one can scarcely divest himself of the idea, that, like this, it is a political satire, detailing or indicating the pains and the penalties of some selfish politician. In regard to the poor hare, it may be mentioned that it seems to be in as bad repute in South Africa as the fox is in Europe. M. Arbousset tells that he met with a legend, according to which it is believed that the Master of things, the Lord (morena), sent, in the former times, a grey lizard, with this message to the world,' Men diethey will be restored to life again.' The chameleon, however, set out from his chief, and, arriving in haste, he said, Men die—they die for ever.' Then the grey lizard came and cried, 'The Lord has spoken, saying, Men die they shall live again.' But men answered him, 'The first word is the first-that which is after is nothing.' M. Arbousset adds, that, notwithstanding that, they have always hated the lively and cunning chameleon, whilst they love the slow, but innocent grey lizard. Now, there is a similar legend found amongst the Namaquas, the only points of difference being that, according to this legend, it is the moon which is said to have sent the messenger, and the hare which is said to have brought the lying tidings which were believed, but, in consequence of the deceit which he knew to be practised upon him, he who heard the message threw at it a stone, which struck it on the mouth and cut its upper lip the trace of which may be seen in all its progeny, at once testifying to the truth of the legend and the certainty of punishment following a departure from the truth. Such are a few of the proverbs, the riddles, and the tales of the Bechuanas; and it is interesting to find that there is in these tribes an intellectual, as well as a moral and a physical, likeness to ourselves. Yes, God has made of one blood all nations to dwell on all the face of the earth.' Let us then learn to live and to love as brethren. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. As regards domestic buildings, I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is a sanctity in a good man's house which cannot be renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruins and I believe that good men would generally feel this; and that, having spent their lives happily and honourably, they would be grieved at the close of them to think that the place of their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost to sympathise in, all their honour, their gladness, or their suffering, that this, with all the record it bare of them, and of all material things that they had loved and ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves upon, was to be swept away, as soon as there was room made for them in the grave; that no respect was to be shown to it, no affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children; that, though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm monument on the hearth and house to them; that all that they had ever treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and comforted them were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear this; and that, far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear doing it to his father's house. I say that, if men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers' honour, or that our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only. And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up in mildewed forwardness out of the kneaded fields about our capital upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered wood and imitated stone, upon those gloomy rows of formalised minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as solitary as similiar, not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground; that those comfortless and unhonoured dwellings are the signs of a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent; that they mark the time when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn; when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and live in the hope of forgetting the years that they have lived; when the comfort, the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt; and the crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ only from the tents of the Arab or the gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change. This is no slight, no consequenceless evil; it is ominous, infectious, and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love their hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both, and that they have never acknowledged the true universality of that Christian worship which was indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one; he has an altar in every man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly, and pour out its ashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of them depends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build our dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligent completion, and with a view to their duration at least for such a period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might be supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction of local interests. This at the least; but it would be better if, in every possible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensurate rather with their condition at the commencement, than their attainments at the termination, of their worldly carcer; and built them to stand as long as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to their children what they had been, and from what, if so it had been permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the small habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peaceful selfpossession, this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one of the chief sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as the very primal source of the great architecture of old Italy and France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, not on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite decoration of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. The most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at the head of the grand canal, consisting of a ground floor with two storeys above, three windows in the first, and two in the second. Many of the most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth century architecture in north Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind the market-place of Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, Il. n'est rose. sans. épine. ; it has also only a ground floor and two storeys, with three windows in each, separated by rich flowerwork, and with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopia. The idea that a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be historical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life. I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, within and without; and with such degree of likeness to each other in style and manner, as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history. This right over the house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respected by his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be left in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its experience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and developing, into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom which was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's permission to build and possess a quiet resting-place.-The Seven Lamps of Architecture. WHITTLINGS FROM THE WEST. BY ABEL LOG. HEAP THE SEVENTY-THIRD. I was walking slowly down in the direction of the Battery, when I encountered Doctor Lyon. He was just turning a corner, but caught sight of me, checked himself, wheeled about, and extended, not one finger, but his whole hand, which I (being in a rather amiable mood) shook very cordially. This way,' said he, pulling me by the arm. 'I am just married. Come with me; I will introduce you to the bride.' I had a few minutes to spare, and followed Doctor Lyon, more because I wished to see what sort of a lady his wife was, than with any wish to improve the acquaintance. He stopped at a very handsome house, took a key from his waistcoat-pocket, opened the door, and, ushering me up stairs to the drawing-room, said he would return in five seconds. A pretty little girl, with blue eyes and flaxen hair, sat upon the sofa. Now I have always entertained a strong predilection for little maids, who are, as it were, fresh from the hand of Providence, and yet untainted by the world; and, seating myself by the young lady with the blue eyes, I drew her, with the air of an elder brother, towards me, and began to toy with the glossy curls that adorned her temples. 'And what is your name?' said I, soothingly.-' Mary or Alice-or Agnes-or Caroline-which?" 'Isabella-Isabella Lyon.' 'Lyon? Oh, I see: your papa was a widower. You have come home for the holidays, I suppose?' 'No,' said she smiling, 'I have left school.' At this moment Doctor Lyon entered, but he had no |