From Blackwood's Magazine for May. THE LAST WALK. BY B. SIMMONS. On! lost Madonna, young and fair! Murmurs its meek, low melodies; And 'mid the sparkling sands to play, My lost Madonna, whose glad life Was like that ray of radiant air, Thy hair held back by hands whose gleam Was white as stars with night-clouds strivingThy bright lips bent and sipped the stream. Fair, fawn-like creature! innocent In soul as faultless in thy form- It blushed thee back each rosy charm. Where once thy presence round me shone, The Past's sweet legends, worshipped one! From thee to haunts of hated men- 'Mid storm and midnight's rushing windsThese, these, were joys long passed away, To dwell with Grief's eternal things. My lost Madonna, fair and young! Then dashed far Ocean's breast to meet; Than unreturning streams could rove, To me, my henceforth buried Love! And all has perished, but-Despair. Or Joy's gay rainbow gleams o'er thee, I've died to all, but the mad thought That WHAT WAS ONCE NO MORE SHALL BE. 'Tis well;-at least I shall not know How tiine or tears may change that brow; Thine eyes shall smile, thy cheek shall glow To me in distant years as now. And when in holier worlds, where Blame, And Blight, and Sorrow, have no birth, Thou'rt mine at last-I'll clasp the same Unalter'd Angel, loved on earth. From Jerrold's Magazine. THE SNOWDROP IN THE POOR MAN'S WINDOW. It was a darksome alley Where light but seldom shone, Save when at noon a sun-ray touched The little sill of stone Beneath the poor man's window, Spring's dewy breath of perfume, And Summer's wealth of flowers, Or the changing hue of Autumn's leaves Ne'er blest his lonely hours: He knew too well when Winter Came howling forth againHe knew it by his fireless grate, The snow, and plashing rain. Pierced by the frost-winds beating, How tenderly he moved it To catch the passing ray, And smiled to see its folded leaves Grow greener every day: His faded eyes were lifted oft, To watch the Snowdrop bloom,To him it seemed a star of light Within that darksome room. And as he gently moved it Near to the sun-touched pane, Oh! who can tell what memories Were busy in his brain? Perchance his home in childhood In a sylvan valley lay, And he heard the voice of the running streams, And the green leaves rustling play. Perchance a long-departed But cherished dream of yore, Rose up through the mist of Want and Toil, To bless his heart once more. A voice of music whispered Sweet words into his ear, And he lived again that moonlight o'cr, Or but the love of Nature Within his bosom stirred-! The same sweet call that's answered by The blossom and the bird; The free, unfettered worship Paid by the yearning soul, When it seems to feel its wings expand To reach a brighter goal, An aspiration, showing Earth binds us not her slave, But we claim a brighter being, A life beyond the grave. MISCELLANY SIBERIAN CIVILIZATION.-The large annual importation of exiles, the system of conscription, and the advantages offered to public officers volunteering for Siberian service, are the most important and efficacious measures by which Russia proceeds gradually but steadily with the colonization and civilization of her Asiatic dominions. The conscripts are sometimes drawn, not only from Tobolsk, but from the remotest parts of Siberia, and the term of military service being twenty-eight years, it is probable that only a small proportion return to their native villages. Those who do are looked up to as oracles by their countrymen. They are objects of pride to their families, and of respect to everybody else; the place of honor is theirs by right, and they are addressed by the title of Master Soldier. The ferry of the Irtuish, by Tobolsk, whose passage is considered the symbol of political death to the numerous exiles who each year cross it, bestows a step of rank on all public servants offering themselves for duty in Siberia Proper. The passion for rank, stronger in Russia than in any other country, drives hosts of officers across this important boundary, but as they are not obliged to remain more than three years, most of them return home at the end of that time. Far nearer to St. Petersburg than the Asiatic frontier, civilization is still at a very low ebb amongst the aboriginal tribes. Close to Nijni Novgorod, and within a very short distance from Moscow, the prevailing population consists of Cheremisses and Chuvashes-two tribes, many of whose customs are nearly as barbarous as their names. These people are shy and timid, very slow in acquiring industrious habits, and addicted to sundry practices stamping them as semi-savages. In some places they cling to Paganism, and offer up horned beasts, fruit, and vegetables to their various deities. The Chuvash ladies wear a sort of bustle of sheet copper, hanging from the girdle backwards over the hips, and having appended to it all manner of metal ornaments, making a perpetual clatter in walking. But these tribes are the pink of refinement by comparison with those in the northern portion of the Muscovite empire-with the Ostyaks, who eat out of the same trough with their dogs, or with the Samoyedes, who tear with their teeth, and swallow with infinite relish, huge lumps of raw and reeking flesh. The women of the latter people wear, as their favorite decoration (certainly no inappropriate one) a glutton's tail, hanging down the back of their pelisse. Their hair is platted in tails, to which all manner of lumber, brass and iron rings, and rusty musket-locks, are attached.-Blackwood. LANDOR ON REFORM.-The following able and pithy letter is from Walter Savage Landor, Esq. "To the Secretary of the Reform Movement. SIR: My health will not permit me to be present at so large a meeting as I trust will take place at the Guildhall. It appears to me quite useless to send up any more petitions to Parliament. The people must now resort to remonstrances and declarations. The Whigs are defaulters to the most sacred of engagements. They have given you a reformed Parliament, not an improved one; and they protest that no improvement shall be made in future. The present system is more a cheat than the former. The former went deep into corruption without a mask; the present goes deeper into it, and wears one grinning at you in derision. The actual ministers of the Crown first deluded and now defraud you. They tell you the most impudent lie that ever was told, in public or in private; they tell you that the majority of the people want no change whatever, well knowing that nine-tenths are dissatisfied at public expenditure for no public advantage, and at public lands (called crown lands) lying waste, while thousands and tens of thousands ask loudly for bread and labor. They see active, and pious, and learned clergymen who receive less than a hundred pounds a year, while the Bishop of London, since the commencement of the reformed Parliament, has received more than half a million. In Ireland the lands and other tenures held under the Bishop of Derry, would bring a million sterling. Several millions in one single year have been wasted in that country on unprofitable works, while bogs and morasses, capable of cultivation, are lying unreclaimed; and while certain crown lands, from which, however, the Crown derives little or no benefit, would have supplied work and subsistence to many parishes where the inhabitants were starving. Such a waste of public money was never exhibited in the history of nations. The English and Irish have borne more injustice than those which have groaned until lately under arbitrary power and abject servitude. Let us pray and implore that a Parliament in which we place no confidence, may be dissolved, and that our most gracious Queen may be pleased to enlarge the franchises; which we conceive her Majesty by her prerogative has the same right to do, as to enlarge the number of fairs and markets and municipalities. "WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. "June 2, 1848." LAPIS-LAZULI.-The Petersburgh Academy of money should begin at sixteen. 2. That when, by Sciences has published the following particulars re- the selfish neglect of the worst part of the specieslative to lapis-lazuli and mica.—“ Both these mine- whom to name is often to blush-the question is not rals are found in the vicinity of Lake Baikal, espe- put, it shall be onerous upon the spinster to put the cially in the river Hindianka, and in all the rivers said question herself. 3. That she shall be permitted which fall from Mount Khamardaban. Mineralo- to break off a match either at the beginning, the gists have not, however, yet succeeded in finding the middle, or just at the end, with no liability for an flow of the lapis-lazuli, notwithstanding the minute action for breach. 4. That no such indulgence be researches which have been made in divers points granted to the other party, and that transportation of these localities. Mr. Moor, the mineralogist, be added to damages. 5. That neither father nor who spent two summers on the banks of the Hindi- mother be asked for consent, except by way of comanka, succeeded only in discovering the flow of pliment, when it is known they have no objection to glaucolithe, or calcareous blue spath,-and every the gentleman. 6. That when the marriage is soattempt since made to ascertain the place of the for-lemnized, the Duke of Wellington shall give away mation of the lapis lazuli has been unsuccessful. the bride. The natives affirm that this precious stone is met The Wife's Charter.-1. That the honeymoon with after the heavy rains have washed down the shall last six months. 2. That the amount of pebbles found in the beds of the rivers. With re- household expenses be fixed by her; with an unlimgard to mica, it is found in great abundance in the ited allowance for extras. 3. That she chooses the neighborhood of Hindianka, even with the ground, watering places for the season. 4. That she be never in the form of not very thick flakes, lying upon a called upon to sit up; and farther, that she be never bed of soft clay, as if it had been deposited upon it. solicited for a latch key. 5. That the husband invaThe inhabitants frequently resort to these places to riably smoke in the garden, (if no garden, no carry off the mica-which they put into their win-smoke.) 6. That the Duke of Wellington be goddow-frames in place of glass.-Athenæum. father to the first child. The Widow's Charter.-1. That weeds-with the HOW THE MONEY GOES.-We are paying thou-earliest dispatch-be turned into orange flowers. sands a-year to the descendants of the demireps and The widow's charter, it will be perceived, has only Moll Fgons who infested and polluted the court of one point; but as that is to possess all the points of Charles II. Is that right? We are also paying for the wife, her character may be said to aim at seven. the immoralities of William IV. Is that right?-Punch. We have been paying £2000 a-year ever since 1798 to the Prince of Mecklenberg Strelitz. What are his claims upon England? What did he ever do for his money? We are paying a little, but a little too much, for the peccadilloes of the late Duke of Sussex. And who is Augusta Arbuthnot, that we should even pay her £100 a-year? Or Arabella Bouverie, that she should have £300 a-year? Or Augusta Brudenell, who gets £202; and why the odd two? We have been paying £104 per annum to the Hon. G. A. F. Smythe ever since he was ten years old. What had he done for his country at those tender years, and what has he done since Myles O'Reilly has £222 during the life of Helena White, granted by George IV. Why was it not granted for his own life? And who is Helena White? Some Schomberg, a Dutchman, gets £2,880 a-year because he is lucky enough to be the great-great-great nephew of a soldier of fortune who was killed when fighting for William III. 160 years since. And thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands are regularly thrown away, year by year, in other abuses of the same kind. Liverpool Allion. CHARACTER OF CHATEAUBRIAND.-He was the knight-errant of modern Europe, who won and wore his trophies and favors on his own person. A ed impassioned in comparison with the frigid mofervid imagination-an animated style which seemdels of the French empire-a spirit which was more chivalrous and bold than discreet and resolute-and a sympathy for the improvement of the age, united to a veneration for the majestic traditions of the past, gave to M de Chateaubriand a potent influence over the minds of men at some of the most remarkable moments in history. When the storm of the first French revolution had, for that time, blown over, the young Breton emigrant who had retired from the army of Condé after the siege of Thionville to the wilds of Kentucky, and subsequently to a garret in London, returned to his native land; and after clubs and revolutionary journals, France was enten years of the brutality and blasphemy of Jacobin chanted to strike a fresh vein of poetry in the pages of Atala, and to resume her old faith in the pleasing attire of the "Genius of Christianity."-Times. THE WOMEN'S CHARTER.-We believe in the TEMPERANCE STATISTICS.-A correspondent has speedy freedom of the female sex. That beautiful communicated to us some rather startling facts rehalf of the creation-and, like the rosy side of a garding the relative_consumption of intoxicating peach, the much better half-has too long been in liquors and bread in Edinburgh, which he has culled bonds. The cunning, the selfishness, and the cow- from the Post-office Directory. We observe from ardice of man, have apart and together, operated, for his statement that in this city there are 296 spiritmany thousand years, to crush the lovely flower, or, dealers, 360 grocers and spirit-dealers, 49 hotels, 51 at best, that he might wear it-as one may say, in taverns and coffee-houses, 48 wine-merchants, and his button-hole, a little more than a fragrant, bloom-98 wine and spirit merchants,-making 902 coning ornament for a brief holiday. These days are cerns in all. Assuming that at each of these places fast going-dying upon the save-all of time. At an average of £5 a week is realized from the sales, length women are beginning to know their own the amount realized would be £4,510 per week, and strength-at length the hour of equality is about to no less a sum than £234,520 a year! Turning to strike: and when it has struck, the world will really, another page, we find that the number of bakers in for the first time, know what's o'clock. The wo- the city is about 200, the amount of whose sales, at men, be it known then, have resolved upon a char- £30 a week, would amount to £312,000-or only ter, a triple charter, formaid, wife, and widow. about £77,480 more than the amount annually exThe Maid's Charter.-2. That unlimited pocket | pended on intoxicating liquors !-Scottish Press. DECOMPOSITION OF LIGHT BY THE EYE-A correspondent sends us the following "On closing the eyes, after having looked steadfastly at a sheet of white paper held in the sun for about half a minute, and covering them without pressure, to exclude extraneous light, (a silk handkerchief held in the hand will answer the purpose), the figure of the paper remains visible for some time. At first it is generally white, and then gradually changes through the colors of the spectrum. All the colors are seldom seen at the same trial; and it rarely happens when one or more are missed that they afterwards appear. Thus when the change is from green to red, yellow or orange are seldom seen. The change from white generally commences with a light indigo or blue, and terminates with red, or some compound of it, but sometimes with a deep blue or violet. The colors are generally seen at the edges of the figure first,-though this is not always the case; and when they once appear, they often remain mixed up with those that succeed. Many curious modifications and confused mixtures of colors will be perceived at times; but it seldom happens that the colors develope themselves, in the first instance, contrary to their order in the spectrum, although when the last has appeared they occur in various ways. This is a phenomenon which I have not seen noticed anywhere and it would seem to arise from the retina decomposing the light that falls upon it, surrendering the rays in the order of refrangibility."—Athenæum. INTERESTING EXCAVATIONS AT POMPEII.-In the street leading from the ancient sea-shore, in the neighborhood of the theatres, to the so-called crossway of the Fortuna, and thence in a direct line to the northern city wall, there has been excavated a house that surpasses in richness and elegance all that has been discovered previously. The space of the court-yard is open, has a Mosaic pavement, and on the walls fantastic pictures of the richest and most tasteful style. At the sides of the atrium (court-yard) are small sleeping-rooms, with wall paintings. In the back ground of the atrium opens a tablinum, the reception hall, with chequered marble pavement. At the side of the reception hall is a dining-room, where are seen three large paintings of full-size figures. They represent Hercules and Omphale holding his club and wrapped in the skin of the Nemyan lion. Next, Bacchus as a boy, and arm-in arm with Silenus, on a cart drawn by two oxen, and followed by Bacchantines. Thirdly, a Bacchanal procession of triumph, with a Victoria, who engraves into a shield the exploits of the victorious god. Here were also the Trikilinion, reposing beds, (not unlike our low divans), the feet of which are richly adorned with silver. Behind the reception hall there appears the garden, with a magnificent fountain at the end, adorned with much Mosaic, and a little marble statue of Silenus. In the middle is the water-reservoir, adorned with elegant marble sculptures, such as a small Faunus drawing out a thorn from the foot of a goat, a beardy satyr, a stag, a hare stealing grapes, an amorino upon a dolphin, a youthful field goddess keeping on her lap a new-born goat, whose mother is caressing it standing on her hind legs. and third stories, to which led a wide staircase. Upon a small picture close to the staircase lies a letter with the (scarcely legible) name of the owner of the house, in oblique characters, and plainly indicating his rank. It belonged to one of the Deuriæ or senators of Pompeii. All the walls of the rooms of the house are decorated with pictures of comic and tragic scenes, and upon one of them is depicted a young girl with mask and double flute. The house has therefore been christened, Casa della Sonatrice, or dell' Ercole Ubbriaco. It is the newest excavation of importance. THE TUBULAR BRIDGES.-We have had an opportunity of inspecting the stupendous iron tubes which are in course of construction a short distance from the Menai Suspension Bridge, for the purpose of forming a passage for the trains of the Holyhead Railway across the strait. Immense piers of granite are being erected on each side of the strait, and a massive pier of the same material is rising in the middle of the stream. On these solid masses of masonry the vast hollow metallic ways will rest. forming a line continuous with the railway. The most cursory inspection of the tubes will at once convince the spectator of their prodigious strength, and show them to be capable of sustaining a far greater weight than any that is likely to pass across them. They are not either cylindrical or elliptical, as many have supposed, but rectangular,―their form being what is not uncommonly called an oblong square, about 30 feet high and 15 feet wide. They are constructed of thick plates of iron, firmly riveted together, and strengthened by girders at the top and bottom. The chief e ement of strength, however, is in the bed or base of the work, which is composed of plates of iron set edgewise, so as to form cells; the under and upper surfaces being firmly riveted to the intermediate perpendicular plates,-the whole, with the walls of the tube and its covering, firmly girded and bound together with the utmost skill and ingenuity, forming a compact piece of workmanship, the strength of which is beyond conception. These enormous tubes are built on stages erected over the stream. The spectator wonders, when contemplating them, how fabrics of such stupendous weight, amounting to many thousands of tons, are to be removed and lifted into the position which they are destined to occupy. They will be floated to the piers on pontoons, and lifted to their final restingplace by hydraulic pressure.-Liverpool Allion. COACH TRAVELLING IN SCOTLAND.-The first mail coach from London that had ever arrived at Glasgow, drew up on the 7th of July, 1788. So great was the interest excited on the occasion, that the proprietor of the inn, the Saracen's Head, ac companied by a crowd of horsemen, rode out as far as the Clyde Iron Works to welcome its approach. According to Jones's Glasgow Directory for 1789, the Diligence for Edinburgh started at nine o'clock morning," or any other hour that the first two pasFormer Times. sengers might agree on!"-Notices of Glasgow in TRADE BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND CHINA.The number of ships which arrived in Hong Kong during the year 1847, was 699, namely, forty-three This dwelling joins a second equally open atrium from Great Britain, 147 from the British colonies, where the servants lived. Here was found a four-sixteen from the United States, and 195 from foreign wheeled wagon with iron wheels, and much bronze ornament. The kitchen contained many neat implements of bronze, and the traces of smoke were in many places visible after the lapse of eighteen centuries. The dwelling had-what is very rare-second states. The total tonnage amounted to 229,465. The value of the imports into Hong Kong, in Chinese vessels, during 1846, was 642,700 piculs, or L.325,780; and in 1847, 840,990 piculs, or L.493,239 The estimated value of sugar exported from Hong Kong during 1847, amounted to L.144,827. |