THE WIDOWED MOTHER.

(Robert Southey.)

[Born, 1774; died, 1843. Works, very voluminous.

Thalaba the Destroyer,'

Metrical Tales,' Madoc,' 'The Curse of Kehama,' 'Roderick,' &c.]

I.

How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:

In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark-blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray

The desert-circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

II.

Who, at this untimely hour,
Wanders o'er the desert sands ?
No station is in view,

Nor palm-grove islanded amid the waste.
The mother and her child,

The widowed mother and the fatherless boy,
They, at this untimely hour,

Wander o'er the desert sands.

III.

Alas! the setting sun
Saw Zeinab in her bliss,
Hodeirah's wife beloved,

The fruitful mother late,

Whom, when the daughters of Arabia named,
They wished their lot like hers:
She wanders o'er the desert sands
A wretched widow now,

The fruitful mother of so fair a race;
With only one preserved,

She wanders o'er the wilderness.

IV.

No tear relieved the burden of her heart;
Stunned with the heavy woe, she felt like one
Half wakened from a midnight dream of blood.
But sometimes, when the boy

Would wet her hands with tears,
And, looking up to her fixed countenance,
Sob out the name of mother, then did she
Utter a feeble groan.

At length, collecting, Zeinab turned her eyes
To Heaven, exclaiming, 'Praised be the Lord!
He gave, He takes away!

The Lord our God is good.'

Thalaba the Destroyer.

THE TEAR OF PENITENCE.

(Thomas Moore.)

[Born, 1780; died, 1852. Works: Odes and Epistles,' Twopenny Post-bag,' 'Fudge Family in Paris,' Irish Melodies,'' Lalla Rookh,' Life of Byron, &c.]

And how felt he, the wretched man
Reclining there while memory ran
O'er many a year of guilt and strife,
Flew o'er the dark flood of his life,
Nor found one sunny resting-place,
Nor brought him back one branch of grace!
'There was a time,' he said in mild,
Heart-humbled tones, 'thou blessed child!
When young and haply pure as thou,
I looked and prayed like thee-but now '-
He hung his head; each nobler aim

And hope and feeling, which had slept
From boyhood's hour, that instant came
Fresh o'er him, and he wept-he wept!

Blest tears of soul-felt penitence!

In whose benign redeeming flow

Is felt the first-the only sense

Of guiltless joy that guilt can know.

There's a drop,' said the Peri, 'that down from the moon

Falls through the withering airs of June

Upon Egypt's land, of so healing a power,

Of so balmy a virtue, that even in the hour
That drop descends, contagion dies,

And health reanimates earth and skies!
Oh, is it not thus, thou man of sin,

The precious tears of repentance fall?
Though foul thy fiery plagues within,

One heavenly drop has dispelled them all!
And now-behold him kneeling there
By the child's side in humble prayer,
While the same sunbeam shines upon
The guilty and the guiltless one,

And hymns of joy proclaim through heaven
The triumph of a soul forgiven.

"Twas when the golden orb had set,
While on their knees they lingered yet,
There fell a light, more lovely far
Than ever came from sun or star,
Upon the tear that, warm and meek,
Dewed that repentant sinner's cheek.
To mortal eye this light might seem
A northern flash or meteor beam;
But well the enraptured Peri knew
'Twas a bright smile the angel threw
From heaven's gate to hail that tear-
Her harbinger of glory near!

'Joy, joy, for ever! my task is done—
The gates are passed, and heaven is won!
Oh! am I not happy, I am, I am.

To thee, sweet Eden, how dark and sad Are the diamond turrets of Shadukiam,

And the fragrant bowers of Amberabad !

Farewell, ye odours of earth that die,
Passing away like a lover's sigh;
My feast is now of the tooba tree,
Whose scent is the breath of eternity.

Farewell, ye vanishing flowers that shone

In my fairy wreath, so bright and brief;
Oh, what are the brightest that e'er have blown,
To the lote-tree springing by Alla's throne,

Whose flowers have a soul in every leaf!
Joy, joy, for ever! my task is done-—
The gates are passed, and heaven is won!

Paradise and the Peri.

MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES.

(1) A person loses at the rate of 10 per cent. by selling cloth at 15s. per yard; how ought it to have been sold to gain 20 per cent.? (2) If a pound weight of standard gold be worth £46 14s. 6d., how much should one sovereign weigh?

(3) Three merchants make a stock of £700; their profits are respectively £23 1s. 5 d., £64 3s. 327d., and £39 8s. 73d. How much did each contribute?

(4) A cubic inch of water weighs 252-458 grains, and the weight of an imperial gallon is 10 lbs. avoirdupois. Find the number of cubic inches in an imperial gallon. (A pound avoirdupois is 7,000 grains.)

(5) If a lump of iron weighing 16 cwt. 1 qr. 5 lbs. 5 oz. be rolled into a cylindrical bar 12 ft. long, find the diameter of the bar to three places of decimals. A cubic foot of iron weighs 7788 oz.

FROM PADUA TO VENICE.

(From the Stones of Venice,' by J. Ruskin.)

camp-a-nile, a bell-tower

ar'-chi-trave, that part of a column which

rests upon the upper part

mi-rage, an optical illusion in a desert or at sea

stag-na'-tion, a standing still in-ter'-min-a-ble, endless

des-e-cra'-ted, profaned, diverted from a sacred purpose

mon-ot'-on-ous, wanting variety

con-vent-u-al, relating to a convent
vo-cif-er-a'-tion, violent outcry
bast'-ion, a bulwark, a mass of earth
standing out from a rampart
e-quiv'-a-lent, equal in value

dis-cord'-ant, inconsistent, not harmo-
nious

tes-se-la-tion, the making of pavement in squares of different colours

COME with me, on an autumnal morning, through the dark gates of Padua, and let us take the broad road leading towards the east.

It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms and vine festoons full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an embankment above the Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows slowly, but strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous banks, with here and there a short babbling eddy twisted for an instant into its opaque surface, and vanishing, as if something had been dragged into it and gone down. Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the dyke on its northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen trembling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than it did at first. Presently, you pass one of the much-vaunted villas on the

Brenta a glaring spectral shell of brick and stucco, its windows with painted architraves like picture-frames, and a courtyard paved with pebbles in front of it, all burning in the thick glow of the feverish sunshine, but fenced from the high road, for magnificence sake, with goodly posts and chains; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese variations, painted red and green; a third, composed for the greater part of dead wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it, each with a pea-green blind, and a classical architrave in bad perspective; and a fourth, with stucco figures set on the top of its garden wall; some antique, like the kind to be seen at the corner of the New Road, and some of clumsy grotesque dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This is the architecture to which her studies of the Renaissance have conducted modern Italy.

The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense white the walls of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change horses. Another dreary stage among the now divided branches of the Brenta, forming irregular and half-stagnant canals; with one or two more villas on the other side of them, but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have recognised before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin, black, and rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull water, with what were once small gardens beside them, kneaded into mud, and with blighted fragments of gnarled hedges and broken stakes for their fencing; and here and there a few fragments of marble steps, which have once given them graceful access from the water's edge, now settling into the mud in broken joints all aslope and slippery with green weed. At last the road turns sharply to the north, and there is an open space, covered with bent grass, on the right of it; but do not look that way.

Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of the little inn at Mestre, glad of a moment's rest in shade. The table is (always, I think) covered with a cloth of nominal white and perennial grey, with plates and glasses at due intervals, and small loaves of a peculiar white bread, made with oil, and more like knots of flour than bread. The view from its balcony is not cheerful; a narrow street, with a solitary brick church and barren campanile on the other side of it; and some conventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco about their windows; and, between them and the street, a ditch with some slow current in it, and one or two small houses beside it, one with an arbour of roses at its door, as in an English tea-garden; the air, however, about us having in it nothing of roses, but a close smell of garlic and crabs, warmed by the smoke of various stands of hot chesnuts. There is much vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting certain wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our