recommend to those who like myself have been intimidated from commencing before owing to its large extent. The second and third volumes have I think pleased me most. I should say these two volumes would be especially useful to those who are thinking of taking orders. That portion I mean commencing with the progress of the Christian religion and ending with the accession of Marcian. One effect of a sea voyage is perhaps pernicious, but it will very likely soon wear off on land. It awakens an adventurous spirit and kindles a very strong desire to visit almost every spot upon the face of the globe. The Captain yarns about California, and the China Seas. The doctor about Valparaiso and the Andes,-another raves about Owyhee and the islands of the Pacific, while a fourth will compare nothing with Japan. The world begins to feel very small when one finds that one can get half round it in three months, and one mentally determines that one will visit all these places before one comes back again, not to mention a good many more. As I have already extended this letter to a considerable length, I will close it here, and send the remainder of our adventures with my first impressions of New Zealand as soon as ever I can find time to put them on paper after my arrival. We are all rather downhearted at present, for ever since the last gale, now a week ago, it has been either dead calm, or the next thing to it, and there are now less signs of wind than ever. I suppose however that like all other things the voyage will come to an end sometime-somehow. + PAST AND FUTURE. Он present moment, priceless point of time! Shall ever mortal learn to know thy worth? In gazing on the pageantry sublime Of future scenes that Fancy shadows forth, Or brooding on the past, how seldom seen The chain of golden moments hung between! Pondering thus, I had a dream On the Old Year's dying day, I gazed around, and a dismal sight The sun shone out with a lurid light, Through blackened rocks and weedy slime And methought I heard a voice sublime- Away and away like a restless wave, The night was rough, my feet were sore, Careless I sank on the slimy floor, Near to a massy dungeon door That echoed the howling blast. But soon I was roused, for a stranger sound Saluted my weary car, Of iron hoofs on a stony ground And clanking chains, I looked around, For the sound came loud and near. I gazed through the seething and driving storm Of an aged man with armour black, And on he came with the iron clank Till he came to the dungeon dark and dank, Then slowly opened the dungeon door, As the savage blast through the cavern tore I fell asleep, and many a dream Of the year that had passed away Flowed through my mind like the lonely stream, Till morning came, and the sun's glad beam Illumined the New Year's day. I hastened forth, for the earth was bright And gaily on the morning air The sound of music flew, The bugle strains of the coming year, Arose to my dazzled view. A Spirit on a shining steed Rose up from the cavern's rocks, With a swell of his trumpet, o'er mount and mead Then a voice from the cavern I heard exclaim— Fly, fly to the country from whence you came, "Go, follow him now while his powers are rife, His brow will be darkened with sorrow and strife, "For he is the Present and I am the Past— Then seize on the Present and follow him fast, THE SUNBEAM. THIRTY years ago Wilfred Hall was standing. Time, if left to himself, will soon crumble an old hall into common dust with that beneath it; yet, scarcely in thirty years. So that if Wilfred Hall had not been burnt, the curious reader might have gone to look at it-if I had given him much clue to its locality; in which case I should have been very careful to keep the secret, for reasons known to myself. As it is, it is little matter. For twenty years ago Wilfred Hall was burnt; causing no regret, as far as I could hear, save only to one solitary artist, who had half finished a sketch of it. Had the sketch been finished, it might have stood at the head of this tale of a sunbeam; but now I shall have to describe the old hall. A mile away was a little town. Through a long line of cottages ran the main road, climbing a wooded hill; on the hill stood the church. Then the road descended the hill again, at the other side, winding through the woods; and led away to a distant city. Here and there, as it went on, quiet picturesque lanes branched off along the hill sides, or down the valleys. At the entrance of one of these lanes might have been sometime a hall gate. For there stood two mouldering neglected gate pillars, with armorial bearings; a stag at gaze, looking stiffly from a shield, disfigured by time and vagrant hands; and on the top of each pillar a hooded hawk; but no gate to swing now even on rusty hinges. Wandering down the lane, where no vehicle seemed to have travelled for a century,-for the grass grew rich as pasture fields, and the hedgerows were wild and neglectedyou came, after ten minutes stroll, in sight of a lonely hall, set low in the hollow of a hill with woods climbing up behind it, and level lands in front:-the very hall I tell you of. Weeds grew in the gravel walks and had grown there many a year. Weeds grew on the door steps, in cracks and K |