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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.

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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,
Methought I arose with the morning beam
And wandered by a lonely stream
On the moorlands far away.

I gazed around, and a dismal sight
Before my eyes was spread,

The sun shone out with a lurid light,
But the earth below was dark as night
As though the world were dead.

Through blackened rocks and weedy slime
I sped my fated way,

And methought I heard a voice sublime-
"This is the land where the tyrant Time
Can never use his sway."

Away and away like a restless wave,
Till the wind began to blow,
And I came at last to a gloomy cave
As the sun sank suddenly into the grave
Of the chaos spread below.

The night was rough, my feet were sore,
I entered the cavern vast,

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 sleet in its frantic speed,
And boding thoughts began to swarm
As I saw advance the dusky form
Of a man on a duskier steed.

Of an aged man with armour black,
And a beard as white as snow,
The weight of time had bent his back,
In hollow voice he cried-" alack
And alas for my year of woe."

And on he came with the iron clank
Of his steed of dusky hue,

Till he came to the dungeon dark and dank,
Where poisonous weeds and creepers rank
In wild profusion grew.

Then slowly opened the dungeon door,
And a dismal groan it gave,

As the savage blast through the cavern tore
The horse and his rider were borne before
And closed in their gloomy grave.

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 sadness was changed to glee,
Woodlands were teeming with life and light,
The rocks were white, and the glorious sight
Had wrapped me in ecstacy.

And gaily on the morning air

The sound of music flew,

The bugle strains of the coming year,
And now a vision bright and fair

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
Away he soared with the lightning's speed,
And scattered his golden locks.

Then a voice from the cavern I heard exclaim—
"Oh mortal why wait you here?

Fly, fly to the country from whence you came,
Joy, wealth and prosperity, wisdom and fame,
Must be asked from the Future Year."

"Go, follow him now while his powers are rife,
Ere ever this year be sped

His brow will be darkened with sorrow and strife,
And armour be donned for the battle of life,
And Time will have silvered his head."

"For he is the Present and I am the Past—
The ghost of the Year that is dead,

Then seize on the Present and follow him fast,
And all his bright glories may bless you at last
When others have vanished and fled."

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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

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