I own that I was weak enough to be deceived
by the elaborate train of deception, and that I
suffered accordingly. I selected an instrument
for a fifty-pound note, which faded away in
harmony and appearance before it had been in my
possession six months, notwithstanding that it
was treated in the most kind and considerate
manner. I called in the services of a professional
man to effect a cure, and he candidly told me
that the operation was impossible. The piano
had only one fault, but that was of the most
unreformable kind—it was a bargain bought, in a
moment of weakness, at a hat-shop.

TRADE SONGS. THE LAW WRITER.

          THRO' the morn, and thro' the noon,
          And thro' the night,
          And thro' the dull year's hazy light,
          To a single dreary tune,
          I write—and write.

     Sometimes dreams of childhood.
         Pierce the dusky room;
     Sometimes a bird, upsoaring,
        Lifts me above the gloom—
     Above the smoke, and the din
        That deafens me all day long,
     And touches my heart within
        Like an old sweet country song.

     I dream of the pleasant gardens
        That lay by the river side,
     Of the banks with a thousand odours,
        Of the elms in their plumy pride:
     I see in the summer waters
        The trout dart to and fro,
     And I think of the friends departed
        Till I scarce know where I go.

     Far away is the grassy meadow,
        Where I played when I was young,
     And the hedge, of maple and hawthorn,
        Where the finch and the linnet sung:
     Ah! I never shall see the heavens
        Where the lark once soared so high,
     Never see the soft eyes of my mother,
        Until I go home—to die.

          For here thro' morn, and thro' the noon,
          And thro' the night,
          Thro' all the dull year's hazy light,
          To a single dreary tune,
          I must write—and write.

THE SEXTON.

SEXTON am I of Armouth town:
I dig the graves when the sun is down:
I ring the bell on the Sabbath morn:
I ring the bell when a child is born:
I ring when the poor or the wealthy die:
The herald of good and ill am I.

Yestermorn, when the storm was loud,
I wrapped a miser within his shroud:
Yestereve, in the dusky light,
A spendthrift muttered his last good night.
One lost to the other his useless gold:
I shall bury them both in the parish mould.

A mother is watching, with stony eyes,
In a hut hard by, as her infant dies.
The storm is over; yet out at sea
Three bodies are tossing, awaiting me.
When the tide drives in on the shining sand,
I shall bury them all with a willing hand.

Last week, on a broad red velvet bed,
The Lord of the Parish lay stiff and dead:
Last week, in a box of boards, there slept
A beggar whom wife nor children wept.
One's in the chancel: and one below
In the deep damp hole where the nettles grow.

And so I live on, from day to day,
With the dead—for the starving parish pay.
Wherever they go (below or aloft)
It troubles me not, so the ground be soft.
Yet I know there's a fellow with puckered face,
Who a promise has got of the sexton's place.
"Some night" (he mutters me hoarse and low)
"I shall put thee to bed where the nettles blow."

A LEBANON SHEIK.

BENT upon visiting a wise Sheik on Mount
Lebanon, we quitted Beyrout by the road
through the pine-forest to the south of the town.
Throughout this pine-forest outside Beyrout,
the ground in the spring of the year cannot be
seen for the flowers, which, although of nearly
every known colour and hue, are almost all of
the same height, and thus form a variegated,
perfumed carpet, spread as far as eye can see.
The traveller from Europe notices how many of
these flowers are of a sort that in his own
country live only in cultivated gardens. Myrtle,
lupins, anemones, sweet peas, hyacinths, and
jonquils, are common in Syria as daisies in an
English meadow. The spring air smells like
that of a well-stocked English greenhouse.

Emerging from the pine-forest, our road led
us through mulberry gardens, of which the trees
were just commencing to throw out their leaves;
and, after winding among shady lanes for three-
quarters of an hour, we reached the village of
Baabda, which adjoins that of Hadet, both
belonging to the emirs of the Shehaab family, the
leading Christian nobility of Lebanon. A little
further on we passed through a corner of the
great olive grove, covering nearly twenty square
miles, and soon afterwards began, by the usual
bad road, the ascent of the mountain.

We halted at the silk factory of an hospitable
Englishman, by whom we were entertained in
the best English fashion. From the drawing-
room of this gentleman's house, is one of the
best views to be met with, even in Lebanon.
To the north, the coast can be clearly traced as
far as Tripoli, with the whole range of Keswan
lying parallel to the sea. Nearer at hand is the
promontory up which the town of Beyrout is
built, together with the city itself, the numerous
mulberry-gardens, pine-forest, and a great portion
of the immense olive grove, all spread at one's
feet like a raised map some ten square miles in
size. Between the spectator and the blue
Mediterranean are several ranges of mountain,
all more or less wooded, all having villages in
every available spot, and all varying in the details
of their landscape. To the south, the coast
can be followed with the eye, until the prospect
is lost in the headlands above Tyre, whilst Sidon
can be distinguished nearer at hand, and with a
good glass the far-off outline of Mount Carmel