Death! why so harsh and cruel,
   To take the infant mild,
Home to its God and Father,
   All pure and undefiled:
And leave the old man hoary
   Weeping for the child?

"Whom the gods love die early!"
   Our Father knoweth best
And we are wrong to censure,
   The supreme behest:
Sleep softly! bonnie blossom,
   Sleep! and take thy rest!

We need such consolation,
   Whether we live or die:
Were Death no benefactor,
   Laden with blessings high
Sad, sad were the survivors,
   Under the awful sky!

DIPLOMACY IN DISTRESS.

ONE after another, the cherished ideals of
our youth take new shapes. One by one
the shadows which we have supposed to be
actual bodies melt away, and disclose the
hard real fact, always unlike the effigy our
fancy formed.

If there were one branch of the good
and grand Circumlocution Office which
we believed in more than another, it was
"F.0." If there were a profession that
had for us a peculiar fascination, and
which we were never tired of studying in
the truthful pages of political novels, it
was diplomacy. The diplomatic service
represented, in our mind's eye, all that
was interesting and exciting in the great
world of politics. We scouted Oxenstiern's
epigram as a malicious libel. We knew
how much wisdom was necessary for the
governing of mankind; we revered the
wisdom of our ideal ambassadors, the
real kings of men. Dignified, but easy,
courteous, yet guarded, our ideal ambassador
was always popular wherever he
went. His princely hospitality attracted
the best society of the luxurious capital
in which he lived. Reticent, straight-
forward, and honourable, he was perpetually
defeating the evil machinations of
envoys of rival courts. When the Russian
prince, not only the possessor of countless
roubles, but also gifted with a diabolical
craftiness, worthy of Macchiavelli— we
never had, and have not, for the matter
of that, even now, any very definite idea
what were the exact doctrines of
Macchiavelli which deserved to be branded as
diabolical; but our political novels were
very fond of so stigmatising them— came in
our ambassador's way, towards the end of
the first volume, how interesting the tale
became! For all his spies, and his bribes,
and the rest of his stock-in-trade,
occasionally including a dagger or so, what a
bad time was in store for that Muscovite!
For at least a volume and a half, the
Macchiavellian schemer usually got the best
of it. Unscrupulous fraud and conspiracy
succeeded, almost invariably. But our
ambassador was equal to the occasion, and
behold at length— either at one of those
magnificent dinners, or, more frequently,
at one of those brilliant balls which were
continually taking place at the British
embassy— the machinations of the emissary of
the Czar were exposed and defeated. The
Russian was not unfrequently consumed
by a mad passion for our ambassador's
daughter, a fair child of Albion, endowed
with every virtue and all the accomplishments,
who, in such cases, was invariably
engaged to an aristocratic but poor private
secretary, and would not, in consequence,
hear of becoming madame la princesse.
Thus, passion and diplomacy were delightfully
mixed; and, as the ill-regulated
mind of the Russian often led to his
attempted abduction of the object of his
affections, delicious complications ensued.
When the ambassador was younger than in
such a case as that just cited, there was
usually a young ambassadress. Under
those circumstances, the wicked foreign
diplomatist became a Frenchman, and the
young ambassadress herself was the object
of his unlawful passion. But, in either
case, the triumph of virtue, and (the same
thing) of the British ambassador always
came off.

As for the attachés, their life was one
round of excitement and luxury. Scions
of noble houses, and in the receipt of
princely allowances from their noble
fathers, those fortunate youths were the life
and soul of all society. They could do,
and they did, everything. The miserable,
puny, poverty-stricken counts and barons
of foreign lands looked with envy on the
broad-shouldered, six-feet high, son of
Britain: as, with his frank, open smile, he
lavished among them astonishing sums of
money, or, as bestriding his thorough-bred
English hunter, he beat them all in the
steeple-chase; or, on occasion, used the
boxing powers of his nation with terrible
effect in defence of the insulted daughter
of his chief. The very Queen's messengers
lived an enviable life; albeit they
were occasionally compelled to travel for
many weeks at a stretch across Russian
snows swarming with wolves, or across
savage mountains beset with brigands
and, worse still, with unscrupulous
emissaries of rival diplomatists. Their lives