phosphorised — nay, even of all those smart young
ladies, fresh and gay, and glib with last night's
opera, or Lord Dundreary — how many have
understood the uses of that case, or know the
English of one single thing it contained? It
may be all very clever and scientific; but I
contend that it is not the least in the world instructive,
and that a few good honest English
explanations would have been of ten times more
benefit to the sightseers.

FROM THE WILDS.

So my old friend recollects me, though the tide of
time hath cast

Many a long wild wave between us, since we hailed
each other last,

Yet I glory in the feeling that your love is not
estranged,

That the boy-heart beats through manhood with an
ardour all unchanged;

Dwelling in the giant city 'mid its shocks of worldly
war,

And its roaring stream of traffic bridged by ancient
Temple-bar;

Turning from the syren pleasures, from the sorrow
and the strife,

Still your memory loves to wander on the morning
hills of life,

Gaining glimpses of the glory that has burned to
pass away,

As the dawn's wild hectic beauty melts into sober day.

And your thoughts are often with me, though you
cannot well divine

How the scorching blasts of trial may have rudely
shaken mine;

But my friend is unforgotten. Can he deem affection
less

Where it bends a guardian spirit in the savage
wilderness?

Where it reigns all undisputed, feeling nought of
earth's alloy,

Like a free wild thing of nature, full of light and full
of joy?

No! the friendship of our boyhood hath no change
nor turning known,

But still burns strong within me, leaping up to meet
your own.

Could you see me here at noonday, half a satyr, half
a clown,

For my hands are hard with labour, and my cheek
is darkly brown;

Not the slender youth you knew me, when on
shining English sands

We watched the ships together and discoursed of
foreign lands,

When our aims were undecided, and the golden
future seemed

All that young Imagination in her heyday ever
dreamed.

You may strive for fame and win it, I can only hope
to share

Such poor toil and such poor triumph as the nameless
exiles bear,

Fell the oak and rear the shanty, die amid the
solitude,

Where the sword-bright river flashes from its sheath
of sombre wood.

Yet I know not who is better—you with dreams of
fame to come,

Or myself, whose aspirations in this awful bush are
dumb,

For the dial-shadow pointeth to the grave when all
is past,

And our toils, though high or humble, only seek for
rest at last.

THE COUNTRY OF MASANIELLO.

ALMOST with his last breath, the great statesman
who was the first Prime Minister of Italy
deplored the condition into which Naples had
been plunged by "that scoundrel Ferdinand"—
the hero of Mr. Gladstone's indignant denunciations,
and the father of him who fled like a
spectre before the daylight of Garibaldi's
advance. "There are now," said Cavour, while
lying on his bed of death, "no longer
Lombards, nor Piedmontese, nor Tuscans, nor
Romagnols — we are all Italians. But there are
still Neapolitans. There is much corruption in
their country; but it is not their fault, poor
people, they have been so badly governed!"
Such is the report of those memorable words,
given by Cavour's niece, the Countess Alfieri,
in a recently published work by M. William de
la Rive, entitled Le Comte de Cavour: Récits
et Souvenirs. The count spoke with all the
solemnity, the tenderness, the awe, and the sense
of responsibility, of a man who knew that he
had but few more moments to live; and there can
be no doubt that what he said was the truth. It is
one of the most fatal qualities of a despotism such
as that of the detestable Neapolitan Bourbons
that it not merely tortures the bodies of its
victims, but poisons the whole national life.
Self-respect disappears with self-government;
abject servility is resorted to as the only protection
against the caprices of a cruel and
irresponsible tyrant; profligacy becomes the
resource of men who, from not being allowed
to speak, have almost ceased to think;
violence, cowardliness, and greed, are soon equally
the habits of the rulers and the ruled.

What Cavour expressed in brief, while waiting
the Divine summons to depart, another
Italian nobleman has just placed before the
English public in a more elaborate form, in a
style singularly vivid and dramatic, and from
personal observation in what may be called the
infected regions. Count Arrivabene, the author
of Italy under Victor Emmanuel, is a member of
an old Lombard family which for the last forty
years has given many recruits to the
patriotic party in the north of the peninsula. An
Austrian subject by birth, an English subject by
adoption, but above all things an Italian, the
count is specially qualified to instruct Englishmen
on the present position of his country,
the virtues and short-comings of his countrymen,
and the necessities of the future. A long
residence in England as an exile, has given him
such a command of our language that he writes
his work in it direct, without trusting to the
somewhat distorting medium of translation;
and a corresponding knowledge of, and
sympathy with, our institutions enable him to
address his mind to the task in a spirit
peculiarly acceptable to Englishmen. His two