genuine in the beginning), and such was the
unhappy way in which the dregs of vagabondism
claimed to be an irritated people.

THE SUMMER WIND.

I.

SPEAK for me, wind of Summer,
Blowing over the moorland,
Over the crested billows,
Over the mountain summits,
Over the forest branches,
And chimneys of the town!
Speak for me, melancholy wind,
And say to suffering human kind
The hopeful things that I might tell,
Had I a voice to fall and swell,
Like thine, upon the land and sea,
As all-pervading and as free.

II.

Breathe gently in the cottage,
Murmur through door and keyhole,
Or pipe in the cozy ingle,
Where, sitting with his loved ones,
The poor man dreams of Fortune,
Or mourns his low estate!
And tell him, ere he goes to rest,
Of all Earth's blessings, Love is best.
That honest bread and strength and health
Are better than a Prince's wealth,
And good men's sleep a richer boon
Than all the gold beneath the moon.

III.

Breathe soft in shady alleys,
Where lovers at the twilight
Sit under hawthorn branches
And paint the rosy future,
And tell them Youth and Beauty
Pass over like the spring;
But that if Love on Virtue lean,
Time shall not dim its golden mean,
But light it on its earthly way,
Until the mortal shall decay;
Then lead it through the immortal door,
Where Love is young for evermore.

IV.

Breathe gently, wind of Summer,
To the exile and the captive,
Heart-smitten and desponding,
Dreaming of distant landscapes,
And joys for ever vanish'd,
And home they love so well!
Tell them, whatever tempests roll,
To keep their summer in the soul,
And that the Wrong which seems to stand,
And overshadow all the land,
Is but a breath of vain endeavour:
While Right is Right, and lasts for ever.

AN AMERICAN NOVELTY.

MY respected mother-in-law is, today, for
the first time during our three months'
sojourn in England, a little distrustful of her
opinions as to the perfectly disinterested and
benevolent motives that prompt our British
cousins in their proffers of gratuitous services
to strangers. Being of the "sunny south" and
an unsubdued "Confederate," she has no
country, and, therefore, without stint or
prejudice, praises your noble institutions! (her
favourite comprehensive expression), model
government! beautiful church service! But
her enthusiasm is chiefly elicited by the
spontaneous and disinterested attentions of the
ushers at theatres and museums, the porters
and guards at railways, the boys and men
at cab doors (where they are never wanted),
and the zealous devotions of servants at
hotels: who not only "do not expect," but
are forbidden to receive, gratuities from guests.
Of course the old lady never detects me forcing
trifling sums on these worthy people, and therefore
does not quite understand my meaning
when I say that, under like circumstances,
human nature is much the same all over the
world.

But what above all things aroused her
admiration, and was read with unusual triumph, was
the following advertisement, which she found in
a country newspaper:

A FACT FOR PHYSIOLOGISTS.—It is a
singular fact that in this enlightened age and
country the treatment usually adopted by the
Faculty, in cases of Dyspepsia (Indigestion), is the
result of a false theory, indicating a lamentable
ignorance of the Physiology of the Stomach and
Digestive Organs, and is in most instances calculated
to establish and confirm the malady it is
intended to remove. The Secretary of the Nottingham
Botanic Institute will feel a pleasure in
forwarding (free) to all applicants the excellent Botanic
Remedy for Indigestion, Bilious and Liver
Complaints, recently discovered by Professor Webster
of Philadelphia, and communicated to the Institute
by that distinguished Botanist. The Medical
Reform Society (at whose cost these announcements
appear) wish it to be frankly and distinctly understood
that they will not, in any shape, nor under
any circumstance whatever, accept any contribution,
fee, or gratuity for this recipe, the object of the
Society being to demonstrate the superiority of the
Botanic over every other practice of medicine; and
in return only desire that those who may be
signally benefited by it will forward to the Society a
statement of the case, and thus aid with facts in
accelerating the present movement in favour of
Medical Reform. Enclose a directed envelope to
the Secretary, Botanic Institute, Nottingham.

The dear old lady, as is the case with all
people who read such advertisements, is
afflicted with every ill they describe, and requested
me to address the Botanic Institute at Nottingham
without delay, and very respectfully ask
for the recipe which those good Samaritans
offer gratuitously to a suffering public. In
vain did I tell her that in old countries like
England the ingenuity of man is developed in
a high degree; but to my mind the advertisement
had a strong odour of quackery; and that before
the millennium such benevolence as that claimed
by the Botanic Institute was not to be credited
or expected. But when I added that seven
years ago, I, being then in London, had seen the
same advertisement, and, writing for the
recipe, received a column of printed matter from
the Institute reciting the ingredients and
their proportions, concluding with a mournful
confession that the supply of the indispensable
drug, "the Susquehanna root," discovered by