the other, with the largest round pudding
in the middle. Others have great beds made
like aces of diamonds; three of them have
made hard-favoured sets of little beds, like
furrows cut across the whole width of the
garden, with narrow walks between, like ruled
copy books; and two of them have fairly
given up the matter, and allowed the whole
strip to lie like the fallow-field of rank grass,
from which they were originally separated by
the builder's walls.

To look at the great mass of our houses
and streets—suburban houses and streets in
especial—a foreigner would suppose we had
no architects among us. "What!" cries Mr.
John Bull, "do you mean to compare any
foreign houses with English houses for
convenience, comfort, and snugness?"
Certainly not, Mr. Bull, with regard to the inside
domestic arrangements; but those are not
the builder's department—they are the work
of the carpenter, the cabinet-maker, the
upholsterer, and the ironmonger. I am
speaking of the external form and appearance
of our modern houses, and I affirm that
it would never occur to a foreigner that such
persons as architects were ever consulted,
except on particular occasions, and that, in
fact, nearly all our houses are the product of
the brains of wealthy, enterprising, master-
bricklayers, or builders who, like my friend
Mr. Roomy, have risen into "builders" from
that questionable foundation. For this reason,
a house with us is in shape nothing more than
a square box, and a street is a succession of
boxes. There is no more external "design"
in them than goes to the construction of a box,
or a rabbit-hutch—a child's first drawing of
"a house" on a slate; and a street is often no
better to look at than a set of menagerie cages
—take away the bars, and place windows in
the front, and add a door with steps, and some
chimneys, and there you have our modern
houses. Sometimes an attempt is made to
get over the heavy squareness by an
ornamental door-way, a flight of stone steps,
or an enormous entrance-porch, or by sticking
a small bit of a wing to one side, like
a house and its little one. But there's the
"box" amidst all the awkward half-
conscious attempts to hide it. Frequently, a
variation is yet more obviously sought by a
skreen or parapet at the top; and yet more
frequently by a rising roof, in imitation of a
haystack in single houses, and of a barn in a
small row of houses. But, after all, there is
the builder's box, standing with sturdy
utilitarianism in the middle of all these vain
attempts, as one should say doggedly (not to add
stupidly), "Well—and a good strong box too."

A CHRISTIAN PAYNIM.

A LEGEND.

ROUND Malaga's fair city
   Is drawn the pride of Spain;
And morn and night, they hotly fight,
   Its battlements to gain.

But, still the valiant Pagans
   Full stoutly hold their own,
And from many a height is the crescent bright
   In fierce defiance shown.

And lo! the wide gates opening
   Send forth a dense array;
In the sun's bright beams their armour gleams,
   And their war-steeds shrilly neigh.

From their saddle-bows down-bending
   They sweep to meet the foe—
But is it from fear that their full career
   Is check'd even as they go?

It is not fear that checks them,
   But pity's gentle sway;
For an infant train on the verdant plain
   Are group'd in frolic play.

The host they view with wonder!
   Admire their trappings gay,
Their plumes of white and their lances bright,
   And their steeds that court the fray.

With greeting and with pleasure
   They clap their little hands;
And laugh and shout as the warlike rout
   Whirl high their deadly brands.

Then spake the Chief Zenete—
   Valiant and gentle knight!
"To your mothers begone, each truant one,
   And screen ye from the fight!"

"Revoke that word, Zenete,"
   Then spake his comrades forth;
"For this infant band is placed in our hand
   As hostages of worth."

"Now shame on ye, by Allah!
   Shame on all such!" cried he:
"May bearded men by us be ta'en,—
   Not smiling infancy!"

OUR PHANTOM SHIP.

CENTRAL AMERICA.

Now that Central America is very
generally looked to as a Land of Hope, the
imagination glows over the picture of what it
is destined to become. Though most of us like
to know as much as travellers will tell us, about
the country of the Incas, very few of us care
to experience what it now actually is. Fleas,
fevers, and frijoles, to say nothing of
convulsions, political and natural, earthquakes
and revolutions, go far to quench the spirit
of the traveller. Only the other day war was
declared with the small state of Honduras by
the small states of Guatemala and San
Salvador. Valiant ragamuffins by the dozen
will form armies, dodge each other, march
and countermarch. There will be universal
crisis, as our neighbours call it. Never
mind. We travel in our Phantom Ship, and
we will wander through the land as phantoms.

Already we have traversed the Atlantic in
our Phantom Ship, and have been drenched
by a good sheet of rain within the tropics by
the time we reach Belize. As Britons, we
will first visit Belize, the British settlement.