for those tender, simple, peasant airs,
through which ever runs such a plaintive
sentiment.

THE WASTE OF WAR

  GIVE me the gold that war has cost,
    Before this peace-expanding day;
  The wasted skill, the labour lost—
    The mental treasure thrown away;
  And I will buy each rood of soil
    In every yet discovered land; ;—
  Where hunters roam, where peasants toil,
    Where many-peopled cities stand.

  I'll clothe each shivering wretch on earth,
    In needful; nay, in brave attire;
  Venture befitting banquet mirth,
    Which kings might envy and admire !
  In every vale, on every plain,
    A school shall glad the gazer's sight;
  Where every poor man's child may gain
    Pure knowledge, free as air and light.

  I'll build asylums for the poor,
    By age or ailment made forlorn
  And none shall thrust them from the door,
    Or sting with looks and words of scorn.
  I'll link each alien hemisphere;
    Help honest men to conquer wrong;
  Art, Science, Labour, nerve and cheer;
    Reward the Poet for his song.

  In every crowded town shall rise
    Halls Academic, amply graced;—
  Where Ignorance may soon be wise,
    And Coarseness learn both art and taste.
  To every province shall belong
    Collegiate structures, and not few—
  Fill'd with a truth-exploring throng,
    And teachers of the good and true.

  In every free and peopled clime
    A vast Walhalla hall shall stand;
  A marble edifice sublime.
    For the illustrious of the land;
  A Pantheon for the truly great,
    The wise, beneficent, and just;
  A place of wide and lofty state
    To honour or to hold their dust.

  A temple to attract and teach
    Shall lift its spire on every hill,
  Where pious men shall feel and preach
    Peace, mercy, tolerance, good-will;
  Music of bells on Sabbath days,
    Round the whole earth shall gladly arise;
  And one groat Christian song of praise
    Stream sweetly upward to the skies!

THE CROCODILE BATTERY.

IN the summer of 1846, when everybody in
England was crazy with railway gambling, I
was sojourning on the banks of the Rohan, a
small stream in one of the north-western
provinces of India. Here I first became
acquainted with the Mugger, or Indian
crocodile. I had often before leaving England,
seen, in museums, stuffed specimens of the
animal, and had read in " Voyages and
Travels," all sorts of horrible and incredible
stories concerning them. I had a lively
recollection of Waterton riding close to the water's
edge on the back of an American cayman,
and I had a confused notion of sacred crocodiles
on the banks of the Nile. I always felt
more or less inclined to regard the whole race
as having affinities with Sinbad's " roc," and
the wild men of the woods, who only refrained
from speaking for fear of being made to work.

My idea respecting the natural history of
crocodiles were in this stage of development
when, one day, while paddling up the Rohan,
I saw what appeared to be a half-burned log
of wood lying on a sand-bank. I paddled
close up to it. To my astonishment, it proved
to be a huge reptile. The old stories of
dragons, griffins, and monsters, seemed no
longer fables; the speculations of geologists
concerning mososaurians, hylæsaurians, and
plesiosaurians, were no longer dreams. There,
in all his scaly magnificence, was a real
saurian, nearly eighteen feet long. For a
while I stood gazing at this, to me, new
fellow-citizen of the world, and speculating
on his mental constitution. The monster
was, or pretended to be, asleep. I wondered
if he dreamt, and what his dreams or reveries
might be about;—possibly he was dreaming
of the same old world with which I associated
him — possibly of the fish who were swimming
in the waters below: or, he might be thinking
of the men and women he had swallowed in
the course of his existence. There was a
snort; perhaps that was occasioned by the
beugles and heavy brass ornaments which had
adorned the limbs of some Hindoo beauty he
had eaten, and which were lying heavy and
indigestible on his stomach. But presently
the brute lay so still, and seemed so tranquil
and placid in his sleep, that it was difficult
to imagine him guilty of such atrocities. He
did not appear to be disturbed by remorse, or
the twitching of a guilty conscience: it may
have been all a slander. I felt so kindly
disposed towards him, that I could not
imagine it possible that if awake he would
feel disposed to eat me. Let us see! so
making a splash with my paddle, I wakened
the sleeping beauty. He instantly started up,
and opened, what appeared — what indeed
proved to be — an enlarged man-trap; disclosing
a red, slimy cavern within, fringed with great
conical fangs. He closed it with a snap that
made me shudder, and then plunged it
the water, his eyes glaring with hate and
defiance.

Some days after I had made this new acquaintance,
I was sitting at home talking with my
brother when a native woman came crying and
screaming to the bungalow door, tearing her
hair out in handfuls; she got down on the
veranda floor and struck her head against it, as
if she really meant to dash her brains out. A
crowd of other women stood at a short
distance, crying and lamenting as if they were
frantic. What was the matter? Half-a-dozen
voices made answer in a discordant chorus, that