disinfectant—and the strongest have been
freely tried—is able to remove it ? For very
many years this pestilence has waged its war
against humanity, being most dangerous in
the more central parts of the city of London,
and in the districts of Whitehall and
Westminster. It is also our decided opinion,
whatever the Rector of Saint Paul's, Covent
Garden, may have thought of it in his day,
that one popular opinion of the year sixteen
hundred and sixty-five, to which that excellent
man adverts, still holds its place fast in
the public mind. We are, for our own parts,
not ashamed to confess our belief that if the
clapper were to fall out of the bell at
Westminster there would be good hope of some
speedy abatement of this plague.

GOD'S GIFTS.

GOD gave a gift to Earth:—a child,
Weak, innocent, and undefiled,
Opened its ignorant eyes and smiled.

It lay so helpless, so forlorn,
Earth took it coldly and in scorn,
Cursing the day when it was born.

She gave it first a tarnished name,
For heritage, a tainted fame,
Then cradled it in want and shame.

All influence of Good or Right,
All ray of God's most holy light,
She curtained closely from its sight.

Then turned her heart, her eyes away,
Ready to look again, the day
Its little feet began to stray.

In dens of guilt the baby played,
Where sin, and sin alone, was made
The law that all around obeyed.

With ready and obedient care,
He learnt the tasks they taught him there;
Black sin for lesson—oaths for prayer.

Then Earth arose, and, in her might,
To vindicate her injured right,
Thrust him in deeper depths of night.

Branding him with a deeper brand
Of shame, he could not understand,
The felon outcast of the land.

God gave a gift to Earth:—a child,
Weak, innocent, and undefiled,
Opened its ignorant eyes and smiled.

And Earth received the gift, and cried
Her joy and triumph far and wide,
Till echo answered to her pride.

She blest the hour when first he came
To take the crown of pride and fame,
Wreathed through long ages for his name.

Then bent her utmost art and skill
To train the supple mind and will,
And guard it from a breath of ill.

She strewed his morning path with flowers,
And Love, in tender dropping showers,
Nourished the blue and dawning hours.

She shed, in rainbow hues of light,
A halo round the Good and Right,
To tempt and charm the baby's sight.

And every step, of work or play,
Was lit by some such dazzling ray,
Till morning brightened into day.

And then the World arose, and said—
Let added honours now be shed
On such a noble heart and head!

O World, both gifts were pure and bright,
Holy and sacred in God's sight:
God will judge them and thee aright!

YADACÉ.

Now yadacé is a game. There are required
to play it neither cards nor dice, cues, balls,
checquer-board, counters, fish, pawns, castles
nor rooks. It can be played in winter or in
summer, at home or abroad, in perfect silence,
amidst the greatest hubbub. The race is to
the swift in yadacé, for the most skilful
player must win. You cannot cheat at
yadacé ; and it is a game that a child of nine
may begin, and may not have finished when
he finds himself an old man of ninety.

To give you a proper notion of yadacé I
must take you to Algiers.

Are you acquainted with that strange
town ? the aspect of which—half Oriental
half Parisian—puts me in mind fantastically
of a fierce Barbary lion that has had his
claws pared and his teeth drawn, and has
been clipped, shaven, and curled into a semi-
similitude of a French poodle. I never was
in Algiers, myself. I mean to go there, of
course (when I have visited Persia, Iceland,
Tibet, Venice, the ruined cities of Central
America, Heligoland, and a few other places
I have down in my note-book), but my spirit
has been there, and with its aid, that of my
friend Doctor Cieco, who was formerly a
surgeon in the Foreign Legion out there, and a
file of the Akbar newspaper I can form a
tolerably correct mind-picture of the capital
of Algeria. A wonderful journal is the
Akbar, and a magic mirror of Algiers in
itself. Commandants d'etat major, chefs
d'escadron, and chirugiens major are mixed
up with sheikhs, mollahs, dervishes and
softas; spahis and zouaves indigènes. There
are reports of trials for murder where
Moorish women have been slain in deserted
gardens, by choked up wells, under the
shadows of date-trees—slain by brothers and
cousins El This, Ben That, and Sidi
Somebody—for the unpardonable eastern offence
of appearing in the presence of Christians
without their veils; the witnesses are sworn
on the Koran; the prisoner appears at the
bar in a snowy burnous; the galleries are full
of Moorish ladies in white yashmaks or veils,
and Jewish women in jewelled turbans; and
the prosecution is conducted by a Procureur
Imperial in such a square toque or cap, and