will content ourselves with directing the
attention of founders, assayers, and all
workers in metal, glass, and porcelain, to the
subject.

CHIPS.

A RIVER PICTURE IN SUMMER.

SUMMER at last: gay, glowing, exuberant
summer; laughing through windows, sporting
up staircases, playing at hide and seek in
ivied turrets, tripping in roguish elfin fashion
through thicket and wood, and here, from the
smooth mirror of this tranquil river in dizzy
reflections of light, till the letters on the page
of my book scud away altogether, and reading
is out of the question. There now, the window
is open, and that wayward spirit of a
breeze that has been whining for admittance
is at liberty to gambol at its wild will
among my papers. As I droop my head over
my hand, half for laziness and half for shade,
I am conscious of all sorts of summer
influences. Now I lie captive in the folds of that
scarf-like haze that floats and trembles lover-
like over the glassy translucent surface; then
the white petal-like sail of some tiny boat
catches me, and I float with it as confiding as
a nautilus, till I am lost and melted down in
the broad horizon; then I mix with the blue
coils of light, and clamber up, after two or
three sunny falls, the black vale of some
motionless leviathan, that with yards crossed,
and sails all loose, lies asleep on its watery
shadow: then I hear the gradual clank of
the anchor, and the blithe rollicking troll of
the sailors as they skip round the polished
cycle of the windlass, singing not of Mount
Abora but Alabama. Now a long creamy line
bisects the expanse of blue. I hear the splash
and hiss of the paddle, and a gust of metallic
music thrills the stagnant air by me, and I
turn to watch the jaunty little ferry-boat, as it
coquettishly flirts and curtseys through an
arcana of foam. What a delicious medium
of sounds water is! how it mitigates and
idealises the rude work-day world tones: the
hubbub of a town, the splash of a steamer,
the monotone of a ship-bell, when translated
by this, all lose their original dissonance, and
gain an idiom, which, if not music is
interspersed with sounds nearly allied with it.
See! a puff of thin blue srnoke, and a quick
bright snake-like dart of yellow flame,
followed by a deep sullen boom that rattles the
window panes, and all but spills my ink.
Ha! there is a sight worth looking at. How
statelily— nay imperially— she subdues the
water; not flinging it off in scorn with an
impatient angry face, but trampling it under
her keel noiselessly, like a conqueror. How
the stars and stripes at her fore, flaunt out
against the sky: and the huge red funnel and
the glittering brass rail of her crowded
quarterdeck— what salient points are they for
the light. As I bend forward to listen I can
almost distinguish— so still is it— the parting
huzzas from the light little satellite that
slowly drops behind to let her rouse ail her
strength up for a battle with the Atlantic.

It is a bright noon now, and the green field
below looks cool and inviting. Why should
I not bask there, and gladden mine eye with
a wider range? The half-alive lapping of the
tide in the rocks, and the swaying of the
grotesque knots of black sea-weed, like so many
jelly-fish, and the careless follow-my-leader-
like dipping of the white gulls, and the
bobbing gasping struggle of the buoys, and
the tenacious resistance of the vessels at
anchor, and their tory-like dislike to turn
round with the tide; these are so many
pleasant bits of side-play that I amuse myself
with observing. And then, on some little
sandy promontory or isthmus some blithe
seven- years- old heroes are, Canute- like,
defying the sea; and, when cut off at last,
regaining terra firma with a leap that has
all the mimicry if not the importance of
heroism.

For the main figures of my canvass I have
variety enough: here a zig-zag line of clumsy
canal-boats in tow; there a New York
clipper with its tall taper masts and snow-
white flat cotton sails; then a yacht, with its
blue pendant and main-sheet all but dipping
the water; here the red, blue, and white of
the Dutchman, with his porpoise-like prow,
and yellow oily hull; or the sumptuous
orange of the Spaniard or Portuguese, with
its Columbus-like recollections and Dolci
hombre di Jesu! A bright busy scintillating
water-picture enough, when I have added the
lighthouse and the fort in the distance, and
the clock tower with its shining dial opposite,
and the forest-like line of masts on the shore,
and the dome, and the church towers, and the
labyrinthine interlacing of warehouses and
chimneys that rise tier after tier along
the miles of shore on the other side till the
smoke is clear, and you discern a blue ridge,
when, may be, if you had an eagle's eye, you
might be conscious of a clear reservoir and a
secret underground pathway, which, though
not under the protection of nymph or naiad,
is surely not without the tutelage of some as
benign spirit, if it be the engineer of a water
company; when, with the hints of cool baths,
and of sunbeams that have not the life crushed
out of them by falling too far from the clouds,
I leave you to rest or to wander at your
pleasure.

THE SCALE OF PROMOTION.

IT was not many months since that the
prime-minister of one of the Italian sovereigns
was an Englishman; who had in days
gone by served his ducal master in the capacity
of groom.

It is not many years since that the prime-
minister of the King of Oude— the arbiter of
fortune, of life and death, at Lucknow— was
an Englishman also, who had first entered