O sun! thou cherisher of life,
    Thou opposite of death,
Dissolver of the frost-bound strife
    That seals up Nature's breath!

Nurse of the poor man's orphan'd brood,
    God of the harvest fields,
Ripener of all earth grants for food,
    And all her beauty yields;

Deliverer of the prison'd streams
     From winter's joyless reign;
Awakener from mournful dreams
    To sound and sense again.

They fable of thee pleasant things; —
    To bear our loved to thee,
The great ships spread their strong white wings,
    Like angels o'er the sea;

And daily in thy heavenly glow
    Our sick and weak we set;
Watch for the end of anxious woe,
    And sigh, "Not yet—not yet!"

O sun! look down on me and mine
    From that o'erarching sky;
Emblem of God's great glory shine,
    And His all-pitying eye;

Lest when I on that glory gaze,
    Mine eyes through tears look out,
Like one who sees with sore amaze
    And faint distressful doubt,

The changed face of some faithless friend,
    Who promised generous aid,
Was trusted, tried, and in the end,
    The trembling hope be tray'd

      THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN.
   FROM BUCHAREST TO KRAIOVA.

FANCY an agreeable community of gipsies
playing at civilisation, and my reader will
not have an erroneous idea of Bucharest.
Life is nowhere so free from vain restraints
and troublesome formalities. There
are no grave worshipful persons about,
to shame merry folks into being staid
and serious. A true Wallachian looks upon
flirtation as the business of life. This may
be varied now and then by dancing,
gambling, and official peculation; but these
are merely casual diversions, and the true-bred
Wallachian returns to the first occupation
with a quickened sense of enjoyment.
He is indeed a political intriguer
by nature; but, after all, politics are
merely an amusement to him, and he
would give up the schemes of half a life-time
for the smile of some bedizened old
coquette of forty-nine. He is not ambitious;
but he likes place for its profits; for the temporary
advantage which it gives him over his
rivals in love affairs, and over the neighbours
who desire to rob him in some way—as most
of them do. Every Wallachian nobleman
believes devoutly that he has a right to hold
some public office, at least once during his
life, to divorce his wife when he pleases, and
to outwit his neighbour. He would bear
the utmost extreme of want and poverty
however rather than follow any trade. Recently
the prejudice entertained among the
nobility against the learned professions, is
happily melting away. I take it, they consented
to be instructed by the Greeks in,
this respect; so it is pleasant to add that the
present minister—or, it would be more correct
to say, director—of the interior, was a doctor of
medicine, and that by far the greatest man in
the country, lived long in exile on the honorable
earnings of a small professorship in
Moldavia.

I know no race of men more winning and
interesting than the Roumans, or of conduct
more thoroughly objectionable. The men
are mostly slight, dark, gipsy-looking fellows,
with keen, restless eyes. They are as active
as wild men. They are almost as strong
and fearless as their old Dacian forefathers.
But they consider it the height
of fashion and good taste to affect an exaggerated
effeminacy of demeanour and
habits. It is delightful to see some well-knit
gentleman, with a sweeping moustache
six or seven inches long, a nervous frame,
and the glance of a hawk, whose right place
would undoubtedly be at the head of a troop
of irregular cavalry, placing his trust in eau
de Cologne and cambric handkerchiefs, or
waltzing with a six-dandy power fifty times
round a room which he could clear from one
end to the other at a single bound. But conversation,
however carefully subdued, breaks
out now and then in strange fiery sallies. There
is a racy, fine-flavoured smack about it, which
speaks of keen wits and hearty animal enjoyment
in the midst of the most artificial
scenes. Extraordinary intimacies exist among
them. Friends are fond of calling each other
by some pungent nickname that would torture
the ears of a used-up gentleman of the
West: a nickname usually derived from some
odd act of roguery, which has of course been
found out. They walk into each other's
houses unannounced. They stay as long as
they please, joining in the meals and occupations
of the family, and talking, dancing,
singing eternally. They are always combining
and arranging practical jokes of an elsewhere
unheard-of nature. The ladies enter
keenly into this sport, and distinguish themselves
in it. A gentleman of the French
nation who was visiting, not long ago, at the
house of a great Boyard, was delighted at the
attentions of a lady who formed one of the
company. Before the evening was over she
implored him to write to her. The enraptured
Gaul complied; and, on going out to
dinner on the following day, learned to his
dismay that his letter was the general topic
of conversation in polite society, and had
been handed about by his fair friend to all
her acquaintances.

Two other stories are worthy of the