adult to the egg. This is the vital round;
the beginning and the ending, the ending and
the beginning. The wheel goes round
continually, life kindling sparks of life; and what
is called death, is the worn-out forms becoming
cold and decaying away.

CHIP.

A COLONIAL PATRIOT.

THE following interesting scrap from
Melbourne, addressed to the conductor of this
journal, bears reference to two articles which
appeared in the twelfth volume:—

"I pray you to pardon this liberty; but I
could not refrain from thanking you for the
very favourable manner in which my conduct
has been reported in your journal for last
December, headed Old and New Squatters.

Unknown to you, but through Mr. Arnold,
bookseller here, I have had your Household
Words and Narratives from the very first,
and also almost all your published works,
though I left England on the twenty-fifth of
April, eighteen hundred and three, in the
Calcutta, to found the colony of Port Philip,
Bass Straits, and was removed to the present
Hobart Town in February, eighteen hundred
and four, yet my affection for the fatherland
has caused me to expend what means I could
afford in purchasing the works of the best
authors, and also some of the periodicals.
From eighteen hundred and twenty-eight to
the ruinous year eighteen hundred and
forty-three, I imported for my use— through the
house of Brookes, merchant, London— six
newspapers, six magazines, three quarterlies,
three annuals, and generally made up fifty
pounds a-year for books.

In eighteen hundred and forty-three, I
was deprived of all my thirty years' labours,
and had to begin the world again;
Victoria— before the gold days— was a
wonderful country. In five years and a-half
— beginning with March, eighteen hundred
and forty-eight— I had secured another small
fortune. I am fond of books and paintings
and engravings. I have, in this out-of-the-way
part of the world, a library of near
four thousand volumes. In eighteen hundred
and fifty-three, I expended about one hundred
and seventy pounds for books with the house
of H. G. Bohn, and yet expend about fifty
pound a-year with Mr. Arnold of Melbourne.
To the Art Union of London I have
remitted sixty-three guineas— fifty of which
were remitted in eighteen' hundred and fifty-four
for five shares for each of the next ten
years— in one sum of fifty guineas. It was
mentioned in their catalogue, but not my
name.

Victoria, before the gold days, remitted
largely to the mother-country for books,
newspapers, periodicals, and music, also for
paintings and engravings. We— that is the
bulk of the Englishmen resident here— love
the old island that, scarcely raising her head
from the ocean that cabins her shore, has
spread, with her handful of freemen, an empire
such as earth never witnessed before. This
colony is one proof of the above; founded by
freemen, without any aid from the British or
colonial government, it had gone on rapidly,
healthfully, and with much comfort. Independence
was the rule, poverty the exception
(and that generally caused by the foul spot of
the colonists— drunkenness); but, with the
discovery of gold we were inundated with
people many of whom were utterly unfit for
labour of any kind. I believe that these
people thought that they could pick up gold
in the streets or the forests without labour.

We have had many changes— some have
risen high; some, after making princely
fortunes, have speculated and lost all. Misery and
want have visited us; but now, thank God!
all seem going on well. We of the legislative
council have checked the reckless expenditure
of the rulers, and now we are all employed.

I hope you will excuse this letter; I have
often wished I dared write to you; your
tales and essays have beguiled many an hour
of my life, and I am thus in your debt. I
was much pleased with your favourable notice
of me, and, to add to it, the Argus (the
Thunderer of Victoria and Australasia), just
as your number for December arrived, was
pleased to praise me even more than I do
deserve. You will thus see that your or
your contributor's article was not at variance
with the feeling of the colonists here. On
that point I have sent by this post the
newspaper of date Wednesday, the sixteenth of
April, eighteen hundred and fifty-six.

Wishing you many years of healthful
employment in the highly useful manner you
have been so long engaged, I am, dear sir,
One that would like to call myself your
friend."

HAWKSWELL PLACE.

PART FIRST.

I.

WITH greyly-pencill'd clouds the twilight creeps
   Silent along the slope of purple wold,
Upon whose brow a ling'ring sun-touch sleeps,
   Like eye of faded love caressing cold.
Wreaths of white mist, noiseless as spirits, rise
   From the deep hollows of the autumn hills,
Steal ghastly up, as day-light slowly dies
   Hov'ring on skirts of woods and haunting rills;
Hanging in mystery over darkling pools,
   Which hidden lurk in wild, lone, moorland spots;
Winding about midst stilly wooded knolls
   Where the mass'd, fallen foliage, lies and rots;
Drooping unwelcome over cottage eaves,
   Or gliding, ghost-like, round the church-yard graves;
Melting in noisome dews on russet leaves,
   Shrouding the night in their soft, fleecy waves.

II.

From out the dark, bronzed shade of ancient woods,
   Peer gables, rnoss'd with lichens grey and hoar;