A neat little church had just been erected at
Almorah. The people of the place are all
fair-complexioned, and some of the children
as white as those born of European parents.

                       AT REST.

    HERE let us linger as the evening closes,
        In this green coppice with the setting sun;
    The landscape now in mellow'd tints reposes,
        Ere yet the bat-wing'd twilight flitteth dun.

    The sun-illumined boughs arch'd high o'erhead
        Distil a cool light from yond glowing sky,
    Where his great disc, declining broad and red,
        Tinges dull clouds with his ensanguined dye.

    Still sounds from distant woods the cuckoo's note,
        The half-hush'd birds are twittering in the brake,
    In quiet ponds the darkening shadows float,
        Reflected foliage stains the brimming lake.

    Here we will linger till the air dissolveth
        Each uncomposed sound to silence clear,
    While the moon rises o'er yond trees, and solveth
        In her soft halo all the landscape near.

    Nor will we think upon the morning's gladness,
        No thoughts of day shall haunt this hallow'd light,
    Far sweeter are the evening shades and sadness
        To hearts which in each other take delight.

    And now the world's at rest, our souls shall steal
        To blend and mingle in this peaceful hour,
    Like rainbow hues, which sweeter grace reveal
         In the soft stillness of a moonlight shower.

    Love is the rainbow left us in our thrall,
        The hope of earth, form'd by a light from heaven,
    Which penetrates the showers of grief that fall—
        Foretaste of joys for aye, not of earth's leaven.

DOWN AMONG THE DUTCHMEN.

VI.

BOUND Zaandamwards, Saardamwards,
Great Peterwards, I go forth from the Grey-
headed Nobleman to a pleasant tune from
the Bells, which I have come to mind no more
than the buzz of flies. Distracting at first, they
have grown now to be lullaby most excellent,
and I do believe if the works of my near
neighbour, who plays the Bellini air all night
long, were to get astray, and so suspend its
music, I should fall to restless tossing and
beating of pillow, and so come in for an
unquiet night. They wait on me down the little
street until I reach the corner of the mighty
Platz (where, by the way, on occasion of
Admiral de Ruyter's funeral, I have seen in
an old print, how the procession was put to
walk tortuously from the right to the left—
from the left to the right, and from the
right back again, and so was ingeniously all
fitted in to the Grand Platz), and here my
bell-music gives way to a discordant burden.
Not to that old obtrusive chant of Clean de
Boots, beautiful—oh! laid only for the
present, but to another discordant tune, that
will henceforth lie in wait for me at street
corners, at shop doors—the Lottery Ticket
tune. Men of villanous physiognomy, of
the cropped Pentonville or ticket-of-leave
type, such as were likely, during  the
garette days, to wander about at dusk with
bludgeon for walking-sticks; gentry who
might wile away the morning's tedium in
offering for sale the Form of Prayer as
appointed to be read in all her Majesty's
churches; men of this forbidding aspect
are abroad everywhere this morning, thrusting
their lists of numbers into your face
with sounds like low growling threats.
Two, three, more of them at a time
compassing you about; enforcing their goods
with a Stand and Deliver manner. I think
of the lonely walks by the canal banks
under the Noah's Ark trees, and take a
mental affidavit that I will not wander abroad
by dusk, while the Staats Leterij Fever is
raging. Raging, indeed; for, everybody is
buying, everybody is hoping and fearing,
everybody is pretty sure to win. Servants
principally, and small traders, who will buy
and lose, and buy and lose again, and then
be driven to robbing of their masters. Little
boys that run about the streets do a little
business in this way, and beg or help
themselves until they have got sufficient to
purchase in the Staats Loterij. I am told the
ruin begotten of this, among these classes,
especially, is more than a stranger can
conceive; and that the purloining of the
master's silver is but the inevitable
consequence when the servant takes to purchasing
in the Staats Loterij. Nobody wins, as a
matter of course, at least no one that a man
can lay his fingers on. It is much, as at
other gaming, desperately unprofitable to
all parties. For, as Mr. Thackeray asks:
"Did you ever play a game at loo, for
sixpences? At the end of the night, a great
many of those small coins have been lost,
and in consequence won; but ask the table
all round. One man has won three shillings;
two have neither won nor lost; one rather
thinks he has lost; and the three others
have lost two pounds each."

Admirable analysis; only in our Dutch
lottery it is not so difficult to name the
winner. For, the Royal State Lottery—The
Royal state—the government, that is—
wins, and draws a snug little income from
the odious traffic; draws it from the
idleness, sin, crime, and want, of its own
children. It is the pelican's story the other
way. And where has the Royal State Lottery
its home and local habitation? No where,
but at the Bier Huis! At beer-houses and
spirit-houses of every degree, side by side
with the shining flasks of Schiedam and viler
drink, at such places alone may be found the
tempting lists of the lucky numbers, officially
announced and communicated by special
grace to the beer interest only. The beer
interest sells wholesale to the ticket-of-leave
men before mentioned. The beer interest has
the earliest information, and is enabled to