eauty; I have seen in it an
expression quite of heavenly peace and contemplative delight, as the May
breeze came over him from the woods while he was slowly walking out of
church on a Sunday morning, and when he had half emerged from the
shadow.' A flippant person present inquired, 'Did you ever chance, Miss
F., to observe that heavenly expression on his countenance, as he was
walking into church, on a fine May morning?' A laugh was the reply. The
ways of Nature harmonised with his feelings in age as well as in youth.
He could understand no estrangement. Gathering a wreath of white thorn
on one occasion, he murmured, as he slipped it into the ribbon which
bound the golden tresses of his youthful companion,

'And what if I enwreathed my own?
'Twere no offence to reason;
The sober hills thus deck their brows
To meet the wintry season.'

* * * * *

(_k_) FROM 'RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON.'

BY E.J. TRELAWNY. 1858 (MOXON).

Some days after this conversation I walked to Lausanne, to breakfast at
the hotel with an old friend, Captain Daniel Roberts, of the navy. He
was out sketching, but presently came in accompanied by two English
ladies, with whom he had made acquaintance whilst drawing, and whom he
brought to our hotel. The husband of one of them soon followed. I saw by
their utilitarian garb, as well as by the blisters and blotches on their
cheeks, lips, and noses, that they were pedestrian tourists, fresh from
the snow-covered mountains, the blazing sun and frosty air having acted
on their unseasoned skins as boiling water does on the lobster by dyeing
his dark coat scarlet. The man was evidently a denizen of the north, his
accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and bony build, and
self-confident and dogmatic in his opinions. The precision and
quaintness of his language, as well as his eccentric remarks on common
things, stimulated my mind. Our icy islanders thaw rapidly when they
have drifted into warmer latitudes: broken loose from its anti-social
system, mystic castes, coteries, sets, and sects, they lay aside their
purse-proud, tuft-hunting, and toadying ways, and are very apt to run
risk in the enjoyment of all their senses. Besides, we were compelled to
talk in strange company, if not from good breeding, to prove our breed,
as the gift of speech is often our principal, if not sole, distinction
from the rest of the brute animals.