e cowhide in all jails, workhouses, and
places of punishment in South Carolina, as being more effective--that is
painful. In some instances it is used on the plantations. It consists of
a wooden instrument, shaped like a baker's peel, with a blade from three
to five inches wide, and from eight to ten long. There are commonly
holes in the blade, which give the application a percussive effect. In
Charleston this punishment is generally administered at the guardhouse
by the police, who are all Irishmen. Any offended master or mistress
sends a slave to the place of chastisement with a note, stating the
desired amount, which is duly honored. Like institutions breed like
results all over the world: in Sala's 'Journey Due North' we find the
same system in operation in Russia.

PEN, PALLET, AND PIANO.

With the roar of cannon and tramp of armed men resounding through the
land, and the fair young face of the Republic disfigured to our eyes by
the deep furrows of war, it is pleasant to know that in certain nooks
and corners, gentler sounds of harmony still linger, and that ateliers
exist where men's fancies grow on canvas from day to day into soothing
visions of loveliness.

The scarlet-and-gold and general paraphernalia of war are too tempting
to pallet and brush, not to be seized on with avidity and reproduced
with marvellous truth; but it is more agreeable to pass over accurate
representations of the Irish zouave, with Celtic features, not purely
classical in outline, glowing defiantly under the red cap of the Arab,
and Teutonic cavalrymen, clinging clumsily to their steeds, and turn for
solace to the grand, solemn Shores of Niagara, to wander amid the
tangled luxuriance of the Heart of the Andes, or to bask in the sweet
silence of Twilight in the Wilderness. There are Icebergs too, floating
in the Arctic Sea, frozen white and mute with horror at the dread
secrets of ages; but, responsive to the versatile talent of the hand
that creates them, they glow with prismatic light of many colors. Mr.
Church irradiates the frozen regions with the coruscations of his own
genius, bringing to these lonely, despairing masses of ice the
revivifying hope and promise of warmer climates.

In pondering over the sad mystery of these Icebergs, we float down again
to Tropical Seas and Islands; and as we linger under the shade of palm
and banana tree, the rude chant of the negro strikes the ear in the
grotesque and characteristic fram