up his concern. No wonder!
because the dearest ties of his heart have been broken, and those who
were the charm of home have gone down to the cold grave, the home of
all. Why then should he revisit his native place? What is the cottage of
his birth to him? What charms has the village now for the gentleman just
arrived from India? Every well remembered object of nature, seen after a
lapse of twenty years, would only serve to renew a host of buried,
painful feelings. Every visit to the house of a surviving neighbour
would but bring to mind some melancholy incident; for into what house
could he enter, to idle away an hour, without seeing some wreck of his
own family, such as a venerable clock, once so loved for the painted
moon that waxed and waned to the astonishment of the gazer, or some
favorite ancient chair, edged so nobly with rows of brass nails,

--but perforated sore, and dull'd in holes
By worms voracious, eating through and through.

These are little things, but they are objects which will live in his
memory to the latest day of his life, and with which are associated in
his mind the dearest feelings and thoughts of his happiest hours."

Here is an attempt at a description in verse of some of the most common

TREES AND FLOWERS OF BENGAL

This land is not my father land,
And yet I love it--for the hand
Of God hath left its mark sublime
On nature's face in every clime--

Though from home and friends we part,
Nature and the human heart
Still may soothe the wanderer's care--
And his God is every where

Beneath BENGALA'S azure skies,
No vallies sink, no green hills rise,
Like those the vast sea billows make--
The land is level as a lake[111]
But, oh, what giants of the wood
Wave their wide arms, or calmly brood
Each o'er his own deep rounded shade
When noon's fierce sun the breeze hath laid,
And all is still. On every plain
How green the sward, or rich the grain!
In jungle wild and garden trim,
And open lawn and covert dim,
What glorious shrubs and flowerets gay,
Bright buds, and lordly beasts of prey!
How prodigally Gunga pours
Her wealth of waves through verdant shores
O'er which the sacred peepul bends,
And oft its skeleton lines extends
Of twisted root, well laved and bare,
Half in water, half in air!

Fair scenes! where breeze and sun diffuse
The sweetest odours, fa