thin that stony girdle lay a landscape soft and lovely as any that
arose within the tropical seas. There the plantain waved its leafy
crown, the orange shed its rich perfume, and bore its golden fruit aloft
upon the desert air, and the light, feathery foliage of the tamarind
moved gracefully to the touch of the dallying breeze. All was green, and
soft, and fair, for there no winter chills the life of nature, but,

"The bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers."

It was a scene which might have seemed created for the abode of some
being too bright and good for the common earth of common men, or for
some Hinda and Hafed, who, driven from a world all too harsh and evil
for their nobler natures, might have found in it a refuge,

"Where the bright eyes of angels only
Should come around them to behold
A paradise so pure and lonely."

Alas for the dream of the poet! This beautiful island became the refuge,
not of pure and loving hearts, but of one from whose nature cruel
tyranny seemed to have blotted out every feeling and every faculty save
hatred and fear; and he who first introduced into its yet untainted
solitudes the bitter sorrows and dark passions of humanity, was a child,
who, but ten years before, had lain in all the loveliness of sinless
infancy upon a mother's bosom. Of that mother's history he knew
nothing--whether her sin or only her sorrows had thrown him fatherless
upon the world, he was ignorant--he had only a dim memory of gentle
eyes, which had looked on him as no others had ever looked, and of a
low, sweet voice, speak to him such words as he had never heard from any
other. He had been loved, and that love had made his life of penury in
an humble hovel in England, bright and beautiful; but his mother had
passed away from earth, and with her all the light of his existence.
Child as he was, the succeeding darkness preserved long in brightness
the memory of the last look from her fast glazing eyes, the last words
from her dying lips, the last touch of her already death-cold hand. She
died, and the same reluctant charity which consigned her to a pauper's
grave, gave to her boy a dwelling in the parish poor-house. With the
tender mercies of such institutions the author of Oliver Twist has made
the world acquainted. They were such in the present case, that the poor
little Edward Hallett welcomed as the first glad words that had fallen
on his ears for two long, weary years, the news that h