underneath cathedral arches dim,
Where the sad soul may wake to comfort her
The stately music of a funeral hymn;

Nor on some wind-swept hill, whose wavering grass
Sways to the summer breezes blowing free,
While the great cedars, rustling as they pass,
Murmur a cadence of the mournful sea;

Not in the arched depths of the solemn woods,
Within the flickering shadows cool and deep,
Where the still wing of silence ever broods,
And woos the weary soul to dreamless sleep.

But build it in the temple of my heart,
And from the sacred and mysterious shrine
A flame of deathless memory shall start,
Tended by Sorrow and by Love divine.

All sweetest recollections of past joy
Shall haunt that shrine, to make it heavenly fair:
All memories of bliss without alloy
Shall cluster in undying beauty there.

There quiet peace shall hold resistless sway:
Softer than snow the holy hush shall be.
Till even Sorrow gently glide away,
And Love divine alone keep watch with me.

KATE HILLARD.

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

BY LADY BARKER.

ALGOA BAY, October 23, 1875.

Two days ago we steamed out of Table Bay on just such a gray,
drizzling afternoon as that on which we entered it. But the weather
cleared directly we got out to sea, and since then it has carried us
along as though we had been on a pleasant summer cruise. All yesterday
we were coasting along the low downs which edge the dangerous
sea-board for miles upon miles. From the deck of the Edinburgh Castle
the effect is monotonous enough, although just now everything
is brightly green; and, with their long ribbon fringe of white
breaker-foam glinting in the spring sunshine, the stretches of
undulating hillocks looked their best. This part of the coast is well
lighted, and it was always a matter of felicitation at night when,
every eighty miles or so, the guiding rays of a lighthouse shone out
in the soft gloom of the starlight night. One of these lonely towers
stands more than eight hundred feet above the sea-level, and warns
ships off the terrible Agulhas Bank.

We have dropped our anchor this fresh bright morning a mile or so from
the shore on which Port Elizabeth stands. Algoa Bay is not much of a
shelter, and it is always a chance whether a sudden south-easter
may not come tearing down upon the shipping, necessitating a sudden
tripping of anchors and running out to sea to avoid the fate which