e Lord
Lytton in an eloquent passage in _Earnest Maltravers_:

"It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at
midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley,
its never-innovated and mossy grass overrun with fern, and its
immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon
the graves, of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last proud
and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the
laughing landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw something
of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feel their associations,
like that which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the
cathedral aisles of Nature, with their darkened vistas, and columned
trunks, and arches of mighty foliage. But in ordinary times the gloom
is pleasing, and more delightful than all the cheerful lawns and sunny
slopes of the modern taste."

REGINALD WYNFORD.

[Footnote 1: This was the famous Charlotte de la Tremouille, so
admirably portrayed by Scott in _Peveril of the Peak_. Her direct
male heirs terminated in her grandson, the tenth earl, and she is now
represented in the female line by the duke of Atholl, who through her
claims descent from the Greek emperors.]

RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.

TWO PAPERS.--I.

"Well, Abdallah, what have you in view that can tempt one to a ramble
on such a breezeless morning as this?" was my question of the turbaned
exquisite who had just presented himself on the balcony where we sat
at sunrise inhaling the fragrant breath of a thousand flowers. We
were at Singapore, that little ocean gem at the foot of the Malayan
peninsula, where, fair as a pearl, she nestles in the crested coronet
of the deep blue sea. The whole island is but twenty-seven miles long,
with a width varying from three to twelve; but in no other area of
such limited dimensions can the tourist find so much of enchanting
beauty and picturesqueness, or such a variety of tropical products, as
in this "garden of the East." Without mountains, but with its central
peak of Bookit Tima rising about six hundred feet above the sea, the
scenery is diversified with richly-wooded hills, evergreen dales,
and luxuriant jungle-growth drooping over and reflecting its graceful
fringes in many a little babbling brook. The fruits of the island are
varied and luscious, the foliage perennial, and its myriads of flowers
so gorgeously tinted,