Yon distant isle will often hail:
E'en here I took the last farewell;
There latest marked her vanished sail.

Along the solitary shore,
While flitting sea-fowl round me cry,
Across the rolling, dashing roar,
I'll westward turn my wistful eye:
Happy thou Indian grove, I'll say,
Where now my Nancy's path may be!
While through thy sweets she loves to stray,
Oh! tell me, does she muse on me?'

This charming lyric, the pathetic tenderness of which commends it to
every feeling heart, is all that Burns has left in evidence that the
sea had to him, at least, one poetic aspect.

CURIOSITIES OF CHESS.

More has perhaps been written about chess-playing than any other of
the games which human ingenuity has invented for recreative purposes,
and it is not easy to foresee the time when dissertation or discovery
on the subject shall be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Scarcely
a year passes that does not add something to our knowledge of the
history of the royal game; and among the latest additions, the able
paper by Mr Bland, published in the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society_, is not the least deserving of notice. It contains many
curious particulars and remarks, interspersed in its dry and technical
narrative, sufficient to form a page or two of pleasant reading for
those--and they are not few--to whom chess is interesting.

We must premise that Mr Bland takes three but little-known Oriental
manuscripts as the groundwork of his observations; one of them, in the
Persian character, is said to be 'probably unique,' though,
unfortunately, very imperfect. It bears no date or author's name,
these being lost with the missing portions, but the treatise itself
contains internal evidence of very high antiquity. The author, whoever
he was, tells us that he had travelled much through Persia and the
adjacent countries, from the age of fifteen until the middle period of
life, during which he gained the knowledge and experience which
enabled him to write his book. Besides which, he measured his strength
with many masters of the art of chess-playing, adding on each occasion
to his reputation as a conqueror: 'and whereas,' as he relates, 'the
greater number of professors were deficient in the art of playing
without looking at the board, I myself played so against four
adversaries at once, and at the same time against another opponent in
the usual manner, and, by divi