looming way one may
say that Warwickshire has a fair share of pretty country-houses and
attractive parsonages. Still, the beauty of the southern and midland
counties is altogether a beauty of detail and cultivation, of historical
association and architectural contrast; not that which in the north and
east depends much upon the beholder's sympathy with Nature unadorned--wild
stretches of seashore and pathless moors, mountain-defiles and wooded
tarns. Wales and Cornwall, again, have the stamp of a race whose
surroundings have taught them shrewdness and perseverance, and their
scenery is such that in many places, though the eye misses trees, it
hardly regrets them. In the midland counties, on the other hand, take the
trees away and the landscape would be scarcely beautiful at all, though
the land might be equally rich, undulating and productive. Half the
special beauty of England depends on her greenery, her hedges, her trees
and her gardens, in which the houses and cottages take the place of birds'
nests.

LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.

LITTLE BOY BLUE.

Childish shepherd, sleeping
Underneath the hay,
Oh would that I could whisper in your dreams,
"The sheep astray!"

Couldst thou not in Dreamland,
Pretty herdsman, pray,
With horn and crook lead gently to the fold
Thy sheep astray?

Alas for soft sweet slumber's
Mistland gold and gray,
While o'er the hilltops shimmering spirits lead
Our sheep astray!

PAUL PASTNOR.

THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.

II.--GENERAL EXHIBITS.

The exposition under one roof of products of every kind, natural and
cultivated, mechanical and artistic, has a certain impressiveness from the
wonderful extent and variety of the assemblage, but the effect is
confusing and oppressive. The Philadelphia plan of grouping the exhibits
in separate buildings was both more pleasant to the eye and more useful to
the student. There is no place in Paris, however, affording room for
isolated buildings of sufficient aggregate area, and the Bois de Boulogne,
though immediately outside the fortified enceinte, in much the same
position, relatively, that Fairmount Park holds to Philadelphia, was
probably held to be too remote.

[Illustration: GRAND CUPOLA AT ONE OF THE CHIEF ENTRANCES TO THE MAIN
BUILDING.]

The Exposition building is too low to afford grand general views except in
the end-galleries, on