ties! to be condemned to behold for milleniums that yawning monster, Sameness and Time, that hungry hyena, ever bearing children, and ever again devouring her offspring! Ha! not to be permitted to die! Awful avenger in heaven, hast thou in thy armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful? Then let it thunder upon me! command a hurricane to sweep me down to the foot of Carmel, that I there may lie extended, may pant, and writhe, and die!"* And Ahasuerus dropped down! Night covered his bristly eyelids. An Angel carried him back to the cavern. "Sleep here," said the Angel to him: 66 Sleep in peace; the wrath of thy Judge is appeased. When thou shalt awake, he will be arrived, he whose blood thou sawest flow upon Golgotha, and whose mercy is also extended to thee!"'

AN EARTHLY PARADISE.

ACCORDING to the Venetian traveller, and the Arabian author of the "Sirem Hakem-biassir-illah," there was at Alamoof, and also at Masiat, in Syria, a delicions garden, encompassed with lofty walls, adorned with trees and flowers of every kind, with murmuring brooks and translucent lakes, with bowers of roses and trellices of the vine, airy halls and splendid kiosks, furnished with the carpets of Persia, and the silks of Byzantium. Beautiful maidens and blooming boys were the inhabitants of this delicious spot, which ever resounded with the melody of birds, the murmur of streams, and the ravishing tones of Sweetest voices and instruments; all respired contentment and pleasure. When the chief had noticed any youth to be distinguished for strength and resolution, he invited him to a banquet, where he placed him beside himself, conversed with him on the happiness reserved for the faithful, and contrived to administer to him an intoxicating draught, prepared from the hyoscyamus. While insensible, he was conveyed into the Garden of Delight, and there awakened by the application of vinegar. On opening his eyes all Paradise met his view-the black-eyed and green-robed houries surrounded bim, obedient to his wishes; ravishing music filled his ears; the richest viands were served up in the most costly vessels; and the choicest wines sparkled in golden cups. The enchanted youth believed himself really in the Paradise of the Prophet, and the language of his attendants confirmed the delusion. When he had had his fill of enjoyment, and nature was yielding to exhaustion, the opiate was again administered, and the sleeper transported back to the side of the chief, to whom he commumioated what had passed, and who assured him of the truth and reality of all he had experienced, telling him such was the bliss reserved for the obedient

servants of the Imaum, and enjoining at the same time the strictest secrecy. Ever after, the rapturous vision possessed the imagination of the deluded enthusiast, and he panted for the hour when death, in obeying the most cruel and extravagant commands of his superior, should dismiss him to the bowers of Paradise for ever.

THE ITALIAN BOY.

AMONG the miseries to which a walking gentleman is exposed, street cries and street singers stand high in offensiveness. A passer-by is stunned and horrified by the one and the other, whilst the ear of musical taste, or classical correctness, is assailed and tortured so as to make discord ring in it long after the noise has been heard. Fancy to yourself, harmonious reader, the horrifications which "Blue Bonnets," from a black beggarman, mumbling bad English, must occasion; or "Home, sweet home!" from a ragamuffin, covered with tatters, and teased into ugliest writhings by vermin, as a specimen of domestic comfort. Worse even than the vilest street cries is the wocal and instrumental music of our great thoroughfares, or that is brought to your private dwelling, in the hopes of being daily more highly bribed to stay away; such as when a man and his woman, scratching themselves into tune, and essaying a duet, give you sharps for flats, when sharps are like razor-grinding, the second outsinging the first, and the tenor is base indeed; or a wiolin player tormenting cat-gut to the air of "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled!"

We have often ran away from such murderers of music, and executioners of song; and we remember twice suffering severely by being hemmed in a crowd, having been stunned on one of these occasions, with "O! lady fair!" by a loathsome, squalid family; and, on another, having been chased down a whole street by "Glorious Apollo," given through the nose by a collector with a hat in his hand, and two other brawlers who looked as if the gibbet had been unloaded for their enlargement.

Besides, there can scarcely, to speak generally, be a more disheartening sight, than that of ballad singers, street minstrels, and the like. Many and many a time have we stood and scanned a person or a group of persons, of this cast, till the heart ached; and quite as often have we hurried past them, in reality dreading the feelings they would awaken. In the world few there be who are more in love with song than ourselves-of song, that overflowing of the spirit in which unassisted words are too weak to express all the heart feels; that inspired voice which Burns sought for and found in perfect and lovely nature,-in

the murmuring stream, the air-waved trees, the warble of birds, nay, in the springing lower and dew spangled herbage; that refined and gushing emotion which, floating on the breath of melody to the heart of hearts, carries with it a power to wake the purest and loftiest sentiments. The force of poetry, of painting, of eloquence, is great; but, clothe beauty of verse in the appropriate notes of music, and nothing can exceed the stirring of the best elements within us. We ascribe song to the angels,-melody to the revolutions of the spheres ; we regard it as the most acceptable mode of expressing ourselves to the Deity; and the history of the world shows its various nations breathing their most ennobling thoughts, whether of devotion, love, or patriotism, in the garb of song.

And of all songs, a ballad is the most universally admired and felt,-the happy combination of sense with melodious expression, which, passing through the ear to the heart, not only conveys pleasures of the most thrilling nature, but leaves us in that mood best suited to the exercise of individual friendship, or goodwill to our fellow men. And yet, as already said, hardly anything is more fitted to inspire melancholy feelings than the sight of ballad singers. It is not that their notes are "out of tune and harsh," it is not alone the vulgar twang that affects one unpleasantly. These are things which only reach the ear. 'Tis the singers, and all that you necessarily associate with most of them, that weighs down the spirit. You see a poor, emaciated woman, with such remains of beauty as tell she once might be deemed by some happy lover the "fairest of the fair." You think of the hours in which she first exercised that talent, by which she is now with feeble or broken voice endeavouring to gain a morsel of bread to support her attenuated frame, or perhaps a disabled husband, some sick or famishing children. You picture to yourself the pleasure with which her parents hailed the first attempts of so good a songster,-of the applause that attended her cultured efforts, in the cheerful family meetings of a comfortable home,-of the blush that would then mantle upon the cheek, that is now haggard and wan, especially if pressed to sing before the youth she wished most to gratify; bnt now, you mark the downcast look, the reluctant labour, the struggling breast, and hear the notes falling like uncertain drops of lead,heavy and ungenial; for the heart is chilled, and the music will not flow, the heart-felt exuberant impulse has utterly filed!

We once stood and listened to a street ballad singer of this, or rather of a superior mind, till we fancied we could trace her very history through all its windings, from its bright, sparkling start into light, its pure source, till its arrival at the dreary" Slough of Despond."

She was tall, with fine, or rather, noble features. Her complexion was dark, and her expressive eye one of the largest. Perhaps it was the waste of the cheek that made it appear so. Her mass of coal-black hair was remarkable, for