THE PET CANARY.

(A Tale for Little Girls.)

BY A YOUNG MOTHER.

Nelly Pryor was, I am sorry to have to record it, one of the most heedless little girls I ever knew, and caused her dear mamma many anxious moments, in thinking how she could cure her little daughter of this sad, but common fault. I never knew a more sweet-tempered child, or one who possessed a more obliging disposition; delighted at being allowed to execute any little commission, she yet never performed it exactly in the way she had been told to do; somehow, it generally happened she forgot half of what she had to remember, and thus was really of more trouble than use. When her forgetfulness was pointed out to her, she always seemed to regret her heedlessness, and, penitent for her fault, always promised to try and do better in the future; but, alas! all her good resolutions were soon forgotten, and her mamma almost began to despair of eradicating this deep-rooted fault in her disposition.

One summer's afternoon, Nelly ran with breathless haste into the drawing-room. "Oh! mamma dear, cousin Margaret has brought me such a lovely canary, and you know, mamma, you said that if I would give my dolls to Cousin Annie, I should some day have a canary. Mamma, may I have this?"

"If I allow you to have it, dear child, who is to take care of it?"

"I, mamma, to be sure!" replied Nelly, with a look of surprise at the question: "I will take the very greatest care of the dear little thing."

"Ah! Nelly dear, you say so now, but I am really afraid to trust you," replied Mrs. Pryor; you are so very thoughtless, that I fear some day poor little birdie will be forgotten, and so die of hunger."

"Dear mamma," replied Nelly, "how can you think I would be so cruel? I will promise you never to come to breakfast without first having fed my bird, and when I do forget him, you may take him from me. Oh! I shall love him so, and will teach him to be fond of me. I may have him?"

Thus coaxed and caressed by her little daughter, Mrs. Pryor at length consented that Nelly should have the bird, at the same time expressing a hope that her careless and indolent habits would not cause the bird a troubled life. Nelly thanked her mamma over and over again, and danced out of the room, shaking, in her joy, the poor little canary fearfully.

Carrying it into the dining-room, she hung it up in the window, and delightedly called the

domestics to come and admire her pretty present.

For some time "Dick" found himself well cared for; for Nelly, true to her promise, gave him seed and fresh water each morning before sitting down to her breakfast: If there were any biscuits after dinner, a bit was always saved for him, and a lump of sugar was ever at his service; so that for the present all was well.

Dick was not ungrateful for her kindness; he would hop down from his perch whenever his little mistress approached him, opening his beak to welcome her, and he invariably began to whistle as she drew near him. Nelly passed many hours with her new favourite, and never seemed tired of admiring his pretty plumage.

Before many weeks passed, Nelly began to tire of her possession: the novelty had worn off, and, I regret to say, the task of feeding him was no longer a source of pleasure. Her papa, too, had given her a doll's house, and she was so amused with this, that poor Dicky was neglected, and although he cried "Pretty Dick! pretty Dicky!" each time she entered the room, she scarcely listened to him. Three days passed without his having any fresh chickweed, and his last lump of sugar looked exceedingly dirty and dry. Still he seemed contented with his hempseed, and sang as cheerfully as ever, but Nelly paid but small attention to his little endeavours to attract her notice; she seemed wholly devoted to her doll's-house.

دو

At the end of the month, her birthday arrived, and with it came a box of "croquet.' These were speedily arranged in the garden, and Nelly, with her young friends who lived near her, soon revelled in the delights of this pleasant game. The next day, and the next, Nelly gave every spare moment to this fresh amusement, and poor Dick was completely forgotten.

One day after dinner, Mr. Pryor happening to look at the bird's cage, saw the poor little thing sitting with his beak open, and hardly able to breathe; his feathers ruffled, and his eyes, once so bright, were sunk and dim. He went up to the cage, but Dicky was no longer able to " chirrup" his welcome, for there was hardly any breath in his poor little body!

"Nelly," said her Papa, “what is the matter with your little bird ?"

Nelly coloured and faltered, "Oh, papa! I-I-I have forgotten to feed him!" Sobbing bitterly, she ran down to the kitchen for both seed and water, which she hastily ran back with into the dining-room.

Mr. Pryor took down the cage, and found poor Dicky had neither seed nor water! "Ah! poor little bird!" said he, "you have fallen, I fear, into cruel hands: if I had for one moment thought you would have been treated thus, I

THE HAWK.-W. Wheaton, Ringwood.) Such is the title of a local magazine, under the part or whole (if we mistake not) editorship of an old contributor to our pages, in the success of which we naturally feel an interest. "The Hawk" premises a Monthly Hover from the Vale of Avon, centrally representing, and delegate of three counties-Hampshire, Dorset, Wilts-and may be properly expected, in the course of such a circuit, to pick up many noteworthy, but hitherto unregarded, waifs and strays of information-memorial of ancient usages and lingering customs-and, in this respect, as well as in supplying a pleasant local periodical, promises to become eminently useful. Not having seen the prospectus of the publication we can only judge of its aims by the number (6th) before us, which we find gives some pleasant chapters on such household subjects as "Coal," and "British and Foreign Fruits," subjects upon which, however often written about, something interesting and even novel may be said. In the latter article, for instance, the writer, in describing the pomegranate, introduces a charming fable, translated from the poems of the Persian Hafiz, which will be new to many readers, and the philosophy of which is worthy the acceptance of Christian mothers.

When Shirine, the beautiful wife of Selim Kouhda,

was blessed with the first white almond-blossom of their love, she prayed Allah would watch over the babe, and bless its young life with peace. The Prophet, in answer to the mother's prayer, commanded that she should make a pillow of the leaves of the gul sal berk (rose of a hundred leaves), and place the babe upon it, under the shadow of the sweet elcaya tree; then shall the Peris strew over the couch the seeds of the pomegranate, which are laden with the sweet waters of peace; the nightingale and the goldfinch will sing while she sleeps, and fair girls of Cashmere shall chaunt the zuruleet at her awakening. Shirine did as the Prophet commanded, and the white blossom rested under the shade of the elcaya, until the Peris bore her on their wings to Paradise. And Shirine bowed her head, and cried: "Allah il Allah, we will chant the zuruleet: my blossom has peace for ever.'

In the pages devoted to poetry we find a very elegant translation of the Chevalier de Chatelain's poem, A Travers Champ," in which the tenderness and simplicity of the original are happily preserved. A poem in the Dorset dialect, quoted from the third collection of "Poems of Rural Life," by the Rev. W. Barnes, is full of playful humour; and we also draw attention to the translation of Horace's ode Ad Q. Delium (Book ii., ode 3), " Equam memento rebus in arduis," by W. Reade, jun.; which, though we do not fel the breezy, out-of-door air that permeates the interweaving boughs of pine and poplar

in the original, yet is carefully and smoothly rendered. The reviews are of a very interesting nature, and, amongst desultory matters, we notice some notes on 66 Bees among the Romans," and an account of ancient "Bulla" of Pope Innocent VI., found in the hand of a skeleton in Milford church-yard, near Lymington, and the writer, while probably laying too much stress on the date of the pontificate of Innocentius (1352), as proving the period the Bulla has been in the dead hands' keeping, pertinently draws attention to the custom of the ancient Greeks (as of the modern Greek church to this day) of placing a piece of money under the tongue of the dead, and the probable relation this consecrated coin in the grasp of the Catholic skeleton bore to Charon's fee in the mouth of the ancient Greek. Such speculations are as curious as they are interesting. "S.," who writes from Ascot, of "Bees among the Romans,” observes, in referring to Virgil's description of them in his fourth Georgic, that one of his chief errors was in imagining that they were ruled over by a king; but this error obtained among ourselves as recently as the reign of Charles the Second, when Moses Rusden, the King's Bee-master, put forth his work entitled " Further Discovery of Bees: from his house next the sign of the King's Arms, in the Bowling Alley near the Abbey in Westminster," in the year 1679, in which he tells us, that

"A

Every colony, swarm, or stock of bees consisteth of several bees, all of one genus, which for distinction may be divided into three sorts of bees: viz., a kingbee, a common honey-bee, and a drone-bee, which may be compared to three sorts of doggs for their different shapes: thus, the king-bee to a most stately buck greyhound, the common-bee to a little fierce bulldogg, and the drone-bee to a great mastiff-dogg, of which in their order

And forthwith Moses Rusden, in chapter 2nd, enters into a particular account of the "Royal race of king-bees," and informs us, not without, it may be, a secret reference to his Royal master's status, that "one of them equals the value of all the rest; that he hath a majestick gait and aspect; that his tongue and fangs are shorter than the honey-bees, which Nature seemeth in part to have denied him, as having maintained as other princes are." no need to use either (as they do), being to be And much more in the same quaint strain, which, with the book before me, might tempt to longer extracts; 80, closing the thin, time-darkened manual of the king's bee-master, we bid farewell for the present to the modest but well-filled periodical which led us to refer to it.

PENNY POEMS. By Owen Howell.-(London: G. Pitman, 20 Paternoster Row.)—We do

sympathy is with his more abstract subjects "Life," "Colenso," in which there is much to impress us with the conviction that the writer is a man of earnest and religious thought, free from sectarian narrowness. In “Myrilla,” whether consciously or not, Mr. Howell echoes Shelley.

I had resided for some time in Callander before making out the customary pilgrimage to the Trossachs and Loch Katrine, the omission of which by any visitor would infallibly stamp him a heathen and a publican. Think not the fact could remain unknown: everyone knows everything that passes, or that should pass and does not, in this little highland village. Meanwhile, O my Public, do you know Callander? Probably, for in these days of Hero-and-Intellect-worship the adjacent lochs and mountains have become a modern Holy Land, and many are the pilgrims that throng thereto. The palmer's amice, staff and scallop-shell, have their appropriate successors in plaids, shawls, kilts of tartans, real and fancy possible and impossible, sported by Smiths, Browns, and Robinsons, with a jaunty audacity that must make the dust of many a chieftain start and tremble under their feet with mingled wrath and wonder. Relics abound-watch-cases, books, stockings, spectacle-cases, ribbons, lockets, papercutters-nay, we verily believe night-caps and Wellington-boots, all of that unceasing tartan, not only tartan-proper but tartan-improper, including, I mean, the vast variety of fancy checks, stripes, and glaring combinations that make one long for a temporary attack of colourblindness!

Tartans should only be worn upon their native heath, and there only by those who can prove an indisputable and time-honoured right to the privilege. Let me not be suspected of highland pride and exclusiveness. My forbears, Anglicé ancestors, for whom I bear a truly Scottish love and veneration, were Borderrievers, or in plain terms gentlemen-thieves (start not, O prejudiced Sassenach !), first in many a bloody foray, and clever at lifting many a fine herd of cattle from the English side of the Debatable Land peace to their gallant memory!

But I must not let my virtuous indignation carry me wandering further. Know, then, if ignorant of the fact—and, if you do know, acknowledge-that the village of Callander consists of one long backbone of a street, with irregular ribs branching off, to the river on the one hand, to the cliffs on the other. There is nothing in the village itself to distinguish it from a hundred

others of the same stamp; but architectural beauty is neither missed nor wanted where the eye has such a wealth of natural beauty to rest upon on every side. To me Ben Ledi, standing sentinel in the background, is a neverfailing source of interest and admiration. To watch sunshine and shadow chasing each other on its slopes, or the mist creeping like white smoke in and out amidst its fissures, or in rain the thousand water-courses foaming white among its rocks, whether the soft pink clouds of dawn blush upon its heathery breast, or the sunset glory crimson its lofty brow, or when, as now, its dark outlines stand out in bold relief against the daffodil sky of evening, at all times and at all seasons Ben Ledi exercises a nameless fascination over me.

Thou art no false prophet, O daffodil sky: the morn has dawned, soft aud fair to look upon With staff in hand (umbrella), and wallet (excessively neat travelling-bag), I stand at the hospitable gate, talking to the lord of the castle (Mr. -, of the Dreadnought Hotel), while a curious nondescript vehicle is being prepared for the reception of myself and fellow-pilgrims. A few moments more the horn sounds (entirely a figurative expression), and away we start; past silver Vennachar, with its rowans dipping their scarlet treasures in its clear waters-up hill and down dale for sundry miles between wattled hedges, overhung with slender birches, then

"Merrily through the ferny dell,

And down to the sleeping lake,
The sunbeams dance and whisper low,
The water-lilies to wake."

Achray, gleaming amid its fringe of alders and birches, with its rugged guardian Ben Venue watching, with a jealous care, the Sleeping Beauty at his feet. On-on, through the farfamed Trossach glen, and ere many minutes have passed we have reached our goal, and Katrine lies before us.

Hastily securing a small skiff (the "Helen," of course), we launch forth upon its storied waters. Hour after hour slips by unnoticed as we glide in and out among the purple islands.

Wherever the eye wanders it is greeted by perfection of colour and outline, be it silvery strand or heathery cliff. At last we bid an unwilling farewell to the Queen of Lochs, and resign our boat to the care of its owner, a fine old specimen of a Highlander. With the air of a prince he invites us to a seat beside him on his rustic bench, where we accordingly ensconce ourselves and smoke the pipe of peace. Shrewd, with a keen perception of humour, our old boatman is by no means a companion to be despised. A slight touch of condescension is visible, perhaps, in his otherwise perfect manners; but can you wonder? for is not his foot on his native heath? and is not his name MacGregor? His unmitigated contempt for poor MacSmith, who is pacing up and down before us, waiting for the steamer, is most amusing. His glance, at first coldly contemptuous as it rests on neck-tie of one tartan and kilt of another, becomes actually withering as it dwells upon the knees, which the unwonted presence of the dirk in the stocking seem to have rendered of a sickly pallor.

"Yous a puir sight, sir," he says at last; "is he paid for making sic a fule o' himsel, think

ye?"

Then comes the homeward drive, and thoroughly do we enjoy it. The deep silence around us, the mountains looming from a sea of shadow, the red lights gleaming from solitary farm-houses, the sweet odour of the bog-myrtle. Ah, how the miles fly past! Then the lights of the village, a final flourish, and the pilgrim stands once more within the hospice, extremely ready for the repast, consisting not solely of parched peas, the odours of which meet him with a hearty welcome.

*

It is evening. The sun has gone down behind the mountains, leaving a rosy track upon the heavens. Nothing breaks the stillness save the lapping of the water against the boats moored among the ferns, or the occasional chirr chirr of the partridges hid in the heather. Around us the lake spreads its quiet waters, while behind our mossy-seat, dimly visible through the summer foliage, tower the ruined arches of a long-past age. Ah, surely through the parted branches of yon grand old chestnut there gleams on us a sweet childish face, with wilful rosy lips and sparkling eyes, rich with budding promise of the fatal beauty that "where'er it came brought destruction." Yes, this is Inchmahone, the little island on Menteith, on whose heathery slopes the infant-queen and her Maries passed many a merry hour, shouting at their baby-play. Surely in after-years, when gazing from the lonely tower of Leven on the dark waters below, or later still, when weeping the weary hours in Fotheringay, this quiet island would rise before Marie's aching eyes,

with the vain regret that she had not died there, in her innocent childhood, and been laid beneath the daisies in her own child-garden. Fade away, O lovely childish face! fall back, O drooping branches, and veil that fairy figure beneath your pitying shade! spare us the scenes of blood and horror that come crowding in the train of that ill-fated lady!

Let us wander round the islet, picking our steps through the debris of ruined wall and tower. Passing beneath an arch, which still stands perfect in sculptured beauty amid the surrounding decay, we find ourselves in the roofless precincts of the chapel. At our feet, half hidden among the long grass, with upturned faces to the heavens, lie the stone figures of knight and lady. No name, no recordnothing but the sculptured forms lying side-byside. Looking down on their motionless rest one longs for some fragment of the history of these two. Perchance, he, that stately knight, had bound the red cross upon his brest, and, who knows, fought side by side with the Lion King in the bloody siege of Acre. And she, that gentle lady, had she passed her peaceful hours in household offices of love, concocting simples for her people, or sitting among her maidens, at the eternal tapestry, embroidering with "skeely" touch the deeds of her warrior lord; or in gazing wearily from her turrets out upon the wild mountains, watching for his return from the far eastern land?

But while we gaze at knight and lady with the refrain of the records of old, And he died' ringing in our ear, the shades of night deepen over the haunted island, and the stars one by one come gleaming forth in the dark blue above. So we rouse ourselves, and laying a hand with a reverential touch on the forms at our feet, we leave them to their quiet rest.

Unloosing the boat from its moorings, we push noiselessly from the shore; listening to the soft splash, splash of the oars in the water; we pursue our way till the boat grates upon the pebbly strand. But ere we quit the lake, we turn for one last look at the dark island we have left behind us; and as we stand by the water's edge and hear its ripples on the shore, in thought we stand upon another shore, even the sands of time, and through the moaming of the restless wavelets at our feet, there is wafted over the gleaming waters the low murmur of strange voices, the echo of unearthly music. Many and varied are the tones that blend in that wild strain. Sorrow and mirth, joy and woe, the distant sound of battle and the joyous harvest song, the infant's murmuring accents, the clear tones of youth, and the trembling voice of age; we hear them, separate and yet combined, in that strange melody-the sounds of Life and Death.