the best ouverture to a wayside repast, is, when procurable, a watermelon, not cut in slices, as is done by some neophytes, but eat like an egg, one end being cut off, and the cellular parenchyma within extricated with a wooden spoon-that of the pear tree is the best - the roseate fluid percolating all the time to the bottom, and affording a fragrant beverage when the first proceeding is over. For a second course, a cold fowl, with slices of snake cucumber, can be recommended; and for hors d'œuvres, the most refreshing are, sour milk with chopped sage or roseleaves, also eaten with a pear-spoon, or cucumbers smothered in sour cream. In Farsistan, ice can generally be obtained to add to these cooling preparations, which may also be flavoured with rose-water. For desert, the most easily procured dainties are prepared cream flaked with sugar, fresh bitter almonds, iced rose-water, sweetened with honey, and fragrant with the aroma of mountain thyme and absinth. Bread is made of acorns, and must be avoided. Sometimes a species of bec-a-figue can be obtained. They must be cooked on a skewer of cedar only. The young onion is in these countries less ardent than with us. Many little additions to make up the "poetry of a repast" may also be occasionally obtained, as a bunch of delicious grapes, suspended for an hour under the moistened frond of a date-tree, figs served up in cream, dates lightly fried in olive-oil, or apricot-paste dissolved in fresh milk. The repast is invariably followed by the kalliyun ; but wine, even of Shiraz, should not be partaken of till nightfall, and is better avoided altogether when the aristological student is "dining out," that is to say, by the way-side. The next ridge, that separated the Desht-Ber from the Desht-Arjun, was not passed without toil. There were seven long miles of ascent, and four of descent, across the loftiest range that the traveller meets with in passing from the sea to the interior. The road was not so steep, however, as it was stony, and the rocks were on all sides clad with shrubs and trees. At the summit of this pass there was a caravanserai, and, not far from it, some abundant springs, depositing deep incrustations of travertino; and among the flowering plants around, the common brook weed (samolus valerandi) awakened pleasing reminiscences of home. This pass is called the Kotul-i-Pir-i-Zun, or the Old Woman's pass. From the summit the different ranges of hills that have been surmounted by successive defiles and steps, appear like the frozen waves of a stormy sea, pointing their bare-splintered crests to the southward. When the Baron de Bode crossed the Pir-i-Zun, in the month of January, the chain was covered with snow, whilst in the Desht-Ber vegetation was green, and the air balmy and warm. The temperature of the spring, at the summit of the pass, was 59 degrees Fahrenheit. The mean temperature for the first fortnight in July, at Bushire, was 86 degrees. At Dalaki, in the Dashistan, June 26th, the thermometer stood at 96 degrees; and July 10th, 98 degrees in the shade. This would indicate to the pass an elevation of little less than 3000 feet.

As we descended towards the plain of Arjun, through a thin forest of oak, the flies bit the mules so severely, that their guardian lost his temper, and upbraided me in loud terms for travelling in the day, in opposition to all Persian custom. I had, however, no choice, as the chief object of my journey was to examine the geological structure of these passes, and I could not have told a sandstone from a limestone by night.

The plain of Desht-Arjun is so called from the abundance of the wild almond, which covers whole tracts of hilly land to the eastward.

The plain itself is grassy, and gives nourishment to numerous herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. The studs of the late Firman Firmah, the Viceroy of Farsistan, and father of the exiled princes, used to graze here, and the young princes themselves often visited this spot for the purpose of sport, there being abundance of game, birds, boars, and wild beasts, in the neighbouring wood-clad mountains. At the further end, or northeasterly extremity of the plain, we arrived at a delightful spot, where numerous streams of pellucid water flowed from out of gaping caverns, situate at an inaccessible height on the vertical face of a precipice, while the waters flowed downwards, beneath the shade of trembling willows and far-spreading chinars, towards a lake that occupies the easterly extremity of the plain. This spot is deemed sacred; and close by is a mosque, beyond which is a cemetery in which are several rudely-sculptured lions. The lion appears to have been the favourite funereal ornament in Farsistan and Luristan, as the black ram is in the old cemeteries of Azerbijan, at Tabriz and Salmast. The lion is, indeed, essentially Persian, while the ram is Turkoman, the chief tribe among whom was well known as the Kara Kayanlu, or "the Black Ram."

To the eastward was a large village of about three hundred houses, but it appears to be only inhabited during the summer months, for De Bode found the villagers, in the winter-time, at Khan-i-Zenund. We ascended from this delightful spot to an elevated and gently-undulating country, passing a round tower on the summit of the Sineh Sifid, or "white breast," and gaining thence the banks of a pleasant mountainstream which abounded in fish. We reached Khan-i-Zenund at about two o'clock in the morning of the last day of June, and the thermometer being at 41 deg., the sensation of cold was so intense, after leaving, only a few days before, the plains of the Dashistan, that I was glad to get off my mule and walk at a brisk pace. Such great vicissitudes of temperature have a great influence on the character of the vegetation, which was both various and remarkable in these districts, and which, from beneath a shrubbery of dwarf oak, almond, and astragalus, presented an infinite variety of flowering plants, among the most curious of which were pinks and carnations growing in tufts and various-branched species, the asafoetida and gum ammoniac plants, the Tartarian statice, splendid hollyhocks, gorgeous fritillarias, and beautiful gentians, and I observed a superb species of michauxia, differing totally from the only known species, and which is the more curious as Andrew Michaux himself travelled this road.

The passage of a low range of hills led us from these wild but flowery tracts into a mountain-environed plain of great extent and exceeding beauty. Streams of water were carried over the soil in every direction for purposes of irrigation, the land was tilled and marked out in definite portions, the mules began to wade through submerged rice-fields, which were dotted with white vultures, feeding apparently on frogs and snakes; the road gradually became more distinct; ranges of tall poplars, prolonged in a sweeping direction, marked the course of a distant stream, and at length we espied, at intervals breaking through the thickets of cypress and pomegranates, the battlemented walls of a city, and then, peering above a vast and irregular extent of wood, and grove, and garden, the lofty minarets and glittering domes of the renowned Shiraz; the hum of human voices began to break upon the ear, and the wearied mules, as well as ourselves, became at the same time sensible of our approach to a great city.

JUDITH.

BY CHARLES HOOTON.

I.

Childhood retains a Vision of Paradise, and strives to realise it-Eve is born again in her Children-Love-Every Generation falls again.

WHO but remembers, when a child,
That inner, self-contain'd delight

With which, in summer woodland wild,

While suns shone bare and clouds were white,

He crouch'd beneath the stooping boughs
That to his baby-fancy made

Some bow'r of bliss, some fairy house,

With walls of chequer'd green and shade?

So all have felt: yet known not, this
Angelic joy beyond all price,
The poor fragmental instinct is,
By which we cling to Paradise!

Eve, in the infant, lingers still

Reluctant round her native bow'rs;
And from life's vale views Eden's hill,
Denied to erring feet of ours!
But as the brain grows worldly old
This dream of ante-life retires :
The cheated heart falls still and cold,
And Eden with our youth expires.
Then, as along life's path we go,-
Our backs upon The Garden turn'd,—
With bleeding feet and eyes of woe,

Still more our primal loss is mourn'd.
Yet by the way we haply meet-
To cheer us on our desert track-
Another wanderer from the seat
Of Paradise behind our back.
'Tis Love o'ertakes us on the way,
And brightly essays to recall
Unto the soul that glorious day
Wherein it dwelt before its fall.

Alas, ye simple sons of men!

And wo for you, ye daughters fair!

Each generation falls again,

For Satan, though unseen, is there.

II.

Pictures the Intensity of my Love for Judith.
Had I gaz'd winkless at the sun,

I had not grown more densely blind
Of these black orbs, or more undone,
Than, gazing on her, grew my mind.
She had no errors, knew no wrong,
In my infatuated sight:
She'd no deception on her tongue,
And nothing did that was not right.

If she said white was black, to me

"I was so; and sooty grew the snows: For I through her alone could see.-

Of such a love such madness grows.
She pass'd along the earth alone:
None like her of her kind I saw.
So sweeps across yon starry zone
Some bright unusual thing of awe.
No wealth for her too lavish seem'd ;
Too delicate, or rich, or rare.
Yet it adorn'd her not, I deem'd,

But she adorn'd what she would wear.

Though beauty's forms are infinite,
And each in kind excels the rest,
Against my better reason, yet

Her kind of beauty was the best.

And though all rich in tints and dyes,

Of differing shades are differing fair; The blushes of life's morning skies Upon her cheeks had no compeer. In majesty of life and light,

Above th' horizon of my soul, She rose to banish sorrow's night,

And rule my world with bright control.

No artful pipe of human skill,

Nor Nature's sweetest throated bird,

Such meaning music utter'd, still,

As from her lips divine I heard.

So, passive in my strength I bent,

And chain'd in willing weakness, smiled.

My vanish'd pow'r to her was lent,-
She led me as they lead a child.

I felt no will, and no desire ;

Or only wish'd the same as she : Absorbed by that involving fire Wherein I lost identity.

Such was my love, when love began.— Would, like beginnings had like ends !

Vice is indigenous in man,

And fiends the soonest enter friends.

Who love intense, can hate no less :
Who highest soar may sink as deep.-
This woman's heart is hard to guess,
For he may win who cannot keep!

III.

Attainment is not necessarily Satisfaction. Where is it most this error lies?

In things themselves, or in our breast? The prize when gain'd may prove no prize, And heav'n no heav'n when once possess'd. Perfection must in seeking be:

And happiness, in its pursuit.
We spend our years to raise the tree,-
A moment serves to pluck the fruit.

So things possess'd are next to lost,
Since value by possession sinks :
And less the object than the cost

It is, whereof the seeker thinks.
Thus is it with the multitude:

Not so with men whose hearts are wise.-
They know there's ruin in the blood,
And treason in the brightest eyes.

What! where's the law that may forbid
Those asking eyes that beckon'd you,
From arching so the tassell'd lid,

That it shall beckon others too?

O! I have labour'd in that mine;

And know the worth of diamonds well.
They may be true,-that pair of thine,-
But those of hers were false as hell.

The pearls, but not the fish, are rare :-
These fleshly pearls are merely paste.
Be warn'd, young merchant :-have a care,
Nor throw your heart away in waste.
Do not my deeds, but as I say:

My words are much the best of me.

I utter wisdom day by day,

But folly do as frequently.

Two giants thus have kept at war

Flesh and the soul,-since life began :
Though both imperfect masters are,
The spirit is the better man,

IV.

I marry Judith—Our brief Happiness-She proves False, and my Friend treacherous. We whom our mothers bore for two,

First love and then the church made one.

One half retain'd the pow'r to do

What t'other half had wish'd not done.

She held my honour in her hands

A treasure rare, in doubtful keeping!-
Too heavy loads may break their bands,
And Sin will watch for Virtue sleeping.
Sin has a special taste for beauty,
And fascination lives in ruin.
There's no attraction in one's duty,
But deep temptations in undoing.

In happiness we liv'd awhile,

As live two birds that on a spray

Have newly built, in some sweet isle,
That needs no tenants more than they :

And in each other centred see

All love that heav'n has had to spare

From its own sun of purity,

To light this lower world of care.

But through the darken'd sky that lowers
Around life's ruins, dust, and ashes,
The longest happiness of ours,

Like lightning, but breaks out in flashes!