riding through graves, crowded among the roots of the trees. Over the resting-places of their chief men they build small mosques, or, in some cases, mere low-roofed huts; but better than many of the dwellings of the living. I entered one of these, and found the floor filled with tombs, one apparently very old; and one or two in the usual form of the more elaborate tombs of the country, with a high ornamented stone at the head and feet, connected by two long side stones, across which were little shelves with hollows for water, and I think flowers. Some earthen lamps stood on the old tomb; and babies' graves were near the door. It was a solemn place. light through the rents in the walls or roof fell in faint brown patches on the earthen floor. This and that which entered by the low ever open door was the sole sombre illumination of the place, which had a cathedral stillness and sacredness about it, mingled with that feeling of faint desolation which in every land and under every form the forsaken graves of men and women awake in the heart.

The

But oftener I went into the city, never tired of looking at the varied human forms that met me on my way. One cannot help wondering, when he sees the little, jerky, self-asserting, tight-laced Frenchman, beside the stately, dignified, reserved, loose-robed Arab, how the former could ever assume and retain authority over the latter. I have seen a power of contempt and repressed indignation in the half-sidelong look with which an Arab in a ragged bernouse regarded a Frenchman who had tapped him on the shoulder with a stick to attract his attention. There is something in the bearing and manners of the Arab significant, whether truly or not, of a personal dignity far beyond that common to the German, or French, or English. Two of them came once to our residence to remove our piano before we left. A great proportion of the heavy carriage in Algiers is done by the Arabs slinging the weight on a pole which rests on their shoulders. Our breakfast being still on the table, I asked them to sit down and have some coffee; which they did without the least embarrassment, half-lounging on their chairs, and chatting away in bad French, aided by gesture, with a thoroughbred ease rarely to be seen in our own country. I was proud of them. Their religion teaches them that in the sight of God they are all equal, and they seem to believe it, more at least than Christians do; and this combined with their fatalism, which naturally destroys all haste and perturbation, produces an indifferent stateliness of demeanour which many a man of Norman blood and fabulous origin might well envy. One or two of them whom I came to know a little, used always to shake hands with me after the English fashion. Indeed, they seem to like the English much. Inglese bono are frequently the first words you hear from their lips. Some English ladies we knew had favour shown them to the degree of being permitted to enter the mosques without putting off their shoes, being only required to wipe them very carefully on a mat brought them for the purpose. I was amused at being recognised in the streets as an Englishman, because I was partly dressed in the Highland costume. But, indeed, the Highlander is the type of the English soldier with them. This notion the native African troops

have brought back with them from the Crimea. Once I was standing in the principal market-place, when one of a little group of French and Maltese about me touched me and pointed to the sign of a cabaret opposite, upon which appeared a Highlander and a Zouave, fraternizing hand in hand. They seemed desirous I should acknowledge the relationship.

(To be continued.)

Flowers.

Lear. Give the word.

Edgar.-Sweet marjoram.
Lear.-Pass.'-Shakespere.

WHAT would conventional poets and quasi-poetic conventional moralizers do without their common-places, the Sea, the Stars, and the Flowers? The grey-green old Ocean has been bothered about his 'secret' till he might almost be forgiven for rising in his wrath and deluging the land at large for the sake of drowning the rhymes; and the Stars have been so bowled about in modern verse, that if the bands of Orion' are not yet loosened, it can scarcely be for want of pulling about. The flowers have fared even worse, and how should they revenge themselves? The stars might shake themselves to earth, like plates from Antony's pocket, and the Sea might drench our steeples, drown the cocks,' to stop the perpetual small-talk going on about them. But the Flowers!-from the child's primer to the last verse-book, they are abused with the counterfeit of settled praise; the modesty is almost maundered out of the violet, the perpetual perfume well nigh pottered out of the rose, and the lily nearly plagued out of her purity. And what can they do? There may exist the man who would

'Die of a rose in aromatic pain,'

I can quite conceive it, for I have turned very faint over a bouquet merely from excess of pleasure-but who can conceive a Rose going out of her way to put a poetaster to death? or employing the Deadly Nightshade to do it? Or even engaging the Poppies to silence him with their lethargic touch? The Flowers endure the evils of familiarity, for the love they bear us,

Teaching us by most persuasive reasons
How akin they are to human things.'

And how akin they are! How full of sympathy and persuasive speech! The little moss in the parched desert said God is here' to the fainting traveller, and perhaps there is hardly one of us who has not been indebted at some time in his life for a positive suggestion of good from a flower. I speak not now of common-places. I do not mean that any one has ever been taught purity by the lily or modesty by the daisy. I speak of such a thing as coming suddenly upon a little blossom in a weary, dusty road, or picking up a dropped rose in

Cheapside, a thing to touch the least sentimental of men. Of the technical Language of Flowers,' forfend that I should know anything; I would as soon open 'Napoleon's Oraculum,' or 'Mother Shipton's Dream-book,' as one of the accredited manuals of floral meanings. But there are certain colours, and certain combinations of form and colour among flowers which have a speech not to be put into a dictionary, and yet which constitutes a real spiritual influence. Tastes differ. I have myself a fancy amounting to a passion for the large blue convolvulus. Its celestial depth of colour seems almost too much for the eye to bear, and its shape is surely quite unsurpassed in beauty among all the flowers. I mean the climbing convolvulus, which is now in its glory, when

to the mellow season

Branches in the lawn make drooping bowers,
Vase and plot burn scarlet, gold, and azure,
Honeysuckles wind the tall grey turret,
And pale passion-flowers'—

now, when there is a mistiness in the moonlight, and a touch of decay in the South wind, which speak of coming

'Days that shred the boughs with trembling,
Nights that weep and wail.'

I have not met any one who sees in the Convolvulus as much as I see; but every one who reads this will think of his own favourite. With one of my friends it is the passion-flower

The flower that I love is both solemn and rare,
The deep-hearted purple it wears in disdain;
When other gay blossoms are flaunting and fair,
It spreads out its petals like triumphing pain.
Its white is for pureness, its green is for hope;
All golden its fruit in the soft chilly air;
The dream it suggests is of infinite scope,

For the Cross and the Passion are symbolized there.'

With another, it is the simple dandelion, and, if you will but look at it, there is more in a dandelion than you think for. It is really a beautifully constructed flower, and how akin it is to human things, how it can inspire a passion, we know from the story of the fat and listless Shawondasee, so exquisitely told in the most finished poem of the century:

'Listless, careless Shawondasee !

In his life he had one shadow,
In his heart one sorrow had he.
Once as he was gazing northward,
Far away upon a prairie
He heheld a maiden standing,
Saw a tall and slender maiden

All alone upon a prairie ;

Brightest green were all her garments;
And her hair was like the sunshine.

Day by day he gazed upon her;

Day by day he sighed with passion;
Day by day his heart within him

Grew more hot with love and longing
For the maid with yellow tresses.
But he was too fat and lazy
To bestir himself and woo her;
Yes, too indolent and easy
To pursue her and persuade her,
So he only gazed upon her,
Only sat and sighed with passion
For the maiden of the prairie.

Till one morning, looking northward,

He beheld her yellow tresses

Changed and covered o'er with whiteness,

Covered as with whitest snow-flakes.

"Ah! my brother from the northland,

From the kingdom of Wabasso,
From the land of the white rabbit,

You have stolen the maiden from me.
You have laid your hand upon her
With your stories of the northland !"
Thus the wretched Shawondasee
Breathed into the air his sorrow;
And the south wind o'er the prairie
Wandered warm with sighs of passion,
With the sighs of Shawondasee,
Till the air seemed full of snowflakes,
Full of thistle-down the prairie,
And the maid with hair like sunshine
Vanished from his sight for ever;
Never more did Shawondasee
See the maid with yellow tresses !
Poor deluded Shawondasee !
'Twas no woman that you gazed at,
'Twas no maiden that you sighed for,
"Twas the prairie dandelion,

That through all the dreamy summer
You had gazed at with such longing,

You had sighed for with such passion,
And had puffed away for ever,
Blown into the air with sighing.

Ah! deluded Shawondasee !'

It is to the beldam tribe of lovers' that we must go for instances, if we would learn fully what kinship there is between flowers and human creatures; what confidences may spring up between them; how roses and lilies may be talked to as if they were our even Christians.' What a pretty story does the laureate tell here :—

'Rivulet, crossing my ground,

And bringing me down from the Hall
This garden-rose that I found,

Forgetful of Maud and me,

And lost in trouble, and moving round,

Here at the head of a tinkling fall,

And trying to pass to the sea;

O Rivulet born at the Hall,

My Maud has sent it by thee

(If I read her sweet will aright)
On a blushing mission to me,

Saying, in odour and colour, “Ah, be
Among the roses to-night."

The rose sent down with a message 'in odour and colour,' then getting giddy at the whirlpool and forgetting itself, 'lost in trouble,' trying,' poor bewildered rose! 'to pass to the sea;' and intercepted, like a truant child, by the lover, who knew better than to let it have its will it is all quite human. And that the rose had a soul, and that other flowers could sympathize with an expecting lover, we all know, or may know, if we will read his account of his floral confidences in Maud's garden, where the lion that 'ramps' over the gate is clasped by a passion-flower.' Note, however, with respect to that message in odour and colour,' that the colour of the rose is not precisely that of love. If love has a colour, it contains a shade of blue, and, as nearly as possible, resembles that of the electrie fluid sent through an exhausted receiver. The first time I saw that colour I told my companion it was the colour of love, and I still think so. But listen to the lover in waiting:

'I said to the lily, "There is but one

With whom she has heart to be gay;
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play."
Now half to the setting moon had gone,
And half to the rising day;

Low on the sand, and loud on the stone,
The last wheel echoes away.

I said to the rose, "The brief night goes
In babble, and revel, and wine;

O young lord-lover, what sighs are those
For one that will never be thine ?

But mine, but mine," so I swore to the rose,
"For ever and ever mine."

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,

As the music clash'd in the hall;

And long by the garden lake I stood,

For I heard your rivulet fall

From the lake to the meadow, and on to the wood,
Our wood that is dearer than all;

From the meadows your walks have left so sweet,
That whenever a March-wind sighs,

He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes,

To the woody hollows in which we meet,
And the valleys of Paradise.

The slender acacia would not shake

One long milk-bloom on the tree;

The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,

As the pimpernel closed on the lea;

But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;

The lilies and roses were all awake,

They sighed for the dawn and thee.

Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls
Come hither, the dances are done,

In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen, lily and rose in one;

Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers and be their sun.