hideous nightmare does the opium- in the writings of such different men eater conjure up images dishonoring as De Quincey and Southey, Charles to God and purity. Take a little sen- Lamb and Hartley Coleridge, is no tence, for instance, out of one of the dreams which he has himself recorded: I thought it was a Sunday morning in May, that it was Easter Sunday, and yet very early in the morning. I said aloud (as I thought) to myself: "It yet wants much of sunrise, and it is Easter Sunday, and that is the day on which they celebrate the first-fruits of the Resurrection. I will walk abroad, old griefs shall be forgotten; for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high, and stretch away to heaven and the forest-glades are as quiet as the churchyard; and with the dew I can wash the fever from my brow, and then I shall be unhappy no longer.

fictitious sentiment assumed for the purposes of art. It had been put to a severe practical test which many genuine lovers of children might not have withstood. The necessities of small households and straitened means had brought them into close and daily contact with the nursery. Southey wrote his history of Portugal keeping watch at the same time over the baby seated in her chair at his side. De Quincey, at an age when young men take little notice of children, was the favorite companion of the little Wordsworths, and when little Kate died his grief What a fragrance there is in the pic-ing. In after years his love for his passed all the limits of ordinary mourn

ture, an innocent fragrance as of dewy lawns and early blossoms, but hardly powerful enough, we might have feared, to overpower the noxious fumes of his drugged imagination! It reminds one of Charles Lamb's own description of an empty village church:

-was

deferential in its expression
own children — gentle, diffident, almost
joined to a feminine and tender regard
for their needs and pleasures. At any
moment he would break off from his
writing at the cry of a child up-stairs,
and carry it down to sit in his armchair
and be comforted. Nor was such ten-
derness merely parental. Like Words-
worth's love for nature, it was part of
his religion; and it was joined to that
love for the weak and helpless which is
a characteristic note of the Christian
creed. It is one of the most lovable

Wouldst thou know the beauty of holi-
ness? Go alone on some week day, bor-
rowing the keys of good Master Sexton,
traverse the cool aisles of some country
church, think of the piety that has kneeled
there; the congregations, old and young,
that have found consolation there; the
meek pastor, the docile parishioner. With
no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting traits in these men of letters. It in-
comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of
the place till thou thyself become as fixed
and motionless as the marble effigies that
kneel and weep around thee.

It is very remarkable, we think, to see what a strong hold such tranquil scenes and memories had upon the literary men of this period. "Eccovi! look at him," cried Carlyle, when he saw De Quincey; "this child has been in hell." And he was right; nevertheless the ghastly experiences which he had gained there had not obliterated the peaceful images still treasured in the recesses of his bewildered brain; nor had the horrors of physical and mental disease banished the pure emotions and sympathies which such memories evoked. And the reverence for innocence and infancy which breathes

spired some of their most felicitous writings; it irradiated even the black abyss in which De Quincey was so often plunged; it constituted the deep, though in later years, after death had visited it, the trembling happiness of Southey's home; and it made Charles Lamb in his old age once more the playfellow of his "dream children.”

Childhood was an Eden to which in fancy they wandered back, and to which the fruits of the tree of knowledge had brought no enchantment.

It was with the same sympathetic and serious and tranquil spirit that they regarded existing religious systems, and the doctrines upon which they were founded. They may ponder and discuss a question, but there is no feverish restlessness in the inquiry. De Quincey

66

Wordsworth, at the instance of Charles Lamb's friends, wrote his epitaph. As he originally wrote it the first line was,

To the dear memory of a frail good man. The more foolish of Lamb's friends objected to the word "frail," and it was rewritten without that word - the only word in it which was individualizing.

At this distance of time we are wiser.
We no longer fear to dishonor the dead
by the remembrance of human weak-
ness, but are well content to leave them
to that merciful judgment which, re-
versing so many earthly verdicts, has
lifted them

Above the world and sped the passing life
Across the waters to the land of rest.

From Macmillan's Magazine.

THE FETISH-MOUNTAIN OF KROBO.

lived in a mystery which he had no desire to solve; as his biographer affirms he went through the world wrapt in a general religious wonder.” He looked upon Christianity as the one divine revelation, and no Biblical criticism had power to trouble his faith. "The Bible," he says, putting aside all scientific objections "the Bible must not teach anything that man can teach himself." Southey, slowly but surely working his way onwards from the Unitarianism of his youth, has, as Hazlitt said, "missed his way in Utopia and found it in Old Sarum." Charles Lamb touches upon such matters in a lighter vein; even when he venerates an idea he has a natural disregard for its outward forms and symbols, yet he has no desire to controvert or disturb existing beliefs. "Credulity," he says, "is a man's weakness but a child's strength," and he is quite ready to ex- THE sun had just disappeared behind tend to it that affectionate toleration the fringe of fan-palms on the horizon, which he has for childish things. But and the afterglow was throwing a crimthe great realities of life and death, and son light over the placid waters of one love beyond the grave, are more and of the broad lagoons which skirt the more to him as the world grows emp- seaboard of the West African Gold tier, and friends never to be replaced Coast. I had been travelling for some are taken from him. "Coleridge is hours in a long, narrow Adangbe canoe, dead," he would say irrelevantly in the and was very tired of being cooped up midst of conversation, as if the cry in the cranky craft. The village which of his heart must make itself heard be- I had decided to sleep in was still miles fore he could go on to speak of other away on the opposite side of the broad, things. The calamities he had suffered shallow stretch of water; and yet, haunted and oppressed his solitary though tired, hungry, and cramped, hours. In the "surfeit of time" of there was a restful sensation of calm which he speaks at Enfield, he is some-enveloping the scene which reconciled times "serious to sinking almost ;" me in some degree to this tedious mode and though he rises buoyant, by the of travelling. sweetness of his nature and the energy of his spirit, above the troublesome waters, there is ever a pathos underlying his merriest moods and his wittiest sayings, born of the tragic cloud which hung over his dearest affections and his home. To the last his wandering thoughts found a resting-place in the eternal verities; and he who so unaffectedly loved his sister whom he had seen, has found, we may humbly trust, the Giver and Object of all love.

In the fly-leaf of his copy of Lamb's "Life and Letters" there is a note in Sir Henry Taylor's handwriting.

The short tropical twilight was fast fading into darkness, and the bright blue sky toning down into the deepest azure, out of whose depths peered the pale light of the glimmering stars. The placid waste of waters was only gently ruffled now and then by the ugly black snout of some sleepy alligator, slowly rising to the surface for a breath of the cool evening breeze.

As I lazily lolled in one end of the canoe, I could not help admiring the fine proportions of the stalwart native who was standing in the stern, slowly propelling the uncouth craft on its slug

gish way. His clean-shaped muscular | his interminable song seemed all to limbs stood out in clear black silhouette have suddenly fled, leaving nought beagainst the colors of the sunset, as he hind but an uncouth, unintelligible leisurely laid his weight on the long, jargon. The soft twilight was now straight pole, or drew it gently out of almost at an end, and a cold, damp the muddy bottom. He eased his labors breeze was creeping over the sluggish by softly singing a low rhythmical waters, hinting at miasma and all sorts chant, which blended delightfully with of malarial horrors. All the poetry of the calm repose of the scene. Like all the scene had vanished. I felt cross African music it was in a decidedly and tired and hungry, and roughly orminor key, and the quaint rhythm of dered my boy to tell the man to stop the Adangbe words rose and fell in a his ugly noise and to pole as if he gentle cadence, which at that moment intended to put me ashore sometime seemed to me the perfection of poetry. before the sun rose again. The cold, The song was undeniably long, how- unhealthy dews of the African night ever, and presently I fell to wondering were now falling like a cloud, and a what its subject could be. Was it an white mist of vapor gently rising from epic by some poet of his tribe, telling the almost stagnant waters, making me of mighty deeds in the chase, and of long to be safe on land and sheltered heroic fights with hereditary enemies? from these poisonous exhalations, even No, that gentle, plaintive air would in the stuffy native hut which I exsurely better fit some tender love-chant, pected to find on landing. and the man was probably singing the charms of some far away dusky beauty, whose soft black eyes had set his heart aflame.

What!" I exclaimed. "Yessah! he da cuss too bad. He be one Popo man, sah, and he say that one Kokofoo man make some bad palaver wid him, so he da cuss him." "Do you mean he is calling him names ?" "Yessah! He cussing de man fader, an' de man moder, and he grandfader, and he grandmoder, and all he moder and fader before him, back, back, back, long time. He cuss plenty, massa!"

At length I arrived at my destination, a small crowded village of mud huts, and there I found the two other white men who were to go with me on the morrow to pay a visit to the FetishMountain of Krobo.

My curiosity was aroused; I would find out the theme of his song from my black boy, who was sprawling on some After a night's struggle with Brobpackages in the bottom of the canoe. dingnagian mosquitoes and other abom"Sam, you savez that man language?"inations, we made an early start, and "Yessah!" "Well, what he sing- by seven o'clock our procession of haming about?" "He cussin, sah!" mocks, bearers, and carriers was wending its serpentine way through the narrow bush-track which led to our destination. Hammock-travelling has an undeniably luxurious smack about it; but unfortunately there the luxury begins and ends. To the uninitiated, who have never been forced to use this form of locomotion, it may suggest ideas of silken cushions, of embroidered baldaquins, of waving ostrichfeather fans, and of gorgeous fly-brushes gently waved by graceful, if dusky, slaves. The reality, however, is prosaic enough; and the idea of hammocktravelling suggests to the unhappy official or trader of the Gold Coast, who has been forced to make weary journeys in this manner, visions of hard canvas, unlimited shaking and jolting, dust and flies, besides a dozen other The discovery caused an unpleasant discomforts inseparable from a therrevulsion of feeling. The melody of mometer standing ninety degrees in the

Alas, how was my poetic image cast down! So that soft rhythmic chant was nothing but a long string of curses, and what I had taken to be the amorous outpourings of an untutored poetic nature was, on the contrary, a collection of atrocious expressions which would probably cause even a Billingsgate fishfag to turn pale with envy.

shade. On the West Coast of Africa, | spreading away to the north, where the however, where horses seldom thrive, horizon is bounded by the distant range hammocks are indispensable, and sup- of the Akwapim Hills. In the middle ply the only means of making journeys of the plain rises the Fetish-Mountain, of any length. standing out like an island in a sea of freshest green. In shape and size much resembling the rock of Gibraltar,

The Gold Coast, as every one knows, is a British possession on the seaboard of the Gulf of Guinea, and labors un- it forms a conspicuous landmark for der a reputation for extreme unhealth-many miles around. iness, which in many cases is not wholly Although still three or four miles deserved. Liberal allowance as regards away we could distinguish faint sounds pay and leave of absence induce a good of an almost incessant discharge of many young men to enter the service musketry, while clouds of smoke curled of the colony, and they, together with in the still air around the sides of the a certain number of traders and mis-mountain. Passing through a village sionaries, form the only civilized popu- our party was reinforced by three more lation of the extensive country over white men, consisting of the commiswhich a Protectorate has been declared. |sioner of the district and two other To those interested in folk-lore and officials who were making a tour of ethnography the Gold Coast offers a inspection in that part of the Protectorgrand field for investigation, the inhab-ate. We now formed quite an impositants having remained for the most part in the same condition of primitive simplicity in which they were found by the first European visitors to the coast four or five centuries ago. Despite a tolerable supply of missionaries of all denominations, Fetishism flourishes almost as vigorously as ever; and if its horrible rites have been rigorously suppressed in those territories which recognize British authority, there are still numbers of curious customs and with their powder in small gourds atceremonies practised which are ex-tached to their waists, while the women tremely interesting as illustrating the marched along behind, carrying on peculiar ideas of the people.

I was particularly anxious to visit the Krobo mountain, having been told that it was at certain times of the year the scene of many curious customs which might be well worth observing. One of the most interesting of all, the Otufo, or "Tail-girl" custom, was about to be celebrated, and I was on my way to the Krobo hill at the opening of this paper. This hill is about sixty miles from the seacoast, and a little to the westward of the Volta River which flows northward right through the Protectorate.

ing procession, and the string of six hammocks, with their bearers, carriers, and other attendants, stretched over quite a long distance of path. The villages on all sides were almost deserted, as nearly the whole population of the district had congregated on the FetishMountain.

Now and again we met small parties of natives, evidently on their way to the scene; all the men carrying long, rusty, flint-lock guns,

their heads huge black pots full of palm-wine. It was evidently a general holiday, and all were decked in their brightest cloths and beads. A curious and not unpleasant chant, in a very minor key, was lustily kept up by these people as they marched, and the same strange refrain could be heard on all sides echoing in the distance, until the tune rang in our ears with annoying persistence.

On commencing the ascent of the mountain our path for the first mile or so rose in a leisurely zigzag fashion; After two or three hours' travelling but soon hammocks were no longer we left the thick undergrowth of bush, practicable, and despite the great heat through which we had been going, and every man had to get out and walk. emerged on the Krobo plain, a fine The side of the mountain which we undulating stretch of prairie, covered were ascending was almost bare of with short, fresh, green grass and vegetation, save where a low under

in times of danger. It is the great cemetery and burial-ground for the whole tribe; and at certain seasons of the year the entire population of the Krobo country resorts to it for the celebration of certain Fetish customs and ceremonies.

growth of scrub hedged in the path, by them as the heart and centre of without affording the slightest shelter their territory, and a place of refuge from the perpendicular rays of the sun. In many places the track was nothing more than a narrow ledge or fissure on the face of precipitous cliffs, and at short intervals huge boulders of ironstone could be seen poised on the very edges of the precipices, ready to be hurled by a very slight effort upon any The mountain, however, is far from body of assailants who might be rash being usually deserted; on the conenough to attempt to force a passage trary, it possesses a more peculiar and up the mountain. These immense strange population than is perhaps to masses of stone had probably been be found in any other part of the gradually dislodged from their softer surrounding, and were so undermined that it looked as if a push from the hand of a child could send the mighty masses crashing down the mountainsides like some terrible avalanche.

globe.

It is very generally believed that African tribes possess but a scanty amount of respect for the usual forms of morality. This is a mistake. A comparison between the average moral About two centuries ago the ances- behavior of a central African tribe tors of the present tribe of Kroboes with that of the inhabitants of civilwere driven, for some reason or other, ized lands would be, I think, to the from their own country further south. credit of the savages. Wives are On arriving in the neighborhood of the bought, it is true, but probably the mountain they overcame the original very idea of property causes the marinhabitants and at once settled them- riage-tie to be less frequently abused selves on the hill. Finding themselves than among more civilized races. In in possession of a natural fortress of those parts of Africa which are under the strongest description, they were European rule and law adultery is anyenabled to set at defiance the surround- thing but rare, because the natives ing tribes and from their impregnable have no other remedy than to bring place of refuge made such constant actions for damages in the Commissionraids on the natives of the plain that in ers' Courts, where the amount awarded a short time they imposed their rule to the unhappy husband varies from over a large stretch of the surrounding twenty-two shillings to seven pounds, country. At present they are supposed according to the tariff or value of wives to number some forty thousand, and belonging to certain tribes. In the owing to their savage and warlike char- interior, however, where European auacter are greatly feared by neighboring thority is not recognized, adultery is tribes of much greater numerical rarely to be purged by a mere fine. strength. They now form part of the The case is tried by the native ruler, British Protectorate, and owing to the and the verdict generally results in the increased security of life and property execution of the two culprits in the have settled themselves in large vil- most brutal manner. Bosman, an old lages on the plains, where they possess author on the Gold Coast, relates how, enormous groves of the palms which when the country was under the rule produce the oil of commerce. They of Dutch factors, he once witnessed have divided themselves into two sec- the execution of an adulterer at Axim, tions, under two kings, one ruling over a town on the seaboard. The unhappy eastern, the other over western Krobo. man was bound and laid on the ground He of western Krobo is subordinate in the market-place, and the task of to the other, and the two dominions decapitating him was confided to a form a fairly united body. The moun- child of seven years of age, who with tain, however, is still looked upon a blunt, rusty cutlass took over an hour