lasts for a considerable time after a storm, | for as the poleward side of a cyclone invaand may begin before a storm sets in; it riably blows from east to west, it may is caused by the progressive movement meet the ordinary westerly winds of these of the undulations being more rapid than latitudes, and, owing to the slower motion that of the storm, so that they outrun it, of cyclones in temperate zones, may only like heralds sent before to tell of an ene-just neutralize them, so that a calm will my's approach, or affectionate missives be the result; while on the southerly dispatched by a friend after his departure, limit of the very same cyclone there may to assure us of his continued existence. be a considerable storm, since there these Strange to say, these cyclones seem to forces will aid instead of neutralizing each move rather against than with the trade- other. Observations on cyclones here winds, for they invariably move from the are therefore more difficult and less valuaequator towards the poles, whereas the ble than if made within the tropics; but trade-winds move from the higher lati- there, on the other hand, the means of tudes towards the equator. This phe- observation are much less. Were a sysnomenon has excited much surprise, and tem of submarine telegraphs established hitherto, we believe, has received no sat- in the West-Indian islands, and observaisfactory solution. They also widen out tions carefully made simultaneously at difin diameter, and decrease in violence, as ferent points, and then collated, much they approach our latitudes, and thus valuable information might be obtained, often encounter and neutralize each other. and the same use might be made of the Though so much less severe, they seem to East-Indian system of telegraphs. The be more frequent in the temperate zones, study of cyclones, as well, indeed, as of probably owing to new storms being atmospheric currents in general, is of generated in the temperate zones them- much importance, not merely in a theoselves, besides those which enter them retical point of view, but also as bearing, from the tropics. Here, also, we may be in a most practical manner on the interactually within the northern limit of a cy-ests of navigation and the safety of human clone, and yet the air be perfectly still, I life. From Fraser's Magazine CURIOSITIES O F COMPROMISE. THE TERMS ON WHICH EVERY BODY SURRENDERS. "HALF a loaf," saith the proverb, "is | better than no bread;" and the maxim, we think, holds equally good whether the foad be the coarse brown crust in the corner of a tramp's wallet, or the confection cut for a young marquis with a silver knife and served on priceless porcelain. In either case there is sure to be a craving unsupplied, and each, while he alleviates the longings of nature with his morsel, is at heart and stomach like poor Oliver Twist, "asking for more." Through all professions, under all circumstances, in all "In the bowl where pleasures swim, We require the assurance of neither King Solomon nor Mr. Tupper, that"Even in the midst of laughing there is sorrow" but we do marvel at that peculiarity in human nature which can not accept the sweetest draught without wishing that it was differently mixed, or in a larger measure, or offered by another hand, or drained from a more fanciful goblet; that if its wreath be even woven from thornless roses, must needs long for the scentless dahlia; and in the midst of whose mirth there is something worse than sorrow-a vague restless yearning for it knows not what. There is a wondrous touch of that halfsympathizing, half-searching satire which makes the pathos of Vanity Fair, and causes it to probe the heart of every one of us to the quick, when the Marquis of Steyne, jeering at Becky for the little woman's worldly ambition, says to her: "You all want what you can't get-what isn't worth having when you've got it. 'Gad, I dined with the King yesterday, and we'd boiled neck of mutton and turnips!" The jaded men of pleasure had gone the whole round of epicurism, and come sorrowfully back to the point from which they started. prosecute our journey, but should lay ourselves down wearily and hopelessly to die on the scorching sand. Master Harry, supine and agape on nurse's flannel apron, cries bitterly for the moon. It is as well to begin as you mean to go on. Poor little man! In one way or another he will be crying for the moon all his life. That sagacious woman, skilled in sedative arts, gives him a China orange, in lieu of the lustrous orb hanging outside the nursery window beyond his tiny reach. Again, it is as well to begin as you mean to go on. He will be lucky if he can always get so good a thing as a China orange when he is asking for a fixed planet. He accepts it, however, under protest indeed, and with his eyes riveted on Diana the while, but still he accepts it, and the venal urchin renders his first act of submission to the universal principle of compromise. It is a wholesome precept, that "If you can't have what you like, you should like Because the moon, what you have." whether in apogee or perigee, or other astronomical phase, must always be beyond your grasp, is the best possible reason why you should suck your China orange till nothing is left but the pips. Look at your neighbors, and observe how all, with scarcely an exception, are draining away like so many leeches at the shrinking fruit. This man aimed at fame And without being men of pleasure, so-literary, we will say-as being the least is it with us all. We all want what we can't get. When we've got it, perhaps the boiled neck of mutton and turnips is the more savory dish of the two. But even though we accept the unpalatable truth, we fail to act upon it. The mirage that lures us on through the desert is too fascinating to ignore, though our Arab has vouched for its unreality, and the frame of a dead camel with something very like a man's thigh-bone and a human skull, are even now bleaching at our feet. We do not choose to allow that those pointed minarets and waving palms, and the cool sheet of water glistening like a mirror in the sun, will always be a couple of leagues ahead. Surely it is worth while to go a few yards, and yet a few yards farther, in the direction of the Happy Land. Perhaps, were it not for this illusion, we should never have the heart to Medio de fonte leporum, tangible and perhaps the most disappointing of all "kudos." He was head of his form at Eton, had his interleaved "Scriptores" filled to the margin with parallel passages from every known author, was "sent up" for Greek Iambics which the head-master himself could scarcely construe, and spent in reading Herodotus for his amusement those "long-after-fours" that will never be so bright any where again, as by the sunny Brocas or on the velvet sward of the Upper-Shooting-Fields. Then a senior wrangler at Cambridge, and author of a poem to which Firmilian were a tame and commonplace production. No wonder he "put in" for a great reputation, and had reason to be cruelly disappointed that his famous work on "the Impossible" did not go through a dozen editions, and render him the most notorious personage in England. "Monstrari digito prætereuntium" was his mark, but he fell short of it, and with more commonsense than you would have given him tain tower called the Malakhoff, which credit for, accepted the compromise. | other victim amongst hundreds of sufferNever mind how bitter was the first taste ers like himself to the defenses of a cerof the rind, he bit manfully into his orange, and clings to it now like a vampyre. It would be a fine thing to be a Scott or a Bulwer or a Macaulay; but faute de mieux, certain pounds a sheet are not to be despised, and though the treacle of popularity may be in the top-shelf of the cupboard under lock and key, substantial butter is no unwelcome addition to real bread. Take another instance. The present Mrs. Goodenough was the beauty of three counties -nay, an acknowledged star in those fastidious vapor-baths, the London ball-rooms. She has more than once danced with royalty, and borne her part discreetly enough in that exhilarating dialogue of question and answer which the blood of kings is so apt to originate. A sucking duke has sent her flowers from Covent Garden. It was generally believed in her own native place that she might have been a marquis's third wife. She was well brought up. The Stretchers are all well brought up, or if not it is no fault of their aunt, my Lady Backboard, so it is needless to state that she looked to make a great match; but when season after season failed to bring the moon any nearer the sphere of these undoubted attractions, why she put up with her orange like a sensible young woman, and never pulled a wry face about it, but consented frankly and cheerfully to make Squire Goodenough, with his comfortable hall and moderate though sufficient income, the "happiest of men." Some men kick and some compoundthat is the whole difference; but the kickers, with a few rafe exceptions, have to follow the example of their more rational fellow-creatures, and compound too at last. Reader, if a lady, you are not of course old enough to remember the days of stage-coaches; nor indeed under any circumstances could you have occupied the box-seat; but if you are a gentleman, and forty, you will not misunderstand my illustration. It is not, I grant, every nature that is so constituted as to be able thus to settle down from high aspirations to contented mediocrity. It is not every Roman who is willing to accept the cultivation of cabbages as an equivalent for the splendors of a dictatorship; and Napoleon at St. Have you not sometimes seen a highHelena making himself and Sir Hudson couraged, high-stepping, rebellious young Lowe both exceedingly uncomfortable, horse, the one black sheep in the team, could not forget, though he tried hard to put in, at what coachmen call the offdo so, the tarnished glitter of a diadem in wheel, a position dangerously convenient the petty intrigues of a coterie. To do for the application of the double thong? soldiers justice, however, theirs is the pro- With ears laid back, and stiffened limbs fession of all others which teaches them pointing in different directions, suggestive most readily to adapt themselves to the only of retrogression, he submits unwillexigences of their situation. It happened ingly to the ignominy of being harnessed to the writer of this article, not many to the vehicle; the attendant helpers payyears ago, to come across the mangled ing him the compliment of caution in apform of a French colonel of Voltigeurs ly-proaching his heels. How tight they pole ing pale and exhausted on a stretcher, him up! How carefully they buckle the with his leg amputated at the thigh, an- rein to his bit where the purchase shall It be greatest, and the pain consequently places with the Esquimaux or the Lap most severe in his poor mouth. They lander; might vote it inconvenient, not grin at each other when their preparations to say, disagreeable, to divide our days are concluded, and the coachman, draw- and nights into nine months at a time of ing on his gloves, scans their arrange- the latter, for three of the former. ments with an approving eye. The reins would astonish us not a little to find are parted, the driver leans forward, the that at midsummer, make what haste whole machine is put in motion, all but we would, we were never "in time to the neophyte. He declines to move, he go to bed with a candle," and disgust won't start, not he! Nevertheless the us still more to sit through the winter tough harness stands the strain. His fel- days by lamplight, except when some low-laborers pull him along, will he, will fortuitous Aurora Borealis gives us the he! though his four iron-shod feet are chance of an "outing." But the Lapp scoring the Macadam into furrows, while cherishes none of these weak-minded a torturing grasp compresses his jaws, and prejudices. The long, dark winter is to the pitiless whip-cord plies its stinging him the season of merriment and festive cuts about his rips. Maddened to desper- ty. In his warm hut under the snow hiation, he plunges forward against his col- spends his hours in the agreeable alternalar, to drag every thing incontinent to tions of feasting and sleeping. His diges Hades. Very well! In half a dozen tion, happy man! accommodates itself strides he learns that he is pulling the with facility to blubber and train-oil, and rest of the team along as well as the whole from Michaelmas to Lady-day he keeps a coach-the gray, the little chestnut, the perpetual Christmas. It is no wonder blind mare, the four insides, the passen- that he is lusty and wakeful during the gers on the roof, the whole of the luggage, short summer, and can devote "the shinand the supplementary old woman with a ing hours," like Dr. Watts's bee, to laycotton umbrella and a bandbox. ing up a store for future consumption. He has no coach-horses to take him abroad, but he compromises for a team of sagacious rough-coated dogs that draw his sledge quite as fast as he cares to go; and moreover he compounds for no assessed taxes, and curses no income ditto. Nay, we are even fain to believe that he has some set-off for the unspeakable hideousness of his partner; and that domestic qualities of which we know nothing, but which must be beyond price to a man who spends nine months of the year in his own house, make him rich amends for an outside that in our eyes approaches deformity. "He'll soon tire of that fun," says the coachman, who has played the same game with hundreds in his day, and at the first ascent it dawns upon the equine mind of our rebel that he had better accept of a compromise. Behold him, ere the half way house is passed, trotting submissively along as if he had been in harness all his life. Would old Wildfire, who bore him, the mare that but one jockey at Newmarket could ride, and not an inclosure in Yorkshire could keep in, acknowledge this for her foal once rolling amongst the June buttercups at her feet, free as the breeze that wantoned with the whispering elms nodding and towering in the summer sky? Many a stout heart, many a keen and gallant spirit have we all seen, put in, so to speak, "at the off-wheel." Perhaps one in a hundred, and that, alas! too often the bravest and the gentlest, will not bend, but break! This exception only goes to prove the great invincible rule of compromise. So with the swart African, or the supple Asiatic, under the white glare of the torrid zone. True that the sun beats down upon him with scorching fury— that the gaudy leopard, the sleek and shining tiger, lie in wait for him in the tangled jungles, gorgeous with its many hues of animal and vegetable life. That massive serpents coiled in glistening folds lurk in the deep, dank glades, ready to In the natural world, by the decrees of squeeze and pound and lubricate him, a far-seeing Providence, the advantages and then bolt him for a meal! That and the drawbacks of weather, climate, every step he goes may be his last. But salubrity, and production, seem to be is not life to him one rich voluptuous weighed in a balance, of which compro- dream? Has he more than a passing care mise may be said to hold the scales. You" what he shall eat, or what he shall or I, perhaps, might object to change drink, and wherewithal he shall be Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and softer skies, Breadths of tropic shade, and palms in clusters, knots of paradise; Never comes the trader, never floats a European flag, Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag; clothed?" That tawny skin is his velvet | over the water, knows not the meaning mantle, that starry heaven the roof-tree of that sacred word which made Tell a of his home-he stoops to the diamond marksman and Washington a hero. He rill, he feeds from the broad-leaved tree. is liable-though it is but justice to say He has no books to read-no letters to we have every reason to believe those are write no cards to leave-no debts to rare exceptions in which the gentlemen pay. Surely his is the happy land- the of the Southern States abuse their irreElysian fields of the ancient poet - the sponsible power-still, alas! that it should fiddler's green of our own honest Jack be so! he is liable to be beaten, reviled, Tar of modern days. abused, chained like a dog, worked like a beast, torn forcibly from wife and children, nay, compelled, at a master's will, to tions which in all nations, however desubstitute other ties for those holy affecgraded, distinguish man from the brute. Ah! it makes one's heart sore and one's blood boil to think of the kindly matron and her nestling children put up for sale to the highest bidder, the little ones wrenched from her one by one, never, never to see her again-perhaps the tiniest of all, the last darling, just weaned, taken from that breast, of which though the skin be ebony, is not the milk a mother's and the anguish a woman's? And the father, whom she may have loved for all his woolly hair and flat lips, as well, and maybe better, than the dainty countess loves her high-featured earl, looks his last upon her ere he follows his new master towards the Far South and the sweltering cotton-grounds, where his very heart must be surrendered, like his body, to the caprice of that master who has bought him because his frame is large and muscular, and his face expressive of honest affection and good will. Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree, Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea." The Red Indian, belted with the scalps of his foes, compromises for his freedom by such a life of hardship, labor, and privation, as a civilized being can hardly realize, followed by an old age of excrutiating rheumatism, of which, by the way, you must experience the pangs if you are free from gout. Compromise again! Perhaps, however, the moment at which our Delaware or Blackfoot finds it most difficult to accept his situation with content, is that in which he is fain to draw his girdle a couple of holes tighter as a substitute for dinner after a thirty-six hours' fast. Have you ever been deer-stalking on a Highland hill? Fancy coming home famished, as you invariably do, from that exhaustive recreation, though you take out sandwiches with you for luncheon, and being told by your valet that "there will be no dinner to-day, but he will buckle your waistcoat a couple of inches tighter in lieu thereof." Would you not kick your valet? The Indian is always deer-stalking, and never has any sandwiches. I believe, however, that he is sometimes sufficiently exasperated to kick his poor squaw. Nevertheless, our tawny "Brave" would hardly be persuaded to exchange his plateau on the Rocky Mountains for the confinement of Grosvenorsquare, even if you offered him the four full meals a day that John the footman finds so indispensable to his health and comfort. The negro, again, under the fostering patronage of our liberty-loving cousins You would think the sons of Ham must madden in their chains. Not so. Again, in mercy interposes the inevitable law of compromise. With great vital power and a sensuous nature, as callous to mental pain as it is susceptible of physical enjoyment, the negro finds a pleasure in the mere animal functions of eating and drinking, in the comfort of warmth, in the luxury of repose, such as can not be realized by more nervous organizations, refined by education to an intellectual pitch the black can never reach. Although a slave, he is not forbidden to bask in the sunbeams, or snore after his full fat meal in the shade. To him the tinkling of the banjo, the loud laugh of his fellows, the empty jest, and the unmeaning chorus, are replete with revelry and joy. If his pleasures be coarser than the white man's, so are his pains far duller and less excruciating. If he never |