"Ay, why," cried I, and dropped a tear, Adoring, yet despairing e'er To have her to myself alone— "Why was such sweetness made for one?"

But, growing bolder, in her ear
I in soft numbers told my care ;
She heard, and raised me from her feet,
And seemed to glow with equal heat.
Like heaven's too mighty to express,
My joys could but be known by guess;
"Ay, fool!" said I; "what have I done,
To wish her made for more than one?"

But long she had not been in view
Before her eyes their beams withdrew;
Ere I had reckoned half her charms
She sunk into another's arms.

But she that once could faithless be
Will favor him no more than me:
He too will find he is undone,
And that she was not made for one.

Still to be pinioned down to teach.
The syntax and the parts of speech,
Or, what perhaps is drudgery worse,
The links and points and rules of verse;
To deal out authors by retail,
Like penny pots of Oxford ale;
Oh, 'tis a service irksome more
Than tugging at the slavish oar.
Yet such his task-a dismal truth-
Who watches o'er the bent of youth,
And while, a paltry stipend earning,
He sows the richest seeds of learning,
And tills their minds with proper care
And sees them their due produce bear,
No joys, alas! his toil beguile :
His own lies fallow all the while.
"Yet still he's on the road," you say,
"Of learning." Why, perhaps he may,
But turns like horses in a mill,
Nor getting on nor standing still,
For little way his learning reaches

Who reads no more than what he teaches.

A SCHOOL-USHER.

WERE I at once empowered to show

My utmost vengeance on my foe,

To punish with extremest rigor
I could inflict no penance bigger
Than, using him as learning's tool,
To make him usher of a school.
For, not to dwell upon the toil
Of working on a barren soil,
And laboring with incessant pains
To cultivate a blockhead's brains,
The duties there but ill befit
The love of letters, arts or wit.
For one, it hurts me to the soul
To brook confinement or control;

streams course through, in time united by the Lubangi into a pretty little river flowing westerly to the Luama. It was the most delightful spot that we had seen. As the people were amiable and disposed to trade, we had soon an abundance of palm-butter for cooking, sugar-cane, fine goats and fat chickens, sweet potatoes, beans, peas, nuts and manioc, millet and other grain for flour, ripe bananas for dessert, plantain and palm wines for cheer, and an abundance of soft, cool, clear water to drink. Subsequently we had many such pleasant experiences, but, as it was the first, it deserves a more detailed description.

Travellers from Africa have often written about African villages, yet I am sure few of those at home have ever comprehended the reality; I now propose to lay it before them in this sketch of a village in the district of Uhombo. The village consists of a number of low conical grass huts ranged round a circular common, in the centre of which are three or four fig trees, kept for the double purpose of supplying shade to the community and bark-cloth to the chief. The doorways to the huts are very low, scarcely thirty inches high. The common, fenced round by the grass huts, shows plainly the ochreous color of the soil, and it is so well trodden that not a grass-blade thrives upon it.

On presenting myself in the common, I attracted out of doors the owners and ordinary inhabitants of each hut, until I found myself the centre of quite a promiscuous population of naked men, women, children and infants. Though I had appeared here for the purpose of studying the people of Uhombo and making a treaty of

friendship with the chief, the villagers seemed to think I had come merely to make a free exhibition of myself as some natural monstrosity.

I saw before me over a hundred beings of the most degraded, unpresentable type it is possible to conceive, and, though I knew quite well that some thousands of years ago the beginning of this wretched humanity and myself were one and the same, a sneaking disinclination to believe it possessed me strongly, and I would even now willingly subscribe some small amount of silver money for him who could but assist me to controvert the discreditable fact. But common sense tells me not to take into undue consideration their squalor, their ugliness or nakedness, but to gauge their true position among the human race by taking a view of the cultivated fields and gardens of Uhombo, and I am compelled to admit that these debased specimens of humanity only plant and sow such vegetables and grain as I myself should cultivate were I compelled to provide for my own sustenance. I see, too, that their huts, though of grass, are almost as well made as the materials will permit; and, indeed, I have often slept in worse. Speak with them in their own dialect of the law of meum and tuum, and it will soon appear that they are intelligent enough upon that point. Moreover, the muscles, tissues and fibres of their bodies, and all the organs of sight, hearing, smell or motion, are as well developed as in us. Only in taste and judgment. based upon larger experience, in the power of expression, in morals and intellectual culture, are we superior. I strive, therefore, to interest myself in my gross and rudelyshaped brothers and sisters. Almost burst

say

ing into a laugh at the absurdity, I turn toward an individual whose age marks him out as one to whom respect is due, and say to him, after the common manner of greeting, My brother, sit you down by me on this mat, and let us be friendly and sociable;" and as I it I thrust into his wide-open hand twenty cowries, the currency of the land. One look at his hand as he extended it made me think I could carve a betterlooking hand out of a piece of rhinoceroshide. While speaking I look at his face, which is like an ugly and extravagant mask clumsily manufactured from some strange dark-brown coarse material. The lips proved the thickness of skin which nature had endowed him with, and by the obstinacy with which they refused to meet each other the form of the mouth was but ill-defined, though capacious and garnished with its full complement of well-preserved teeth. His nose was so flat that I inquired in a perfectly innocent manner as to the reason for such a feature.

"Ah!" said he, with a sly laugh; "it is the fault of my mother, who when I was young bound me too tight to her back."

His hair had been compelled to obey the capricious fashion of his country, and was therefore worked up into furrows and ridges and central cones bearing a curious resemblance to the formation of the land around Uhombo. I wonder if the art grew by perceiving Nature's fashion and mould of his country?

Descending from the face, which, crude, large-featured, rough-hewn, as it was, bore witness to the possession of much sly humor and a kindly disposition, my eyes fastened on his naked body. Through the ochreons

daubs I detected strange freaks of pricking on it, circles and on it, circles and squares and crosses, and traced with wonder the many hard lines and puckers created by age, weather, ill-usage and rude keeping. His feet were monstrous abortions with soles as hard as hoofs, and his legs, as high up as the knees, were plastered with successive strata of dirt; his loincover or the queer "girding-tackle" need not be described. They were absolutely appalling to good taste, and the most ragged British beggar or Neapolitan lazzarone is sumptuously—nay, regally-clothed, in comparison to this "king" in Uhombo.

If the old chief appeared so unprepossessing, how can I paint without offence my humbler brothers and sisters who stood round us? As I looked at the array of faces I could only comment to myself, "Ugly, uglier, ugliest !" As I looked at their nude and filthy bodies I ejaculated "Fearful!" as the sum-total of what I might with propriety say, and what, indeed, is sufficiently descriptive. And what shall I say of the hideous and queer appendages that they wear about their waists-the tags of monkey-skin and bits of gorilla-bone, goat-horn, shells, strange tags to stranger tackle? and of the things around their necks-brain of mice, skin of viper, "adder's fork and blind-worm's sting"? And how strangely they smell, all these queer manlike creatures who stand regarding me! Not silently. On the contrary, there is a loud interchange of comments upon the white's appearance, a manifestation of broad interest to know whence I come, whither I am going and what is my business. And no sooner are the questions asked than they are replied to by such as pretend to know. The replies were