HE 86. THE POSSESSION OF JUBA—(CONTINUED). E has passed over the mountain, and has descended its side. Bristling shrubs, swamps, precipitous banks, rushing torrents, are no obstacle to his course. He has reached the brow of a hill, with a deep placid river at the foot of it, just as the dawn begins to break. It is a lovely prospect, which every step he takes is becoming more definite and more various in the daylight. Masses of oliander, of great beauty, with their red blossoms, fringed the river and tracked out its course into the distance. The bank of the hill below him, and on the right and left, was a maze of fruit-trees, about which nature, if it were not the hand of man, had had no thought except that they should be altogether there. 2. The wild olive, the pomegranate, the citron, the date, the mulberry, the peach, the apple, and the walnut, formed a sort of spontaneous orchard. Across the water groves of palmtrees waved their long and graceful branches in the morning breeze. The stately and solemn ilex, marshalled into long avenues, showed the way to substantial granges or luxurious villas. The green turf or grass was spread out beneath, and here and there flocks and herds were emerging out of the twilight and growing distinct upon the eye. 3. Elsewhere the ground rose up into sudden eminences crowned with chestnut woods, or with plantations of cedar and acacia, or wildernesses of the cork-tree, the turpentine, the carooba, the white poplar, and the Phoenician juniper; while overhead ascended the clinging tendrils of the hop, and an underwood of myrtle clothed their stems and roots. A profusion of wild-flowers carpeted the ground far and near. 4. Juba stood and gazed till the sun rose opposite to him, envying, repining, hating, like Satan looking in upon Paradise. The wild mountains or the locust-smitten tract would have better suited the tumult of his mind. It would have been a relief to him to have retreated from so fair a scene, and to have retraced his steps; but he was not his own master, and was hurried on. Sorely against his determined strong resolve and will, crying out and protesting and shuddering, the youth was forced along into the fulness of beauty and blessing with which he was so little in tune. 5. With rage and terror he recognized that he had no part in his own movements, but was a mere slave. In spite of himself he must go forward, and behold a peace and sweetness which witnessed against him. He dashed down through the thick grass, plunged into the water, and, without rest or respite, began a second course of aimless toil and travail through the day. 6. The savage dogs of the villages howled and fled from him as he passed by; beasts of burden, on their way to market, which he overtook or met, stood still, foamed and trembled; the bright birds, the blue jay and golden oriole, hid themselves under the leaves and grass; the storks, a religious and domestic bird, stopped their sharp clattering note from the high tree or farm-house turret, where they had placed their nests; the very reptiles skulked away from his shadow, as if it were poisonous. The boors who were at their labor in the fields suspended it to look at one whom the Furies were lashing and whirling on. Hour passed after hour, the sun attained its zenith, and then declined, but this dreadful compulsory race continued. 7. O, what would he have given for one five minutes of oblivion, of slumber, of relief from the burning thirst which now consumed him! But the master within him ruled his muscles and his joints, and the intense pain of weariness had no concomitant of prostration of strength. Suddenly he began to laugh hideously; and he went forward dancing and singing loud, and playing antics. He entered a hovel, made faces at the children, till one of them fell into convulsions, and he ran away with another; and, when some country people pursued him, he flung the child in their faces, saying, "Take that !" and said he was Pentheus, King of Thebes, of whom he had never heard, about to solemnize the orgies of Bacchus, and he began to spout a chorus of Greek, a language he had never learnt or heard spoken. 8. Now it is evening again, and he has come up to a village grove, where the rustics were holding a feast in honor of Pan. The hideous brutal god, with yawning mouth, horned head, and goat's feet, was placed in a rude shed, and a slaughtered lamb, decked with flowers, lay at his feet. The peasants were frisking before him, boys and women, when they were startled by the sight of a gaunt, wild, mysterions figure, which began to dance too. He flung and capered about with such vigor that they ceased their sport to look on, half with awe and half as a diversion. 9. Suddenly he began to groan and to shriek, as if contending with himself, and willing and not willing some new act; and the struggle ended in his falling on his hands and knees, and crawling like a quadruped towards the idol. When he got near his attitude was still more servile; still groaning and shuddering, he laid himself flat on the ground, and wriggled to the idol as a worm, and lapped up with his tongue the mingled blood and dust which lay about the sacrifice. And then again, as if Nature had successfully asserted her own dignity, he jumped up high in the air, and, falling on the god, broke him to pieces, and scampered away out of pursuit, before the lookers-on recovered from the surprise. NEWMAN. 37. WAITING FOR THE MAY. [Denis Florence M'Carthy, an Irish barrister of an ancient family, and born about 1820, ranks among the best living poets and most elegant writers of Ireland. Besides "Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics," he has enriched Englis literature, with some of the noblest translations we possess, especially from Calderon. He is, we believe, a barrister, and is also Professor of Poetry in the Catholic University of Ireland.] Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles, Ah my heart is weary waiting, 2. Ah! my heart is sick with longing, Longing to escape from study Ah! my heart is sick with longing, 8. Ah! my heart is sore with sighing, Sighing for their sure returning Ah my heart is sore with sighing, 4. Ah! my heart is pained with throbbing, Throbbing for the May Throbbing for the seaside billows, Or the water-wooing willows, Where in laughing and in sobbing Glide the streams away. Ah my heart is pained with throbbing, 5. Waiting, sad, dejected, weary, Waiting for the May. Spring goes by with wasted warnings Moonlit evenings, sunbright mornings- Man is ever weary, weary, Waiting for the May! D. F. M'CARTHY. A 38. ITALY. Nera it is in the life of any man, when, for the first time, he crosses the Alps. A sympathy is touched and developed that shall vibrate and expand forever. Upon that soil we learn that Imagination and Sentiment are the Italian elements of our nature. All things seem ideal, poetic, visionary. Splendors that the northern world knows only by halfheavenly flashes that fade before they can be felt, here are natural and permanent. From the valleys and plains of Italy summer is never entirely withdrawn, and winter seems but a tardier spring. 2. Elsewhere we have glimpses of her life in conservatories, and when we enter the guarded retreats, where orange-trees, and olives, and myrtles are garnered up as creating around them a kind of sacred soul-life, we say, "This is like Italy." Its atmosphere is fragrance, its soil is beauty, its canopy a glory unimaginable. Its air is a prism to turn the common light into enchantment. What melodies of color-violet, rose, purple-roll along its steeps! Yet the true fascination of Italy is of the soul; and the features of the scene enjoy our devotion on account of the Spirit that looks out from them, and which they typify. 3. It is the clime of Art,-the temple of the sacraments of the material transfigured into the spiritual; of the perpetual marriage of the formal with the divine. Life, thought, pas sion, manners, all things, partake of an aesthetic quality. An ethereal stream of ideal sentiment seems to float over the |