cool and breezy and soft, nor had he ever seen so glorious a water. "If ye dinna get a fou basket the nicht an' a feed the morn, William Laverhope, your right hand has forgot its cunning," said he to himself.

He took the rod carefully out, put it together, and made trial casts on the green. He tied the flies on a cast and put it ready for use in his own primitive fly-book, and then bestowed the whole in the breast-pocket of his coat. He had arrayed himself in his best, with a white rose in his button-hole, for it behoved a man to be well dressed on such an occasion as voting. But yet he did not start. Some fascination in the rod made him linger and try it again and again.

Then he resolutely laid it down and made to go. But something caught his eye the swirl of the stream as it left the great pool at the hay-field, or the glimpse of still gleaming water. The impulse was too strong to be resisted. There was time enough and to spare. The pool was on his way to the town, he would try one cast ere he started, just to see if the water was good. So, with rod on his shoulder, he set off.

Somewhere in the background a man, who had been watching his movements, turned away, laughing silently, and filling his pipe.

A great trout rose to the fly in the hay-field pool, and ran the line upstream till he broke it. The ploughman swore deeply and stamped on the ground with aggravation. His blood was up, and he prepared for battle. Carefully, skilfully he fished, with every nerve on tension and ever-watchful eyes. Meanwhile miles off in the town the bustle went on, but the eager fisherman by the river heeded it not.

Late in the evening, just at the darkening, a figure arrayed in Sunday clothes, but all wet and mud-stained, came up the road to the farm. Over his shoulder he carried a rod, and in one hand a long string of noble trout. But the expression on his face was not triumphant; a settled melancholy over

spread his countenance, and he groaned as he walked.

Mephistopheles stood by the garden gate, smoking and surveying his fields. A well-satisfied smile hovered about his mouth, and his air was the air of one well at ease with the world.

"Weel, I see ye've had guid sport," said he to the melancholy Faust. "By the by, I didna notice ye in the toun. And losh! man, what in the warld have ye dune to your guid claes?”

The other made no answer. Slowly he took the rod to pieces and strapped it up; he took the fly-book from his pocket; he selected two fish from the heap; and laid the whole before the farmer.

"There ye are," said he, "and I'm verra much obleeged to ye for your kindness." But his tone was one of desperation and not of gratitude; and his face, as he went onward, was a study in eloquence repressed.

From The New Review.

TRADITIONS OF THE FIJIANS. The Sacred Mountain of Nakauvandra-the Pandanus Tree-so called from the hut first built there by the ancestor god, Dengei, the father of the race is at once the Olympus and the Orcus of the Fijians. There, in a cave, Dengei lies coiled in serpent form, resting from his Titan battle with his grandsons. When he turns his mighty coils the earth trembles. From the tree stump near the cave mouth burst the great fountain that deluged the world, and swept away his rebel subjects to the westward. Hither come the Spirits of the Dead to prepare for their last leap into the western ocean. An old saga relates the coming of the man Dengei, in the first canoe to reach Fiji from the west, for the mythology of the South Sea Islanders, if not of all races of mankind, is traditional history. Plainly the father who, being alive, had ruled the whole joint family, and ordered every detail in the daily life of every member of it, could not have ceased to watch over them be

was heard no more. If they did the things of which he had disapproved, punishment would surely overtake them: the crops would fail, a hurricane unroof the hut, a flood sweep away the canoes. He watched over his children: if their nets were full, it was he who had led the fish to them; if they vanquished their enemies, it was that he had strengthened their arms in response to their prayers and offerings. His descendants in the purest line owned something of his godhead, claimed something of the worship and service due to him, were set within the pale of the tabu, and might not be disobeyed, or even touched, without evoking the wrath of the unseen. the tribe multiplied, the Common Ancestor rose step by step in godhead, the centre of a group of lesser gods, his own descendants. The poet glossed his life history with heroic incidents, magnifying his stature, his strength, his deeds until he took a colossal, elu sive human shape. The mythology of Polynesia is a study in miniature of the genesis of all religions.

As

But the Shades do not climb the rugged sides of the Sacred Mountain because their gods dwell thereupon, but rather because it is the high land on which the fathers of their race set foot when they landed from the westward. In nearly every island in the South Seas there is a spot whence the Shades of the Dead leap into the ocean to be ferried over to the Spirit World. These jumping-off places (Thombo thombo) are steep cliffs facing the

originally came-a place where the air is warmer, the yams are larger, the earth is more fruitful, the life more easy. The land of their origin is the goal of the Shades after death, and if they seem to tarry on the way, it is because their haven is so remote, and the dangers of the road are so obvious, that the mind does not care to follow them beyond their arrival at the leaping-place. Is the Polynesian heaven an unnatural creation? We make a paradise ourselves of our old home. Emigrant Englishmen never tire of telling their children of the wonders and delights of "home" as contrasted with the poverty of their adopted country. If Canadians or South Africans had no beliefs concerning a future state, and knew nothing of England but what their fathers had told them, England would have come to be a mysterious paradise, where their souls would journey after death, and their jumping-off place would lie at the mouth of the St. Lawrence or the Orange River. In Fiji every island has its "jumping-off place," most of them pointing back to Nakauvandra, whence the effluent of immigration reached them. Every district on the main island has its own Path of the Shades by which the Spirits travel to the mountain. The traditions of each tribe vary with the features of the country traversed by its path; but the main incidents are the same, and therefore it is fair to take the Spirit Path of the tribes in the delta of the Rewa as a fair specimen of a Melanesin Book of the Dead.

The Greenland Birch.-The midget of the whole tree family is the Greenland birch. It is a perfect tree in every sense of that term, and lives its allotted number of years (from seventy-five to one hundred and thirty), just as other species of the great birch family do, although its height, under the most favorable conditions, seldom exceeds ten inches. Whole

bluffs of the east and south-east coast of Greenland are covered with "thickets" of this diminutive species of woody plant. and in many places, where the soil is uncommonly poor and frozen from eight to ten months a year, a "forest" of these trees will flourish for half a century without growing to a height exceeding four inches.

From The Quarterly Review. CHILDREN YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY.1 "Nicht bloss der Stolz des Menschen füllt den Raum mit Geistern, mit geheimnissvollen Kräften, auch für ein lebend Herz ist die gemeine Natur zu eng, und tiefere Bedeutung liegt in dem Mährchen meiner Kinderjahre, als in der Wahrheit, die das Leben lehrt," So speaks Schiller by the mouth of Max Piccolomini in his "Wallenstein," and they are words of eternal wisdom. The mind and the memory in early youth are susceptible as melting wax to even fugitive impressions, and anything that lays firm hold of the fancy must leave an indelible mark, and may possibly shape an existence. What sends so many boys of all classes to sea, in spite of the parental warnings, and the assurance, generally amounting to conviction, of the sorrows awaiting the novice? The inLate spirit of adventure has been nursed on sea-tales from the sagas of marauding sea-kings down to the battle of the Nile and Trafalgar: the boy has cherished his fancy on Cooper and Michael Scott and Marryat; he revels in the dashing deeds of the buccaneers, and has even shamefaced admiration for such chivalrous pirates as the Red Rover or Adderfang; he looks at all in ros 2 color and little in shadow. He will see a world of strange countries, and make acquaintance with marvellous customs;

a

1 1. Sandford and Merton. By Thomas Day.

Three vols. 1783-89.

even the thrilling narratives of terrible catastrophes a e rather incentives than deterrents, for he is pretty sure to be saved in the boats, and may be cast up to play the Crusoe on some enchanted island. It does not occur to him that Defoe and his imitators take care to supply their castaways with the stores of a well-found ship; and that for one man who has been snatched from death by a miracle, many scores have gone straight to the bottom or survived for lingering tortures. So at the present moment more stringent legislation is contemplated for the suppression of the cheap sensational literature which is supposed to occupy the police courts and fill the prisons. The most experienced judges and magistrates have expressed their convictions that many a Jack Sheppard in embryo might have betaken himself to an honest trade and grown up a valuable member of society, had he not been demoralized by the desire to em

ulate the deeds of the heroes of the Newgate Calendar.

These, no doubt, are extreme illustrations. Our girls do not go to sea, nor are the boys of the upper orders seduced into bloodshed and burglary. But, looking at the matter in its lighter aspects, the same principle still holds good. The mind is formed by its intellectual food, and the chief element of success in instruction consists in making education at once enjoyable and beneficial. Recreation is not only to be sought in dancing or out-of-door games,

Mrs. Barbauld. Six vols. 1792-95.

3. The Story of the Robins. By Mrs. Trimmer. New edition. 1785.

they are in their place; it ought to be made an essential part of study. The

Mrs. Sherwood. New edition. Circa 1788.

5. The Parents' Assistant. worth. New edition. 1796. And many others.

By Maria Edge

The words are thus rendered by Coleridge:""Tis not merely The human being's pride that peoples space With life and mystical predominance; Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love This visible nature and this common world Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import Lurks in the legend told my youthful years, Than lies upon that truth we live to learn." (Wallenstein, Part II. The Piccolomini, Act iii. sc. 2.)

tically and dramatically active than in the nursery or schoolroom, should be stimulated and guided. Read the life of any distinguished man or woman, and we shall see that in the choice of books from earliest childhood they showed decided predilections. Omnivorous readers they may have been where books were scarce, but at least they knew exactly what pleased them; and we almost invariably find that their future career, when they were free to shape it, was the reflection of those