the space of five hours, during which I fainted eight or nine times." 4th. A fourth kind of torture was a cell called "little ease.' It was of so small dimensions, and so construct ed, that the prisoner could neither stand, walk, sit, nor lie in it at full length. He was compelled to draw himself up in a squatting posture, and so remain during several days. and would afford some kind of amusement to divert their minds from incessantly dwelling on their own forlorn and hopeless condition. Is it too much to say that something would be gained for the happiness of the human kind, if all men were agreed that, wherever there was a habitation, whether for an individual family, or for a number of persons, strangers to each other, such as hospitals, workhouses, prisons, asylums, infirmaries, and It would lead us into too wide a field to point out even barracks, there should be a garden? In our the various considerations which suggest themselves opinion, a dwelling without a garden ought not to exist. upon a review of this subject. The facts above col--Loudon's Gardener's Magazine, February. lected are, however, well worthy the attention of the student of our constitutional history; for the long continuance, under the authority of the royal prerogative alone, of a practice directly opposed to the fundamental principles of reason, justice, and law, condemned and denounced by the opinions of the wisest lawyers and statesmen, at the very time that they were compelled to act upon it, furnishes a very remarkable instance of the existence, in former times, of a power above the law, controlling and subverting the law, and rendering its practical application altogether inconsistent with its theoretical excellence. The above interesting account is abridged from a volume just published in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Criminal Trials. TO THE CUCKOO. O blithe new-comer! I have heard, I hear thee, and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, Or but a wandering voice? While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear, That seems to fill the whole air's space, Thrice welcome, darling of the spring! The same whom in my schoolboy days Which made me look a thousand ways, Through woods and on the green; And I can listen to thee yet, Can lie upon the plain, And listen till I do beget That golden time again. GARDENS. WORDSWORTH. In the Great Marylebone Workhouse, which has a front that, for length, and the size and number of the windows, might be compared to a Russian palace, there are constantly from eighty to one hundred and twenty very old men and women, who are led or carried out, one by one, every morning, and set down on a bench under a shed, or, when the weather is fine, in the sun, where they remain almost in a state of torpor, being unable to help themselves and having no one to attend to them, till they are led or carried, one by one, back again, at the time appointed for their next meal. What a picture of human desolation! If, instead of being placed upon benches, with nothing to gaze at but a brick wall, these persons were led into a garden, where they could see numbers of their fellow-inmates at work, breathe the fresh air, see and smell the flowers, and, hear the birds and other rural sounds, their miserable lot would have some little alleviation. A number of them could perhaps assist in some of the lighter garden operations; the most infirm could scare away the birds, or prepare gooseberries and vegetables for the kitchen. This might enable them to measure their time as it goes, THE CRAFTS OF GERMANY. governed by usages of great antiquity, with a fund to defray the co THE different crafts in Germany are incorporations recognised by law, porate expenses, and, in each considerable town, a house of entertain ment is selected as the house of call, or harbor, as it is styled, of each particular craft. Thus you see, in the German towns, a number of miths' Harbor, &c. No one is allowed to set up as a master worktaverns indicated by their signs, as the Masons' Harbor, the Blackman in any trade, unless he is admitted as a freeman or member of the craft; and such is the stationary condition of most parts of Germany, that no person is admitted as a master workman in any trade, except to supply the place of some one deceased, or retired from business. When such a vacancy occurs, all those desirous of being permitted to fill it present a piece of work, executed as well as they are able to do it, which is called their master-piece, being offered to obtain the place of a master workman, Nominally, the best workman gets the place; but you will easily conceive, that, in reality, some kind of favouritism must generally decide it. Thus is every man obliged to submit to all the chances of a popular election whether he shall be allowed to work for his bread; and that, too, in a country where the people are not permitted to have any agency in choosing their rulers. But the restraints on journeymen, in that country, are still more oppressive. As soon as the years of apprenticeship have expired, the young mechanic is obliged, in the phrase of the country, to wander for three years. For this purpose he is furnished, by the master of the craft in which he has served his apprenticeship, with a duly-authenticated wandering book, with which he goes forth to seek employment. In whatever city he arrives, on presenting himself with his credential, at the house of call, or harbor, of the craft in which he has served his time, he is allowed, gratis, a day's food and a night's lodging. If he wishes to get employment in that place, he is assisted in procuring it. If he does not wish to, or fails in the attempt, he must pursue his wandering; and this lasts for three years before he can be anywhere admitted as a master. I have heard it argued, that this system had the advantage of circulating knowledge from place to place, and imparting to the young artisan the fruits of travel and intercourse with the world. But, however beneficial travelling may be, when undertaken by those who have the taste and capacity to profit by it, I cannot but think, that to compel every young man who has just served out his time to leave his home, in the manner I have described, must bring his habits and morals into peril, and be regarded rather as a hardship than as an advantage. There is no sanctuary of virtue like home. From Everett's Address. YOUTH AND AGE. He bounds along his craggy road, And if the mist, retiring slow, Roll round its wavy white, But when behind the western clouds Pursues his evening way! And if the mists of night close round, SOUTHEY, IMPROVEMENTS IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY. | difficult and unnecessary to enumerate one-tenth of the [Extracted from the last number of the Westminster Review.] achievements of modern surgery; and it were superfluous to add that it is to anatomy, and to anatomy alone, that all improvements in this department can be traced. SINGING OF BIRDS, Ir is a fact capable of demonstration, that since the healing art reached that point of cultivation which entitled it to the name of science, disease has been gradually decreasing both in frequency and fatality. And it is equally capable of proof, that the degree of perfection with which anatomy has been studied at any successive periods, may be safely taken as the rule by which the progress of all the other branches of the science may be ascertained. And on what else should it depend ;-how much does a watch-maker know about a watch by counting its beats, and looking at the out-thrush, in a mild, moist April, will commence his tune early in the side? As anatomy has been encouraged, so has medicine progressed. Wherever dissection was forbidden, surgery declined; and, even in the present day, those schools of medicine in which dissection is most liberally practised, send out into society surgeons and physicians who seldom fail to prove in after life the accuracy of Baillie's assertion, that "the dead body is that great basis on which we are to build the knowledge that is to guide us in distributing life and health to our fellow-creatures." Sir William Petty (who died about 150 years since) states, that the proportion of deaths to cures in St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's Hospitals, was in his time one to seven; while we know by subsequent documents, that in St. Thomas's Hospital, during 1741, the mortality had diminished to one in ten; during 1780, to one in fourteen; during 1813, to one in sixteen; and that, during 1827, out of 12,494 patients treated, 259 only were buried, or one in forty-morning with the unceasing monotony of its song; and, though there eight. As his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex has justly said "Indeed, such is the advantage which has been already derived from the improvement of medical science in this line of study, that comparing the value [From the Journal of a Naturalist.] THE singing of most birds seems entirely a spontaneous effusion, produced by no exertion, or occasioning no lassitude in muscle, or relaxation of the parts of action. In certain seasons and weather, the nightingale sings all day, and most part of the night; and we never observe that the powers of song are weaker, or that the notes become harsh and untunable, after all these hours of practice. The songmorning, pipe unceasingly through the day, yet, at the close of eve, when he retires to rest, there is no obvious decay of his musical powers, or any sensible effort required to continue his harmony to the last. Birds of one species sing in general very like each other, with different degrees of execution. Some counties may produce finer songsters, but without great variation in the notes. In the thrush, however, it is remarkable that there seems to be no regular notes, each individual piping a voluntary of his own. The voices may always former will more particularly engage attention by a peculiar modulabe distinguished amid the choristers of the copse, yet some one pertion or tune; and should several stations of these birds be visited the same morning, few or none probably will be found to persevere in the same round of notes; whatever is uttered seeming the effusion of the moment. At times a strain will break out perfectly unlike any any repetition of it.' Harsh, strained, and tense, as the notes of this preceding utterance, and we may wait a long time without noticing bird are, yet they are pleasing from their variety. The voice of the blackbird is infinitely more mellow, but has much less variety, compass, or execution; and he too commences his carols with the morning light, persevering from hour to hour without effort, or any sensible faltering of voice.-The cuckoo wearies us throughout some long May are others as vociferous, yet it is the only bird I know that seems to suffer from the use of the organs of voice. Little exertion as the few notes it makes use of seem to require, yet, by the middle or end of June, it loses its utterance, becomes hoarse, and ceases from any further essay. Robespierre. The following is a brief and striking sketch of the man who attained so sanguinary a celebrity, and reigned absolute Sultan of the "Reign of Terror:" "I had two private conversations with Robespierre," says Dumont; "he had a sinister aspect; he never looked one in the face; he had a twinkling, winking motion in his eyes, which was continual and painful. Once I saw him on some business relating to Geneva; he asked some explanations from me, and I pressed him to speak; when he rose to speak in public, and from the moment he so began he told me that he was as timid as a child, that he always trembled speaking, he could not hear his own voice!" Curious proof of Mirabeau's popularity.-"Your horses are very bad," said one to a post-boy, between Calais and Amiens. "Yes," replied he, my two wheelers are bad, but my Mirabeau is excelMirabeau, as he did the most of the work, and provided the Mirabeau lent!" The third horse, in the middle, was then commonly called the was good, they did not care for the rest."-Dumont's Recollections of Mirabeau. of life as it is now calculated to what it was a hundred years ago, it has absolutely doubled. The most fatally malignant diseases have become comparatively mild in the hands of modern physicians. The entire half of our population were at one time destroyed by one disease alone-small-pox; the mortality of which at the present time is but fractional. Typhus fever was once accustomed to visit this country in annual epidemics, and to slay one out of every three whom it attacked; whereas in the present day it is seldom seen as an epidemic, and its average mortality does not amount to one in sixteen. Measles, scarlet fever, hooping-cough, and consumption, are no longer regarded with the extreme terror in which they were once viewed. From 1799 to 1808 the mortality of consumption amounted to about twenty-seven per cent. of those who became ill; from 1808 to 1813 it diminished to twenty-three; and from 1813 to 1822 it still further decreased to twenty-two Mr. Locke was asked how he had contrived to accumulate per cent.” * * * * As anatomy was more attended to, replied, that he attributed what little he knew, to the not a mine of knowledge so rich, yet so extensive and deep. He surgery proportionally advanced, until in the days of Har-having been ashamed to ask for information; and to the vey (who discovered the circulation of the blood about the year 1610), bold and important operations were attempted. The extreme clumsiness and cruelty with which they were even then performed, could scarcely be credited, had we not in our possession some descriptions of them by those house under the canopy of heaven, has no sooner finished The Kham of Tartary, who does not possess a single who operated. Thus, Fabricius of Aquapendente, pre-his repast of mare's milk and horse-flesh, than he causes a ceptor of the immortal Harvey, describes what he con- herald to proclaim from his seat that all the princes and sidered an improved and easy operation in the follow-potentates of the earth have his permission to go to dinner. ing terms:-" If it be a movable tumour, I cut it away with a red-hot knife, that sears as it cuts; but if it be adherent to the chest, I cut it without bleeding or pain, with a wooden or horn knife soaked in aqua-fortis, with which having cut the skin I dig out the rest with my fingers." It is little more than fifty years ago when Mr. Sharpe, one of the most eminent surgeons of London at that time, denied the possibility of the thigh-bone being dislocated at the hip joint, an accident which occurs daily, and which the merest bone-setter in the kingdom can now detect. But it were a task equally rule he had laid down, of conversing with all descriptions of men, on those topics chiefly that formed their own peculiar professions or pursuits. ERRATUM IN No. IV.-In page 30, line 16 of the first column, for April 26 read April 25. LONDON:-CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL EAST.' London, GROOMERIDGE, Panyer Alley, Hull, STEPHENSON. Liverpool, WILLMER and SMITH. Manchester, ROBINSON, and WERE Newcastle-upon-Tyne, CHARNLEY, Edinburgh, OLIVER and BOYD. Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Stamford Street, feet in height. Some additions, which were made to it after this, were not completed till 1315, in the reign of Edward II., the ninth king after him, in whose reign the first stone of the pile had been laid. This was the building we now call old St. Paul's, the immediate predecessor of the present cathedral. It was one of the largest edifices in the world, and in its best days, before it was deformed by the successive repairs to which it was subjected, and the various foreign incumbrances under which it was long buried, it was no doubt a grand and imposing structure. But, from the causes we have mentioned, its form in the course of time underwent so many changes that at last it pre congruity and confusion. The spire was of timber, but in 1315 it was found to be so much decayed that the upper part of it had to be taken down and replaced. It was upon this occasion that a ball, surmounted by a cross, was first fixed upon the termination of the spire.. THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. PAUL'S. THE elevated situation of the spot on which St. Paul's is built, seems to have pointed it out from very ancient times for religious or other public purposes. Without adopting the very doubtful opinion of some antiquaries, that the Romans during their occupation of the island had erected a temple to Diana upon this eminence-an opinion which has not even the support of tradition, and which Sir Christopher Wren, when he dug the foundations of the present church, became convinced had no other support-it seems to be clear that these foreigners used it for a cemetery or burial place, if not for any thing more sacred. On the erection of the present building many Roman funeral vases, lacry-sented the appearance of little else than a heap of inmatories, and other articles used in sepulture, were found at a considerable depth under the surface. Next to these lay in rows skeletons of the ancient Britons; and immediately above them, Saxons in stone coffins, or in graves lined with chalk, together with pins of ivory and box wood which had fastened their grave clothes. The first accident which befel the church was the The earliest building which is actually recorded to have consequence of a violent tempest of thunder and wind stood on this site was a Christian church, built about which burst over the metropolis on the 1st of February, the year 610, by Ethelbert, King of Kent, the first of 1444. The lightning having struck the spire set it on the Saxon princes who was converted by St. Augustine. fire; and although a priest succeeded in extinguishing It was dedicated to St. Paul, and the old historians tell the flames, a good deal of damage was done, so that it us was indebted for the latest improvements which it was not till the year 1462 that the gilded ball with the received to the liberality of St. Erkenwald, the bishop cross again made its appearance on the summit of the of the diocese, who died in 681. However, it could building. A much more serious disaster than this, scarcely have been a very magnificent or extensive edi- however, happened about a century afterwards. On the fice, if it be true, as is related, that upon its being acci- 4th of June, 1561, a plumber who was employed in dentally burned down in 961, it was rebuilt the same making some repairs, thoughtlessly left a pan of coals year. After this it was again destroyed by fire in the burning within the spire while he went to dinner; the year 1087; when the Norman bishop, Mamki, who flames from which caught the adjacent wooden work, had just been appointed to the see, resolved to under- and .n no long time set the whole building in a blaze. take its restoration, on a much larger and more splen- In spite of everything that could be done, the confladid scale, at his own expense. Both he and his suc-gration continued to rage till it had consumed every cessor De Belmeis, each of whom presided twenty years thing about the church that was combustible, and over the diocese, are said to have devoted all their re- reduced it to a mere skeleton of bare and blackened venues to this great work; but it was not finished till walls. the time of Bishop Niger, the fourth after De Belmeis, in the year 1240. In 1135, indeed, the uncompleted building had again caught fire, and been nearly burned to the ground. When the fabric, which might thus be called ancient, even while it was yet new, at last stood ready for consecration, it exhibited a mass 690 feet in length by 130 in breadth, surmounted by a spire 520 | VOL. I. With such ardour, however, did the Queen (Elizabeth), and, it may be said indeed, the whole nation, promote the scheme of restoring the sacred edifice, all ranks contributing to the pious and patriotic work, that in the space of about five years it was again opened for worship. But it never recovered its ancient splendour: the spire, in particular, was not rebuilt at all; and from the short ness of the time spent in the restoration altogether, it is probable that other parts of the work were hurried over without much attention either to strength or beauty. By the end of the reign of Elizabeth accordingly, the structure had fallen into sad decay; so that it was found in 1608 that it could not be repaired under a cost of considerably more than twenty thousand pounds. It was not, however, till 1633, in the reign of Charles I., that the repairs were actually begun, the interval having been spent in attempts to collect the necessary funds by subscription. Meanwhile the cathedral was every year becoming more ruinous. The money subscribed at last amounted to above a hundred thousand pounds, and then the celebrated Inigo Jones having been appointed to superintend the work, it was, as we have said, pro ceeded with. We shall now mention some particulars to show the extraordinary state of neglect and ruin into which this once proud edifice had been by this time allowed to fall. Towards the close of the sixteenth century it is stated, that the benches at the door of the choir were commonly used by beggars and drunkards for sleeping on, and that a large dunghill lay within one of the doors of the church. The place indeed was the common resort of idlers of all descriptions, who used to walk about in the most irreverent manner with their hats on even during the performance of divine service. More than twenty private houses were built against the walls of the church, the owners of several of which had cut closets out of the sacred edifice, while in other instances doors had been made into the vaults which were converted into cellars. At one of the visitations the verger presented that "the shrouds and cloisters under the convocation-house are made a common lay-stall for boards, trunks, and chests, being let out unto trunk-makers; where, by means of their daily knocking and noise, the church is greatly disturbed." One house, partly formed of the church, is stated to have been " lately used as a play-house;" the owner of another, which was built upon the foundation of the church, had contrived a way through a window into a part of the steeple, which he had turned into a ware-room; and a third person had excavated an oven in one of the buttresses, in which he baked his bread and pies. The first thing which Jones did was to clear away these obstructions, after which the work of restoration proceeded slowly but with tolerable regularity till the commencement of the civil wars in 1642. In 1643, not only all the revenues of the cathedral, but the funds which had been collected for repairing it, together with all the unused building materials, were seized by the Parliament. The scaffolding was given to the soldiers of Colonel Jephson's regiment for arrears of pay; on which, no man hindering them, they dug pits in the middle of the church to saw the timber in. Another part of the building was converted into a barrack for dragoons and a stable. Public worship, nevertheless, was still celebrated in the east end and a part of the choir, which was separated from the rest by a brick wall, the congregation entering through one of the north windows which was converted into a door. At the west end Inigo Jones had erected a portico of great beauty, consisting of fourteen columns, each rising to the lofty height of forty-six feet, and the whole supporting an entablature crowned with statues. These statues were thrown down and broken in pieces; and shops were built within the portico, in which commodities of all sorts were sold. The wood-cut, at the head of this article, represents the cathedral as it was drawn by Hollar in 1656. In this state things continued till the restoration. Soon after that event, the repairing of St. Paul's again engaged the thoughts of the king and the public; and subscriptions to a considerable amount having been once more obtained, the work was recommenced on the 1st of August, 1663. Three years afterwards, however, (in September, 1666,) before it had been nearly completed, the great fire, which consumed half the metropolis, seized in its progress westward upon the scaffolding by which the cathedral was surrounded, and, after an awful conflagration, left it a mere mass of ruins. History has recorded no finer instance of national spirit than the noble courage and alacrity with which the citizens of London, and the English government, and people generally, rose from this terrible calamity and applied themselves to restore all that it had destroyed. In the plans which were immediately taken into consideration for rebuilding the city, St. Paul's was not forgotten. Sir Christopher Wren, who had been employed in superintending the previous repairs, was ordered to examine and report upon the state in which the foundations of the building were, and so much of the walls as was left standing. At first it was thought that a considerable portion of the old church might still be found available; but this idea was eventually given up; and on the 21st of June, 1675, the foundation-stone of the present building was laid. From this time the work proceeded without interruption till its completion in 1710. The same great architect, Sir Christopher Wren, presided over and directed the work from its commencement to its close. For this, all that he received was £200 a year; and the commissioners had even the spite and meanness, after the building was considerably advanced, to suspend the payment of one half of this pittance till the edifice should be finished, under the pretence of thereby better securing the diligence and expedition of the architect. In fact, it was with no small difficulty that Sir Christopher at last got his money at all. The whole expense of rebuilding the cathedral was £736,000, which was raised almost entirely by a small tax on coals. The church of St Peter's at Rome, which is indeed a building of greater dimensions, but to which St. Paul's ranks next even in that respect among the sacred edifices of Christendom, took one hundred and forty-five years to build, was the work of twelve successive architects, and exhausted the revenues of nineteen successive popes. It is worthy of remark, that St. Paul's was begun and completed not only by one architect, and one master mason, Mr. Thomas Strong, but also while one bishop, Dr. Henry Crompton, presided over the diocese. AN EMIGRANTS STRUGGLES. WHEN we set out upon our expedition, which I have just mentioned, we had two servants with us, and as many dogs. One man carried some biscuits; another a bottle of rum, a piece of beef, and a little tea and sugar, with a couple of tea-pots. Immediately behind my house there is a fine long hill, rising, with an easy slope, to the height of five hundred or six hundred feet, and covered, like the country in general, with trees and grass. It has been the practice to allow proprietors of cattle and sheep to graze on the unlocated parts, which they were obliged to quit on settlers coming to occupy the ground. These herds were generally left in the care of one or two men, while the proprietor lived in Hobart Town; the consequence of which was, that the cattle were allowed to stray wherever they chose, and became altogether wild. This was the case where I have settled; and although the herdsmen have removed themselves to their assigned limits, the cattle are still on my ground, and have been the cause of my suffering one of the most serious inconveniences which can befal a settler. For I had scarcely arrived on my land when my working bullocks got into the wild herd, with which they continue until this day. This our passage through it quite laborious. In one part we struck a light, and the wind blowing with great keenness, the grass blazed up in a few minutes, the flame extending for nearly half a mile. Our provisions were now quite exhausted, and we had to recreate ourselves with tea, and chat beside a beautiful cascade on the river. In these high regions we found several maple trees, with sweet unctuous juice exuding from the bark. You can hardly form an idea of the beauty of the heavens, as the vault appeared to the eye, while we reposed on a kangaroo rug on the grass, beside a large fire which illumined the trees, and with a fine sweep of the river winding its way before us, and reflecting the silvery beams of the moon. Next morning, after walking three or four miles, we killed a kangaroo, and fared sumptuously on a sticker-up. Thus refreshed, we descended towards home. We had explored in this journey a region which no European had ever seen before, and had ascended to some of the highest ground in the island. I should calculate my habitation to be nearly two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and I think we ascended as much more. You may suppose what romantic rapids and cascades occur in the course of a river which falls that height in the course of thirty miles. Just before my door I have a broad placid stream resembling a lake, over which I have made a flying bridge, by means of a rope and the elm-tree case of my wife's piano, which answers the purpose so well that I brought over seven hundred sheep belonging to Mrs. Smith, the other day, by twenty at a time. completely at my own command, for if a visitor comes he must hail on the opposite side before I slacken my rope, and allow him to pull the boat over. I am has completely baulked my agricultural projects, obliging me to perform by manual labour what the beasts of the field should have done for me. But I am again digressing, and tiring you with my misfortunes, instead of giving you an account of our journey. As we approached the river Ouse we found its banks had been lately burnt by the natives, and the grass and smaller trees were completely consumed. After some search we found a place which we ventured to wade, but it was with great difficulty we could keep our feet. Sometimes the dogs would kill a kangaroo, and as we had not time or opportunity to make use of it, the huge crows, which abound in the woods, soon hovered over the carcase in great numbers. These crows are of the same genus as your English ones, but of a different species. They are very large, and distinguished by a white ring round the eye: they have even more cunning than their brethren of the old world. The banks on the further side of the Ouse are yet steeper than on this. We continued to ascend over the burnt ground, and underneath huge trees, for about five miles, till we arrived at the stock-keeper's hut, which we discovered by the help of the track of horses. Here we found eight men, who had been sent up a few days before to erect a hut and stackyard for the cattle. They had sheltered themselves by branches of trees, and burnt a large fire in front. They had chosen a spot beside a small spring of water, in the midst of a large valley, which was almost clear of trees. After making some kangaroo soup we again set out, and bending our course more to the north, so as to keep near the river, we arrived at sun-set on the border of a beautiful lake. It appeared about seven miles long, and proportionably broad, with two lofty islands in the midst of it. The water was very soft and We have no fish in these rivers, excepting some fresh clear; its bed seemed to be composed of fine sand, and water craw-fish, such as are found in the Thames, some very shallow. Having formed our encampment near eels, and a small thing not worth catching. We someits brink, and lighted three very large fires to keep our- times, however, shoot a wild duck or a widgeon, which selves warm, we commenced making tea. One of the are both large and good. We have also a kind of piparty fired a shot over its surface; the discharge was geon, which is very fine eating, and many other smaller succeeded by a long and lasting peal like thunder, birds, besides cockatoos. innumerable, both black and which had a sublime effect. We therefore named this white, and some beautiful parrots and paroquets. But piéce of water Lake Echo. We were now on very high the bird which chiefly enlivens the grove is a species of ground, and seemed to overlook all the mountains magpie, which sings two regular bars of music, of the around us. In the morning, at peep of day, we took clearest and sweetest notes you can imagine. On leave of this enchanting scene, which we had admired taking possession of my grant, my plan was to build a at the two periods most favourable to the display of its rough hut for my servants, which I should inhabit beauty with the rising and the setting sun. The surface whilst a better one was erecting for myself, but the loss remained as even as glass, and the shadows of its of my bullocks made me fain to make the best of my banks and islands gave a soft serenity to the landscape. first habitation. It is entirely built of the materials on the A fine open valley led us down to the river, but we ground, excepting the nails, which came from England, traversed it with difficulty, for during the wet season and the window-frames, which were made in Hobart Town the water had so lodged in it that it was now full of The walls are composed of logs or planks split out of holes, and we were never sure of a step. We passed the trees, of about a foot broad, and two or three inches many recent encampments of the natives, and saw their thick. These are sunk two feet in the ground, and fires at a little distance. As we approached the river nailed to a beam at the top; they are then plastered the dog started a large kangaroo, and hunted it down over with a mixture composed of sand, clay, and grass on the plain. This was a seasonable supply. We im- cut short, and the wall is complete. The roof is covered mediately commenced cooking; cutting off some steaks, with shingles, which are also split out of the trees round we strung them on a stick, and set them before the the house, and have exactly the appearance of slates. fire; when one side was done we turned the other;-this | I have not yet been able to make a floor, we therefore is what they call a sticker-up, and our manner of cooking walk at present upon the bare earth. As I cannot afthem is called bush-fashion. The slang nomenclature ford to buy another set of bullocks (for they cost 877.) which the convicts have imposed on this land is in many I must wait patiently till I recover them when the wild instances unpleasant and vulgar, but sometimes appro- | herds are got in. This of course throws me into great priate. Having made a comfortable meal we again crossed the Ouse, but with still greater difficulty than we had encountered the day before. The intermediate space between the rivers is here still more mountainous than behind my house, and is covered with large rugged stones, and fine lofty trees. We passed several encampments of the natives. Pursuing our way, we soon came to the Shannon, which we crossed, as the eastern side afforded the best walking. Here we entered on an extensive plain, but so rough, and so obstructed with rushes, as to render difficulties. I have, however, upwards of one hundred sheep, two cows, and three or four young ones, a gcat, and a pig, besides eight hens. These last thrive amazingly, chiefly owing to the number of grasshoppers which they eat. I have just heard of an opportunity to send off a letter, and I therefore hasten to a conclusion. It is strange, when I reflect upon it, that any vicissitudes of life should have induced me voluntarily to undergo separation from my friends; to desert their company for |