the vast laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be
nothing, or less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the
principles of all things, solitude for a child is the Agrippa's mirror of
the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude in life of millions upon
millions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none to love them. Deep
is the solitude of those who, with secret griefs, have none to pity them.
Deep is the solitude of those who, fighting with doubts or darkness, have
none to counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes is
that which broods over childhood, bringing before it at intervals the
final solitude which watches for it, and is waiting for it within the
gates of death. Reader, I tell you a truth, and hereafter I will convince
you of this truth, that for a Grecian child solitude was nothing, but for
a Christian child it has become the power of God and the mystery of God.
Oh, mighty and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to
be--thou, kindling under the torch of Christian revelations, art now
transfigured for ever, and hast passed from a blank negation into a secret
hieroglyphic from God, shadowing in the hearts of infancy the very dimmest
of his truths!

MRS POOLE'S "ENGLISHWOMAN IN EGYPT."[13]

An "Englishwoman in Egypt," thanks to the Mediterranean steamers and the
overland route to India, is no longer so unusual or astounding a spectacle
as it would appear to have been five-and-twenty years ago, when that
dilettante traveller, Monsieur le Comte de Forbin, made a precipitate
retreat from Thebes in consequence of the shock sustained by his nerves,
from encountering among the ruins "une femme-de-chambre Anglaise, en petit
_spencer_ couleur de rose," in the person of the Countess of Belmore's
lady's-maid; though the Quarterly Reviewers, who in those days had no
mercy for a French misstatement, even in the colour of a soubrette's
dress, triumphantly declared the offending garment to have been "a
pale-blue pelisse;" and proceeded to demolish the hapless Count
accordingly--(_Quarterly Review_, Vol. xxiii. p. 92.) Since the period of
this rencontre, the _ill-omened_ blue eyes,[14] as well as blue pelisses,
of our countrywomen, have been seen with sufficient frequency on the banks
of the Nile to render the one, it is to be hoped, no longer an object of
alarm to the natives, nor the latter to errant members of the Institute:
but a narrative of the impressions produced on