by the fire which dresses it.--_Monthly Magazine_.

* * * * *

THE TRUE GENTLEMAN.

By a gentleman, we mean not to draw a line that would be invidious between
high and low, rank and subordination, riches and poverty. The distinction
is in the mind. Whoever is open, loyal, and true; whoever is of humane and
affable demeanour; whoever is honourable in himself, and in his judgment
of others, and requires no law but his word to make him fulfil an
engagement--such a man is a gentleman: and such a man may be found among
the tillers of the earth. But high birth and distinction, for the most
part, insure the high sentiment which is denied to poverty and the lower
professions. It is hence, and hence only, that the great claim their
superiority; and hence, what has been so beautifully said of honour, the
law of kings, is no more than true:--

It aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her,
And imitates her actions where she is not.

_De Vere_.

* * * * *

ROYAL PLANTERS.

Among the earliest and most successful planters was Count Maurice, of
Nassau, who flourished in the seventeenth century. This prince had the
advantage of operating in the genial clime, and with the fruitful soil of
Brazil, of which in the year 1636, he was governor. He was a man of taste
and elegance, and adorned his palaces and gardens in that country with a
magnificence worthy of the satraps of the east. His residence was upon an
island formed by the confluence of two rivers, a place which before he
commenced his improvements presented no very promising subject, being a
dreary, waste, and uncultivated plain, equally worthless and unattractive.
On this spot, however, he erected a splendid palace, laid out gardens
around it of extraordinary extent and magnificence; salubrity, seclusion,
horticultural ornament were all studiously and tastefully combined in the
arrangement of the buildings; the choicest fruits of a tropical climate,
the orange, the citron, the ananas, with many others unknown to us,
solicited at once the sight, the smell, and the taste; artificial
fountains of water preserved the coolness of the air, and maintained the
verdure of the earth; thirteen bastions and turrets flanked and defended
the gardens; and seven hundred trees of various sizes, of which some rose
to thirty, some to forty, and some to fifty feet high to the lowermost
branches, were removed to th