sfied that music involves a far greater mystery than
we are aware of. It is that universal language which binds together all
creatures, and binds them by a profounder part of their nature than
anything merely intellectual ever could.

It is remarkable (as proving to me the delibility of caste) that the
Sudras of Central India, during its vast confusions under the Mahrattas
have endeavoured to pass themselves for descendants of the Kshatriyas
(or warrior caste) by assuming the sacred thread, also assumed by the
Rajpoots, and also by some of the Sikhs.

I never see a vast crowd of faces--at theatres, races, reviews--but one
thing makes them sublime to me: the fact that all these people have to
die. Strange it is that this multitude of people, so many of them
intellectually, but also (which is worse) morally, blind, are without
forethought or sense of the realities of life.

Though I love fun, eternal jesting, buffoonery, punning absolutely kills
me. Such things derive all their value from being made to intervene well
with other things.

This is curious:

Shame, pain, and poverty shall I endure,
When ropes or opium can my ease procure?

This offends nobody, not till you say, 'I'll buy a rope.' But now:

When money's gone, and I no debts can pay,
_Self-murder_ is an honourable way--

though the same essentially, this shocks all men.

I have in the course of my misfortunes fasted for thirty years: a
dreadful fate, if it had been to come. But, being past, it is lawful to
regard it with satisfaction, as having, like all fasting and
mortification, sharpened to an excruciating degree my intellectual
faculties. Hence my love and even furor now for mathematics, from which
in my youth I fled.

The _Arrow Ketch_, six guns, is recorded in the _Edinburgh Advertiser_
for June 14th, 1844, as having returned home (to Portsmouth) on
Thursday, June 7th, 'after six years and upwards in commission,' most of
it surveying the Falkland Islands; 'has lost only two men during this
long service, and those from natural causes;' 'never lost a spar, and
has ploughed the ocean for upwards of 100,000 miles.'

Anecdotes from _Edinburgh Advertiser_, for June and May. The dog of a
boy that died paralytic from grief. Little child run over by railway
waggon and horse, clapping its hands when the shadow passed away,
leaving it unhurt. Little girl of six committing suicide from fear of a
stepmother's wrath.

To