ning home with the abbe. 'The abbe has just been
to read a mass for him,' he said; 'it is a benefit which, on such
occasions, I am willing he should enjoy--more, however, from
friendship for him, than out of pity for the accursed soul of a
Jacobin, which in my eyes is worth less than a dog's! But walk in,
sir.'

The picture, a wonderfully lovely maidenly face, with rich curls
falling around it, and in the costume of the last ten years of the
preceding century, was now unveiled. A good breakfast, like that of
yesterday, stood on the table. With a moistened eye, and turning to
the portrait, he said: 'Therese, to thy memory!' and emptied his glass
at a draught. Surprised and moved, I quitted the strange man. On the
stairs of the hotel I met the coffin, which was just being carried up
for L----; and I thought to myself: 'Poor Clotilde! you will not be
able to weep over his grave.'

THE TREE OF SOLOMON.

Wide forests, deep beneath Maldivia's tide,
From withering air the wondrous fruitage hide;
There green-haired nereids tend the bowery dells,
Whose healing produce poison's rage expels.

_The Lusiad._

If Japan be still a sealed book, the interior of China almost unknown,
the palatial temple of the Grand Lama unvisited by scientific or
diplomatic European--to say nothing of Madagascar, the steppes of
Central Asia, and some of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago--how
great an amount of marvel and mystery must have enveloped the
countries of the East during the period that we now term the middle
ages! By a long and toilsome overland journey, the rich gold and
sparkling gems, the fine muslins and rustling silks, the pungent
spices and healing drugs of the Morning Land, found their way to the
merchant princes of the Mediterranean. These were not all. The
enterprising traversers of the Desert brought with them, also, those
tales of extravagant fiction which seem to have ever had their
birthplace in the prolific East. Long after the time that doubt--in
not a few instances the parent of knowledge--had, by throwing cold
water on it, extinguished the last funeral pyre of the ultimate
Phoenix, and laughed to scorn the gigantic, gold-grubbing pismires of
Pliny; the Roc, the Valley of Diamonds, the mountain island of
Loadstone, the potentiality of the Talisman, the miraculous virtues of
certain drugs, and countless other fables, were accepted and believed
by all the nations of the West. One of those