and greeted
many anxious eyes as the vessel rushed proudly on with her decks
thronged with a living freight, all happy as children in the thoughts
of home. The sun shone brightly and gave a warm welcome on our
arrival; and as the steamer moored alongside the quay, an hour sufficed
to scatter the host of passengers who had so closely dwelt together, as
completely as the audience of a theatre when the curtain falls. That
act of life is past--"exeunt omnes," and a new scene commences. We are
in England.

A sudden change necessarily induces a comparison, and I imagine there
are few who have dwelt much among the Tropics who do not acquire a
distaste for the English climate, and look back with lingering hopes to
the verdant shores they have left so far behind. The recollection of
absent years, which seem to have been the summer of life, makes the
chill of the present feel doubly cold, and our thoughts still cling to
the past, while we strive against the belief that we never can recall
those days again.

How, as my thoughts wander back to former scenes every mountain and
valley reappears in the magic glass of memory! Every rock and dell,
every old twisted stem, every dark ravine and wooded cliff, the distant
outlines of the well-known hills, the jungle-paths known to my eye
alone, and the far, still spots where I have often sat in solitude and
pondered over the events of life, and conjured up the faces of those so
far away, doubtful if we should ever meet again. Thus even now I
picture to myself the past; and so vivid is the scene that I can almost
hear the fancied roar of the old waterfalls, and see the shadowy tints
which the evening sun throws upon the tree-tops. My old home rises
before me like a dissolving view, and I can see the very spot where it
was my delight to live, where a warm welcome awaited every friend. And
lastly, the faces of those friends seem clear before me, and bring back
the associations of old times. Those who have shared in common many of
these scenes I trust to meet again, and look back upon the events of
former days as landscapes on the road of life that we have viewed
together.

For me Ceylon has always had a charm, and I shall ever retain a vivid
interest in the colony.

I trust that a new and more prosperous era has now commenced, and that
Ceylon, having shaken off the incubus of mismanagement, may, under the
rule of a vigorous and enterprising governor, arrive at that prosperity
to