he western sky as seen from the metropolis. We lay
aside our little lorgnette. It has shown us as much as we can map in
these pages, and that we have endeavored to do with at least the merit
of accuracy.

EDWARD C. BRUCE.

THE POET'S PEN.

I am an idle reed;
I rustle in the whispering air;
I bear my stalk and seed
Through spring-time's glow and summer's glare.

And in the fiercer strife
Which winter brings to me amain,
Sapless, I waste my life,
And, murmuring at my fate, complain.

I am a worthless reed;
No golden top have I for crown,
No flower for beauty's meed,
No wreath for poet's high renown.

Hollow and gaunt, my wand
Shrill whistles, bending in the gale;
Leafless and sad I stand,
And, still neglected, still bewail.

O foolish reed! to wail!
A poet came, with downcast eyes,
And, wandering through the dale,
Saw thee and claimed thee for his prize.

He plucked thee from the mire;
He pruned and made of thee a pen,
And wrote in words of fire
His flaming song to listening men;

Till thou, so lowly bred,
Now wedded to a nobler state,
Utt'rest such paeans overhead
That angels listen at their gate.

F.A. HILLARD.

SKETCHES OF INDIA.

II.

I had now learned to place myself unreservedly in the hands of Bhima
Gandharva. When, therefore, on regaining the station at Khandallah, he
said, "The route by which I intend to show you India will immediately
take us quite away from this part of it; first, however, let us go and
see Poona, the old Mahratta capital, which lies but a little more than
thirty miles farther to the south-eastward by rail,"--I accepted the
proposition as a matter of course, and we were soon steaming down the
eastern declivity of the Ghats. As we moved smoothly down into the
treeless plains which surround Poona I could not resist a certain
feeling of depression.

"Yes," said Bhima Gandharva when I mentioned it to him, "I understand
exactly what you mean. On reaching an unbroken expanse of level
country, after leaving the tops of mountains, I always feel as if my
soul had come bump against a solid wall of rock in the dark. I seem
to hear a dull _thud_ of discouragement somewhere back in my soul, as
when a man's body falls dead on the earth. Nothing, indeed, could
more heighten such a sensation than the contrast between this and
the Bombay side of the Ghats