many as a master-piece of political sagacity. What a sublime thought, that no purge can now be taken between the Weser and the Garonne; that the bustling pestle is still, the canorous mortar mute, and the bowels of mankind locked up for fourteen degrees of latitude! When, I should be curious to know, were all the powers of crudity and flatulence fully explained to his Majesty's Ministers? At what period was this great plan of conquest and constipation fully developed? In whose mind was the idea of destroying the pride and the plasters of France first engendered? Without castor-oil they might, for some months, to be sure, have carried on a lingering war; but can they do without bark? Will the people live under a government where antimonial powders can not be procured? Will they bear the loss of mercury? There's the rub. Depend upon it, the absence of the Materia Medica will soon bring them to their senses, and the cry of Bourbon and bolus burst forth from the Baltic to the Mediterranean."

"WHEN Florence was four years old her brother Willie was born, and but a few months afterward she and her father died. One day, when Willie was three years old, he was crying bitterly. I took him up, and endeavored to pacify him by telling him about his father and little sister, who had gone to heaven. With the tears still resting on his cheek, he said, thoughtfully, 'I've been to heben; I went there once in a two-horse wagon.' Poor child! he thought the cemetery was heaven."

THE LITTLE PAUPER
UP and down the city street,
Little, weary, wandering feet;
Golden curls, a tangled skein;
Seamless rags-'tis all the same;
Eyes of heaven's own deepest blue;
Limbs a sculptor's model true.
Is she friendless? No one knows-
Is she homeless? On she goes
Down the crowded, dusty streets,
Begging alms of all she meets;
While adown her pallid cheek
Rolls a tear-drop in the street.
God preserve her, with that face
Seemingly so out of place!
Better if her form had been
Plainest eye hath ever seen.

God preserve her in the hour
When she feels temptation's power!

May she never, in her sin,

Sob and say, "It might have been!"

Never, when death's hour she'll wait, All so fearful, "Tis too late!"

OUR war has produced nothing better, in a humorous way, than Sydney Smith's attack, in the "Peter Plimley Letters," on the English Embargo Act, by which, among other things, drugs were for a time excluded from France. He says:

"Such a project is well worthy the statesman who would bring the French to reason by keeping them without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in his own opium; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits; but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is intrusted, and whose appointment is considered by

lay Franconia, with its caverns, its dolomite rocks, and its fir-clad mountains. In one month from the day I left New York I found myself at Forchheim, on the railroad between Bamberg and Nuremberg, and on the western border of the Franconian Switzerland.

Here I commence my narrative.

This region, less interesting in a historical point of view than on account of its remarkable scenery and its curious deposits of fossil remains, is very rarely visited by other than German tourists. The railroads from Leipzig and Frankfort-on-the-Main to Munich pass within sight of its mountains, but few indeed are the travelers who leave these highways, unless at Schweinfurt for the baths of Kissingen, or at Hof for those of Eger and Carlsbad.

Indeed, in my own case, the journey through the Franconian Switzerland requires a little explanation. The primary cause of it was the construction of seats in the passenger-cars on American railways! During nearly six months in the year, for three years, I had been obliged to use those inconveniences, and the result of this (for a tall man) continual cramping, and wedging, and jarring, was a serious injury to the knee-joints, which threatened to unfit me for duty as a pedestrian. Had I been enrolled among the ranks of our gallant volunteers, I am afraid I should have fallen by the wayside before the end of the first day's march. Some years ago I had occasion to regret that the directors of all railroad companies were not uniformly seven feet high, and I now repeat it with emphasis. The Camden and Amboy Railroad is to me simply a torture, the Philadelphia and Baltimore the rack, and from Baltimore to Washington I am broken on the wheel. It is greatly to be regretted that the fares on these roads are so very low, and the business so insignificant, that the companies can not afford greater space for passengers.

The prescription was: Moderate daily exercise, carefully timed so as to avoid unusual fatigue. But I am one of those persons who can not walk simply for the sake of exercise; I must have an object for locomotion. If I were to carry stones, like De Quincey on the Edinburgh turnpike, I should be crippled in an hour, but place me in a winding valley, where every turn discloses an unknown landscape, and I shall hold out for half a day. So the first thing I did, after reaching Germany, was to select an interesting field wherein to commence my Walking-Cure. Saxony, Thüringia, the Black For

The omnibus for Streitberg was in waiting, with two passengers besides myself. The first was a pleasant old gentleman, who I soon discovered was a Professor from the University of

where he was fellow-student with George Ticknor and Edward Everett. Then entered a miserable-looking man, with a face wearing the strongest expression of distress and disgust. He had scarcely taken his seat before he burst into loud lamentations. "No, such a man!" he cried; "I have never met such a dreadful man. I could not get rid of him; he stuck to me like a blue-fly. Because I said to one of the passengers, 'I see from your face that you have studied,' he attacked me. 'What do you think, from my face, that I am?' he said. I didn't care what he was. 'I'm not very well dressed,' said he, 'but if I had my best clothes on you might guess twenty-four hours before you could make me out!' Oh, the accursed man! What did I care about him? 'Don't go to Streitberg!' he said, 'stop at Forchheim. Go to the Three Swans. If you stay there a day, you'll stay three; if you stay three days, you'll stay three weeks. But what do you take me for?' 'A journeyman shoemaker!' I cried, in desperation. 'No, you're wrong; I'm a dancing-master!' Holy Saint Peter, what a man!" After this I was not surprised when the narrator informed us that he was very sick, and was going to Streitberg to try the "whey-cure."

We entered the valley of the Wiesent, one of the far-off tributaries of the Rhine. The afternoon was intensely hot, but the sky was clear and soft, and the landscape could not have exhibited more ravishing effects of light and shade. Broad and rich at first, bordered with low hills, the valley gradually became deeper and narrower, without losing its fair, cultivated beauty. We passed around the foot of the Walpurgisberg, on the summit of which is a chapel, whereto a pilgrimage in honor of St. Walpurgis is made on the first of May. Further up the valley, on the opposite side, is the Verirkapelle (the Chapel of Annoyance); so called, I presume, because you have it in view during a day's walk. Its situation is superb, on the very crest of a wooded mountain. Peasant-women, with gay red cloths on their heads, brightened the fields, but the abundance of beggars showed that we were in Bavaria.

At the little town of Ebermannstadt two young ladies joined us. They wore round hats, much jewelry, and expansive crinolines, which they carefully gathered up under their arms before taking their seats, thereby avoiding the usual