like a sad minor undertone, telling the sorrowful tale of human labor, toil, and pain. But Nature never errs; these sounds are all blended harmoniously, and lull to rest, with vague, delicious fancies, the happy dreamer, who, resting under the trees by the shore of "sweet running waters, with a soft south-wind blowing over them." listens with gentle rapture to the divine symphonique whole.

And the improvising artist, to produce a similar effect, must possess that power which has been happily called "prophetic action of the mind," which bestows this marvellous and inexplicable ability to seize on the instant, without taking time for reflection, upon the best out of a throng of fast-crowding fancies, and create, from this little pallet of twenty-four gamuts, things of beauty.

fancies.

TEMPTING FATE.

JULY 31.

We are again trying to beat out. The captain proposed we should have the vessel towed through by a steamer, but we refused simultaneously: it shocked all our poetical

"Just like an omnibus to cross the Desert," cried Venitia, half indignant.

Even the practical Janet said, "O no, that would never answer"; and then, as we walked the deck together, she quoted Humboldt about these "Pillars of Hercules at the west margin of the earth, on the road to Elysium and the Hesperides, beyond which were first seen the primeval waters of the circling Oceanus, in which the source of all rivers was then sought."

"And here was the fabled margin of the earth," she continued. "Now, according to these wise men of old, we should be sailing towards, not from, Elysium. We are striving to enter these 'primeval waters of the circling Oceanus,' and probably, my dear," she added, putting her arm tenderly around my waist, "we are approaching a true elysium, not the sorrow you dread so much. Your troubles at this very moment may be graciously righting themselves, some happy influences working, like sweet Ellie's Knight, to

When we reach home, darling friend, we may all find peace and pleasure instead of trouble and trial.”

"Home!" I replied, sadly; "it has been some time, Janet, since I have regarded that word as representing a reality for me. My home, henceforth, will only be a country, a wide space, a land, not a fireside with sweet possessions."

We paced the deck silently for some time with quick, elastic tread, as if our wills intended to control the feelings through the physical motions, and Janet's only answer was a firmer grasp around my waist. Evening, off Al-Kazar Point. -The sun has just set beautifully, but now a dull, heavy cloud hangs around the horizon, like a curtain partly drawn up. Cape Trafalgar stretches out in the distance golden and glorious as a heavenly hill," and Cape Espartel, the northwest point of Africa, also catches a gleam of the radiant light.

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Behind us lies Gibraltar, just faintly seen, for a misty cloud hangs over it; but the last rays of sunlight give us a sight of its stone walls and houses clambering up against the rugged old Rock. Opposite to us is a beautiful bit of landscape; Al-Kazar Point, a rugged, sharp, gray bluff runs out into the sea, forming a bay; behind it are several hills, each covered with a different shade of green, and the atmosphere which hangs over them is deliciously soft. One catches the sunlight, which throws a silvery sheen over its verdure; another has a clear, open hue, like Shakespeare's "lush and lusty grass, with an eye of green in it"; and beyond there is yet another, wrapped in a semi-opaque greenish haze. Meadows stretch out, and there are clumps of trees, which tell of sweet shady woods that must now, at this hour of nightfall, be full of all manner of solemn sounds, and where

"the silent air

Lays her soft ear close to the green earth."

To-day the Spanish coast presented a curious sight; trees stood in closer and more regular groups than nature arranges them; then there were rows forming belts or boundary lines around large tracts of land, which land was yellow as if covered with grain stubble, and some looked like pasture which had been cropped off by cattle.

The western horizon is glorious just at this instant, Cape Trafalgar and its surrounding hills are covered with a dissolving green haze, which has "an eye of fire in it" like the opal. Tarifa light-house gleams out fitfully on the Spanish shore, and the opposing currents of the Straits beat noisily through. We have been talking of those early voyages of the ancients, their earnest attempts to advance beyond the Mediterranean shores; of the old tale of the Argonauts, which is enveloped as thickly in poetical myths as these beautiful mountains are with the glowing haze.

No wonder those early voyagers clothed their adventures with legends, for when they reached these pillarlike mountains and saw such a dark unknown expanse of waters stretching out beyond, they must have felt startled and awed; then the aerial perspective of time gathered gradually around their expeditions, and naturally gave them poetic, mystic forms. Like us, these early adventurers must have had fitful, capricious winds, and listened with terror to this thundering roar of the contending currents in these Straits, forbidding them to advance as they seem to do us towards Elysium.

How curious these water currents are to the unlearned, such as I am. I traced to-day upon the globe the course of that mysterious Gulf Stream, which sweeps river-like

across the ocean, flowing past the opposing and circling waves as if they were simple earth-banks; retaining, it is said, forever unchanged its own high temperature through all its intercourse with other waters.

The captain, who is an intelligent man in his business, told me that the ocean current propelled by this gulf current, which flows from the Azores towards the Straits of Gibraltar and the Canary Isles, drives round the waters of the Atlantic Ocean in a continual circular course of three thousand eight hundred miles!

The night thickens, the wind changes, and the sea is treacherous. The captain and men look anxious, but we three women, who carry such heavy loads chained fast to our hearts, one a grave, the other a hopeless love, and the third a living death, are not appalled by the presence of mere physical danger; indeed, presenting itself in this sublime form, it possesses a strange attraction, to me at least.

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"I should feel loath to risk the lives of these men," said Janet just now, but there are boats enough to save them, and despite all the fine stories told of disinterestedness and generous self-sacrifice at such fearful times, I know, in such an event, these sailors would take good care of themselves, no matter what became of us and our poor maids. But we shall get through safely"; and she added in an undertone, as if to herself, turning away from me, "I fancy death is too great a blessing to come to us just yet."

A perfect fleet of vessels set out with us this morning,over two hundred; it was a fine sight to see them stretch out their huge wings against the morning sky, looking like so many gigantic birds. Some of them have sailed steadily on like us, contending bravely with wind and