After all the toil, at nightfall the vessel had made but four miles in the whole day's sailing; so the captain wisely determined to give up the present attempt, and in one short half-hour we were back at Gibraltar, in front of this old Rock, which towered up, gray and grim, against the mellow sky.

As we neared the point, the Rock gun fired, an eagle swept grandly around the cliff, and soared off into midair. Janet and I quoted impulsively, and in one breath almost, as if we had been thinking with one mind,

"Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister,

Whose happy flight is highest into heaven."

Since our return, we have each withdrawn into ourselves, as it were. I am filling up journal; Janet is lying in her hammock, gazing silently up at the starry sky and the Rock, which looks as unflinching as she sometimes does. Once in a while she stretches out her hand and rests it tenderly on my shoulder, for she never likes me to be far off from her; I turn to give back the caress, and see her dear, true eyes looking at me with an expression full of firm, unchanging, mother, sister, and friend love.

Venitia is in the cabin, improvising. Most mysterious is this power to me, this capability of expressing passing thoughts and feelings by quick-succeeding and blending harmonies. I have spoken before of Venitia's remarkable possession of this gift; but since her separation from Luigi her improvisations have taken a deeper tone; they are very often now what the Germans call subjective, and are a true tone-language; not a fiction of art, but a lovely, mystical, cipher-tongue, telling her heart and soul history.

She never names them, never writes them off, never talks of them, and only plays them when she is alone.

Sometimes they are so masterly, I cannot resist calling out to her; but though I veil my admiration or interpretation of her musical thoughts under technicalities, my remarks check her on the instant, and she breaks off into vague chords, simple pursuits of harmonies and dry reasonings.

But if, like to-night, they are objective and descriptive, then my comprehensions and remarks stimulate her, and make her develop her musical thoughts more brilliantly. Now, as the music rises up from the cabin, I notice its spirituality; image after image is summoned, and yet only a gentle hovering over each, for the fancy roused by the scene of to-day is so rich in such descriptive wealth as to silence thought. Curious inharmonious dissonances are wedded so skilfully as to make perfect concord; indeed, the chords proceed rapidly, without reflection; they fall instantaneously from each hand, dissimilar as possible, and yet their union is divinely complete. This is not the result of mere grammar rules.” The study and knowledge of theory may, does, help the improvising artist; but the power or gift which Venitia possesses to so high a degree arises from some subtle, spiritual influence, which is exercised over the mind, and the best name to give it is inspiration.

It resembles the divine harmony of nature, where each sound in itself, like these chords, if taken separately, may be unmusical; such as the hot, grating chirrup of the grasshopper, so fretful and petulant; the crackling of dried leaves; the rustle and tumult of the winds among the branches of the trees; the regular rise and fall of an oar, the drip of the water from its blade, with the complaining creak of the thole-pin; and sweeping along, upon the surrounding air, from the distance, a hum and throb

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.

LY 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

'Make straight distorted wills.

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.

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