I HAD heard much of the magnificence of the scenery in the Bight of Leogane, but the reality far surpassed what I had pictured to myself.

The breeze, towards noon of the following day, had come up in a gentle air from the westward, and we were gliding along before it like a spread eagle, with all our light sails abroad to catch the sweet zephyr, which was not even strong enough to ruffle the silver surface of the landlocked sea, that glowed beneath the blazing mid-day sun, with a dolphin here and there cleaving the shining surface with an arrowy ripple, and a brownskinned shark glaring on us, far down in the deep, clear, green profound, like a water fiend, and a slow-sailing pelican overhead, after a long sweep on poised wing, dropping into the sea like lead, and flashing up the water like the bursting of a shell, while we sailed up into a glorious amphitheatre of stupendous mountains, that rose gradually from the hot sandy plains that skirted the shore, covered with one eternal forest; while what had once been smiling fields, and rich sugar plantations, in the long misty level districts at their bases, were now covered with brushwood, fast rising up into one impervious thicket; and as the Island of Gonave closed in the view behind us to seaward, the sun sank beyond it, amidst rolling masses of golden and blood-red clouds, giving token of a goodly day to-morrow, and gilding the outline of the rocky islet (as if to a certain depth it had been transparent) with a golden halo, gradually deepening into imperial purple. Beyond the shadow of the treecovered islet, on the left hand, rose the town of Port-au-Prince, with its long streets rising like terraces on the gently swelling shore, while the mountains behind it, still gold

tipped in the declining sunbeams, seemed to impend frowningly over it, and the shipping in the roadstead at anchor off the town were just beginning to fade from our sight in the gradually increasing darkness, and a solitary light began to sparkle in a cabin window and then disappear, and to twinkle for a moment in the piazzas of the houses on shore like a will-of-the-wisp, and the chirping buzz of myriads of insects and reptiles was coming off from the island astern of us, borne on the wings of the light wind, and charged with rich odours from the closing flowers, "like the sweet south, soft breathing o'er a bed of violets," when a sudden f and a jet of white smoke puffed out from the hillfort above the town, the report thundering amongst the everlasting hills, and gradually rumbling itself away into the distant ravines and valleys, like a lion growling itself to sleep, and the shades of night fell on the dead face of nature like a pall, and all was undistinguishable.—Blackwood's Magazine.

Notes of a Reader.

A PASIEKA, OR BEE FARM. [IN one of Mrs. Gore's Polish Tales we find the following delightful picture of a Bee-farm in Poland, with the economy and sweet simplicity of its inmates.]

In Poland, with the pristine, pious, and honest-hearted people of Zmujdz, the bees, the chief source of their wealth and prosperity, have obtained a sanctity exceeding even that of the redbreast in our own country. To put a bee wantonly to death is regarded as a sin;-to neglect their health and comfort, as a fault; and the result of the superstitious veneration with which the bee farmers watch over their hives is rewarded by an excess of tameness and a degree of mutual understanding, such as these winged usurers rarely exhibit in other countries. Instances of familiarity and anecdotes of instinct are cited round the hearth by the Samogitians, incontestably authenticated, but bordering on the marvellous.

The province of Zmujdz, or Samogitia, is perhaps the only one in Poland or even in Europe, where ignorance and superstition in their grossest form have wrought no evil on the moral character of the people: and whether attributable to the bounty of nature which has blessed them with ample competence, without the enervating means of luxury,-or to the protecting influence of the Pantheon of household divinities, so vaunted by the Samogitians of old, certain it is that they retain the purity and simplicity of the antique time, and live for the worship and service of God,-contented, - laborious,virtuous, cheerful ;-ignorant alike of the corruptions generated by populous cities, and

the vices and struggles of surrounding nations; nay, almost beyond the influence of the political misfortunes of their own.

Clothed with luxuriant woods, fed by a thousand fertilizing streams, and presenting a rich and diversified surface, Samogitia is parcelled into commodious farms rather than divided among a few insatiate magnats, as in the adjoining province of Lithuania. The few nobles who possess territories in the province are men unconnected with the Court and resident on their estates.

On the banks of a rapid brook skirting extensive woodlands in one of the most favoured districts of the province, stood the Pasieka of Zwieta; a farm which had descended to the good Jakób Bremglicz, its present proprietor, from a race of ancestors tracing the legendary yeomanship of the family to the illustrious reign of Sigismund Augustus. He was a worthy, warm-hearted man;-comely, healthy, wealthy, and even wise according to the highest acceptation of the term: for he knew the path of duty, and walked in it humbly and steadfastly. But this was the limit of his knowledge. The schools now established in Samogitia had not come into operation in time to include the good Jakób among their neophytes; and notwithstanding his privilege of crying "Veto," in the senate as loudly as a Radzivil or a Sapieha, notwithstanding his goodly pastures, nobly-timbered woods, and high account in the neighbourhood, his smattering of scholarship endowed him with little reading, and less penmanship. Yet small as was this advance in civilization, it sufficed to render him the intellectual president of the simple, rural population among which he lived and prospered; whose veneration was lavished upon Jakób and his wife Józefa, (or as she was termed by the custom of the province, Jakubowa, or Madam Jakób)—a upon the wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best, and even happiest couple in the district!

Of their three children, Dzidzilia, the eldest daughter, was already in her seventeenth year; while Benisia and her brother Janek were children of nine and ten, and still under the vigilant tutorage of their aunt Anulka, the sister of Jakób; a spinster whose early education in the Ursuline convent at the neighbouring town of Rosienie,-caused her to be venerated among the Bee Farmers as a semi saint, and full and perfect philosopher. Under these distinctions, sister Anulka was by no means proud. Her disposition was as sweet as the miód or honey turned to such good account under her presidency; and had any healing or peace-making been required in a family where, by the blessing of Heaven, all was gentleness, happiness, and love, the mild spinster was the very person to have smoothed down irritations, and softened asperities.

But at the Pasieka of Zwieta nothing of the kind existed!--The farm flourished; the children flourished; the bees flourished; while the neighbours applauded, and the parents gave thanks to Providence with smiles on their rubicund faces, and tears in their clear blue eyes. The rich incense of the bee-garden formed a fragrant atmosphere round their dwelling; and the hives that rose like golden globes in the stages of the hive shed, and the wild swarms cultivated as stock, in the woodlands of the farm, seemed to rejoice in contributing to the stores of the happy family. Sometimes, indeed, late in the autumn, the bears were known to come down from the Lithuanian forests, and pillage the wild honeycombs they had been anxiously watching through the summer or the spider would make its invidious way into the hives; or the moth deposit her baleful eggs among the combs. But these were minor grievances; -and the effigies of the Holy Marya, and St. Jozef with his branch of lilies, erected over the gateway of the Pasieka, were greeted morning and evening with tokens of praise and thankfulness.

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND.

IT is only within the last thirty or forty years that the children of the poor received any kind of education save what they were orally taught by their parents, or by the clergyman on Sunday afternoons, when he catechizes the children in the church. Of course, very few of them could either read or write. The rising generation, however, have all had some share of instruction in the parochial schools, which are now generally established. Whether the effects anticipated from these establishments will ever be realized, is at present doubtful. It has certainly enabled some of the children to obtain for themselves better situations in life; and, though extreme ignorance in school-learning is not now so prevalent as it was, there are yet no very visible signs of moral amendment. Education, like all other blessings, is valuable only so far as it is rightly used. If the resolution to make a proper use, could be enjoined along with the dissemination of it, all the expected good effects would undoubtedly follow from it, but not otherwise.

The English Church service is admirably adapted for an uneducated congregation. The poor, who cannot read, have opportunity to hear the whole of the Scriptures read over once in every year. They repeat the confession, and many of the supplicatory prayers and creed, after the clergyman and precentor; and to every petition they give an audible assent; so that an attentive hearer soon becomes acquainted with every thing he should believe, as well as all he should do, as a Christian.-Quart. Journ. of Agriculture.

Retrospective Gleanings.

PAROCHIAL RECORDS.-GREAT MARLOW.

Extracts from the ancient Church Book,

which begins Lady Day, 1592. 1592.-Paid for mendynge the bells, when the queen came to Bysham Abbey, 1s. 6d. Received of the torchmen, for the profytte of the Whitsun ale, 57. 1604-5.-Paid the ryngers when the kynge came to Bustleham, 5s. 1608.-Among the church goods

Item.-Fyve payr of garters, and bells.
Fyve coats and a fool's coat.
Fower feathers.

N.B. These morris-coats were lent out to the neighbouring parishes, and are accounted for till 1629.

1612.-Paid the ryngers, when the kynge

came through the towne, 2s. 6d.

The office of sidesman occurs till 1640. 1617.-Paid the ryngers, when the kynge came by to Bisham, 5s. 1642-Paid for throwing in the bullworks about the church, and in Duck Lane, and for cleaning the church when the souldiers lay inn itt.-(Sum not named.) 1647.-Laid out, in going to Beaconsfield about the covenant.-(Sum not named.) Paid the ryngers when the kynge came thorow the towne, 5s. 1650.—Sept. 29. For defacing of the kynge's arms, Is.

1651.-Paid to the painter, for setting up the state's arms, 16s.

Sierra Leone.-The Sierra Leonese boast of having fewer musquitoes than their neighbours. "That is easily accounted for," say the men of Bathurst, "the climate of Sierra Leone is so bad that nothing can live in it, not even a musquito."

Odd Discipline.-Mr. Leonard says, "In passing the guard-house at Prince's Island, the black sentry, with nothing else save a ragged shirt on, and the belt of a cartouch box buckled round his middle, presented arms to us; and the officer of the guard came out with a parrot in his hand, and asked us if we wanted to buy."

Prince's Mixture. This term is not only applied to a favourite snuff. Prince's Island is celebrated among African cruisers for the bad weather so commonly met with near it,

frequent and vexatious showers of rain, and

gusts of wind, all which are quaintly termed by our seamen Prince's Mixture.

The Rhinoceros Bird, or helmet horn-bill, has a call resembling the braying of an ass, being almost equally loud and discordant-to contribute which, Nature has, do doubt, placed the immense unseemly protuberance on the beak, from which it receives its name.-(See the cut of the Rhinoceros Bird, at page 312, vol. xix. of The Mirror.)

Beauty and Poetry.-Beauty is to a woman what poetry is to a language, and their similarity accounts for their conjunction; for, there never yet existed a female possessed of personal loveliness, who was not only poetical in herself, but the cause of poetry in others. Were the subject to be properly examined, it would be discovered that the first dawn of poetical genius in a man proceeds almost invariably from his acquaintance with the other

sex.

Where love exists, poetry must exist also; for one cannot possibly have being without the fellowship of the other ;-they live together, and together they perish.

Fraser's Magazine.

Curious Tax.-Tlascala, a province of North America, in the government of Mexico, was originally an ally to Cortez, on the conquest of Mexico, who obtained a grant of it from Charles VI., King of Spain, by which it was exempt from any service or duty whatsoever to that Crown, only by paying the King of Spain a handful of maize for each head, as an acknowledgment; which inconsiderable parcels were said, upwards of fifty years ago, to make up 13,000 bushels. This province produces a great quantity of Indian corn: hence it had the name of Tlascala, or The Land of Bread. P. T. W.

Wooden Clocks are made chiefly in the Black Forest, in South Germany; and it is said that 70,000 of such clocks are manufactured there annually.

French Levee Wit.-There were two very fat noblemen at the court of Louis XV., the Duke de L- and the Duke de NThey were both one day at the levee, when the King began to rally the former on his corpulence. "You take no exercise, I suppose," said the King.--" Pardon me, sire," said de L--, "I walk twice a day round my cousin de N——,”

THOMAS GILL.

April Foolery.-One of the best tricks of this description is that of Rabelais, who being at Marseilles, without money, and desirous of going to Paris, filled some vials with brickdust, or ashes, labelled them as containing poison for the royal family of France, and put them where he knew they would be discovered. The bait took, and he was conveyed as a traitor to the capital, where the discovery of the jest occasioned universal mirth.

Modern Aqueduct.-Louis XIV. began an aqueduct in 1684, near Maintenon, to carry water to Versailles; but the works were aban

doned in 1688. This would have been, perhaps, the largest aqueduct in the world, the whole length being 60,000 fathoms, the bridge being 2,070 fathoms in length, 220 feet high, and consisting of 632 arches.

Neat Rapartee.-St. Thomas Aquinas being

in a closet with Innocent IV. when an officer

brought in a large sum of money, produced by the sale of absolutions and indulgences, "You see, young man," said the Pope, "the age of the church is past in which she said, silver and gold I have none."""True, holy father," replied Aquinas," but the age is also past when she could say to a paralytic, "Rise up and walk."

The Arabs have not neglected their olden hospitalities, as have many nations in the march of" improvement." The old "Peace be with you" is still their common salutation. "Welcome, what do you wish ?" is the address to a stranger, whose entertainment costs him only a "God reward you."

Fairs. The ancient Arab fairs appear to have been more intellectual scenes than any of modern times; for, in the fairs at Mecca, and at Okadh, A. D. 500, poetical contests were held, and the poems to which the prize was awarded were written on byssus, in letters of gold.

should be in danger from Frederick William I., with his six feet six, this king being in the habit of compelling tall men to join his regiment of grenadiers.

Tyrolese Minstrels.-In the Encyclopædia Americana we find the following sly hit at formance at the Argyll Rooms, the writer English credulity:-Speaking of the perdescribes them "sometimes such as it is difficult for the most patient hearer to put up with-e. g. the music of the four Jews, who sung dressed as Tyrolese.”

making a noise with the feet always sigApplause.-In Germany, applause by nifies the highest degree of satisfaction.

Cider in America.-A liquor is obtained by distillation from cider, termed cider-brandy, Middle States; while a very strong liquid of which great quantities are made in the frozen, and then drawing off the portion may be obtained by allowing cider to be which remains fluid, and thus retains the heat. But, a far more wholesome liquid than either is the poinona wine, which is prepared by adding one gallon of brandy to six of new cider, after it is racked off. This, when eight or twelve months old, is a very good substitute for wine, and is, beyond all comparison, more wholesome than the wretched mixtures sold so cheap under the name of Lisbon wine, &c.

Paintings.-The sale of the Nieuwenhays collection, a few days since, produced the sum of 20,210., the number of works being celebrated Landscape by A. Vandevelde, 141. The last picture in the sale was the which brought the immese sum of 1,3761.

Presence of Mind.-Cæsar, on landing at Adrumetum, in Africa, with his army, happened to fall on his face, which was reckoned a bad omen; but he, with great presence of mind, turned it to his advantage, for, taking hold of the ground with his right hand, and` kissing it, as if he had fallen on purpose, he exclaimed, “Teneo te Africa." (I take possession of thee, O Africa.)

Epitaph, near Bristol.

P.T.W.

I WENT and 'listed in the Tenth Hussars,
And galloped with them to the bloody wars.
"Die for your sovereign-for your country die!"
To earn such glory feeling rather shy,

Disadvantages of Tallness.-Frederick II. when crown-prince, wished to become acquainted with the Marquess d'Argens, and to receive a visit from him. He replied that he

Snug I slipped home. But Death soon sent me off, After a struggle with the hooping cough.

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