There is the weakness, the debility of a bad constitution—“ Flojo soy como un bondo," I am weak as a strip of tailor's cloth, as the expression runs!

There is the loss of the loved!

There is the loss of property, and the falling off of trade!

There is the domestic misery, over which love tries to draw its too transparent veil!

There is the child, wandering farther and yet farther from the path of duty and of love!

All these are causes of agony in Spain as in any other country; but they are evils that are differently met, as it strikes me, in different countries.

In England, a tradesman failing, and seeing that he is failing, sticks up to the last, and never knows or never chooses to know, until the final smash, that he is beaten.

In Spain, on the other hand, a man in such a case meekly retreats before the foe.

And, surely, this latter course is the one more consistent with honour and common prudence?

In England, the fatal disease of body, likewise, is grappled with to the last.

In Spain, ere it is over, the tears of prescient agony force their way from the aching eyes.

In England there is no memory of the sainted dead: their very names are forgotten.

In Spain the whole country goes into mourning on the day set apart to commemorate the dead.

In England domestic misery is met by active measures.

In Spain it is met with meek acquiescence, a sprightly resistance. "Well, really, if my husband likes better than he does me,

I wish him joy of his bargain;" said a Spanish lady to me of her faithless spouse; "I am not going to run after him, if he values me so lightly." But the tears were trickling down her face the while!

Government oppression has done much to create sorrow of heart in sunny Spain; tricksters, it must be owned, succeed better than honest men, and a terrible phase of dogged unbelief settles in a cloud over the ill-filled mind of those who look on, and argue, and suffer, and draw their own inferences.

"Tengo el convencimiento," I have often heard it said of late, “que Dios favorece solamente á los malos” (“I am firmly convinced that God favours only the bad").

Looking on the way the world wags, how many of us must fain say, or, at least, think at some dark hours of life, the same!

7

Spanish ladies read but little, and have but little to occupy their mind; hence they observe and think, and their remarks are oftentimes more original and substantial than those of their husbands.

The Spanish face, so pensive, so melancholy, with its sallow skin, and long dreamy eyelashes; the names of the women, "Maria de los Angeles," Concepcion, Maria de los Dolores-all have an oppression of pensive sadness about them.

A merry, ringing laugh is never heard, any more than the song of a lark, or the carol of a linnet, although there is no lack of wit, and ready, pungent repartee.

When the great orator, Emilio Castelar, had signed the deathwarrant of two soldiers, for mutiny, he shut himself up in his rooms, and wept until the shades of evening stole on, and reminded him of his nightly work.

Some might think such demonstrative sorrow is skin-deep; in the case of the Spaniard it is real, true, genuine, and lasting.

Look at their genuine sorrow for a fellow-creature's fall or misfortune; look at the tenderness of passionate affection between members of the same family; look at their bitter but silent sufferings in the devouring poverty that is now eating up the land; look at their touching demeanour in the presence of the early death and the newmade grave, and see how deep are their feelings, how capable they are of devotion, tenderness, heroism for those they love-how patient they are under privations.

True, they have their faults: a lack of self-control, and the like. I know it well. But come from heartless England to compassionate Spain, and suffer in the latter country, and find a friend at every step, and you will love their sons and daughters, with their warm hearts, and many faults.

And how keen is the Spanish sense of the pathetic and the ridiculous! After all, tragedy and comedy are but a step apart. A poor man lay dying; he kept on telling me that (he was an Englishman) "a change to another land, his own home, would do him good."

"Yes," said a Spanish woman, as she bent over his shrunken form, "you won't be long, before you start for home, now!"

She turned away to hide her sobs, and I then understood the force and pathetic, strikingly pathetic, beauty of her words!

H. J. ROSE.

At Mürren, Switzerland.

THE snow-capped mountain gleams against the sky;
The evening winds are silent as they pass,
Afraid to violate the sanctity

Of yonder heaven-crowned majestic mass;
The silver moon just tips the dazzling snow,
Flushed with the kisses of the sun's last glow.

A starlit vapour shimmers through the pines:
It steals along the sides from height to height,
Reveals the wakened glacier's broken lines,

Bathes the whole mountain in a flood of light:
Which, wrapt around in its own purity,
Knows not of hate, or sin, or misery.

Behold, O Man, that mountain's calm repose,
Unvexed by troubling doubts or musings sage.

The mystery of its origin who knows?

Who dare assign the limit of its age? Look, as the clouds from off the summit roll, Thou seest an image of the human soul.

X. F.

Illouscha.

A SHADOW OF RUSSIAN LIFE.

In a wretched faubourg of Moscow, hard by the barrier where the poorest inhabitants of the city dwelt, stood a low two-storied wooden house of uninviting appearance. Its cracked window-panes were thickly encrusted with dust. One side of the house had sunk visibly and looked as though it might fall in at any moment.

In the courtyard, beside a ruined well, stood a little boy, bucket in hand, patiently waiting until a woman in patched and faded garments, in the act of drawing water, made way for him. The child was fair, but of that fairness which is so common in Russia. His hair had faded from early exposure to the burning sun. His little pinched face bore a touching expression of mute agony. His cotton shirt, soiled and torn, barely covered his lean shoulders, and revealed around his sunburnt neck a tiny metal cross, suspended from a faded riband. He looked about ten years old, although younger, and when questioned by inquisitive neighbours, was fain to confess that he did not know his age.

"Well, Illouscha," said the woman in tattered garments, as she raised her pail and prepared to leave the well, "is your mother at home?"

"Yes, she is just come in;" replied the child, as he threw his whole weight upon the handle of the well in order to bring it to the ground.

"And has she brought you anything nice?"

Illouscha was for a moment silent, and then answered briefly : Only papa brings me nice things."

66

Aye, aye, it is sad to lose one's father," murmured the woman, as with a deep sigh she turned with her pail towards the house.

The child filled his bucket with difficulty, and seizing his heavy burden, dragged it down the steep stones, stumbling at each step, and scattering the water on every side.

"Take care you don't roll down the stairs," said an old man in a shabby overcoat, who was watching him from below. "What are you spilling the water for, you young rascal?" shouted the old man angrily. "Isn't it damp enough here in the house without your flooding us like this? At your age you ought to be able to carry water properly."

The little fellow, breathless from exertion, passed on in silence, and then, stopping before a door he set the pail on the ground, lifted the latch, and walked in.

There Illouscha found his mother stretched motionless on the bed, her face buried in the pillow. He fixed his eyes on a disordered mass of black hair-for she had seized her head with her hands, and the kerchief with which she generally bound her hair had fallen to the ground.

The little boy leant against the door-post and watched this figure without venturing to open his lips. The song of a workman in the yard was distinctly audible through the open window. He also heard the incessant trills of a canary, and the harsh voice of a matron scolding her cook. A fiacre rattled by, its driver shouting lustily, as he lashed his jaded beast; and presently-in striking contrast to the whirl of life, a funeral cortège crept slowly down the street.

Illouscha remained motionless, gazing fixedly upon the form stretched on the bed. Once or twice a slight shiver ran through his body, and a strange expression settled in his eyes, but he did not cry. It seemed to him as though his mother were dead. He remembered that she had daily complained of a pain in her side; how often had she told him that her legs swelled, and that she felt a heavy weight upon her chest! Only the day before, on going to bed, she had murmured plaintively: "I feel it is nearly ended—my time will soon come." But in the morning she had risen at daybreak to scrub the floors of a neighbouring office. She had come back weary, and had remained on her bed, mute and motionless, ever since.

The child shuddered at the thought of losing his mother. She was very severe, even cruel to him sometimes, aye! and beat him very often; but she was all that he had in the world. His father had gone to the war, and his kind old granny had been dead two years. Sometimes when his mother said, "Listen, you little rascal, if I were to die, you will have to wander about the world and beg, he would cry bitterly, for he had noticed how beggars were hunted, insulted, and accused of stealing, whenever they came near to his neighbours. He remembered also how on one occasion his mother had flung a crust of dry bread to a beggar, with the bitter reproach of kindred suffering, "Begone! I am no richer than thou!"

At thoughts of the sad prospect before him large tears rolled down his cheeks. At this moment the figure moved on the bed.

"Mother," he said softly, "Mother-what ails you?"

At these words she raised herself slightly. Her face was pallid as wax, her eyes glassily fixed.

"Mother, I have brought some water," said Illouscha in a timid,