has the village now for the gentleman just arrived from India?  Every well remembered object of nature, seen after a lapse of twenty years, would only serve to renew a host of buried, painful feelings.  Every visit to the house of a surviving neighbour would but bring to mind some melancholy incident; for into what house could he enter, to idle away an hour, without seeing some wreck of his own family, such as a venerable clock, once so loved for the painted moon that waxed and waned to the astonishment of the gazer, or some favorite ancient chair, edged so nobly with rows of brass nails,

    —­but perforated sore, and dull’d in holes
    By worms voracious, eating through and through.

These are little things, but they are objects which will live in his memory to the latest day of his life, and with which are associated in his mind the dearest feelings and thoughts of his happiest hours.”

Here is an attempt at a description in verse of some of the most common

TREES AND FLOWERS OF BENGAL

    This land is not my father land,
    And yet I love it—­for the hand
    Of God hath left its mark sublime
    On nature’s face in every clime—­

    Though from home and friends we part,
    Nature and the human heart
    Still may soothe the wanderer’s care—­
    And his God is every where

    Beneath BENGALA’S azure skies,
    No vallies sink, no green hills rise,
    Like those the vast sea billows make—­
    The land is level as a lake[111]
    But, oh, what giants of the wood
    Wave their wide arms, or calmly brood
    Each o’er his own deep rounded shade
    When noon’s fierce sun the breeze hath laid,
    And all is still.  On every plain
    How green the sward, or rich the grain! 
    In jungle wild and garden trim,
    And open lawn and covert dim,
    What glorious shrubs and flowerets gay,
    Bright buds, and lordly beasts of prey! 
    How prodigally Gunga pours
    Her wealth of waves through verdant shores
    O’er which the sacred peepul bends,
    And oft its skeleton lines extends
    Of twisted root, well laved and bare,
    Half in water, half in air!

    Fair scenes! where breeze and sun diffuse
    The sweetest odours, fairest hues—­
    Where brightest the bright day god shows,
    And where his gentle sister throws
    Her softest spell on silent plain,
    And stirless wood, and slumbering main—­
    Where the lucid starry sky
    Opens most to mortal eye
    The wide and mystic dome serene
    Meant for visitants unseen,
    A dream like temple, air built hall,
    Where spirits pure hold festival!