XIII.--GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA -----

DEAREST LOUISA,--Inquire, if you please, about Mr. Claude -----. 
He has been once at R., and remembers meeting the H.s. 
Harriet L., perhaps, may be able to tell you about him. 
It is an awkward youth, but still with very good manners;
Not without prospects, we hear; and, George says, highly connected. 
Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed and insists he has
Taken up strange opinions and may be turning a Papist. 
Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to. 
“Where?” we asked, and he laughed and answered, “At the Pantheon.” 
This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic church; and
Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service,
Yet I suppose the change can hardly as yet be effected. 
Adieu again,—­evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina.

  P.S.  BY MARY TREVELLYN.

    I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance. 
  Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous. 
  I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him. 
  He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and
  Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is frightfully selfish.

* * * * *

  Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever,
    Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus’s Arch,
  Here from the large grassy spaces that spread from the Lateran portal,
    Towering o’er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between,
  Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,
    Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring. 
  Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o’ermaster,
    Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still. 
  Is it religion?  I ask me; or is it a vain superstition? 
    Slavery abject and gross? service, too feeble, of truth? 
  Is it an idol I bow to, or is it a god that I worship? 
    Do I sink back on the old, or do I soar from the mean? 
  So through the city I wander and question, unsatisfied ever,
    Reverent so I accept, doubtful because I revere.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

MY AQUARIUM.

On the tenth of May, 1857, I became the glad possessor of a tank capable of holding thirteen or fourteen gallons of water.  Its substantial frame of well-seasoned oak, its stout plank bottom, lavishly covered with cement, promised to resist alike the heat and dryness from without and the wet within.  The sides and ends, of double flint-glass, seemed to invite the eye across their clearness.  Its chosen site was at a south window, so shaded by a wing of the house as to receive only the morning sun for about two hours; and clustering vines overhung the window, so that the beams fell in checkered light.  All was now ready.