London’s jurisdiction, as marked by the Boundary Stone, extends much farther up the river than we have as yet gone.  Nor are the swans her only vicegerents.  The myrmidons of Inspector Bucket, foot and horse, supplement those natatory representatives.  So do the municipalities encroach upon and overspread the country, as it is eminently proper they should, seeing that to the charters so long ago exacted, and so long and so jealously guarded, by the towns, so much of the liberty enjoyed by English-speaking peoples is due.  Large cities may be under some circumstances, according to an often-quoted saying, plague-spots on the body politic, but their growth has generally been commensurate with that of knowledge and order, and indicative of anything but a diseased condition of the national organism.

But here we are, under the shadow of the departed Nine Elms and of the official palace of the Odos, deep enough in Lunnon to satisfy the proudest Cockney, in less time than we have taken in getting off that last commonplace on political economy.  Adam Smith and Jefferson never undertook to meditate at thirty-five miles an hour.

EDWARD C. BRUCE.

LINES WRITTEN AT VENICE IN OCTOBER, 1865.

  Sleep, Venice, sleep! the evening gun resounds
    Over the waves that rock thee on their breast: 
  The bugle blare to kennel calls the hounds
    Who sleepless watch thy waking and thy rest.

  Sleep till the night-stars do the day-star meet,
    And shuddering echoes o’er the water run,
  Rippling through every glass-green, wavering street
    The stern good-morrow of thy guardian Hun.

  Still do thy stones, O Venice! bid rejoice,
    With their old majesty, the gazer’s eye,
  In their consummate grace uttering a voice,
    From every line, of blended harmony.

  Still glows the splendor of the wondrous dreams
    Vouchsafed thy painters o’er each sacred shrine,
  And from the radiant visions downward streams
    In visible light an influence divine.

  Still through thy golden day and silver night
    Sings his soft jargon the gay gondolier,
  And o’er thy floors of liquid malachite
    Slide the black-hooded barks to mystery dear.

  Like Spanish beauty in its sable veil,
    They rustle sideling through the watery way,
  The wild, monotonous cry with which they hail
    Each other’s passing dying far away.

  As each steel prow grazes the island strands
    Still ring the sweet Venetian voices clear,
  And wondering wanderers from far, free lands
    Entranced look round, enchanted listen here.

  From the far lands of liberty they come—­
    England’s proud children and her younger race;
  Those who possess the Past’s most noble home,
    And those who claim the Future’s boundless space.

  Pitying they stand.  For thee who would not weep? 
    Well it beseems these men to weep for thee,
  Whose flags (as erst they own) control the deep,
    Whose conquering sails o’ershadow every sea.