Woman’s love is writ in water!  Woman’s faith is traced in sand! 
    Backwards—­backwards let me wander to the noble northern land;
    Let me feel the breezes blowing fresh along the mountain side;
    Let me see the purple heather, let me hear the thundering tide,
    Be it hoarse as Corrievreckan spouting when the storm is high—­
    Give me but one hour of Scotland—­let me see it ere I die! 
    Oh, my heart is sick and heavy—­southern gales are not for me;
    Though the glens are white with winter, place me there, and set me free;
    Give me back my trusty comrades—­give me back my Highland maid—­
    Nowhere beats the heart so kindly as beneath the tartan plaid! 
    Flora! when thou wert beside me, in the wilds of far Kintail—­
    When the cavern gave us shelter from the blinding sleet and hail—­
    When we lurk’d within the thicket, and, beneath the waning moon,
    Saw the sentry’s bayonet glimmer, heard him chant his listless tune—­
    When the howling storm o’ertook us drifting down the island’s lee,
    And our crazy bark was whirling like a nutshell on the sea—­
    When the nights were dark and dreary, and amidst the fern we lay
    Faint and foodless, sore with travel, longing for the streaks of day;
    When thou wert an angel to me, watching my exhausted sleep—­
    Never didst thou hear me murmur—­couldst thou see how now I weep! 
    Bitter tears and sobs of anguish, unavailing though they be. 
    Oh the brave—­the brave and noble—­who have died in vain for me!

W.E.A.

* * * * *

EARLY GREEK ROMANCES—­THE ETHIOPICS OF HELIODORUS.

“It is not in Provence, (Provincia Romanorum,) as is commonly said from the derivation of the name—­nor yet in Spain, as many suppose, that we are to look for the fatherland of those amusing compositions called Romances, which are so eminently useful in these days as affording a resource and occupation to ladies and gentlemen who have nothing to do.  It is in distant and far different climes to our own, and in the remote antiquity of long vanished ages:—­it is among the people of the East, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Syrians, that the germ and origin is to be found of this species of fictitious narrative, for which the peculiar genius and poetical temperament of those nations particularly adapt them, and in which they delight to a degree scarcely to be credited.  For even their ordinary discourse is interspersed with figurative expressions; and their maxims of theology and philosophy, and above all, of morals and political science, are invariably couched under the guise of allegory or parable.  I need not stay to enlarge upon the universal veneration paid throughout the East to the fables of Bidpai or Pilpay, and to Lokman, who is (as may easily be shown) the Esop of the Greeks:—­and