I come to you as swallows come,
    Across the stormy foam;
  My chief delight in alien lands,
    To sing my songs of home: 
  Nor will I once regret my home
    And all the sea that parts,
  If you will only give me now
    A home within your hearts!

* * * * *

[From the Athenaeum.]

VIRGINIA TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.[A]

[Footnote A:  The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia; expressing the Cosmographie and Comodities of the Country, togither with the Manners and Customes of the People.  Gathered and observed as well by those who went first thither as collected by William Strachey, Gent, the first Secretary of the Colony.  Now first edited from the original Manuscript, in the British Museum, by R. H. Major, Esq., of the British Museum.  Printed for the Hakluyt Society.]

This is a suggestive book, with its prophetic motto,—­its dedication to Lord Bacon, the fit patron of discoverers,—­and its curious map, “described by Captayn John Smith,” adorned with ships, and huge whales, and all the land so closely dotted over with tall trees and molehill-sized mountains, and here and there the mark of an Indian settlement just visible.  Worthy William Strachey, Gent., what would be his surprise to look over a map of Virginia Britannia,-that “ample tract of land” with “sufficient space and ground enough to satisfie the most covetous,”—­in the year 1850; and to mark the teeming and busy population, the steamboats that navigate the “five faire and delightfull navigable rivers” within the Chesapeake Bay, the railroads that intersect the whole country and the vast human tide still pouring westward?  “This shall be written for the generation to come,” is his motto; and interesting it is to the reader to follow him in his narrative of the toils and privations of the good company to which he was secretary, and in his full and minute account of the produce of the country, and its strange inhabitants.  Who William Strachey was, Mr. Major, notwithstanding all his diligence, has not been able to ascertain.  In his dedication to Lord Bacon, he describes himself as having been “one of the Graies-Inne Societe,” and his narrative affords ample proof of his being a man of learning and worth:  but of his family, the date of his birth or of his death, we have no record.

The earlier attempts to colonize North America were numerous, but all unfavorable.  “Divers voyages” were made thither from the year 1578 to the close of the reign of Elizabeth, but without success; nor were the first adventurers in the reign of her successor more fortunate.