the bud bursts into blossom but to hide the \ 

 falling leaves, fragrant amid the decay of the j 

 parent flower. 



Then the beauties of our country are so 

 varied ! The peasant girl, gifted with pearl 

 like modesty, and the courtly maiden, set, as 

 her birthright, in a golden circlet — the intel- 

 lectual face beaming intelligence, and the 

 English matron, proud as Cornelia of her 

 living jewels. 



Nor is the perfection of English beauty 

 confined to any class. In summer-time you 

 meet it everywhere ; by the hedge-rows, in 

 the streets, in the markets, in the parks, at 

 watering places ; at home, and abroad. At 

 every turn, one meets some fair specimen of 

 living beauty. We are reflected in it, and 

 we get rude health by the contact. 



" LITERACY PENSIONERS." 



The miserable outcry of certain lite- 

 rary men about their " hardships," and their 

 ignoble attempts to be admitted to pensions (!) 

 are truly contemptible. 



Whatever may have occurred in earlier 

 times, when the claims of literature were not 

 properly recognised and rewarded, can have 

 no reference to the sums now paid for mental 

 labor. A recent pension granted to a public 

 literary man, reminds us, although he is a 

 sad grumbler, that he has in his time rolled 

 in money. Few persons have been better 

 remunerated, or better enabled to live in com- 

 plete affluence. If his expenditure was un- 

 duly extravagant, — which it was, who but 

 himself can be to blame ? This whining, 

 puling, outcry, we repeat, is disgusting ; and 

 we hope to hear no more of it. Meantime, 

 let us append the very sensible remarks of a 

 contemporary (the Critic), bearing hard 

 upon the same subject : — 



A great deal of exaggeration and absurdity has 

 been vented, especially in a certain recent " Auto- 

 biography," with respect to the " calamities" of 

 authorship by profession. Much of the pain which 

 is said to attach exclusively to that condition of 

 life, is mitigated by counterbalancing advantages 

 or pleasures ; while still more of it will be found, 

 on close inquiry, to be no necessary concomitant 

 of literary pursuits, but, in a greater or less degree 

 to accompany all the forms of industry cultivated 

 in a state of society so highly complex and arti- 

 ficial as is our own. 



When, towards the close of his laborious liter- 

 ary life, Robert Southey, indulging in a train 

 of retrospective meditation, endeavored to sum up 

 what literature had done for him, he chronicled 

 the result of his reflections in the question, — 

 " Would I have been a happier man had I been 

 all my life arguing in Westminster Hall?" and 

 it needs no great acquaintance with the character 

 or temperament of men like Southey to enable 

 any one to answer for him " No !" The temper 

 which was ruffled by the sarcasms of Byron ; the 



susceptibility which so pitiful a person as William 

 Smith of Norwich could rouse into passionate in- 

 dignation ; the whole sensitive nature which, even 

 in so quiet a sphere as the library at Keswick, at 

 last yielded its possessor a prey to insanity, — 

 how could these have stood the judicial browbeat- 

 ings and professional exasperations and wear and 

 tear of metropolitan legal existence ? 



Let any literary man, with the gifts and senti- 

 ments of the genu ine student, and who is disposed 

 to grumble at the chagrins of his lot, ask himself 

 whether these would be fewer or less keen were 

 he a surgeon or a merchant, — were he a competi- 

 tor of Mr. Pecksniff's, or doomed to be pitted 

 against the learned and eloquent Serjeant Buzfuz ? 



This is well said ; quite to the point. If 

 rigid inquiry be made, it will be found that 

 no really deserving man, now-a-days, needs 

 perish for want of support, simply because 

 he is an author. Let him work with his 

 hands, as do other men equally worthy with 

 himself; and let him bear in mind the trite 

 but true saying, — Aide toi, et le Ciel {aider a. 



We are quite of the old school ; and con- 

 sider that " if a man will not work, neither 

 should he eat." This is good law, and should 

 be equally dealt out to all but those who are 

 " incapables." 



INDIAN SCENERY. 



The following graphic sketch, from the 

 pen of a traveller in the East, cannot fail to 

 interest our readers. It bears the impress 

 of truth throughout : — 



Our Eastern land is a gorgeous one, but it is a 

 picture land. It better suits the portfolio of an 

 artist — the" tesselated pages of an album," than 

 the personal contest of hand and foot, or constitu- 

 tion. It is fair to look upon, but let us see it in a 

 diorama. It has all the capabilities of producing 

 a superb and showy painting, or series of paint- 

 ings ; but it will not do to tread those sunny 

 tracts, to wander among those glittering scenes, 

 that look so well on canvas. The sunbeams that 

 impart fife to the picture, give death or delirium to 

 the traveller who dares their influence ; and those 

 grotesque groups of trees and depths of jungle — 

 bright with flowers and birds, whose very plumage 

 seems a flower-bed — afford shelter to beasts of 

 prey, and reptiles whose venom is as powerful and 

 deadly as their colors are beautiful. 



There are squirrels sporting before my door. I 

 love those graceful little creatures — so wild, so 

 boldly shy, so untameubly-regardless of the en- 

 dearments of man ! Parroquets, with green fea- 

 thers and roseate bills, are fluttering noisily among 

 the cocoa-trees, with a mad sort of rompishness 

 allied to intoxication. They are delighted, no 

 doubt, with the sudden shower which has so re- 

 freshingly cooled the air ; or perhaps they have 

 been banquetting on the seeds of the cotton-plant ; 

 which if Fomet, a botanist of other years, is to 

 be credited, H fuddle tlie parroquets." 



The oleander scents and beautifies the little 

 garden plot before me, and the wild plants, that 

 spring profusely around, are full of beauty. 



