At last, steam communication with Australia seems about to become a reality, for the first vessel is announced to start in May for Sydney, to touch at the Cape and other colonies on her way out; and accommodation is promised for two hundred passengers of different classes. There is also a project on foot for a line of steamers from Panama to Australia, and to Valparaiso, which, if brought into operation, will make a voyage round the world little more than a bagman's journey. Apropos of Australia, Mr Clarke, who first predicted that gold would be found in that country, says, 'that just 90 degrees west of the auriferous range in Australia, we find an auriferous band in the Urals; and just 90 degrees west of the Urals, occur the auriferous mountains of California.' A speculation for cosmogonists. In our own country, we are finding metalliferous deposits: vast accumulations of lead-ore have come to light in Wales, which are said to contain six ounces of silver, and fifteen hundredweight of lead to the ton; and in Northamptonshire, an abundant and timely supply of iron-ore has just been met with. We might perhaps turn our metallic treasures to still better account, if some one would only set to work and win the prize offered by Louis Napoleon; namely, 'a reward of 50,000 francs to such person as shall render the voltaic pile applicable, with economy, to manufactures, as a source of heat, or to lighting, or chemistry, or mechanics, or practical medicine.' The offer is to be kept open for five years, to allow full time for experiment, and people of all nations have leave to compete. One of the electric telegraph companies intends to ask parliament to abolish the present monopoly as regards the despatch of messages; in another quarter, an under-sea telegraph to Ostend is talked about, with a view to communicate with Belgium independently of France; and there is no reason why it should not be laid down, for the Dover and Calais line is paying satisfactorily. And, finally, another ship-load of 'marbles' and sculptures has just arrived from Nineveh; and the appointment of Mr Layard as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (though now but temporary) is regarded as a praiseworthy recognition of his merits and services; and now that we have a government which combines a few littérateurs among its members, it is thought that literature will be relieved of some of its trammels.
CHILDREN'S JOYS AND SORROWS.
I can endure a melancholy man, but not a melancholy child; the former, in whatever slough he may sink, can raise his eyes either to the kingdom of reason or of hope; but the little child is entirely absorbed and weighed down by one black poison-drop of the present. Think of a child led to the scaffold, think of Cupid in a Dutch coffin; or watch a butterfly, after its four wings have been torn off, creeping like a worm, and you will feel what I mean. But wherefore? The first has been already given; the child, like the beast, only knows purest, though shortest sorrow; one which has no past and no future; one such as the sick man receives from without, the dreamer from himself into his asthenic brain; finally, one with the consciousness not of guilt, but of innocence. Certainly, all the sorrows of children are but shortest nights, as their joys are but hottest days; and indeed both so much so, that in the latter, often clouded and starless time of life, the matured man only longingly remembers his old childhood's pleasures, while he seems altogether to have forgotten his childhood's grief. This weak remembrance is strangely contrasted with the opposing one in dreams and fevers in this respect, that in the two last it is always the cruel sorrows of childhood which return; the dream this mock-sun of childhood—and the fever, its distorting glass—both draw forth from dark corners the fears of defenceless childhood, which press and cut with iron fangs into the prostrate soul. The fair scenes of dreams mostly play on an after-stage, whereas the frightful ones choose for theirs the cradle and the nursery. Moreover, in fever, the ice-hands of the fear of ghosts, the striking one of the teachers and parents, and every claw with which fate has pressed the young heart, stretch themselves out to catch the wandering man. Parents, consider then, that every childhood's Rupert—the name given in Germany to the fictitious being employed to frighten children into obedience—even though it has lain chained for tens of years, yet breaks loose and gains mastery over the man so soon as it finds him on a sick-bed. The first fright is more dangerous the sooner it happens: as the man grows older, he is less and less easily frightened; the little cradle or bed-canopy of the child is more easily quite darkened than the starry heaven of the man.—Jean Paul Richter.
A REJECTED LOVER.
You 'never loved me,' Ada!—Those slow words
Dropped softly from your gentle woman's tongue,
Out of your true and tender woman's heart,
Dropped—piercing into mine like very swords,
The sharper for their brightness! Yet no wrong
Lies to your charge; nor cruelty, nor art;
Even while you spoke, I saw the ready tear-drop start.
You 'never loved me?'—No, you never knew—
You, with youth's dews yet glittering on your soul—
What 'tis to love. Slow, drop by drop, to pour
Our life's whole essence, perfumed through and through
With all the best we have, or can control,
For the libation; cast it down before
Your feet—then lift the goblet, dry for evermore!