On these words she vanished. Soon after her husband was overpowered and mortally wounded in a sally of the opposite party, and was with difficulty removed to Schnellerts, where he shortly expired.

And since his awful end,

In spectral armour dight,
With troops and horses round
He traverses the night.

And when in German land
The seeds of war are rife,

He leaves the ruined castle,

And tells the coming strife.

H. F. C.

ON SEEING A DEAD TREE.

OLD tree! thou art withered! of late I stood here,
And the birds in thy branches did merrily sing:
Thy shadow stretched dark o'er the stream passing near,
And thou wert as green as the rest in the spring.

How altered since then! leafy honours, so great,
In beauteous profusion encircled thy tree;
Now every one spurns thee, nor cares for thy fate,
But still thou hast serious reflections for me.

I think while I view thee and rest on yon stile,
Man's life is as frail as the leaves thou hast shed-
Like thee, he may boast of his honours awhile,

But Time will pass on and his fame will be dead.

Fond friends may oft come to the tomb where he's laid,

And love and affection the past will look o'er,

By degrees they will go-all those friends will have fled,
And hid in the grave, he'll be heard of no more.
Death makes no distinction-he takes, as his right,
The young and the aged, the king and the slave:
E'en beauty, that magic of empty delight,
Must fall at his bidding, and yield to the grave.

THE MYRTLE.

I GAZED upon the myrtle's snow,
Its countless leaves, which ever blow.
I gazed; until I seemed to see
The blood-red sword of Liberty
Through the opposing branches gleam,
While round me, like a dream,
Athens spreads her mystic groves:
On the slow procession moves!
Hark! a shout rings through the sky!
'Tis done: farewell to tyranny.
Myrtle, there are who thee declare

Nursling of the Cyprian fair;

Wouldst thou not rather called be

Emblem divine of Liberty?

While thus I doubted and surveyed
With firmer glance the quivering shade,
A sudden brightness, as of steel,
Strikes me among the boughs I feel
A golden quiver lies revealed;

'Twas Love's, 'neath Venus' tree concealed.

P. T.

EMIGRATION AND TRANSPORTATION.

TALES OF THE COLONIES; OR THE ADVENTURES OF AN EMIGRant. By C. ROWCROFT, ESQ., a late Colonial Magistrate. Fifth Edition. Smith, Elder, & Co., 1847.

EMIGRATION AND TRANSPORTATION relatively considered, in a Letter dedicated by permission to Earl Grey. By MRS. CHISHOLM. London Ollivier, 1847.

We never intended this magazine for an organ of criticism; partly from distrust of our own abilities, considering that a boy's opinion could not carry much weight with it; partly because the numerous periodicals put forth from time to time by our respected predecessors never bore that character; and partly because we did not think that such papers would prove acceptable to our schoolfellows.

During the holidays, however, the "Tales of the Colonies" were kindly sent us by the author, whom we have ascertained to be an Etonian of 1810, and whose work, from that reason, no less than from the compliment of the gift, seems to require notice at our hands.

The "Tales of the Colonies" are from the pen of a late colonial magistrate, and purport to be the history of the settler in the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land. To those of our readers who have not seen it, though it has reached a fifth edition, we will give a brief outline of the emigrant's adventures, and then proceed to the subject developed in it-emigration, and its relation to transportation.

At the beginning of the year 1816, Mr. William Thornley, a Surrey farmer, suffered great reverses in the corn trade, from the extensive nature of public competition, and the multitude of tithes and taxes, pressing heavily on an already failing business. Having accidentally heard of the many eligible opportunities which presented themselves for emigration to Van Diemen's Land, he consults his wife and determines to seek his fortune there; and finally arrives in Hobart Town on the third of February, 1817, having to begin life afresh on 3600 dollars (£780.), and 1200 acres of land assigned him by the colonial government on the banks of the Clyde, fifty miles from town. On his way thither he meets with a servant and partner in one Samuel Crab, a Shropshire ploughman, a character of unprepossessing address, but a thoroughly good heart, reminding us of Dr. Johnson, whose habitual disgust with the wretched country, and its inhabitants, and determination to leave it by the next ship, though all the time his affairs and those of his master prosper more and more every day, and himself is at bottom contented, furnish us with much amusement. The following is a tolerable specimen of this cross-grained spirit :

"Crab says that every thing is wrong on this side of the globe, and that he is sure nature first tried her hand at creation in Van Diemen's Land, and found that she was making mistakes, so she went right over to the other side, and mended matters. For,' says he, 'look at the trees, instead of shedding their leaves in winter, they shed their bark; and there it hangs in rags and tatters, till it drops off. Would any decent respectable tree in England behave in such a manner? And look at what they call rivers! Why the river Jordan (its a shame to give it such a Scripture name) isn't so broad

M

as the New River at home! as to the Clyde, I don't know what to make of it; it runs up-hill in some places. And the grass! it isn't green, like honest, wholesome grass at home, but brown, and as coarse as wire-grass in a swamp. If you want to make the grass green in Van Diemen's Land, you must set fire to a patch, and then what comes up after is green for a while, but there's little of it. There is not a natural flower in the whole country, nor a root, nor a plant, nor a fruit, fit for man's eating. The cherry-tree, as they call it, is a funny thing indeed! a sour, squashy thing, with the stone forgotten in the middle, and so it was stuck outside, for the look's sake, I suppose. Then everything is contrary; you never know which is north and south, and it's winter in June, and summer in January! I tell you what it is, master, it's all a mistake; and the best thing we can do is to go back to a country fit for Christians to live in-to old England, where a man knows what he is about, and can get a pint of beer if he wants it, and get his plough and his cart dragged by horses, and not by bullocks in this outlandish fashion."

Thornley's affairs prosper up to 1824, when news comes of the approach of a formidable tribe of bushrangers, a sort of nomad burglars, helped by natives, which causes considerable panic on the banks of the Clyde. One night they attack a new settler's house, and with the spirit of enterprise and neighbourly attachment so necessary in uncivilized parts, Thornley, with two or three friends, sets off to the rescue.

After

hair-breadth escapes many from the waddies and womeras of the natives, when they have got the enemy at a disadvantage a letter comes to our hero announcing that his house has been set on fire; and he agrees to return alone, a distance of about thirty miles. His taking a wrong turn-his wanderings in the bush-his horrible extremity from hunger and the loss of his horse-his almost certain death by the natives, against