Siberian Shaman, namely, that of inducing a somnambulous cataleptic state; but that now, the former not carrying out their whirling and other stupifying operations to the same extent as was once done, these ceremonies have become mere senseless and unmeaning rites; the Dervishes themselves being now ignorant of the purpose meant to be accomplished by their singular religious services. Three, however, out of the thirty-two orders into which the Dervishes are divided, the Meldeve, the Bedive, and the Rufai, still practise the whirling to a much greater extent than any of the others; their movements, accompanied by a barbarous kind of music, and various other ceremonies, while they call out in a voice of increasing loudness, "Allah! Hu!" until, breathless and exhausted, like the Shaman, they fall into a state of utter insensibility. After a few more absurd practices, they are then blessed by their chief, "Sheik Ulislam," as he is sometimes called, (meaning Chief of the True Believers,) and speedily recover. THE THREE VOICES. WHAT saith the Past to thee? Weep! Beauty hath died like the dream of a sleep, Trifles of sense, the profoundly unreal, How speaks the Present hour? Act! So shall thy footsteps in glory be track'd, Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavour; Droop not o'er efforts expended in vain ; What doth the Future say? Hope! Look where light fringes the far-rising slope- Watch! Though so long be the twilight delaying, Miscellaneous. "I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own, but the string that ties them."-Montaigne. roofless, owing to the intensity of the frost having extracted the nails by which the shingles were fastened to the rafters. Provisions are brought into St. John's frozen hard, and they will keep perfectly well so long as the frost lasts; it is ludicrous enough to see pigs, hares, and large codfish frozen stiff, and carried by a leg or tail over a man's shoulder, like a musket. One evening a discussion as to the degree of cold led to a bet, and the commanding officer's orderly was sent to ascertain what the thermometer stood at outside the window. The major's servant ingenuously brought the thermometer into the room, and looked at it by the light of the fire; the mercury thus suddenly astonished, naturally ran up a tremendous pace. In the conversation which took palce between him and the orderly, he was overheard exclaiming, "Wait till it stops, Bob! Now tell the major it is at 45 notches above Nero."-Echoes from the Backwoods. ANECDOTE OF LORD ERSKINE. WHEN induced to make a personal observation on a witness, Erskine divested it of asperity by a tone of jest and good humour. In a cause at Guildhall, brought to recover the value of a quantity of whalebone, a witness was called of impenetrable stupidity. There are two descriptions of whalebone, of different value, the long and the thick. The defence turned on the quality delivered; that an inferior article had been charged at the price of the best. A witness for the defence baffled every attempt at explanation by his dulness. He confounded thick whalebone with long in such a manner that Erskine. was forced to give it up. 'Why, man, you don't seem to know the difference between what is thick and what is long. Now, I'll tell you the difference. Now, I'll tell you the difference. You are a thick-headed fellow, and you are not a long-headed one!" -Townsend's Lives of Eminent Judges. THERE is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will; a word-a look, which at one time would make no impression-at another time wounds the heart; and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarcely have reached the object aimed at.-Sterne. WHO does not look back with feelings which he would in vain attempt to describe, to the delightful rambles which his native fields and meadows afforded to his earliest years? Flowers are among the first objects that forcibly attract the attention of young children, becoming to them the source of gratifications which are among the purest of which our nature is capable, and of which even the indistinct recollection imparts often a fleeting pleasure to the most cheerless moments of after-life.Kidd. WHEN two friends part, they should lock up one another's secrets, and interchange their keys. THE noblest weapon wherewith man can conquer, is love and gentlest courtesy. N.B.-The Second Volume of this Periodical is now ready; covers for binding, with table of contents, may be ordered of any Booksellers. KING LEAR AND HIS DAUGHTERS. So utter is its desolation that even winter lacks the power to make its aspect wilder or more desolate. Summer leaves, and summer flowers, bright with the sunshine or glittering with the dew, trailing along the broken walls and shattered coping-stones, hanging a garland over porches mouldering into dust, over dim discoloured window panes, over wormed and mossy garden seats, over fountains choked with weeds, over paths but barely pervious, mock and magnify its desolation and decay; but in winter all external and surrounding objects are in keeping with the void and ruined Grange. Titanic trees circling the old house like a body-guard of giants, wierd and awful in their look as those which frowned upon the Pilgrim's path, naked and gnarled, and making melancholy music as the wind sighs through the leafless boughs; bare slopes, with here and there a barer bush creaking as it sways; here and there a heap of faded leaves, that rustle with a startling unfamiliar rustle as you tread; dead stems of flowers, and crackling sapless shrubs, weaving a tangled network that overspreads the uneven terrace and dismantled urns; the stagnant and turbid fishpool, the very clouds themselves, heavy and cold and leaden, and creeping sluggishly across the sky; are perfectly in harmony with all the eye discerns and all the imagination pictures of that old decaying house. Did light laughter ever echo underneath that roof? Did youthful footsteps ever bound along its floors? Did the firelight ever gleam in crimson flakes upon its shining walls? Were rosy children ever wakened by the summer sunshine streaming through its cheerful window-panes? Did the smoke of blazing yule logs ascend its tunnelled chinney stacks at bygone Christmas festivals? Who were its inmates? what was their history? Why is it tenantless-fallen to decay? Pass through the vaulted porch, traverse the sounding hall, and by the cold deserted hearth sit down, and let us conjure up a history of the past. Why have my sisters husbands, if they say, They love you all? Haply when I shall wed, Lear. But goes this with thy heart ? Lear. So young, and so untender! Cor. So young, my lord, and true. Lear. Let it be so ;-thy truth then be thy dower: Here I disclaim all my paternal care, GRANGE. Shakspeare.-King Lear. not wrong him, this son-in-law was one better calculated to excite distrust and dread than love. Fair seeming, smooth spoken, humble almost to abjectness, winding into men's thoughts without developing his own, with wearing a perpetual smile, a smile so like a sneer that a wandering eye, a hesitating step, thin bloodless lips it was difficult to determine when he smiled and when he sneered,—he was a man whom dogs and children would instinctively avoid: direr reproach we will not stay to cast upon him. Those wandering eyes of his, how truly did they symbolize the narrow restless mind which worked within! how intelligibly they spoke of growing, greedy, unsatisfied desires, of baneful, peacedestroying passions usurping absolute dominion over that unquiet stormy mind! The inactive aimless life he led, subserved to foster those desires by offering no diversion to the current of his thoughts, which still flowed on in one direct and unimpeded course, delving a deeper channel, expanding into a broader flood, and gaining might, and volume, and velocity, by the mere absence of all impediment and check. He knew that, come what might, all that his benefactor had amassed must one day devolve on him; but then the certainty was not so proximate as he could wish. Years might elapse before the wealth so coveted should become his portion. Oh, that the inevitable, but yet remote, event could be accelerated! Oh, that the wearisome delay, the tedious waiting for the dead man's shoes, could be abridged! And might it not? Ay, might it not? In this one question all his gloomy reveries eventuated; beyond it, all was dim, chaotic, undefined. So, brooding over this dark thought; so, day by day, tending and nourishing the poison-plant which had struck deep root and thrived apace within his mind, until its baneful growth became too mighty for repres sion; so, suffering suggestion to assume the form and pressure of a settled purpose, and listening to the whispers of a dwarfish fiend, until that fiend, dilating with his expanding influence, swelled into giant's shape, and wore the mien and gestures of a stern inexorable Once on a time, for that is, after all, your only taskmaster; the old man's son-in-law became the docile legitimate method of opening a tale, - once on a time, slave of Avarice. Day and night, weekday and holytwo centuries since perhaps, a grey-haired man, who day, at mass and meals, visions of wealth, of sole had amassed great wealth by trading ventures to the supreme possession, flitted before his eyes, and minisEast, came hither to reside. An only daughter, her tered unceasing aliment to the master passion of his husband, and their child, shared in the old man's heart mind. But ever there arose one uniform impediment,— and home. He had been a poor dependent, this son-in-ever the figure of an old grey-headed man glided between law, whose thrifty zeal had helped to build the fabric of the merchant's fortune, and, growing in his good opinion year by year, gained at the last the rich requital of his daughter's hand. Her hand, we say, for that her heart accompanied it admits of doubt. If rumour did him and his desire; and ever, as that presence troubled him, a phantom whispered in his ear suggestions of a fearful import, which, awful and hideous at first, grew less and less repulsive with every repetition, so that a murderous thought at length would lose its horrid character, and harbour in his brain as naturally as though it were its own familiar lurking-place. From thought to act, from the motive to the method, were easy, if not inevitable, transitions. And yet, and yet, there was a haunting dread, the disquieting and constant fear of subsequent detection, to deter him from the deed. "Silently and well would poison work, but if suspicion should arise--" and then the prospective murderer would ponder on the matter more profoundly, search into old treatises, study the nature of mineral and vegetable poisons, and test their effects on animals, whenever practicable, until his knowledge of their character and operation was accurate and complete. And one was chosen, slow, and subtle, and sure as truth itself; and nightly mingled and administered in the stoup of spiced wine which custom had commended to the old man's palate. Yea, while he drank, the placid murderer stood by and never blanched; heard kindly words, thankful acknowledgments of his (the murderer's) delicate attentions fall from the old man's lips, and yet felt no compunctious visitings! And every day he saw the fitful flame of life which burnt within the victim's frame flickering with a fainter, feebler light, and knew how soon it would be quenched for ever; and saw the earnest sorrow of the daughter of that dying man, and yet persisted in the desperate crime, unwavering to the last! Grey-headed old man, surrounded on thy deathbed by delusions, close thy dim eyes in peace, happy in the illusory belief that thou hast confided thy daughter's happiness to safe and worthy keeping! He sank so slowly, wasting away with such a gradual decline, so like the natural decay of life, that, when death did set his "silent seal" upon the suffering clay, no comments followed the event, and he was laid to sleep within the village church with solemn pomp and simulated grief by the husband of his child, the inheritor of his possessions, and the destroyer of his life. memento of earlier and happier times was now no more. That wrinkled face, those silvery hairs, those old benignant eyes, that kindly voice- lost, lostirretrievably lost. While he was alive, it was a joy only to meet his affectionate greeting, morning and evering-much more to hold untiring converse of the past, to run over the sunny retrospect of her girlhood, to compare impressions, restore the half effaced, and, by renewing, vivify the fresh. Dreary, exceeding dreary, therefore, was the void created by the death of that dear doting parent. Her spirits sank, and then her health, and then she, too, went down into the dust. Her husband and her son, the one a haggard, prematurely grey, and consciencestricken man, the other a dull-eyed, gibbering idiot, abandoned Farleigh Grange within a year of her decease, and perished by shipwreck on their voyage to a foreign land. The estate reverted to a distant relative, but, often as it has been tenanted, the Grange has never been the permanent abiding place of its inhabitants. Some curse appears annexed to its possession-some fatality attached to its possessors; and, for half a century past, it has been, as it now is, a desolate, deserted, and, in common credence, haunted house. SCENERY OF THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY. FEW chapters in the history of civilization and human industry are so replete with importance and interest to every grade of readers, as the accounts of the means by which England has been, within the last score of years, covered with a net-work of iron, or System of Railways. As a branch of national economy, the subject will have a paramount claim upon the attention of the statist and the politician in forming their estimates of the means by which the internal prosperity and domestic peace of the empire have attained a century of advancement within less than a quarter of that period. At this vast subject it is but our intention to glance; and rather to select one of its stupendous examples, and describe its course and construction, we trust, so as to prove that a Railway, instead of cutting up and despoiling the face of the country, has, like a fertilizing river, enriched and embellished the district through which it trends, in its progress stretching out its giant-arms of improvement on each side of its mighty course. "To sleep," said we? No, not to sleep, but thenceforth to haunt the troubled vision of the assassin by his perpetual presence. Go where he would, to the murderer's fancy the very air was full of eyes, dim aged eyes, glaring upon him with a fearful menace. Through the dim gloom of midnight the angry gleam of those old eyes would seem to penetrate and awe him. In the blazing embers, in the pictures on the walls, in the fantastic figures on the fountain, in the white clouds that skimmed athwart the sky, in the very stones upon his path, he saw the lineaments of the murdered man. In the moaning of the wind, in the shivering rustle of the leaves, in the murmuring ripple of the water, in every casual, transient, sound, there were, to his car, intelligible articulations of the old man's voice. Wine had no power to banish from his brain the frightful images which thronged in thick succession through it; there was a poisonous savour in everything which met his lips; and the pure element itself smacked of a polluting mixture. Music was torture to his ears, for his wife found melancholy solace in dwelling on the songs and melodies which her father in his life-time loved; and by the mere force of association the mur-line, profusely illustrated with views of its great works, derer would shudder as he passed one vacant chair, and hurry from the room, filled with the fear of seeing its former occupant glide into his accustomed seat. His wife, too, pined and drooped, and seemed to wither gradually away. As we have hinted, her affection for the only parent she had ever known, had never been supplanted by the more impassioned love which ordinarily springs up within a woman's heart towards him with whom she forms a new and nearer tie. From a sentiment of duty towards her father, rather than of actual attachment to the object of her father's choice, she had originally consented to the union proposed to her; and in the society of that father, and in the nurture of her infant son, she had subsequently found her greatest happiness; hence the bereavement she had sustained was full of bitterness. The one golden link in the chain of old remembrance was snapped-the living For this purpose we have preferred THE GREAT WestERN RAILWAY, in many respects the most important work of its class yet completed; and one of the most attractive by means of the picturesque and interesting country through which it passes. There exists, likewise, a peculiar facility for our task, or rather labour of love, in a work of the highest authority, which has just been issued from the press. This is a magnificent folio volume, detailing the history and description of the and the adjacent scenery; and forming, altogether, the through which the line passes, this work presents a truly glorious picture of present and past. It has been published, we are informed, at an outlay of some fifteen hundred pounds, a large sum, if it is true; but only proportionate to the vast and varied interest and attraction of the subject of the work, and its demand on popular encouragement. By the aid of this very complete work we shall proceed to describe that truly magnificent line-the Great Western Railway. "Bristol, the capital city of the West of England, has been distinguished for its commerce from a very early period, and was for many centuries the second city in the British dominions. Its position, upon a tide river, and surrounded by an extensive coal-field, appears as well fitted to secure a pre-eminence amongst the manufacturing interests of modern times as amongst those of commerce in days of yore. In practice, however, this has not been fulfilled. The manufacturers of England, since they have attained their present immense importance, have flourished chiefly in the Northern and Midland districts, and have not descended, in any great force, into the West." It was natural to expect that the Railway System would be introduced at an earlier period amongst a population enriched by machinery, such as that lying northward of Birmingham, than amongst the men of commerce and agriculture who inhabit the West. Thus, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was completed before any of the passenger-railways about Bristol were commenced; and the Great Junction and London and Birmingham Railways both obtained their Acts earlier than the Great Western Railway; though, when the latter was brought forward, it received a far more cordial support from the population of its own districts than was the case with the northern lines. Thirteen years have now elapsed since the Great Western Line was first proposed; mainly with the object of reviving the commerce of the ancient port of Bristol, in connecting it by this iron road with the Metropolis. The enterprise was a noble one, and reminds one of the recovery of its fortunes by Cabot, some three centuries and a half since. The Railway project was warmly taken up; for we find Mr. Britton leaving his antiquarian pursuits to illustrate its advantages, in a Lecture read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Bristol, Oct. 19, 1833. "London," says the Report, "from its greatness, is, and must long continue to be, the centre of wealth, of arts, and of commerce; but its port is not well situated for the trade of the West: a long and dangerous passage, during the winter season, of more than one hundred leagues, must be made by ships coming from the West. Could vessels discharge their cargo in this port, they would be in safety, and ready for another voyage; indeed, ships from America and the West Indies, under favourable circumstances, may make two voyages in the season; but the fortnight that it takes longer in going to London is often fatal to their doing so. This will show the advantage of a ready land communication with London, which is now afforded by the projected Western Railroad. By this, the cargo of a vessel discharged in Bristol, may, in six hours, be in the centre of London, and conveyed at a moderate price at all seasons of the year. Bristol may become, under these views, the Great Western Port of London, being but six hours' distance from her. It has been figuratively said that the Grand Junction Canal may be compared to the back-bone of England. Then, surely, we do not violate propriety by saying that the Great Western Railway may be the right arm of the Metropolis." This anticipation was not a mere rhetorical flourish; but, as we have just said, the promise has not been fulfilled. There were many difficulties at the outset: the advantages were, by no means, generally appreciated; the estimated capital,two and a half millions,-was large; and the line was to be carried through a district altogether unused to such undertakings, and pre-occupied by powerful turn pike-road and canal interests. It is not to our purpose. to enumerate the several Acts of Parliament obtained for forming this Railway; but it should be mentioned, that, in the early stage of the proceedings, the promoters of the measure did not consider it practicable to apply to Parliament at once for an Act for the whole line. It was, likewise, at first intended to connect the line with the London and Birmingham Railway at Kensall Green, about four miles from the Metropolis; but the idea of this junction was abandoned, and a separate entrance into London secured. Before we proceed to details, it may be as well to notice certain circumstances in which the Great Western district differs from any other. Its traffic is altogether of a higher class than that in the North: for example, the existence of such a city as Bath, or such a town as Cheltenham, (to which latter the line has been extended,) supported entirely by persons living upon their incomes, is peculiar to the West; and the passengers, if not so numerous, yet indulge in higher comforts than the general population of such towns as Birmingham or Manchester. The line of country westward of London, also, differs from every other line in the number and character of the towns upon the route. "Of a train-load of passengers starting from London, a considerable number, and of the highest class, might be expected to leave the Railway at Windsor, at Reading, at Oxford, at Glou|cester, at Cheltenham, or at Bath; comparatively few of the original passengers will leave at Bristol; whilst, on the other hand, the seats of many of those who had left the train would be filled by persons proceeding to Bristol from the place for which the others had departed. This is wholly different from what takes place either upon the Birmingham, or upon any other line of Railway proceeding out of London; and the towns that have been named are, notoriously, centres of a numerous and wealthy population." In choosing the course of the Railway, two lines of country were to be considered, between London and Bristol, or rather, between Reading and Bath; the one ascending the vale of the Kennet, keeping the high ground south of the Marlborough downs, and descending through the Cotteswold by the valley of the Avon; the other following the ravine of the Thames, from Reading to near Wallingford, ascending the great vale of Berks, at the foot, and to the north of the Marlborough downs; and therefore intersecting the crest of the Cotteswold, above Box, a village a few miles east of Bath. Mr. Brunel, the appointed engineer to the Company, chose the latter line to the north of the Marlborough downs-both as being, in an engineering point of view, the best line, and as affording, in a greater degree than any other, facilitics of communication with Oxford, Gloucester, Cheltenham, South Wales, and the West of England generally; points of very great importance. The line, accordingly, takes the following direction through the counties of Middlesex, Bucks, Berks, Wilts, and Somerset. It commences at Paddington, passes by Acton, Ealing, Hanwell, over the Brent, to near the cattle-market at Southall, within two miles of Uxbridge; through Slough, and within one mile and three-quarters of Eton and Windsor; through Salt-hill to Maidenhead, where it crosses the Thames, and within six miles of Marlow; and thence passes within five of Wokingham and Henley, to Reading. The line next takes rather a northerly direction, ascending along the right bank of the Thames, which it crosses and recrosses at Basildon and Moulsford, where it is four miles from Wallingford; and thence passes to Staunton, where it is four miles from Abingdon, and ten from Oxford. Its course then proceeds westward, within two miles and a half of Wantage, six miles of Faringdon, four of Highworth, and one and a half of Swindon, whence there is a ready communication with Marlborough, Hungerford, and the south of Berkshire, and where the line is joined by the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway, now complete to Cirencester, and between Cheltenham |