that Voltaire pronounces that passage to be the finest in Virgil.

I liked the "Jerusalem" better than I used to do. I was enraptured with Ariosto; and I still think of Dante, as I thought when I first read him, that he is a superior poet to Milton; that he runs neck and neck with Homer; and that none but Shakespeare has gone decidedly beyond him.

As soon as I reach Calcutta I intend to read Herodotus again. By the bye, why do not you translate him? You would do it excellently; and a translation of Herodotus, well executed, would rank with original compositions. A quarter of an hour a day would finish the work in five years. The notes might be made the most amusing in the world. I wish you would think of it. At all events, I hope you will do something which may interest more than seven or eight people. Your talents are too great, and your leisure time too small, to be wasted in inquiries so frivolous (I must call them) as those in which you have of late been too much engaged - whether the Cherokees are of the same race with the Chickasaws; whether Van Diemen's Land was peopled from New Holland, or New Holland from Van Diemen's Land; what is the precise mode of appointing a headman in a village in Timbuctoo. I would not give the worst page in Clarendon or Fra Paola for all that ever was or ever will be written about the migrations of the Leleges and the laws of the Oscans.

I have already entered on my public functions, and I hope to do some good. The very wigs of the judges in the Court of King's Bench would stand on end if they knew how short a chapter my Law of Evidence will form. I am not without many advisers. A native of some fortune at Madras has sent me a paper on legislation. "Your honor must know," says this judicious person, "that the great evil is that men swear falsely in this country. No judge knows what to believe. Surely, if your honor can make men to swear truly, your honor's fame will be great, and the company will flourish. Now, I know how men may be made to swear truly; and I will tell your honor, for your fame, and for the profit of the company. Let your honor cut off the great toe of the right foot of every man who swears falsely, whereby your honor's fame will be extended." Is not this an exquisite specimen of legislative wisdom?

I must stop. When I begin to write to England, my pen runs as if it would run on forever.

Ever yours affectionately,

T. B. M.

TO MISS FANNY AND MISS SELINA MACAULAY.

OOTACAMUND, August 10th, 1834.

MY DEAR SISTERS, -I sent last month a full account of my journey hither, and of the place, to Margaret, as the most stationary of our family; desiring her to let you all see what I had written to her. I think that I shall continue to take the same course. It is better to write one full and connected narrative than a good many imperfect fragments.

Money matters seem likely to go on capitally. My expenses, I find, will be smaller than I anticipated. The rate of exchange, if you know what that means, is very favorable indeed; and, if I live, I shall get rich fast. I quite enjoy the thought of appearing in the light of an old hunks who knows on which side his bread is buttered; a warm man; a fellow who will cut up well. This is not a character which the Macaulays have been much in the habit of sustaining; but I can assure you that after next Christmas I expect to lay up on an average about seven thousand pounds a year, while I remain

in India.

At Christmas I shall send home a thousand or twelve hundred pounds for my father, and you all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it is to me to find that I shall be able to do this. It reconciles me to all the pains-acute enough, sometimes, God knows of banishment. In a few years, if I live-probably in less than five years from the time at which you will be reading this letter-we shall be again together in a comfortable, though a modest home; certain of a good fire, a good joint of meat, and a good glass of wine; without owing obligations to anybody; and perfectly indifferent, at least as far as our pecuniary interest is concerned, to the changes of the political world. Rely on it, my dear girls, that there is no chance of my going back with my heart cooled toward you. I came hither principally to save my family, and I am not likely while here to forget them. Ever yours,

T. B. M.

TO A SWALLOW BUILDING UNDER THE EAVES AT CRAIGENPUTTOCK.

BY JANE WELSH CARLYLE.

[JANE BAILLIE WELSH CARLYLE was born at Haddington, Scotland, July 14, 1801. She was educated at the Haddington school. She was married, October 17, 1826, to Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). Her published writings are contained in "Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle," prepared for publication by Thomas Carlyle and edited by J. A. Froude (3 vols., 1883). She died in London, April 21, 1866.]

THOU, too, hast traveled, little fluttering thing,
Hast seen the world, and now thy weary wing
Thou, too, must rest.

But much, my little bird, couldst thou but tell,
I'd give to know why here thou likest so well
To build thy nest.

For thou hast passed fair places in thy flight,
A world lay all beneath thee where to light;
And strange thy taste,
Of all the varied scenes that met thine eye,
Of all the spots for building 'neath the sky,
To choose this waste.

Did fortune try thee? was thy little purse
Perchance run low, and thou, afraid of worse,
Felt here secure?

Ah no, thou need'st not gold, thou happy one!
Thou know'st it not of all God's creatures, man

Alone is poor.

What was it then? Some mystic turn of thought
Caught under German eaves, and hither brought,
Marring thine eye

For the world's loveliness, till thou art grown
A sober thing that dost but mope and moan,
Not knowing why?

Nay, if thy mind be sound, I need not ask,
Since here I see thee working at thy task

With wing and beak.

A well-laid scheme doth that small head contain,

At which thou work'st, brave bird, with might and main,
Nor more need'st seek!

In truth, I rather take it thou hast got
By instinct wise much sense about thy lot,
And hast small care

Whether a desert or an Eden be

Thy home, so thou remain'st alive and free
To skim the air.

God speed thee, pretty bird! may thy small nest
With little ones, all in good time be blest!
I love thee much;

For well thou managest that life of thine,
While I-oh, ask not what I do with mine!
Would I were such!

HEROISM IN HOUSEKEEPING.

BY JANE WELSH CARLYLE.

So many talents are wasted, so many enthusiasms turned to smoke, so many lives spoiled for want of a little patience and endurance, for want of understanding and laying to heart the meaning of The Present-for want of recognizing that it is not the greatness or littleness of the duty nearest hand, but the spirit in which one does it, which makes one's doing noble or mean! I can't think how people who have any natural ambition, and any sense of power in them, escape going mad in a world like this, without the recognition of that. I know I was very near mad when I found it out for myself (as one has to find out for oneself everything that is to be of any real practical use to one).

Shall I tell you how it came into my head? Perhaps it may be of comfort to you in similar moments of fatigue and disgust. I had gone with my husband to live on a little estate of peat bog, that had descended to me all the way down from John Welsh, the Covenanter, who married a daughter of John Knox. That didn't, I'm ashamed to say, make me feel Craigenputtock a whit less of a peat bog and a most dreary, untoward place to live at. In fact, it was sixteen miles distant on every side from all the conveniences of life, shops, and even post office. Further, we were very poor, and further and

worst, being an only child, and brought up to great prospects, I was sublimely ignorant of every branch of useful knowledge, though a capital Latin scholar and very fair mathematician.

It behooved me in these astonishing circumstances to learn to sew. Husbands, I was shocked to find, wore their stockings into holes, and were always losing buttons, and I was expected to "look to all that"; also it behooved me to learn to cook! no capable servant choosing to live at such an out-of-the-way place, and my husband having bad digestion, which complicated my difficulties dreadfully. The bread, above all, brought from Dumfries, "soured on his stomach" (O Heaven !), and it was plainly my duty as a Christian wife to bake at home.

So I sent for Cobbett's "Cottage Economy," and fell to work at a loaf of bread. But, knowing nothing about the process of fermentation or the heat of ovens, it came to pass that my loaf got put into the oven at the time that myself ought to have been put into bed; and I remained the only person not asleep in a house in the middle of a desert.

One o'clock struck! and then two!! and then three!!! And still I was sitting there in the midst of an immense solitude, my whole body aching with weariness, my heart aching with a sense of forlornness and degradation. That I, who had been so petted at home, whose comfort had been studied by everybody in the house, who had never been required to do anything but cultivate my mind, should have to pass all those hours of the night in watching a loaf of bread- which mightn't turn out bread after all!

Such thoughts maddened me, till I laid down my head on the table and sobbed aloud. It was then that somehow the idea of Benvenuto Cellini sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace came into my head, and suddenly I asked myself: "After all, in the sight of the upper Powers, what is the mighty difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, so that each be the thing that one's hand has found to do? The man's determined will, his energy, his patience, his resource were the really admirable things of which his statue of Perseus was the mere chance expression. If he had been a woman, living at Craigenputtock with a dyspeptic husband, sixteen miles from a baker, and he a bad one, all these qualities would have come out more fitly in a good loaf of bread!"

I cannot express what consolation this germ of an idea