resque in form, or combination, or color, and here again, there must be beautiful details, and the human impress of Art upon them, to satisfy the sense that craves the picturesque.

I sat one evening on the cliffs at Newport with Mot Notelpa, a friend who wears the onyx ring, of which Sterling has written so good a story—and as we were discussing America, Mot, the gentleman of two hemispheres, said to me: "America is only a splendid exile for the European race." The saying was no less forcible than fine, but I have no room to follow its meaning here. He did not say or mean that it was a pity to be born an American, or deny the compensation which gives us our advantages.

No man who has traversed Europe with his eyes and mind open has failed to see that as our great natural advantage is space, so our great social and political advantage is opportunity, and every young man's capital the chance of a career. But the race as a unit, cultivated to the point of Art, is exiled, wherever the laws of Nature postpone Art.

You may be sure that I said no such thing to the Empress, as in the moonlight she provoked the comparison.

But the "No" of my reply meant all that. And when, the next morning, we steamed in a stiff gale from Caldwell to Crown Point, the unhumanized

solitude of the shores accorded well with the dusky legends of Indian wars that haunt the Lake.

rather

Lake George should be the motto of a song than the text of a sermon, I know. But it is beautiful enough to make moralizing poetry. It is the beauty of a country cousin, the diamond in the rough, when compared with the absolute elegance and fascination of Como. Nor will I quarrel with those whom the peasant pleases most--especially if they have never been to court.

ΝΑ Η ΑΝΤ

H! which were best, to roam or rest?
The land's lap or the water's breast?

To sleep on yellow millet-sheaves,
Or swim in lucid shallows, just

Eluding water-lily leaves,

An inch from Death's black fingers, thrust
To lock you, whom release he must;

Which life were best on Summer eves?

NAHANT is a shower of little brown cottages, fallen upon the rocky promontory that terminates Lynn Beach.

There is a hotel upon its finest, farthest point, which was a fashionable resort a score of years since. But the beaux and belles have long since retreated into the pretty cottages whence they can contemplate the hotel, which has the air of a quaint, broad-piazzad, sea-side hostelry, with the naked ugliness of a cotton factory added to it, and fancy it the monu ment of merry, but dead old days

G