And toiling on, unvanquished and alone,
While hope's last halo round th' aspirant shone,
He sought the mystic lore by sinuous ways,
By rills soft purling where the noontide blaze
With dubious twilight filled the forest shades;
In populous cities, and sequestered glades;
Till, grappling knowledge girt with pangs divine,
A conquering Prince he paused in Palestine.
"O joy!" the Watcher sighed, with reverie's sweet
Unsyllabled emotion, "joy complete!

When precious fruits beyond all thought's compare,
Though guarded by grim dragons of despair,
These hands emaciate 'reft from holier trees
Than showered with greening-gold the Hesperides-
While, born 'mid purging flames, from bubbled dross,
Dread rose the glamour of the Rosy Cross!
Immortal health, reviving on the verge

Of death, shone glorified. Woe's sullen dirge
Gave change to vital music such as thrills
The pulses of our being, such as fills
The veins with vinous pleasure, such as stirs
The bosom with the glory Life confers.
But not alone perennial strength was mine,
Unfading youth, and beauty half divine;
The barren staff of poverty spread leaf
And burgeoned into blossoms; from the grief
Of ruin and privation proudly rolled

The joy of boundless sway and wealth untold—
While mellowing ripe within my grasp were grown
The Grand Elixir and the Golden Stone.

'Twas summer near Idumea, and the gush
Of fountains babbled in noon's sultry flush,
And silver tinkles 'neath the drowsing shade,

Where, lapped in ease, earth's slumbering lords were laid,
Proclaimed the cooling sense the winnowed air,
From fans revolving, blew through jewelled hair;
Along the marble floors with flickering gleam,
As shapes reflective in a rippled stream,

Fantastic shadows played where light did glance
Without, through finden boughs in glittering dance,
Within, through painted screens, where, strewn around,
All gorgeous colours variegate the ground;
Heat hushed the sky, and mid-day sleep the land,
When flashed from sorrow's sheath power's flaming brand!

"An interval of passionate delight,

And Fame broke shell, unfurling wings for flight;
And warrior hosts around my fortunes thronged,
Whose quick allegiance direst oaths prolonged;
And shrill the trumpets woke their brazen voice;
And bright the dawn bade glinting arms rejoice;
And fresh the breeze through silken banners sang;
Loud rolled the drums, the clashing cymbals rang;
And twinkling spears, and blazing helms enhanced
The pomp of war that down the dells advanced.
Through thickets green, and o'er the fertile plain,
In dim perspective, stretched the sinuous train.
Hours died in roving 'mid Judæan hills,

Where oft through beechen copse some rivulet trills,

Where, camped at eve, along our lonely track,
Red glared the watch-fires of the bivouac.
Alternate moments of repose and toil

Thus marked our footprints on the sacred soil;
Again the sunrise saw in march proceed
The groaning camel and the neighing steed;
Again, at sundown, when with travel spent,
Like tiny pyramid sprang the mushroom tent,
And prostrate forms from brooding silence drew
What strength might still our pausing course renew.
For conquest thus towards Syrian scenes we hied,
Whence soared to heaven in flesh the Deified!
Our long-extended ranks slow gliding on
From leafless Ziph to cedared Lebanon,
Through velvet meadows and umbrageous woods,
And now by sedgy meres or brawling floods-
Till hoofs no longer pressed the Hebrew sod,
By patriarchs tended and by prophets trod;
Till scorching drought bade succulent herbage cease,
With gradual signs of vegetive decrease;
Till, lo! the horizon ringed in stern excess
The sterile wonders of the wilderness.

"Colossal ruins in the yellow waste

Our march at length arrested. Art, embraced
By Nature, in the desert reared her crest,
And like a Sylvan Goddess stood confessed,
With all her realms around her in the wild

Where, 'neath cool-clustering palms, our lines defiled.
And here, O sultry day! O night serene!
O solar Monarch! and O lunar Queen!
Thy lamps celestial watched our skill evoke,
The buried grandeur from whose graves awoke
Forgotten beauty-saw proud roofs again
Symmetric shafts in gilded domes sustain-
And viewed, o'er rebuilt temples, unconfined
My standards ripple in the dallying wind.
Around the marble fanes in pastoral bliss
Spread the dark verdure of the oasis;
My blooming empire, won with bloodless hand-
An island anchored in a sea of sand.
Exult yet more, O heart of mine! for now
The ripest peach melts ruddy on the bough-
Life's mellowing hope half realised beside
The pale betrothed blushing to a bride!
Thine, Edom, thine-sweet Aia till the hour
When lawless love purloined earth's fairest flower."

Shaldazzar ceased, for wilder rose the sound
Of revel tuned to music. Grouped around,
Disordered in their bacchanal delights,
With pampered air, reclined the Sybarites,
Whose tones seductive hymned in choral song
The liquid rites that festal joys prolong.

Let purple wine-gush,
Gush to the goblet's rim;
Wine!

Let blood-red wine-blush,
Blush to the golden brim.

Above the gorgeous litter, squandered o'er
The leopard-skin clad marble, zephyrs bore
Refreshing fragrance from dew-dripping grass;
Then, ghost-like, 'twixt the pillars forth did pass
Once more, where from the midnight's sapphire bloom
God's awful stars were thrilling in the gloom.
The maiden moon her silver horns beneath
The welkin's verge had dipped, and like a wreath
Of diamond-sprinkled amaranths, around
The brow of Heaven the constellations wound-
Along whose sovereign arch the milky way
Streamed radiance like a cincture, or like spray
Foamed up by surging waves of Time's wild sea,
Lapping upon the shores of dread Immensity.

*

PARAGUAY.*

M. ALFRED DEMERSAY was commissioned by the ministry of public instruction on an exploratory voyage to Paraguay in the year 1844. He left Brest in December of that year, and arrived at Rio Janeiro at the latter end of January, 1845. Hence he proceeded to Santos, which he reached after two days' pleasant navigation among islands of exceeding beauty, and which he declares leave far behind them the archipelago so boasted by the poets of Greece. Crossing thence the Serra do Mar, which follows the capricious outline of the coast, he reached Sao Paulo, or, as he calls it, "the old city of the Paulists." The road to Paraguay by the great rivers being closed by the political and military movements in which Great Britain in alliance with France was engaged against General Rosas, M. Demersay obtained a passage on board the imperial squadron bound to Rio Grande. Arrived at Port Allegro, the disagreeable intelligence reached him that M. de Castelnau, of whose interesting and extensive explorations in Southern America we have previously given a detailed account, having been refused admission into Francia's republic, presided over by Lopez, from the north. This did not give much encouragement to the traveller's project of endeavouring to penetrate the same exclusive country by the south. Add to which, he found that the province of Rio Grande was in a very unsafe condition, for, as he justly opined, all civil wars leave behind them cut-purses, who trouble themselves as little with the nationality as with the political opinions of travellers.

Luckily, however, he made the acquaintance of an Argentine officer about to return to the army of Corrientes, and he was enabled to start under his protection. The first part of the journey was effected by steam up the river Jacuy as far as Rio Pardo, beyond which rapids do not permit boats to go. Our traveller had, therefore, to purchase horses and organise his equipment at this latter place for land travel. The little caravan, he declares, presented a very picturesque and efficient appearance on starting from Rio Pardo. The horses and mules which were to act as relays, and which cost, the first fifty-four francs and the latter eighty-four francs each, went in front, flanked right and left by soldiers under the command of the lieutenant in charge of the escort. Behind him came two mules, laden with the most indispensable baggage, maps, instruments, and books. A Correntine soldier and a servant whom the traveller had engaged led them. The colonel and himself followed behind, and the whole procession was closed by a faithful servant, Maurice by name, well armed.

Our traveller spares the reader the detail of all the incidents that befel him during his journey of one hundred and twenty-five leagues across a province impoverished by long-continued civil wars. They had to sleep in the open air with their saddles for pillows, many a time with

* Histoire Physique Economique et Politique du Paraguay et des Etablissements des Jésuites. Par L. Alfred Demersay, Chargé d'une Mission Scientifique dans l'Amérique Méridionale. Tome Ier. Paris: L. Hachette et Cie.

out supper; and even when that could be procured, it was, at the utmost, "un rôti" of sun-dried meat. Arrived at Alegrete the 29th of January, M. Demersay learned that M. Bonpland, Humboldt's old companion, and from whom he was anxious to obtain details as to the country he was about to visit, was at the old mission of San Borja; and he accordingly turned off in that direction, parting from his companion and escort. The account of his first interview with the venerable naturalist, since dead, is interesting:

I had not deemed it necessary to provide myself with those formal letters of introduction which are proffered at every step in America, and the garments in which I made my appearance were not, it must be admitted, well calculated to take their place. It was two o'clock in the afternoon when I found myself at the doorway of the modest house which my guide had some trouble in discovering at the extremity of the village of San Borja. Assailed since early in the morning by a violent storm, a diluvial tropical rain had deformed my dress. My long and wide boots, soaked with water, fell in spirals on my heels, only kept up by a pair of enormous iron spurs purchased in the province of Saint Paul. A poncho of English cotton, with bright-coloured bars, like those worn by the negroes, but its lustre dimmed by reddish clayey mud, covered my shoulders; and the inevitable sword of the Rio Grandenses kept intruding itself between my legs. The general disorder of such an apparel gave me, it must be admitted, a little anxiety, and the presence of a French servant, as poorly clad as his master, was not calculated to reassure the host to whom I was about to present myself. Without the escort also which the Brazilian authorities had placed at my disposal, I ran great risks of appearing in the eyes of a less indulgent person, as a traveller led into these distant countries by motives which might be quite foreign to a love of science. A few words, however, sufficed to give quite another expression to the scrutinising and surprised looks of M. Bonpland, to make him acquainted with my projects, and to inform him of the object of my visit. The same evening I was at home in his house, and in a few hours we had become like friends of twenty years.

M. Demersay learned from M. Bonpland that General Urquiza, at that time in the service of Rosas, before he became his most formidable adversary, had invaded the province of Corrientes, whilst General Paz, the ally of Great Britain and France, had separated his cause from that of Governor Madariaga, resigned the command of the troops, and withdrawn, with a few Argentine officers, into Paraguay, which, by a complication only met with in South America and Mexico, waived its jesuitical and ultra-Chinese exclusiveness upon this occasion to give an asylum to a traitor. He was obliged, under these circumstances, to await the progress of events under the shelter of the old naturalist's roof. The career of Bonpland has been one of a very remarkable character, and is not generally known. He obtained, on his return from the celebrated journey which he performed in the company of Humboldt, the situation of intendant of the domains of Malmaison and Navarre. Upon the fall of the Empire and the loss of his position, he determined upon once more exploring the Andes. But arrived at the ancient missions of the Jesuits on the left bank of the Parana, he was suddenly seized by the soldiers of Doctor Francia, who detained him prisoner for ten years, in spite of royal intervention and of the exertions of M. de Chateaubriand, at that time minister for foreign affairs. We remember an interpellation, as our allies term it, upon the subject at the Academy; but some one having, in reply to a question put, added that M. Bonpland had made his fortune under