dream. It is sad to mark the wreck of that glo- | rious intellect the wandering mind-the failing memory and yet he can sing Auld Robin Gray' throughout from begininng to end, without missing a word, and with evident appreciation of its sweet and quiet pathos. And now we hasten to conclude a paper over which a few may smile, while the many will bear witness by their tears to its deep truth - and it may be, even the very sceptics become followers of our simple creed; when the songs, warbled night after night to gladden the cheerful fireside, around which cluster a loving band of undivided hearts, shall be all that is left to remind them of past happiness when the mother's favorite song shall be sung, and mother not there to listen the song of the once beloved, now changed the cradle-song, and the little one in the song of joy that serves only to set us weeping the song that marks an anniversary in young lives, turning our tears into laughter, and our laughter into tears, recalling scenes, events, fair faces, gentle tones, hopes, fears, and memories, mysteriously linked and associated with old songs. or dead Heaven In the early stages of life we can have but few anniversaries. Time is unmarked by memory and full of hope. Gradually, however, there arises a calendar in our individual history, made up of such strange hieroglyphics as to be incomprehensible to any but ourselves. Bright days and hours never to be forgotten are signified only by a flower or a song. An old tune, registered long since in that fairy almanac, brings along with it a crowd of recollections that have not visited our minds for years, and seemed to have gone away for ever-dim shapes familiar to the memory, forgotten and remembered again like the fragments of a dream. "Once more we walk the great city of the past," so vividly described by Professor Longfellow "with its silent marble streets, and moss-grown walls, and spires uprising with a wave-like flickering motion; — and hear, amid the mournful sound of funeral bells, sweet and sorrowful voices that keep continually singing, O, forget us not! O, forget us not!"" Throughout the greater part of the Continent, the cultivation of music and singing prevails more or less among all classes, and is a source of pure delight to the poor as well as to the rich. And also in Bohemia, and other districts of Germany, Professor Robson mentions that he has frequently heard pleasant vocal music even among the Russian boors. The celebrated Dr. Rush advocates singing on a fresh ground from any we have yet touched upon, considering it as a powerful corrective of the too common tendency to pulmonic complaints; and records his entire conviction, that the true cause why the Germans are seldom afflicted with consumption, is the strength which their lungs acquire by being constantly exercised in vocal music. He considers no education complete in which singing is not included; learned not as an accomplishment, but a sweet and untiring source of enjoyment for ourselves and others; and thus lessening the temptation to wander out of the charmed circle of home in search of amusement. The utilitarian spirit of the present age, so far from destroying, as some murmurers assert, keeps guard over the Beautiful! not as a thing apart, to be worshipped by the few, but a feeling and an influence to be shed abroad among the common things of every-day life, to gladden and to bless the many. Nothing can be too highly prized which tends to cherish and keep alive the flame of domestic love and sympathy. The spirits of that lamp, whose gentle radiance makes our happiness here below, are many; but Aoide is the blithest and busiest of them all! Her sweet voice lures back the wanderer, and cheers the weary exile with visions of his lost come. A welcome guest in palace or bower; or sitting with the home-loving, by the quiet hearth, making the long hours pass pleasantly awayshe hushes to sleep the cradled child-makes melody for the young and soothes the aged with a world of bygone memories. While enjoying the present she forgets not to lay up a precious store of sweet thoughts for the future; and, like an enchantress, as she is, weaves many a tuneful spell, which winds itself irresistibly about the heart for evermore ! A blessing on Aoide! A blessing upon Old Songs! -Tait's Edinburgh Magazine. Happy, for the most part, are those families where Aoide holds a place among their household deities, and has an altar on the domestic hearth. It is to be regretted that music and singing, especially the latter, should be so little cultivated in the homes of our English poor, AN IMPROVED STEAM-Carriage. - Mr. where it could scarcely fail to shed a gentle and Maxton, the chief mechanical engineer at Cairo, humanizing influence, besides forming a fresh has made a design for a steam-carriage capable link to bind its inmates together. Attention has, of conveying a whole cargo of passengers, lughowever, been already drawn to this subject, gage, and goods of one steamer across the Desert and Harmony now forms a prominent branch of in a few hours, and which, with all the neceseducation in most of our principal schools.saries, will only cost £3,400. AUSTRALIA FELIX.* Hume, a colonist, whose grazings bordered on Lake George, and who, accompanied by a neighbouring settler, Mr. Howell, set out on a roving expedition in search of fresh pastures for his flock, and descried this land of promise. The expeditions of Captain Stuart, Mitchell, and others, followed, until the whole region was not only explored, but suddenly occupied, the squatters generally preceding the regular surveyors. In Australia, as in other new countries, the last tract explored is somehow always found to be the finest and most fertile; and this fully holds of Port Philip or Australia Felix. And without question, when compared with the Sydney district of New South Wales, and some of the other settlements, it does seem to possess advantages both of soil and climate, though the great fea The above is a rather comprehensive titlepage, but the contents of the volume bear it out. Australia Felix auspicious name! — is the youngest of British colonies, and, therefore, the pet of the family. It has, moreover, been all along a thriving, healthy babe of grace, that has suffered but slightly from the diseases which usually afflict infant colonies. Though only in its twelfth year, it has fairly surmounted the helplessness and attendant ills of childhood, and is now as vigorous and full of hope and promise as a young Yankee. Perhaps this colony should have been allowed to attain the age of majority before its early history or autobiography had been so fully written; but with it a dozen years have been as fifty with the older settlements, and have brought it to equal maturity. It has the further claim of being at present, to sheep-farm-tures of the Australian colonies are everywhere ers, one of the most promising fields for emigration throughout the entire extent of the vast Southland. In 1835 Port Philip was a wilderness; in 1847 its thirty-five thousand British subjects export annually nearly ten millions of pounds of wool, now the great staple of all the Australian colonies, as it once was of England. The few cattle, and the scanty flocks originally spread over the wide unoccupied pastures of the colony, are now numbered, the cattle by hundreds of thousands, and the sheep by millions. The early and rapid prosperity of this colony is in a great measure, we would think, to be accounted for by the first settlers being from the neighbouring colonies of Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales; persons with some capital, great enterprise, possessed of requisite knowledge of the country, and trained in the habits of colonial life. These favorable circumstances, and their proximity to the older settlements, exempted the colonists of Port Philip from the difficulties and hardships with which all the other But for nearly ten months of the year the colonies have had to struggle. And yet it may climate is unexceptionable. The evenings of qualify our admiration of the early prosperity of summer are in general clear and cool, and atPort Philip, to recollect that the oldest of these tended with a copious dew. The dryness and genial warmth of the air afford an almost uninflourishing and populous colonies is a penal set-terrupted daily access to the open country; and tlement, of little more than fifty years' dura tion. There are contending claims to what is termed the discovery of Australia Felix. The first explorer seems to have been Mr. Hamilton * Australia Felix; or, a Historical and Descriptive Account of the New Settlement of Port-Philip, New South Wales, including full particulars of the Manners and Condition of the Aboriginal Natives, with Observations on Emigration, on the System of Transportation, and on Colonial Policy, &c. &c. By William Westgarth. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. the same; a thin arid soil, and scanty vegetation, with liability to severe and protracted droughts. Mr. Westgarth, who has made careful and diligent use of the labors of preceding writers, and whose work may rather be regarded as an elaborate and judicious compilation, than a book, the result of original and personal observation and research, has devoted one long chapter to a description of the surface of Australia Felix, and another to its climate, which if not the best in the world, is surely about the second best. The hot, parching winds of summer are the greatest drawback on its general salubrity; but if in well-constructed houses the influence of these blighting blasts may be so effectually guarded against that the temperature rarely exceeds 75°, there is little ground for complaint. All is said in one word. "During six weeks of winter the sky may be generally overcast, and the country and the roads inconveniently affected by the continuous show ers. there appears in the general buoyancy of the population a degree of enjoyment of existence far beyond what is usually exhibited in the duller climes of the Fatherland." If in such a salubrious country disease is known, the patients have to blame their own folly and intemperance. Count Strzelecki, one of the latest wanderers over the Australian regions, says that Port Philip, in its summer season, resembles Baden, Marseilles, and Bordeaux; in its winter, Palermo or Buenos Ayres; the fluctua tions of its temperature are those of Montpellier, and its usual mean is that of Naples. Nor is there a question that, without exaggeration, all these colonies possess, in a high degree, the unspeakable blessing of a fine climate. Mr. Westgarth has given a very ample description of the Aborigines, a chapter on which, perhaps, the less that is now said the better. Though he strives to be impartial, his mind is evidently tinged with colonial prejudice. Since the Aborigines of Australia, like those of Van Diemen's Land, must be swept from among the human families, it is surely better to let them perish in silence, without further attempt to justify or extenuate the extirpation of the doomed race, by the self-same Transatlantic philosophy which is employed to vindicate the destruction of the Red Indians; or by the arguments that a Roman moralist might have used, had the British Isles been considered worth retaining as a colony of Rome. Mr. Westgarth's statements, however, convey a higher impression of the intellectual power and moral sentiments of the Aborigines than we have been accustomed to receive from other sources. Cannibalism takes a new aspect when viewed, as it is by the aboriginal Australian, as 66 a duty to the dead, and a consolation to the living," or when it is considered as a sort of solemn rite, that "the body should be partaken of by the relatives and members of the tribe." The whole subject is sufficiently disgusting. There is something pathetic in the following apology or vindication of the too-common crime of infanticide: "The encroachment of the colonists, and their practical disregard of aboriginal rights, weight with discouraging effect upon the native mind; so that the presence of the whites is thus, perhaps, in some instances as efficient to increase infanticide, as in others it has been found instrumental in restraining it. Mr. Thomas, one of the assistant protectors of the Port Philip district, speaks despairingly of the prevalence and even increase of this crime. He mentions an instance of an old chief, who acknowledged he had no power to stop the practice, the blacks stating that they have now no country of their own, and were therefore unwilling to keep their children." The portraits of the natives, taken from daguerreotyped likenesses of various groups, might very easily, we think, pass for those of Irish people or Highlanders. There is nothing either ferocious or stupid in their faces. The rudiments of civilization are not wholly wanting, but, as holds among all savage tribes, the manners are further advanced than the arts. We are told "When the tribes meet for festivity, and have no deaths to avenge, they are often extremely civil and social one with another. Strangers are formally introduced, the senior blacks describing to the company the country and lineage of their new acquaintance. Past occurrences are talked over, localities where food is abundant are mentioned, and invitations given to relations and friends by the proprietors of these different districts to accompany them thither. The females by themselves are meanwhile engaged after their fashion. Births, marriages, and deaths, are duly discussed; and the relation of family occurrences acquires a piquant edge by a sprinkling of gossip and scandal." * members, the tribes seldom consist, even at the "Frequently very limited in the number of most, of more than two or three hundred individuals; but whether they be large or small, weak or powerful, they seem always perfectly distinct, separate and independent of one another, each inhabiting its own tract of country. There does not appear to be any system of acknowledged chieftainship, such as exists, for the obvious purposes of unity and strength, among the neighbouring New Zealanders and other more advanced races of men. The general control and management of affairs appears to be, by mutual consent, in the hands of the adult or elderly males of the respective tribes. As the younger males advance in life, they are gradually initiated into the mysteries of religion and government. The females are generally unenlightened on these topics. The meetings of the old men are of a sacred and secluded character, and it is highly offensive and dangerous to intrude upon them. Strzelecki describes his own risk on one occasion, from being in the vicinity of one of these secret assemblages. An implacable spirit of mutual enmity occasionally influences the different tribes." Among their vague notions of a future state of existence, some are whimsical, though their origin may be found in the widely-diffused idea of a transmigratory state : "They believe that they are to assume some other form of man or animal; and it is a very common understanding amongst them, that all the present white colonists are their own friends or ancestors who have thus risen from the dead. They have insisted so earnestly on this point, that these opinions may be regarded as a kind of settled doctrine. In some instances old females, who had taken a fancy for particular colonists, have argued themselves into a state of angry excitement because they were not recognized by their supposed former children and executed associates. A native, several years ago Hull, of Melbourne, appeared resigned to his at Melbourne, whose case is mentioned by Mr. fate under the consolatory view that he himself should afterwards be one of the colonists, remarking that he would "jump up a white fellow, and have plenty of sixpences." Mr. Westgarth states, with due solemnity, that "in general they seem to have very undecided views [of religion], and cannot explain themselves connectedly and logically upon the give them, he added, useful instruction in huntsubject." In the neighbourhood of the settle-ing, fishing, and making nets, but the Europeans ments, the natives have evidently degenerated, did no good to his children. and, with their native customs, ceremonials, and superstitions, have lost the few rude arts, the germ of civilization, together with their national feelings and their wild freedom. But they are a doomed and a fast-disappearing race, and it is idle to think more about them. Even missionary efforts have now been nearly abandoned, and the Home Government protection, however well-meant, is found unavailing. Nearly £40,000, spent in the colony of Port Philip in protecting the Aborigines, may have supplied a few rations to the miserable, starving creatures wandering about the settlements, but otherwise it has been worse than thrown away. It is, however, melancholy to read of the gradual abandonment of the missions. The Catholics and Wesleyans have held out best; and now "The conversion or efficient instruction of the older blacks is now generally admitted to be altogether impracticable. They are strongly opposed to any change of habits and customs, remarks the Rev. Mr. Gunther of Mudgee, and seem knit together as in a conspiracy to keep out improvement. The children on reaching adult age are constituted by some mysterious ceremony, and become 'as if enlisted and sworn.' The rearing of the young children has therefore of late been the chief object of attention, and several schools for aboriginal children have been established. "The missionary philanthropy with regard to the younger natives has however been opposed by the seniors of the tribes. The parents are not generally willing that their children should be taken away from them, more particularly as it has been found necessary to keep the pupils as much as possible entirely aloof from their old associates. When the children under instruction are allowed to return at night to their parents' encampment, all the good lessons of the day are usually swept away and laughed out of them; so that it is now the practice to board and lodge them at the school. Teaching in the native language is also, for similar reasons, found not to answer, and the children are now taught in English. But notwithstanding all care and precaution, they are always apt to run off whenever their tribes move away from the neighbourhood. There is often indeed great difficulty in inducing the boys to attend school at all, and the teachers must sometimes go round the encampments and take them away even against their wishes. Although the natives may tacitly submit at the time, they are nevertheless much displeased at this interference with their families. One old man, whose children had been thus taken away, but had run back to him again on his removing from the vicinity of the school, used vehemently to declare, that if they were taken any more, he would appropriate some white children in their place, and teach them in his turn. He could "It would be difficult to discover any defecif we judged him by his indications at school. tive capacity of mind in the aboriginal native, Their aptness and quick perceptions are remarkable, and often positively superior to those of European children. Letters and figures are easily acquired; and although the bare and abstract character of arithmetical operations puzzles them somewhat at first, yet these also are the pupil is generally promising. The native eventually mastered, and the early progress of children have thus been repeatedly considered, and by good authorities, to be as apt and intelligent as those of Europeans. Nevertheless, it is extraordinary that in no instance have these beginnings of civilization ripened, or been permatrained aborigines, youths as well as adults, as nently sustained in adult age. All educated or far as testimony can be relied on, appear to have uniformly degenerated, abandoning at some pereturning to the life of their fathers. The aptiriod their civilized habits and associations, and tude for civilization seems, therefore, to be distinct from a mere readiness for acquiring the ordinary elements of education." Such is the philosophy of Mr. Westgarth, and so might a philanthropic Roman writer have reasoned about the capacities and moral qualities of his painted and skin-clad British ancestors. The natural history of Australia is neutral ground, and so is its geography and civil history. of interest and future promise. The rapid and These are, therefore, fairly treated, and are full prosperous progress of this colony is indeed one of the most cheering chapters in the late history of British settlements. It has been subjected to few or none of the usual hardships or backward casts of infant colonies. No difficulties have been experienced, except those into which the avidity or recklessness of the colonists have wilfully precipitated them, or that rapacious and gambling spirit which passes by the gentle name of speculation. This has been the bane of all Southern colonies; and it ever carries with it its own bitter but wholesome antidote. The fever-fit of speculation never raged more hotly than in Melbourne, the capital of Port Philip, in the early years of the colony. The following passage is a curious and instructive chapter in the history of newly-formed settlements. It could nowhere, we imagine, be equalled, save in the United States: "The town of Melbourne was laid out on the northern bank of the Yarra in the form of an oblong square, with the streets at right angles to one another. The principal streets are of convenient breadth, and promise for the larger population and more elegant structures of the future city an open and agreeable effect, in ac cordance with the climate of the country. But each of the considerable blocks which they mark out is traversed by a lane or 'little street,' affording a traffic entrance to the houses and stores; and the cheaper sections of land in these localities have been bought up by the poorer classes, who are often too densely thronged in their narrow quarters. "The site of the town, whose lands were subsequently the object of such extravagant speculation, had been mapped out in half-acre portions called allotments, a term now associated with many sore reminiscences of golden hopes and rusty realities in the hard but wholesome experience of the colonists. The first land-sale, which consisted of these town-allotments, occurred at Melbourne in June, 1837. The Government required payment in gold, and few were provided with the requisite description of value. The fortunate purchasers obtained such lots as were then sold at a rate varying from £30 to £100 per half-acre. After an interval of little more than two years, the value of each of these small areas of the green sod had ascended to thousands of pounds. At a sale by auction that occurred in 1839, which is still referred to with a sigh by the early colonist as the time of happy faces and general money-making, three half-acre sections realized the enormous sum of £10,250; and the purchaser, it was said, had found this extravagant investment to be also remunerative by means of the magic process of carving out his sections in fragments suitable to the wants and abilities of the crowd of buyers. Many parties were induced thus to speculate in land; and it must be admitted that the continual advance in the estimated value of this kind of property was a temptation difficult to be withstood, and a short and easy road to fortune. Numbers of the purchasers sold out with enormous profit, and again plunged, with their enlarged means, into investments which had already proved so advantageous. "The settlement had been founded, and for a short period at first continued to be peopled chiefly by immigration from Van Diemen's Land. But attention was soon excited in a wider field; and Sydney poured forth her adventurers and her capital to participate in the profitable traffic going on at Port Philip. Two Anglo-Austrian banks, previously in operation in Sydney, promptly established branches in a town of such increasing importance, and in the general prosperity of the times found an ample investment for their large paid-up capital, in discounting the numerous bills that were created by the buying and selling propensities of the settlers. "As every occupation appeared to prosper as every purchaser resold at his own convenience with a profit, and the measure of a man's means appeared in a direct ratio with the extent of his speculations, it was impossible to deny mutual credit and accommodation, which accordingly prevailed to the most unbounded extent. Transactions enlarged and multiplied; and a legion of lawyers was unremittingly engaged in the equally lucrative employment of framing conveyances and unravelling titles for the patches and fractions of land that were incessantly pushed into the market, involved in confusion by the tardy emanation of the crown-grant, the operation of the law of dower, or the haste and negligence of the speculators. The sale of town allotments commenced on 1st June, 1837, that of 'country and suburban sections' on 12th September of the following year. From these respective dates to the end of 1841 there had been sold by Government, chiefly by public auction, in the space of between four and five years, 205,748 acres of land, realizing no less a sum than £394,353. "But the spirit of speculation was not confined to transactions in land. Every description of colonial property found a ready market; and sheep, cattle, and horses, in particular, rose to unwonted prices. In 1839 good descriptions of sheep were frequently sold for £3 each, cattle for £21 or £15, and ordinary saddle-horses for upwards of £100. The fluctuations to which these articles of colonial property are liable may be exhibited in the fact that only four years afterwards, namely, in 1843, the same descriptions and quality of live stock were repeatedly sold at the prices of 3s. 6d., 25s., and £12, respectively. In the Sydney District, where the depression in some articles appears to have been still greater than at Melbourne, several capitalists, who came opportunely into the field, bought up great numbers of sheep at 1s. 6d. per head, and it is said even so low as 9d.; cattle were sold at 11s. each, and horses in some instances for very little more. This "The price of provisions was enormous. was caused partly by a severe drought in the Sydney District in the three years 1837-9, which had repeatedly destroyed most of the crops, and occasioned the death of large numbers of the live stock, and partly from an increased influx of population to these colonies, which was taking place about this time from the mother country. But perhaps, to a greater extent than either, we must attribute these high prices to the usual effects of a speculative spirit, arising from the abundance of available means introduced into the colony, which greatly diminished for a time the exchangeable value of money. The price of flour in the new settlements of Port Philip and Adelaide rose to £80 and even £100 a-ton of £2000 pounds weight, and the common fourpound loaf was sold for three shillings and sixpence. "Labor is usually scarce and dear in Australia, owing to the distance of her settlements from the great reservoir of the mother country. The receipts of the laborer were in full proportion to the apparent circumstances of his employers. Ten shillings a-day was no unusual remuneration for the common descriptions of employment, and mechanics of the more skilful class had even higher wages. The cost of building and the rents of houses were therefore beyond all reasonable expectation. Cottages of four rooms, with very moderate pretensions to appearance or accommodation, were let at an annual rent of £150 to £200. Such exorbitant charges, to |