And again

When I remember all the friends once linked together

I've seen around me fall, like leaves in wintry weather,

I feel like one who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,

Mallett. I know, but I am nevertheless "convinced against my will, and of the same opinion still." What does popularity prove?

Belton. Present success, and that is all a singer needs and asks. It is not the meed which poets and artists desire solely,

Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, for their works look to the future as well

And all but me departed.

Mallett. Yes, that is charming, and the music to which it is set lends it an added grace; I cannot separate the air from the words. So too, "I saw from the beach " has one verse which is very happy in its expression:

Give me back, give me back, the wild freshness

of morning,

Her clouds and her tears are worth evening's best light.

Now that, I repeat it, does not seem very charming after all, but with the music it certainly is, and so is “Love's young dream."

Belton. I should like to have heard him sing. His voice, I am told, was weak and small, but he managed it with skill, and threw into his songs great expression, sentiment, and feeling.

as the present, and they can wait. At all events, with them immediate popularity is not a necessity as it is with an actor and a singer. But the actor's and singer's prosperity lies in the ear of those who hear him. His success is a flash of the present. There is no record left in the air of the voice, and the tones of the expression, and the action. It is not like a picture, or poem, or statue, which may live for centuries to enchant generations yet unborn - which, neglected or scorned to-day, may be recognized, loved, and enjoyed a hundred or a thousand years from now — which, dead to those who now see and hear, may spread hereafter into a large life, and delight nations. Swift popularity with poets and artists has generally a short life. Fame grows slowly; and the most popular poets and artists of to-day are often neglected and forgotten Mallett. Oh! the voice is nothing, or to-morrow. Cowley ran through seven next to nothing, compared with that. I editions, Norris of Bemerton through have heard many a beautiful voice which nine, Flatman through four, and Waller left me utterly cold, while I have been through five, in less time than Shake profoundly touched by others which, speare and Milton through two. Yet though little in themselves, had the art of scarcely even the names of any of these, winging the arrow straight to the heart. except Cowley and Waller, are known If the singer does not feel deeply, and now, while Shakespeare and Milton shine lacks true expression, the best organ will like great planets in the firmament of litnot compensate for the deficiency. There erature. For forty-one years there were is one celebrated singer who gives me no only about a thousand copies printed of pleasure. She has a wonderful voice, Shakespeare's plays. Shadwell and Little perfectly trained, and endowed with extra-were as popular with their contemporaries ordinary flexibility. I have no fault to find with her voice or execution, but it never touches me, and I hear it as I would a perfect piece of mechanism. There seems to be no soul in it. I do not care so much to hear any one sing, as the phrase is, like a bird. What I desire is to hear one sing like a human being, with expression, passion, and feeling, and out of the deeps of her nature. There must be a heart-beat in a voice, or it is a noise. Belton. I know to whom you refer, but I differ from you, and you have the world against you. "My voice is my fortune, sir, she said." Her royal presents of jewellery are as numerous as a dentist's decorations. She coins notes with notes, and her execution is wonderfully rapid. She has the great seal of success upon her, and her popularity is unbounded.

as Dryden and Pope. But where are they now? Darwin was thought a gen ius in his day, and his "Botanic Garden esteemed a great poem. Dryden's jejune transcripts of Chaucer delighted the world, who would not read the originals: and one may safely say that he touched nothing of Chaucer which he did not spoil. Percy's "Reliques of English Ballad Poetry" were ridiculed by the great autocrat Johnson; and Percy himself bowed to the spirit of the age in the poems which he avowed as his own. The turgid bombast of Macpherson's “Ossian" was received with enthusiasm by those who laugh at the old ballads. Present popularity, in a word, is no guarantee of future fame.

Mallett. And a blessed fact it is for all bad poets to console themselves with. If

work and self-sacrifice and encourage. I have great success with the other sex, who ment to active benevolence. The less to us are blanks, or at least without attracreal meaning you put into them the better. Serve them up on cream-coloured paper, with fantastic emblems on the border, and the dish will be sure to be popular.

piety to cavil had proved this book also to and Billy. The native names we shall be true, therefore it must be true, down to come to by-and-by. It was not till the its minutest details. But, alas! for Cap-end of May 1872 that Dobbs—that was tain Lawson as well as for ourselves, we the name of the merchant captain — was have no such simple beliefs in this uncom- ready for sea. On the 24th they set sail, fortable nineteenth century. We must and on the 21st of June, the "Nautilus," prove things and books to be true for our- the winds being light, made the coast of selves, step by step. We are as it were New Guinea. On the 22nd Captain Lawpopes every one of us, and before the tri- son landed at a native village called Houbunal of our private judgment every fact tree, in Torres Straits. And here let us and statement must be verified before we pause to say, that what may be called the can admit that any one who claims to be chartological powers of Captain Lawson a discoverer in any branch of science is a do not at all equal his capacity for penediscoverer indeed. It is sad to think that trating through the heart of New Guinea. faith has fallen so low that it must have The map which accompanies this volume proof to support it, but so it is. As Lu- rather resembles a schoolboy's first atther said, we can do naught else; and this tempt to draw a map of Palestine, a work process we now propose to apply to Cap- of art which painfully reminds one of two tain Lawson's book, of which we will only duck-ponds joined by a gutter; it is a premise, that if our readers can only be as mere slice of the island on which is traced much instructed as they are sure to be the traveller's line of march, and it is quite amused by its perusal, they will be amply devoid of those base innovations of modrewarded. ern science called degrees and parallels of Like all great travellers, Captain Law-latitude and longitude. But what of this? son plunges almost at a step into the jungle of New Guinea. He found himself in November 1871 at Sydney, New South Wales, and there he formed the resolution of exploring the interior of New Guinea. He admits that there were innumerable difficulties in his way. Transport was out of the question. Rifle in hand and knapsack at back, he had to make his way through an immense island, inhabited by a fierce, treacherous, and murderous race." But these difficulties were light when matched against the resolution of the explorer, and the friendly help of a merchant captain who offered to land the captain at a village where he was known to the natives. It is very bold, no doubt, to resolve to travel through New Guinea rifle in hand and knapsack on back; but see how soon this resolution fails. After securing the services of the friendly captain, our traveller's next care was to provide suitable servants to accompany him as bearers of baggage. First there was a lascar named Tooloo, an intelligent and useful fellow, "he was to be my personal attendant; besides, three Australian aborigines, Tom, Joe, and Billy, had been engaged as porters; but when the time for starting came, Tom, who had probably seen the amount of baggage which he would be required to carry in tropical New Guinea, repented him of his bargain and made off "up the country" to be out of the way. So Tom is out of the story, and the only names of the exploring party which the reader is required to remember are, Lawson, Tooloo, Joe,

Who can pine for exact measurements when on this flat slice are marked some of the most remarkable discoveries ever made in geographical or zoological science. It is something to have discovered a mountain beyond compare the loftiest in the world; and a river with a waterfall which must make Niagara quake for its laurels. But let us not anticipate. All in good time. Let us return to Houtree, where our traveller has just set foot on shore with his three followers, and is being introduced to the Papuans, old friends of Captain Dobbs. We linger yet a while to dispose of Dobbs, who, according to Captain Lawson, in spite of his previous good character, seems to have behaved on this occasion in a very peculiar fashion, so peculiar that it is fortunate for him that he had just then determined to retire from the trade in which he had acquired an independence. Nor is this to be wondered at. After introducing the new comer, Captain Dobbs remained a fortnight loading the "Nautilus" with spices, drugs, gums, bark, birds of paradise, cocoa-nuts, and monkey-skins; in return for which he was to have exchanged calicoes, knives, guns, iron-work, gunpowder, and spirits; but would it be believed, one fine night this peculiar and most thoughtless captain sailed off without transferring to the natives the articles for which they had bartered their goods. If he was addicted to these practices it is no wonder that he had amassed an independence. As for the present instance, Captain Lawson says the action of the "man Dobbs was of the

other articles." All these were made into three packages, besides what each man carried in his haversack, and the six took turns in carrying them. His own arms consisted of a double-barrelled rifle, not a very light weapon, a fowling-piece, a sixchambered pistol, and a cutlas. Thus equipped the captain must have looked somewhat like our old friend Robinson Crusoe, except that his pistols had not six chambers. As for his attendants they had each an old musket and their knives; and here let us remark that by several strokes of his pen Captain Lawson converts these old muskets into rifles further

very meanest class, which, besides doing | for observations, twenty-four pounds of the poor people a serious injury, might ship-biscuit, a good supply of ammunition, have led them to wreak their vengeance always rather a bulky article, "and a few on me." This very Christian conduct on the part of the inhabitants of Houtree, we own, astonishes us; perhaps they are so accustomed to be treated in this way by captains of the Dobbs class that they think as little of it as eels are proverbially said to care for skinning; perhaps the old chief who ruled over the two hundred and sixty-three-observe our author's particularity inhabitants of Houtree was so overjoyed by the gift of an old doublebarrelled fowling-piece and a few pounds of powder and shot, on receiving which "he fairly danced," that he snapped his fingers at the defalcations of Dobbs, and coercing his subjects took Captain Law-on in his book, and even makes Aboo son under his gracious protection. As all the necessaries for the march had to be carried, and in this respect travelling in New Guinea is very like exploring the heart of Africa, Captain Lawson recruited his party by two Papuans, who had acquired some knowledge of English in the course of a seafaring life. The name of the one was Aboo, of most repulsive physiognomy "intensified by the cicatrice of a fearful cut across the face." He was only four feet three in height, but of prodigious strength, much more than a match | for that porter advertised for as "a pious man who could carry a hundred-weight;" for Captain Lawson has seen this Papuan Hercules "lift four or five hundred-weight without appearing to exert himself in any extraordinary degree." He was about fifty. Danang, his companion, was younger and taller, and very muscular, but rather lazy; whereas Aboo was indefatigably active and of a most kindly nature. In him, in fact, our adventurer found a real treasure.

Captain Lawson was now ready to start for the interior, but before he plunges into the jungle, he is good enough to tell us that Houtree lies in long. 143° 17m. 8s. E. and lat. 9° 8m. 18s. S., a piece of information for which we are most thankful, and all the more so as it is almost the only precise information as to his whereabouts to be found in any part of his book. His party now numbered six souls, and they took with them a small quantity of tea and coffee, some pickles and preserves, both of which we should have thought needless; but no doubt the captain is given to pickles, and besides he took with him a corrective in the next item, medicines. Added to this were half a dozen bottles of brandy, a set of instruments

bring down swallows on the wing with one of them, a feat, we venture to say, never before performed by Brown Bess or Enfield rifle; but then it must be remembered that these swallows, like all the beasts, birds, reptiles, and creeping things in this book, were twice the size of any ordinary swallows, and so presented a better mark. We think it will be admitted that these arms and the articles specified, with "a few more" in the margin, were an ample load for three men, especially when forcing their way through a country which Captain Lawson says "had never been scanned by the eyes of an European," and presenting, as we shall see, natural obstacles in the shape of rank vegetation, underwood, rocks, precipices, ravines, rivers, and immense mountains, such as few travellers have ever encountered, and all this under a temperature never less than 100° in the shade, and often ascending to 110 or 114 degrees. Their plan of proceeding was simple. They were on the south of the island in Torres Straits, and they were to walk across it to the north coast, traversing what mountains and riv ers might be in their way. Besides this, the intelligent Aboo informed his master that in four or five days they would come to a high mountain range, and for that range they marched. Beyond this, even to Aboo, the interior of New Guinea was a "desert vast and idle." Captain Lawson's march if, as we shall see, it went out like a lion came in like a lamb. So far from finding the Papuans of the south coast murderous cut-throats, they treated him in the gentlest way. After a two days' tramp through marsh and jungle they reached a village where the natives knew the chief, who took them into his own house, made his slaves wash the strangers' feet, spread