over, the colonel returned, and was preparatory to hauling the logs it was shortly followed by Boffin and Rumbles, built of to our homesteads, only leaving who, coming up from the timberless country some miles to the south of Castle Avery, elected to live with us while cutting a set of stable logs. We were a jolly party. Besides the colonel whom I was glad to welcome back and our two friends, there was Leslie, who came over day by day to hew the logs as they were cut, and a pretty regular stream of the wayfarers before mentioned. So that when the day's work was done, the dishes washed, and the cattle fixed up for the night, we had plenty of fun before we turned in. We went to bed early, for the work was more trying than even in mid-winter. The very warmth of the days caused us to get wet through from the knees downward in the melting snow, and this was followed by a sudden chill that came as soon as the sun began to sink, with the result that our trousers and felt boots were frozen as stiff as boards, which made us glad enough to come in to supper and the welcome warmth of the stove. With the departure of Rumbles and Boffin after a fortnight's visit and the completion of our own work in the bush, the colonel and I began throwing down Benson's house, which we had bought, the work to help our neighbors with their house-raisings, which came off as soon as the softened state of the snow permitted of turning up the earth sufficiently to lay the corner stones. These house-raisings frequently gave us heavy, but by no means unpleasant work, when we all pitched in with a will-contented in the knowledge that we were helping our friends, and could count on their assistance at some future time for any like work that we might wish to undertake for ourselves. We attended the first of these bees about the middle of April. Bickford was putting up a new stable, and I remember what a task it was to lift the heavy twenty-five feet ridge-pole into its place. It was very warm in the sun, though the snow was still quite deep, with hard frosts at night, and we were looking forward to the advent of spring, for though on April 5th we experienced a fearful snowstorm, during the continuance of which I had to dig away the drifts from the stable doors three times, the geese had returned on the 7th, and their welcome cry was a sure forerunner of that grand summer weather which came at last, though slowly and reluctantly. THE DATE OF THE EXODUS.-What was the precise date of the Exodus from Egypt? A German astronomer, according to one of our contemporaries, has solved this knotty problem. Jewish tradition gives the date as the 1st Nisan, 1312 B.C. In order to test this, our astronomer has assumed that the Egyptian darkness which immediately preceded the Exodus was an eclipse. He has consequently calculated all the eclipses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C., and having selected those which took place in the spring, has then chosen from them those which come nearest to the date given by the Jewish tradition. The eclipse he finally selected was one which took place on March 13, 1335 B.C. It is curious to note that this date agrees with Jewish tradition, so far as the month and day are concerned. The year is, however, twentythree years out. The astronomer declares that this is a mistake of the Jewish historians, since no eclipse occurred in the year 1312 B.C. He seems to forget that the alleged darkness is described in the Scriptures as having been a miracle. However, the result of his calculation is to show that the Exodus took place on March 27, 1335 B.C.a discovery which will be appreciated when our iconoclastic reformers lay violent hands on the Jewish calendar. Jewish Chronicle. When, hovering o'er the calm, Death watch'd at leisure; His step upon the office floor Was sweet to her as thrush's song; Her face that passed the open door For him made sunshine all day long. And doubtless, though these two would fain Have left awhile the city's roar To loiter down a country lane, Or linger by some lonely shore; Yet sometimes Fate was kind, as when They travelled by "the Underground," And in a carriage meant for ten, No other than themselves they found. And when he showed the men, now dazed You laugh? - My lay is dull, I know; with pleasure, Faith's new world glittering star-like on the A gayer scene let others show, Truth needs a daintier garb than this; My lovers dwell in happy bliss. lee, "I trust that by the help of Christ," said So let the world wheel on its way, THE HAPPY LOVERS. THEY had no "partings in the wood," No "meetings in the hawthorn lane," "Beside the sea" they never stood, Nor "watched the sunset after rain." Their pathway was the busy street, Their trysting-place the office stair, Yet well I know joy more complete Did never visit mortal pair. And why should rustic love alone Be decked with all poetic art? These dull, grey city walls have known The beating of a nation's heart. The weary workers come and go; The secret of each soul is dumb; Yet still at times a radiant glow Across their wayworn lives may come. And these, my happy lovers, knew Hard toil, small wage, and scanty fare; The skies they saw were never blue, But love made gladness everywhere. Earth holds not out a dearer crown; God give the same to all, I pray, Who live and die in London Town. Chambers' Journal. MARY MACLEOD. A PARTING. As still as if magic of will had reft her, In falling dew from the darkening skies She lingered and stayed where at last he left her, And stared at the darkness with shining eyes; A smile on the lips that his own had pressed, A shiver of joy on the hair caressed, The world ecstatic around, above her With touch and tone of the vanished lover. And when she arose with the spell about her, The night was music and day was far, And death was the dream of a loveless doubter, And life was the sky for one burning star; And divine was the right of the power that claimed The heart that trembled and leaped and flamed As blessed thrall of a pitiless passion, A thing to break, or a soul to fashion! And he? He left in a glad commotion, And bought a paper and caught the train, And roused from the Budget of Mr. Goschen To casually meditate now and again Should he dine at the Club or some otherwhere ? If she thought of him when he wasn't there, And the nice little ways she had-God bless her! And whether it cost a lot to dress her? Speaker. MAUDE EGERTON KING. From The Church Quarterly Review. self guilty of advancing "a false claim." Such letters, although they may lack the charm of Gray's or Cowper's, or, we may add, of Scott's, have all the strength, distinctness, and reality which were inseparable from the majestic personality of the writer. Dr. Birkbeck Hill, the most recent editor of the "Life," has now enhanced his own strong claim on the gratitude of "Johnsonians" by collecting all those letters of Johnson's which are not included in Boswell's work. "I have not thought it right," he says, "to pass over any on account of their insignificance.” He pleads that those which he now gives to the world-many of which had been already published by Mrs. Piozzi — will secure for Johnson "a far higher rank among letter writers than he has as yet READERS of that supreme "Biography" which Lord Macaulay has ranked as "first without a second," will recall the various illustrations which it gives of Johnson's capacities as a letter writer. They may remember, for instance, the "celebrated letter" (as Boswell truly calls it) to Lord Chesterfield; the exquisitely tender condolence with James Elphinston on his mother's death; the “polite and urbane" letter to Charles Burney while as yet undistinguished; the courteous but pointed rebuke to a mother who had importuned him to "solicit a great man to whom he had never spoken, for a young person whom he had never seen, upon a supposition which he had no means of knowing to be true; "the noble indignation ex-filled." "Admirable as many of those pressed to his friend William Drum- [letters] are which are published by mond against an attempt to impede the Boswell, nevertheless in the 'Life' translation of the Bible into Gaelic; the they are overshadowed by his superlasternly defiant acknowledgment of Mac- tive merit as a talker . . . His letters pherson's "foolish and impudent let- may be good, but his talk has no rival ;” ter;" the advice to " a young clergyman" but when we no longer have it to in the country," almost verbally antici- tempt us, we shall not fail to recognize pating Keble's line, "By blameless how admirable he was in his correspondguile or gentle force; " 2 the sadly signifi-[ence." This is quite true. The volcant announcement to his landlord that it had "pleased God to deprive him of the power of speech; " the irrepressible cry for sympathy, "O my friend, the approach of death is very dreadful," followed almost instantly by two such sentences as "Let us learn to derive our hope only from God-in the mean time let us be kind to one another;" the reply to his little godchild's "pretty letter," with the closing advice "that through your whole life you will carefully say your prayers and read your Bible;" and the dignified gratitude for Thurlow's munificent offer, which he declines only because if he were now to "appropriate so much of a fortune destined to do good," he would hold him 66 umes before us do indeed present "fine and weighty passages in which he treats of the greatest of all arts, the art of living; "" strong common sense, set forth in vigorous English, on which his friends could always draw in their perplexities ;" and also " a playfulness and lightness of touch which will surprise those who know him only by his formal writings," and may make up, in some degree, for the loss involved in Miss Burney's over-sensitive objection to supplying Boswell with specimens of Johnson's correspondence with herself. We may add that although the letters now published abound in quotations from, or references to, famous writers of all ages-Hesiod, Aristotle, Galen, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Cicero, Tacitus, Martial, Severus, Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, Pope, Addison, Swift, Rochefoucault yet the reader feels in every case that this rich and "full mind" is recalling the passage because it cannot help doing so; of pedantry or ostentation there is bon about "supporting "' it. This is not the shadow of a trace. mere "padding," and similarly John- That Dr. Birkbeck Hill has performed his task with indefatigable assiduity and true "Johnsonian " enthusiasm, goes without saying. At the same time, the criticism which was passed on his annotations to the "Life" is not, we think, wholly inapplicable to similar work in the goodly volumes before us. There is, if it be not ungracious to say so, a little too much of his own individuality in his comments. One does not particularly care about knowing that he considers "Walter Scott disgraced by being one of the correspondents of" that "affected, tiresome, spiteful, and mendacious creature, Anna Seward." He cannot let a reference to Sir Joseph Mawbey pass without not only quoting from the " Rolliad," about the Speaker Cornewall as enduring Mawbey's eloquence, but adding - one might say, deserving of grave reprehension, is what dragging in the following personal we find further on. Johnson writes reminiscence: "I thought when I saw to a "dear friend," Joseph Fowke: 7 my friend, Mr. Leonard H. Courtney," Whether we shall ever meet again in sitting as chairman of committee, that this world, who can tell? Let us, howto him, as member for a division of ever, wish well to each other; prayers Cornwall, these lines might be aptly can pass the Line and the Tropics." 8 applied." 2 He conjectures that a shoe- And Dr. Hill thinks good to observe in black to whom Johnson's friend Dr. a note, "Prayers apparently would take Taylor, of Ashbourne (of whom more the longer course round the Cape of presently), left his property, with a pro- Good Hope." Respect for the religious viso that he might take any name but belief of many readers, if not for that that of Taylor, "was his illegitimate of his hero, whose conviction as to the son. It may have been so, but John- efficacy of intercessory prayer is reson's letter in the text does not, we markably apparent in the "Letters," think, support this charitable suggestion. ought surely to have restrained the ediJohnson writes to Mrs. Thrale on April tor from setting down in his manuscript, 4, 1776, that Thrale " said that he would or at any rate from retaining in his go to the house;" whereupon we have proof, a sneer so vapid and so ignoble. a note, "The House of Commons, IDr. Hill, we fear, would hardly echo conjecture. On April 1, if he attended, he heard a debate on expenses" of the American war; then comes a quotation from Lord North's speech in that debate; after that, a reference to the increase in the national debt on account of that war, with a quotation from Gib-editor has rendered, in this as in previ Carlyle's confession in his book on "Heroes" "The church of St. Clement Danes, where Johnson really worshipped in the era of Voltaire, is to me a venerable place." But we prefer to think of the eminent services which the |