‘Twas a day of storm, for the giant Atlantic, rolling in pride, Drawn by the full moon, driven by the fierce wind, tide upon tide. Flooded our poor little Channel. A hundred anxious eyes Were watching a breach new broken—when suddenly some one cries, “A boat coming in!”—and, rounding the pierhead that hid her before. There, sure enough, was a stranger smack, head straight for the shore. How will she land, where each wave is a mountain? Too late for _how_! Run up a flag there to show her the right place! She _must_ land now! She is close—with a rush on the galloping wavetop—a stand, As the water sinks from beneath her—her nose just touches the land. And then (as rude hands, sacking a city, greedy of prey, Toss, in some littered chamber, a child’s toy lightly away), A great wave rose from behind, and lifting her, towered, and broke, And flung her headlong, down on the hard beach, close to the folk. Crash!... But ’tis only her bowsprit gone—she is saved somehow And a cheer broke out, for a hundred hands have hold of her now. And they say ’twas her bowsprit saved her, or she must have gone over then; Her bowsprit it was that saved her; and little they think, those men, Of one weak woman that prayed, as she watched them tempest-driven! They say ’twas her bowsprit saved her! I say, ’twas that prayer, and Heaven! —_The Spectator._ SOME TURKISH PROVERBS. If the Turk has been qualified as “unspeakable,” he is very far from being inarticulate. Strange as it may seem to those who have formed their opinion of him from hearsay, it is not the less true that he is commonly a good conversationalist, and can say well and pointedly what he has got to say, with a wealth of illustration in anecdote, quotation, and proverb. The latter form commends itself especially to the sententious Turkish mind. The synthetic form of the language, too, secures brevity and conciseness, and opportunities are afforded for those constant assonances or rhyming-vowels which are so dear to the Oriental. On looking over a note-book containing several hundred Turkish proverbs, taken down in the course of reading and conversation, or borrowed from a collection made at the Oriental Academy at Vienna, the writer has amused himself by grouping them roughly under certain heads, so as to illustrate some aspects of the national character and surroundings.