however, no prospect of a speedy solution of these difficulties; and our traveller, having seen all the great personages of the assembly, with their equipages and attendants, begins to weary of the noise and bustle. But he hears that a ceremony of a very particular kind is about to take place, and stays to witness it; for he will neglect no opportunity of improvement. He is present, therefore, at the burning of John Huss, which he understands to be a great propitiatory sacrifice. When he hears, the following year, that a holocaust of the same kind has again been offered in the same place, he, of course, feels justified in recording it as an annual celebration. He notes as a remarkable circumstance, that the victim, on both occasions, is taken from the same nation; but he cannot learn that any law prescribes this selection, or that the efficacy of the sacrifice would be affected by a different choice. Another circumstance which seems to him noteworthy is, that, whereas, under their old religions, the people of these countries offered up, in preference, malefactors reserved for the purpose, or captives taken in war, the Europeans of this newer faith, on the contrary, select men without spot or blemish, and possessed of all the gifts and acquirements held in highest honor among them. He hears vaunted, on all sides, the virtue and learning of Huss, and, above all, his extraordinary eloquence,--for this gift is held in as much esteem in Europe as in Africa. He hears the same encomiums pronounced on the second victim, Jerome of Prague, and learns, at the same time, that the possession of these powers renders his doom the more necessary. He can but infer that the great, though mistaken, piety of the Christians makes them conceive that only what they have of best is worthy to be devoted to so sacred a purpose. But these reflections were made a year later. We must go back to the summer of 1415. SATURDAY, April 13, 1844. It is in the month of August that our African traveller arrives in England. The king is just setting off on a hostile expedition against a country whose inhabitants, though Christian, like the English, are held by them in detestation and contempt. Just before going, the king is obliged to cut off the head of one of his cousins. The cause of this severity is thus explained:--The late king, cousin to his own predecessor, dethroned and killed him; and it being a rule in England that what has been done once is to be done again, the present king lives in great fear of cousins. He finds the people considerate of these royal exigencies. He hears praises bestowed on the clemency of the young Henry, who remits,--so it is reported,--in the case of his kinsman, a grievous part of the punishment which the law awards to treason, only suffering the sentence to be executed in full on a man of inferior rank condemned with him as his accomplice.