on the memory, breaking on the shifting sands of the present; and she the storm-tost mariner struggling on the crest of the waves, ever mistaking the foaming phosphorescence of the surf for a light of friendly assistance; or if she turned to the future, that mist-shadowed nothing, she would alternately fancy herself floating smoothly on an unbroken sea, and gazing into its purple depths, sinister yet tempting; or pushing for some unknown shore, prone for great discovery. Thus is life to us all; we stand on the golden sand of an ever-changing present, listening to the echoes of the past receding with the ebbing tide among the hoarse-mouthed caverns; more often, unheeding, gaze upon the calm, open sea of the future, and, regardless of the billows that break tumultuous around us, think only of those serene hopes to come, those _halcyon_ days of peace shining undimmed in times of deceptive distance. The old man ceased. Night had fallen, and the unwholesome exhalations warned to retire from the unwholesome air—Ganga, soon wrapt in the sweet sleep of youth, lay dreaming over in ever new and magnified forms those doctrines of the Metempsychosis which Nikaiyah had explained to her. She was doomed, it seemed to her, to pass through the stages of an infinite change, and like the banyan tree, as fast as having reached a certain height she seemed to have attained perfection, and must needs bend down to take fresh root in earth. Unconscious that all this was but enlarging her soul and her sphere of good, as the banyan with fresh trunks enlarges its cool and refreshing circumference, and gives wider shelter to the weary and the oppressed. First, she was an ant, busy and careful as the proverb, toiling to increase the glory of the realm and queen; but a hostile invasion of robber tribes relieved her from that insignificant though useful existence—instantly she was rolling, a vast, glittering length, through the crackling under-brush, a gigantic boa; the angry lion, defiant to the last, retreated from those shining meshes, which slow curling in golden folds, could have hugged to death a generation of laocoons. Undisturbed monarch of the wood the monster coiled his serpentine length, glaring—O, horror! that such expression should come from Ganga’s eyes—angrily at the retreating beasts. But with a pang _that_ was finished—she had been struck unawares. Where was she now—how cold! how bleak!—and the feathers! A vulture on the Himmalyah peaks, looking over to the southern sea’s blue on the horizon’s verge—nothing but snow—where were her beautiful valleys—she could fly down, at any rate. What a sensation—to be floating in mid-air unconscious of motion, for want of a standard to measure by; passing through the variously-tinted clouds, seeing naught—the dull flapping of noiseless wings. But now the primeval forest grows green upon the vision—now she swoops at a parrot, all green and yellow, chattering on