“Poems! Havn’t I heard you say many times that there was no good in books now, since there’s such a many writers; that a book is no longer a book, only a rubbish; and that all the half of the writers do is to spile paper and pens, and waste ink. Them’s your words, master, when you war in one of your pleasant humors, _discoorsing_ upon the ruin that’s come into the world. And now this boy goes and writes poems, and you’ll print them!” “Go down stairs, Matty, and bring me those poems.” “And to be made a _paper weight_ in my ould days--just to stand upon papers.” “Do as I desire you.” “I can’t: do you think I’d keep ’em in the kitchen? There they are!” she continued, throwing a roll of manuscript on the table; “there they are! As if _he_ had any right to set up for a poet--as if his mother and him havn’t gone through starvation enough without that. That’s what comes of his neglecting the state of Europe, and hurrying over the knives: his mother wanted to tell you about it, but had no courage, and no wonder. It’s easy to see what’s before him now; and his poor mother blind and desolate. Poems! Oh! no wonder my hair’s gray! But it’s your fault, master--informing his mind! I wonder who ever troubled about my mind!” And out she flounced, while her master, not without some secret apprehension--more anxiety, in fact, for Richard than he had ever felt before--unrolled the manuscript, and, after wiping and putting on his spectacles, commenced its perusal. [_To be continued._ * * * * * =THE TOPMOST CITY OF THE EARTH.= Thirteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty feet above the level of the sea! At a perpendicular elevation of upwards of two miles and a half, nearly on the snow line of the Andes, stands the topmost city of the earth, Ceno de Pasco. It is the capital of the richest silver district of Peru. At the before-named height, the Andes spread themselves out into vast plains or table-lands. Such table-lands--Punas, the Indians call them--sometimes extend hundreds of miles, and, on one of them--that of Pasco--stands the before-named city of Ceno de Pasco, which I took care to visit when I was a dweller in Peru.