Thy empty cage now hangs against the wall! No one inhabits it—nothing is there— Thy seed-box is half full of dust and film; A spider weaves within thy water-glass: The wretchedness of silence—no response To calls and questionings of the heart—the mind— All show me thou art dead—for ever gone! I stand and gaze on thy perplexing cage— Like a friend’s house—deserted!—one we have loved— And before which, returning after years, We pause, and think of hours enjoyed within; And gaze upon the dusty shutters—closed! THE GOOD GOVERNOR. In a region where favourable latitude and tempering sea-breezes combine to produce perpetual summer, lie “the still vexed Bermoothes,” the Bermuda of modern navigators, where one-half of the year is the fitting seedtime for plants of the tropical, and the other half of the temperate zones. These islands, discovered to us by a shipwreck, with one exception, our oldest colony, offer a miniature copy of the institutions of the parent state. About twenty square miles of surface, consisting of one island thirty miles long by two broad, and a half-dozen _aide-de-camp_ sort of islets, support a population rather less numerous, and considerably less wealthy, than that of the City of Canterbury; and enjoy the dignity of a capital, with two thousand inhabitants; of a Governor and Commander-in-Chief, who takes his seat on “the throne” when opening the Bermoothean Parliament; of a Council, or miniature House of Lords, and a Representative Assembly of thirty-six members, forming a miniature House of Commons. They had formerly an Archdeacon, but, by one of those extraordinary decisions that occasionally originate in high quarters, the Archdeacon has been metamorphosed into a Bishop of Newfoundland, whom the Bermudians never see, although they still have the honour of paying the salary of the late Archdeacon. Formerly Bermuda, like Virginia, from which it was an offshoot, was a slave colony, and grew tobacco. But tobacco would not pay, and every Bermudian, being born within a mile of the water, was bred amphibious. Capital cedar for ship-building grows on the hills, and harbours are all around to receive the craft when built. So it came to pass, that the “‘Mudian” clippers became plentiful all over the neighbouring seas, and took a large share of the carrying trade between our American colonies and the West Indies. Even when a large slice of these said colonies had struggled into the Republic of the United States, the ’Mudians continued to do a good stroke of sea-faring business. Then whales abounded in the neighbouring seas, and every ’Mudian took to handling the oar, the lance, or the harpoon, at a time of life when other children were driving hoops, or riding rocking-horses.