all events, I see in a moment the peaks of Sulitelma or of the Andes, or the summits of the Ghauts, or tropical sands, or chilly pine forests spread before me, or palmy West Indian groves. It is morally good, and unspeakably refreshing, to have some such instrumentality of signals with the world without, as these flags are to me. There is a corresponding danger, though a less serious one, in such sympathy as we have making us repine. Though we may go on from month to month without one momentary wish that things were otherwise with us than as they are, yet, on occasion--once, perhaps, in a year--some incident wakens a thrill of longing to be as we once were. Some notice of a concert, or a picture, brings up the associations of a London spring, with all its intellectual and social pleasures:--or the mere mention of a lane or hedge, at the moment the March sun is shining in, recals the first hunting for violets in our days of long walks:--or a foreign post-mark in autumn transports us to Alpine passes or the shores of Italian lakes; and a sickly longing for scenes we shall see no more comes over us. But the reaction is so rapid and sure, that there is little moral peril in this--only the evanescent pain, which gives place to that act of acquiescence which has in it more joy than can be gathered from all the lanes, mountains, and shores of the globe. The occasional sense of our being too weak for the ordinary incidents of life, is strangely distressing. The cry of an infant makes us wretched for hours after, in spite of every effort of reason. I saw, through my telescope, two big boys worrying a little one, and I could not look to see the end of it. They were so far off that there was nothing to be done. The distress to me was such--the picture of the lives of the three boys was so vivid--that I felt as if I had no reason nor courage left. The same sort of distress recurred, but in a more moderate degree, when I saw a gentleman do a thing which I wish could dwell on his mind as it does upon mine. I saw, through the same telescope, a gentleman pick up from the grass, where children had been playing the moment before, under the walls of the fort, a gay harlequin--one of those toy-figures whose limbs jerk with a string. He carried it to his party, a lady and another gentleman, sitting on a bench at the top of the rocks, whose base the sea was washing. When he had shown off the jerkings of the toy sufficiently, he began to take aim with it, as if to see how far he could throw. “He never will,” thought I, “throw that toy into the sea, while there are stones lying all about within reach!” He did it! Away whirled harlequin through the air far into the sea below: and there was no appearance of any remonstrance on the part of his companions! I could not look again towards the grass, to see the misery of the little owner of the toy on finding it gone. There was no comfort in the air of genteel complacency with which the three gentry walked down from the