personal grief; and as he strolls about the breezy common at Woolwich, with all those mementoes of British dominion around him, he is quite too softly exhilarated to admit discomposure. He wishes, nevertheless, as I said before, that England would do something--something striking and powerful and picturesque. He asks himself what she can do, and he remembers that that greatness of England which he so much admires was formerly much exemplified in her "taking" something. Can't she "take" something now? There is the _Spectator_, who wants her to occupy Egypt: can't she occupy Egypt? The _Spectator_ considers this her moral duty--inquires even whether she has a right _not_ to bestow the blessings of her beneficent rule upon the down-trodden Fellaheen. I found myself in company with a very intelligent young Frenchman a day or two after this eloquent plea for a partial annexation of the Nile had appeared in the most ingenious of journals. Some allusion was made to it, and my companion proceeded to pronounce it a masterpiece of British hypocrisy. I don't know how powerful a defence I made of it, but while I read it I certainly had been carried away by it. I recalled it while I pursued my contemplations, but I recalled at the same time that sadly prosaic speech of Mr. Gladstone's to which it had been a reply. Mr. Gladstone had said that England had much more urgent duties than the occupation of Egypt: she had to attend to the great questions of--What were the great questions? Those of local taxation and the liquor-laws. Local taxation and the liquor-laws! The phrase, to my ears, just then made a painful discord. These were not the things I had been thinking of: it was not as she should bend anxiously over these doubtless interesting subjects that the sympathetic stranger would seem to see England in his favorite posture--that, as Macaulay says, of hurling defiance at her foes. Of course, Mr. Gladstone was probably right, but Mr. Gladstone was not a sympathetic stranger. H. JAMES, JR. SVEN DUVA. FROM THE SWEDISH OF JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG. Sven Duva's sire a sergeant was, with many winters white: In Eighty-eight, though past his prime, he went into the fight, And after living on his land he reared him fruit and corn, While children nine around him grew, and Sven was youngest born. None knows if Duva's father was with sense enough endowed To still keep some part for himself, and share with such a crowd; But it must be unto the eight far more than right did fall, For scarcely to the latest born fell any share at all. Yet, none the less, young Sven grew up broad-shouldered, strong of limb: He hewed the tree and ploughed the glebe, for toil was play to him. More mild than many a wiser man, more prompt he hied along, And turned his hand to anything, but everything turned wrong.