Within the Harem’s latticed screen, Where beauty once its radiance shed, No bright eyes, save the owl’s are seen— The rank green jungle rears its head. A carcanet of gems—the snake Lies coil’d where jewell’d beauty prest, Unwinding, seeks the tangled brake, Or fierce erects his horrid crest. Column and arch, with sculpture traced, Crush’d by the peepul’s[39] circling folds, Like writhing Laocoon embraced, Art dies—and nature empire holds. Hail, sombre fabric! type of life Once gay and smiling, now forlorn; Wreck of thyself, with ruin rife, Of all thy first attractions shorn. Like some volcano—dead its fires— Here now no more the passions rage; Ambition, hate, or fierce desires Long past—no longer conflicts wage. Sadly thou breath’st the moral old, Earth’s vanities—man’s chequer’d lot, By seers and sages often told, In life’s fierce tumults soon forgot. As o’er the mould’ring wrecks of time With silent step we pensive steal, In every land, in every clime, Oh! say, whence spring those thoughts we feel? Why hush’d the passions? touch’d the heart? What prompts us all our state to scan? What animates each better part? Why breathe we love and peace to man? ’Tis that awhile withdrawn from cares— Earth’s cares, with strife and sorrow fraught,— Sweet contemplation lowly bears Her treasures to the mint of thought. In such a frame—in stilly tone Waked fancy hears these words exprest, “Oh, pilgrim! this is not your home,— Look upwards for thy place of rest.” A tear trembled in Miss Belfield’s eye as she read her brother’s verses; they had touched some tender chord, and the feelings they expressed were evidently in unison with her own; she arose and retired to her cabin, her head slightly averted, to conceal her emotion. As she passed, the captain fondly stretched out his hand towards her; she seized and pressed it—it was all the commentary she made. The ruins of Rajmahal are not very extensive, nor are the buildings of any extraordinary magnitude or beauty; nevertheless, some mosques, and two or three old gateways, in the Moorish style of architecture, which seems everywhere to have preserved its original character—from Delhi to Morocco—are highly picturesque.