by a quiet hour is given, when, met together with the companions of his journey, he stands in the hushed cabin and hears the voice of prayer and the hymn of praise, and, in the pauses, a gentle ripple of waves against the ship, which now rocks lazily upon the sunny deep; and, ever and anon, as she dips, he can discern through her open ports the shining sea and the wheeling and circling gulls that have come out to welcome her to the shores of the old world. The present writer, when first he saw the distant and dim coast of Britain, felt, with a sense of forlorn loneliness that he was a stranger; but when last he saw that coast he beheld it through a mist of tears and knew that he had parted from many cherished friends, from many of the gentlest men and women upon the earth, and from a land henceforth as dear to him as his own. England is a country which to see is to love. As you draw near to her shores you are pleased at once with the air of careless finish and negligent grace that everywhere overhangs the prospect. The grim, wind-beaten hills of Ireland have first been passed--hills crowned, here and there, with dark, fierce towers that look like strongholds of ancient bandit chiefs, and cleft by dim valleys that seem to promise endless mystery and romance, hid in their sombre depths. Passed also is white Queenstown, with its lovely little bay, its circle of green hillsides, and its valiant fort; and picturesque Fastnet, with its gaily painted tower, has long been left behind. It is off the noble crags of Holyhead that the voyager first observes with what a deft skill the hand of art has here moulded nature's luxuriance into forms of seeming chance-born beauty; and from that hour, wherever in rural England the footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, he will behold nothing but gentle rustic adornment, that has grown with the grass and the roses--greener grass and redder roses than ever we see in our western world! In the English nature a love of the beautiful is spontaneous, and the operation of it is as fluent as the blowing of the summer wind. Portions of English cities, indeed, are hard and harsh and coarse enough to suit the most utilitarian taste; yet even in those regions of dreary monotony the national love of flowers will find expression, and the people, without being aware of it, will, in many odd little ways, beautify their homes and make their surroundings pictorial, at least to stranger eyes. There is a tone of rest and homelike comfort even in murky Liverpool; and great magnificence is there--as well of architecture and opulent living as of enterprise and action. "Towered cities" and "the busy hum of men," however, are soon left behind by the wise traveller in England. A time will come for those; but in his first sojourn there he soon discovers the two things that are utterly to absorb him--which cannot disappoint--and which are the fulfilment of all his dreams. These things are--the rustic loveliness of the land and the