A gleam of hope for Lorette flashes upon me since the above was written. On looking over a provincial paper, I find astounding rumors of ghosts appearing upon the track of a western railroad. Things clothed in the traditional white appear before the impartial cow-catcher, which divides them for the passage of the train, in the wake of which they immediately reappear in a full state of repair and posture of contempt. If this sort of thing goes on, what a splendid new field will be opened for the writer of romance! Certainly, I do not yet see what antidote there is for the primitive and pastoral against seven miles of iron pipe; but it is cheerful to know that ghosts are beginning to come about railroads, and all may yet be well with Lorette. BEHIND THE MASK. It was an old, distorted face,-- An uncouth visage, rough and wild; Yet from behind, with laughing grace, Peeped the fresh beauty of a child. And so contrasting, fair and bright, It made me of my fancy ask If half earth's wrinkled grimness might Be but the baby in the mask. Behind gray hairs and furrowed brow And withered look that life puts on, Each, as he wears it, comes to know How the child hides, and is not gone. For, while the inexorable years To saddened features fit their mould, Beneath the work of time and tears Waits something that will not grow old! And pain and petulance and care And wasted hope and sinful stain Shape the strange guise the soul doth wear, Till her young life look forth again. The beauty of his boyhood's smile,-- What human faith could find it now In yonder man of grief and guile,-- A very Cain, with branded brow? Yet, overlaid and hidden, still It lingers,--of his life a part; As the scathed pine upon the hill Holds the young fibres at its heart. And, haply, round the Eternal Throne, Heaven's pitying angels shall not ask For that last look the world hath known, But for the face behind the mask! DIAMONDS AND PEARLS. We were lately lounging away a Roman morning among the gems in Castellani's sparkling rooms in the Via Poli. One of the treasures handed out for rapturous examination was a diamond necklace, just finished for a Russian princess, at the cost of sixty thousand dollars, and a set of pearls for an English lady, who must pay, before she bears her prize homeward, the sum of ten thousand dollars. Castellani junior, a fine, patriotic young fellow, who has since been banished for his liberal ideas of government, smiled as he read astonishment in our eyes, and proceeded forthwith to dazzle us still further with more gems of rarest beauty, till then hidden away in his strong iron boxes.