What, then, will be the fate of the French and English colonies in temperate Africa? We confess we can hardly venture to predict. Assuredly, neither north nor south Africa will ever give birth to a great or flourishing community, such as North America has done, and as Australia and New Zealand will certainly do. The Caffirs may possibly be driven to a distance, after a long course of trouble and expense; but the Arabs and Kabyles are as inexpungable as the wandering tribes of Arabia Petræa or Tartary. With them, neither expulsion, nor extermination, nor amalgamation is practicable. Very likely France and England will get heartily tired of paying yearly millions for their unavailable deserts, and there is no knowing what they may be driven to do in such an extremity. At all events, we may safely assert that France would have saved sixty millions of pounds, and the interminable prospect of a proportional annual expenditure, had she confined herself to the town and fortress of Algiers; and England would have been richer and wiser, had she kept within the bounds of the original Dutch colony. The best thing we ourselves can do with our extra-tropical Africa, is to leave the colonists to govern, and also to defend themselves from all but enemies by sea: that the French, unfortunately, cannot do. MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. _Continued from page 269._ BOOK V.--INITIAL CHAPTER. "I hope, Pisistratus," said my father, "that you do not intend to be dull!" "Heaven forbid, sir! what could make you ask such a question? _Intend!_ No! if I am dull it is from innocence." "A very long Discourse upon Knowledge!" said my father; "very long. I should cut it out!" I looked upon my father as a Byzantian sage might have looked on a Vandal. "Cut it out!" "Stops the action, sir!" said my father, dogmatically. "Action! But a novel is not a drama." "No, it is a great deal longer--twenty times as long, I dare say," replied Mr. Caxton with a sigh. "Well, sir--well! I think my Discourse upon Knowledge has much to do with the subject--is vitally essential to the subject; does not stop the action--only explains and elucidates the action. And I am astonished, sir, that you, a scholar, and a cultivator of knowledge--" "There--there!" cried my father, deprecatingly; "I yield--I yield. What better could I expect when I set up for a critic! What author ever lived that did not fly into a passion--even with his own father, if his father presumed to say--'Cut out!' _Pacem imploro_--" _Mrs. Caxton._--"My dear Austin, I am sure Pisistratus did not mean to offend you, and I have no doubt he will take your--" _Pisistratus_, (hastily.)--"Advice _for the future_, certainly. I will quicken the action and--" "Go on with the Novel," whispered Roland, looking up from his eternal account-book. "We have lost £200 by our barley!" Therewith I plunged my pen into the ink, and my thoughts into the "Fair Shadowland." CHAPTER II.