The sun is moonlike, as a maiden feigns To veil her beauty, yet sends glances bright That fill the eye, and make the heart delight, Expectant of some wonder. Lengthened trains Of birds wing high, and straight the smoke ascends. All things are fairy-like: the trees empearled With frosty gem-work, like to trees in dream. Beneath the weight the slender cedar bends And looks more ghost-like! 'Tis a wonder-world, Wherein, indeed, things are not as they seem. II.--WINTER-MORN IN TOWN. Through yellow fog all things take spectral shapes: Lamps dimly gleam, and through the window pane The light is shed in short and broken lane; And "darkness visible" pants, yawns, and gapes. From roofs the water drips, as from high capes, Half-freezes as it falls. Like cries of pain Fog-signals faintly heard, and then again Grave warning words to him who rashly apes The skater, nearer. All is muffled fast In dense dead coils of vapour, nothing clear-- The world disguised in mumming masquerade. O'er each a dull thick clinging veil is cast, And no one is what fain he would appear: Nor any well-marked track on which to tread, ALEX. H. JAPP, _in Belgravia_. THE HAPPY VALLEY. A REMINISCENCE OF THE HIMALAYAS. The privilege which the families of officers in the service of the State may be said exclusively to possess, of reproducing in Upper India--and especially in the Himalayan stations, and valley of Dhera Dhoon--the stately or cottage homes of England, is perhaps one, to a great extent, unfamiliar to their relatives at home; and it is scarcely too much to say that the general public, which, as a rule, considers the Indian climate an insuperable barrier to all enjoyment, has but a faint idea of that glorious beauty, which is no "fading flower," in this "Happy Valley," with its broad belt of virgin forest, that lies between the Himalayas proper and the sharp ridges of the wild Sewalic range. The latter forms a barrier between the sultry plains and the cool and romantic retreats, where the swords of our gallant defenders may be said to rest in their scabbards, and where, surrounded by the pleasures of domestic life, health and happiness may, in the intervals of piping times of peace, be enjoyed to their fullest extent. In such favoured spots the exile from home may live, seemingly, for the present only; but, in truth, it is not so, for even under such favoured circumstances the tie with our natal place is never relaxed, and the hope of future return to it adds just that touch of pensiveness--scarcely sadness--which is the delicate neutral tint that brings out more forcibly the gorgeous colours of the picture.