our wealth nor valor was called into requisition.

It

With demoniacal yells and a furious cracking of whips, we dashed into Magdalena and pulled up in the square. was Sunday. The good people were just issuing from the church. Mexican maidens in white or brilliant robes trooped out in twos and threes, and hand in hand went laughingly homewards. And here I feel the scribbling traveller's temptation to romance. A fanciful picture of some dark-eyed beauty, with proud Castilian features, and playful dignity and grace of manner, would fit my tale so well. You would be none the wiser. In a Mexican sketch one expects a pretty woman, even as one looks for lions in African and elephants in Indian scenery. But I will be conscientious. I was so disgusted my self that I would have you also somewhat disappointed. Expect, therefore, no glowing description of female loveliness from me. Good-looking women doubtless exist in Mexico, but I have only been a few miles over the border, and have not seen them. A hazy recollection of flowers, in connection with this scene of church-going damsels, haunts me. But whether they were worn in the hair, or in the dress, or simply carried, I no longer recollect. Men in their colored zarapas and broad-brimmed hats chatted and smoked the eternal cigarette. Old women in black robes loitered about and gossiped. The commandante and a few officials sat on one of the old stone seats. A few miners loafed before the American hotel, the name of which I forget, as also that of the plump, jovial, masterful hostess and her tame English husband. Here I breakfasted, and in the afternoon went out to the mine-a distance of about twenty-three miles.

Past the Sierra Ventana (so-called on account of the hole or window by which a shoulder of it is perforated) and over wave after wave of rolling country sparsely scattered with mesketis-bush we rode, my guide and I, towards some ruddy hills in the distance. And dusk had fallen and night had come, when we ascended the mountain spur on which the mine was situated. The stalwart form of my friend, whom I will call by his nickname, Don Cabeza, came out of the cottage. Not expecting me, he took me for a new mining hand.

"Buenas noches, señor," said I.
"Buenas noches."
"Habla V. Castellano?"

"No hablo so much as all that comes

to."

Then I burst out laughing.

Why! If it isn't Francis ! What a warm-hearted greeting he gave me ! How hospitably he spread the best of everything he had before me! and even would he have relinquished his bed to me, had I allowed him to do so. I had a quantity of news for him, but much as he longed to hear it, he insisted on its narration being deferred until I should have slept and rested.

There is much that is very admirable in the character of these Western men. I speak not of the "store clerks and society men or bummers" for whom my old 'Frisco friend had such undisguised contempt, but of those who came in early days to California. They are lost in a crowd of a different type and of a later date now; wherever you find one though, you will find a large-hearted, generous man, with nothing "small or mean " in his whole character. In the better stamp of old Californian there is less of the snob than in any man in the world. He cares very little for what Pall Mall would call "good form," but he cares a great deal for what is manly and unselfish, and in carrying out these views he is as fearless of what others may think or say as he is of what they may do.

Those days were very pleasant up at the mine. Lazy? Well, yes; I fancy everything in Mexico is more or less lazy. We were so entirely out of the world; the trip moreover was so utterly disconnected with anything that came before or followed it, that, when I look back upon it, it stands out in solitary relief.

The Santa Ana was a new purchase; Don Cabeza was prospecting it. It promised well, but as yet he had not commenced to work it on a large scale. A dobe cottage of three rooms had been built for him and the foreman, and here we lived. Below us, in wattled huts, dwelt the Yaqui miners and their families. A little removed from the cottage was an open bough-thatched arbor, in which we took our meals. Betwixt this and the cottage

was a stunted tree that served various purposes, besides being shady and ornamental. Lodged in the first fork was our water-barrel. The coffee-grinder was nailed to its trunk. In a certain crevice the soap was always to be found. Upon one bough hung the towels; the looking glass depended from another. One branch supported the long iron drill that, used as

The country teemed with quail and jackass rabbits. We bought an old Westley Richards shot-gun in Magdalena, and did great slaughter amongst them. Deer were reported to be numerous, but during my stay we saw none. A great part of our time was spent in cooking. The China boy, nominally chef, was so wondrously dirty that, one day we rebelled and degraded him to the post of scullion; and, being rather proud of our culinary skill, we undertook the preparation of the meals ourselves. Jerked beef, bacon, quails, jackass rabbit, beans, and rice were the articles we had to work upon. Don Cabeza mixed the introductory cocktail, and took charge of the jerked beef and beans; the quails and jackass rabbit fell to my care; bacon was a neutral prop erty; the rice we left to the Celestial. Most elaborate, at least in the titles, were the menus we produced. One Mexican dish that the don used to prepare, of jerked beef pounded and fried with a lit tle butter and a few chopped chillies, was worthy of note. Jerked beef and jackass rabbit! We laughed as we compared these frugal meals with the extravagant breakfasts and dinners of a year ago at Marchand's, the California, and the Poodledog in San Francisco. And, by the way, if you are known at either of the above restaurants, you can be served there with a dinner that neither the Trois Frères nor Bignon's could easily excel.

Every now and then, some Yaqui men or women would come up from their little colony below to purchase something from the storeroom which, owing to the distance from town, it was necessary to keep for their benefit. Great was the mirth of the women to see Don Cabeza and me

cooking. They said we were "loco" or mad. Good-tempered creatures were these Yaquis and easily pleased, for they regarded it as a signal compliment if I sketched one of them.

I never could understand why time sped so rapidly at the mine. There was really nothing to do there. So far as I was concerned this was fortunate, for, had there been, I never should have found time in which to do it. Poco tiempo is a phrase very easily adopted in this land of idleness and procrastination. Before morn

In the rear of the cottage, the spur led up to rocky cañons and gaunt ridges; before it, vast mesas stretched like a sea away to a far-off horizon of mountains that, in the distance, looked as soft as low. down clouds. Behind these purple ranges we lost the sun at night, when it sank to rest a molten mass of glowing, gleaming, iridescent fire, blinding to gaze upon. Swiftly it passed beyond ken, and sable shadows fell and dimmed the landscape. With imperceptible process they knit its distances together, shrouding the intervals in mystery and obscurity, till nought but the deceptively near sky-line was clearly visible. And above it like a halo on the mountains, the glow of orange deepening into red still suffused the heavens with subdued illumination. Thus on the one hand might be seen, high set in a fathomless depth of blue, amidst glittering cohorts of stars that were far and near twinkling and fixed, blue and white and red and yellow, the silver beauty of a crescent moon; on the other the linger ing glory of the vanished sun. The effect was curious.

The foreman went early to bed and was early abroad. Not so Don Cabeza and I. When the mocking-bird in the mesketisbush had ceased its plaintive song, and silence fell upon the land, we would light our largest pipes, endue us in our easiest garments, and sit (he on a carpenter's bench, I in a barrow) smoking and yarn. ing, yarning and smoking, without thought of time, through the still watches of those enchanting southern nights. How many and what pleasant hours did we spend thus! But then Cabeza possessed a shrewd, crisp vein of wit, and an inexhaustible fund of experiences, yarns, anecdotes, and arguments. No more amusing fellow to sit and smoke with ever breathed.

Occasionally we went into Magdalena for stores and letters. Magdalena can boast of a past of some prosperity; a more important future lies before it. At present it bears the stamp of dilapidation, poverty, and squalor that characterizes most Spanish towns. Probably not a dozen of the inhabitants are unincumbered with debt, nevertheless everybody, even to the beggar in the street, possesses from two or three to ten or a dozen mines. It sounds absurd to hear a fellow in rags discoursing glibly about his mines. Sull more absurd is it to know that many of

up a church right away.' And thar he stopped sure 'nough. An' that's how this here church an' town come to be built; least, so folks say hereabout. But they do lie here, too," he added reflectively after a pause.

I was making a sketch of this ruin one day, when the hostess of the American hotel came up and looked on.

'Why, if that ain't the old church! Say, are you a drawing-master?" she asked.

"Yes," said I mendaciously. "Do you think I could get any pupils about here?" "Don't know; guess they don't go much for drawing here. You might get a few girls if you were cheap."

After the dusty and dirty town, we returned to the prettily situated dobe cottage at the mine with renewed pleasure. At length the time came for me to depart. The horses were driven in from the mesas; the near fore cart-wheel (which, when not in use, was invalided and kept in water, to prevent the wood shrinking from the iron tire) was fixed on; the old cart was lined with blankets, and we started one night after dinner to drive into Magdalena for the last time.

The day had been oppressive, but now there was a refreshing softness in the air. At every pace as we jogged along, hares lolloped across the road or played amidst the scattered mesketis-bush on either side of it. Occasionally the howl of a distant cayote might be heard. Night-hawks and owls flitted silently to and fro, and "shardborne beetles" drowsily sang as they wheeled in the dreamy welkin. The stars, the stillness, and the silken winds combined to work a charm. Night wore her richest jewellery, sang low her softest melody, whispered her sweetest poem, and showed her beauty all unveiled even by the lightest fleece of silver cloud. Until I saw these Mexican skies I never knew how much more beautiful night was than day. For every star you dimly dis tinguish here, a thousand are clearly visible there. Their number and refulgence startle you. Were I to live in Mexico, I should be strongly tempted to rise at sundown and go to rest at dawn.

Once more the corpulent coach looms into view. Once more am I uncomfortably ensconed therein. With a torrent of Spanish invective and a terrific cracking of whips, we slowly start. The coach turns round a corner and I catch a last glimpse of Don Cabeza, with his hat off in the road, waving a kindly adieu to me. F. FRANCIS.

From The British Quarterly Review. THE PURITAN ELEMENT IN

LONGFELLOW.

ONE peculiar merit of Mr. Longfellow's poems is in some danger of being overlooked. It has never, so far as we are aware, been commemorated in such a form as to do it complete justice. The simpler side of his genius has secured for him such a reputation as has entirely overshadowed his rarer and subtler powers the expression of which, in several instances, exalts him, in our idea, almost to the rank of the Greek dramatists. He has received his full meed of praise as a sweet lyrical poet. His songs and ballads and bits from his "Evangeline" are in all mouths, "familiar as household words." His delicate perception of the grace and beauty that inform commonplace life, and the affecting and felicitous touch with which he presents them to the imagination, combine to place him in a sphere apart, as the successful interpreter of some of those emotions of which Herder must have been thinking when he declared that the difference between cultivated and uncultivated men was not specific. Longfellow reveals the precise point where they can meet on common ground. He is pre-eminently the poet of the domestic affections, the poet of youth and childhood. But he strikes the universal note the more surely, because he reinforces it by a still but poignant sense of regret, which would probably tend to become depressing were it not that the moment it reaches its highest point of intensity, the imagination recovers itself by embracing a grand religious idea. Novalis has said that all “ultimate feeling is religious; Longfellow's hold on "ultimate feeling" is that which makes him something more than the lyrical poet. A strong, half-dramatic opposition of two currents of emotion or experience is constantly suggested, if not plainly enforced, by him. Age and youth, success and failure, life and death, joy and sorrow, these are the two poles of his thought. That which gives at once the profound pathos and the captivating sense of a solemn gladness and a serene faith to Longfellow's lyrics is that also which is found to lie at the basis of his greater and more subtle efforts. It may, perhaps, be regarded as a service by some readers if we try to make this point clear, and give it illustration by extracts from the poems.

The peculiar mixture of sombreness and brightness in Mr. Longfellow's genius needs to be emphasized at the outset.