community to the native race. The task before us is sufficiently noble to engage all our sympathies, and sufficiently difficult to teach us the advantages of union. The supremacy of Law must be established throughout these islands, promptly, thoroughly, and permanently, and, at the same time, with due regard to the considerations of justice, humanity, and forbearance. This is an undertaking which is attended with many difficulties, and which seems to require the reconciliation of conflicting elements.

Whatever may be thought of Mr. Darwin's views concerning natural selection and the origin of species, no one will be disposed to deny the existence of that struggle for life which he describes, or that a weak and ill-furnished race will necessarily have to give way before one which is strong and highly endowed. This is always the case with different tribes of animals whose territory is limited, and whose interests are conflicting. That it is likewise the case with the races of mankind, the history of many a colony proves. But the case of man differs in some respects from that of other animals. He can study the natural law in virtue of which the conflict arises, and his will can modify its operation. When the European rat exterminates his Maori cousin, he simply follows his instincts, and is not at all aware that he is taking possession of the country in right of his superior strength, ferocity, or sagacity, nor does he feel any misgivings of conscience in respect to the taking advantage of these superior endowments to the detriment of his weaker opponent. The civilized man, however, is able to trace the origin, progress, and consequences of the conflict that spontaneously arises when he comes into contact with an inferior and uneducated race. His higher moral instincts show him at once that to raise the inferior race to his own level, and to endow them with the same gifts, capacities, and advantages which he himself enjoys, is a far nobler thing than to use those endowments to crush and destroy them. The difficulties which lie in the way of such an undertaking arise mainly from the circumstance that the inferior race can scarcely be made to understand the good that is intended them. They will disdain the advances of those whose power they disbelieve, and the proof of this power by its exercise is the one thing which the other party wishes to avoid. When this purpose of pacific colonization is calmly and deliberately embraced after a careful consideration of the consequences which it involves, the spectacle presented is, perhaps, the most sublime which the history of human affairs has to offer. To see a powerful, proud, and lordly nation come in contact with a poor and ignorant race of men, with the design of raising them to something like an equality with itself; to see it submit to have its motives misunderstood, its advances repelled, its interference rejected as encroachment, its generosity viewed as weakness, its power denied, and its majesty insulted; to see it yet calmly persistent in its purpose, withholding the blow which could avenge and crush, and trusting that its labour of love may after all be appreciated and rewarded; this is, doubtless, a more noble sight than the grandest battle, or the most magnificent display of power and wealth.

Alas! that such a picture should be overcast by the blots which imperfect knowledge and defective experience will inevitably import into the realization of our brightest visions. Alas! that after all our selfdenying efforts to waive the exercise of the powers which Nature has

given us, we should be at length well nigh driven to declare that her law is inexorable and must take its course.

Yet no choice is left to us. Forbearance has its limits, and law and justice claim to be protected by the sword. May the necessity be temporary, and may the sword introduce a fairer prospect than we have yet enjoyed of civilization and of peace!

ALEXANDRA.

A CONVOY sailed across the sparkling main,
A fair, swift vessel shooting o'er the wave,
With great war-steamers rushing in her train;

Who rides upon the deep in state so brave?
Daughter of sea-kings, bride of England's heir,
She comes the sceptre of the sea to share.

Implacable and fierce, her fathers strove

The island race to plunder and oppress;
She comes with looks of gentleness and love,

That island race to smile upon and bless.
And mighty keels are with her on the deep;
Who shall molest whom England's squadrons keep?

Swiftly she steers across the foaming sea,

The huge hulks strain behind or press before,
The curling waves dash lightly on the lee,

And bear her blithely to the island shore,
Where English Thames, impatient and elate,
Relieves reluctant ocean of his freight.

Then through the arches of the vaulted sky,

From startled earth pealed to the heavens above

A simultaneous, loud, triumphal cry,

A nation's voice of loyalty and love.

And thus, amidst the guns' resounding roar,
Is Alexandra welcomed to the shore:

"Welcome, oh, Alexandra, to thy home!

Our eyes have strained to see our Princess come :
Our wishes have demanded of the tide

Our Alexandra, Albert Edward's bride :

Our hearts have bounded to the cannons' roar,
That told thy foot had rested on our shore.
And fairer now thy living presence seems,
In all our eyes, than fancy's fondest dreams.
All queenly gifts hath Nature made thine own :
The quiet dignity to grace a throne ;

Calm brow that marks the sovereignty of mind,

And aspirations high, and soul refined;

Soft womanhood, that round some prop will twine ;
(Who but a King should be the stay of thine ?)
The sweet simplicity, which, where it comes,
Makes gilded halls as bright as cottage homes;
And the true heart that never fails to find
The secret bands that link all human kind.
Come, Princess, come ;-in thy bright beauty's right,
To every English heart a fresh delight.

No Nurseling thou of lands whose sunny skies
Pour languid softness into beauty's eyes;

Where strength of soul dissolves in fairy bowers,
'Mid liquid melodies, and fragrant flowers.
No! thou wert born beneath another sky,
And strength is joined with sweetness in thine eye.
Thou wilt not shudder in our English air,
Which now salutes thee for a lady fair,
And noble Princess, worthy to command
The stern devotion of a northern land.

Shall not ten thousand swords, if need there be,
Flash in the air between all wrong and thee?
The hearts and hands of England are thine own,
Thou latest grace to Queen Victoria's throne.
Oh! when that royal lady's star shall set,
(The brightest England's line hath seen as yet,)
To thee may Heaven propitiously transfer
The choicest blessings it hath showered on her.
Long live our Prince; and long his lovely Dane
Live to give lustre to his happy reign!

Long may life's sunshine laugh upon thy brow;
And long thy heart's young freshness bloom, as now,
Now, when we claim thee with exulting pride,
Our Alexandra, Albert Edward's bride!"

Our hearts pulsate with England's: England's voice
Rings like a clarion o'er her subject seas,

Bidding her sons in far off homes rejoice.

We seem to catch her plaudits on the breeze;
We seem to hear her cannons' distant roar,
And answer as we may from our far shore.

Our eyes

have not beheld that gentle face
That smiled its way to every English heart;
Yet well we deem her robed with every grace
That fancy asks to fill a queenly part.

We hail her, bride of England's princely heir,
And ask all blessings on the royal pair.

N. Z.

[This tribute of welcome to England's Princess, from the most distant part of her future empire, reached us too late for insertion in our June number.-ED. S. M. M.]

COLONIAL EXPERIENCE.

I HAVE said that house-building may very likely be made to go along with the settler's earliest agricultural operations. Where this can be managed without detriment to these, it ought by all means to be done. It is, of course, important that a house should be provided for the new settler's family, and no garden work can well be done until after the house is built. On this subject of house-building a few hints may not be useless to those for whom these papers are intended. I have already expressed my opinion that what is called a slab house is, upon the whole, the most desirable for the new settler, avoiding, on the one hand, the large expense of a sawn timber building, and, on the other, many of the discomforts and some of the dangers incident to those built of raupo. Slabs, some few persons may require to be told, are rough boards, obtained not by sawing but by splitting the trunk of some one of the pine trees which abound in the New Zealand forest. It is not of any very great consequence which species of pine is chosen, so far as the durability is concerned, as, under any ordinary circumstances, the slabs will out-last the framework of the building. The persons usually employed to do work of this sort are bushmen, who make work of this description a regular trade. These men will, under proper inspection, make, in all probability, a good job of your house. It is, however, of the greatest moment that you should not be helplessly in their hands. You ought to know, and can easily learn, sufficient of the names and properties of the different woods used, to be able to check them in any attempts at roguery, which, indeed, they are but too likely to attempt. If your house is meant to last for any considerable length of time-more than four or five years, that is, you must take care that the framework is formed entirely of puriri, which alone stands well in the ground. The wood of the other parts is of less consequence; but hard woods may, as a rule, be always preferred to soft. Your chimney must be built of slabs, and ought to be lined inside to a height of at least three feet and a half with stones and clay, which will be sufficient to obviate the danger of fire, if ordinary care is used. These chimneys, although at all times very unsightly, have many advantages, and the new settler will find little cause of complaint in the roughness of his chimney when the south-westerly storms of winter make the sight of a huge back log welcome to his eyes on his return from work. In making slab houses there are two things too often neglected, both of which are well worthy of attention; these are, a verandah, and a floor of sawn boards. A verandah is almost necessary to render a house of this kind tolerably comfortable either in summer or winter, but especially the latter. If the rain beats against the house walls, between the boards of which there are certain to be considerable chinks, it will inevitably make the house a damp one; while in summer the effect of the sun in warping the exposed slabs, and so preparing chinks for the rain, is very apparent. With regard to the floor it is only necessary to point out the fact that under even the most favourable circumstances a floor made of

slabs can never be properly washed, and will never be so level as to enable you to place a table or chair straight upon it. It might seem hardly necessary to mention it, did not experience contradict such an idea, that ugliness is no necessary part of economy even in house-building. A house may, even if built of materials as rude as slabs, exhibit some amount of taste, and ought if possible to do so, as it is almost impossible to calculate the amount of pleasure which such things afford almost unconsciously to many who have brought with them theories to their new home strongly opposed to all such refinements. Nothing can well be imagined more unsightly than the ordinary slab house, built, as it generally is, of a true oblong form with a door in the middle, a window at each side of the door, and the chimney at one end. If the house required is a very small one, some such arrangement may be almost unavoidable. This, however, is by no means the case where there are several rooms required, and the house has consequently to be built of a considerable size. In such cases the expense would be little or nothing extra, of having the house divided into two parts, running at right angles to one another, with a rustic verandah on the inner side, which ought to represent the front of the house.

Leaving, however, the details of house-building for the present, let us glance at the arrangements which the new settler ought by all means to make as soon as possible for providing a garden. As it is self-evident to every man of sense that a garden will be of the greatest benefit to a family out of reach of markets, I will not enter upon a vindication of the principle involved in spending labour and money in forming one. The first golden rule which can never be neglected with impunity in garden making is, that too large a garden is almost worse than none. With no garden a settler can calculate the extra expense in which he will be involved; with one decidedly too large, he can never calculate the amount of his expenditure in money and labour, while the amount of his returns is not likely to afford him a great deal of abstruse calculation. Most new settlers will find half-an-acre of good land amply sufficient for all practical purposes of gardening. Larger quantities, I am aware, will be advocated by some, but my own experience goes against it. Settlers have sometimes grand visions of orchards, vineyards, and the like, and these may doubtless come with advantage all in good time, and after the more important parts of farm work are placed in a fair way to work well and smoothly; but the only effect which I have observed to spring from a premature attempt at these has been that neither they nor the gardens proper were so attended to as to return any produce worthy of the trouble they had cost, while in the end many were entirely abandoned and destroyed.

Having, then, chosen half-an-acre of land, which had better encircle the house, if possible, upon its front and side,-not behind,-the next question ought to be, before fencing it, how it is to be cultivated. It will usually be found best to plough and cross-plough the land, harrowing it well each time. The ploughing must not, however, be allowed to extend beyond the allotted extent of the ground, as, should you want to make a ditch and bank, the destruction of the surface sod will prove a very serious inconvenience. The reason for my advising the ploughing to be done previous to the fencing is, that it is exceedingly inconvenient even for a good team and a good ploughman to work in narrow limits;