I followed Almalic to the caravansera in which he lodged : and after he had fulfilled his vows, he took me with him to Medina. He gave me an apartment in the seraglio; I was attended by his own servants; my provisions were sent from his own table; I received every week a sum from his treasury, which exceeded the most romantic of my expectations. But I soon discovered that no dainty was so tasteful as the food to which labour procured an appetite; no slumbers so sweet as those which weariness invited: and no time so well enjoyed as that in which diligence is expecting its reward. I remembered these enjoyments with regret; and while I was sighing in the midst of superfluities, which, though they encumbered life, yet I could not give up, they were suddenly taken away. Almalic, in the midst of the glory of his kingdom, and in the full vigour of his life, expired suddenly in the bath.

His son Aububekir, who succeeded to the throne, was incensed against me by some who regarded me at once with contempt and envy; he suddenly withdrew my pension, and commanded that I should be expelled the palace; a command which my enemies executed with so much rigour, that within twelve hours I found myself in the streets of Medina, indigent and friendless, exposed to hunger and derision, with all the habits of luxury and all the sensibility of pride. I have travelled from Medina to Mecca; but I cannot flee from myself. How different are the conditions in which I have been placed! The remembrance of both is bitter; for the pleasures of neither can return.-Hassan, having thus ended his story, smote his hands together; and, looking upward, burst into tears.

Omar, having waited till his agony was past, went to him, and taking him by the hand, My son, said he, more is yet in thy power than Almalic could give, or Aububekir take away.

Thou wast once content with poverty and labour, only because they were become habitual, and ease and affluence were placed beyond thy hope; for, when ease and affluence approached thee, thou wast content with poverty and labour no more. That which then became the object, was also the bound of thy hope; and he whose utmost hope is disappointed must inevitably be wretched. If thy supreme desire had been the delights of Paradise, and thou hadst believed that by the tenor of thy life these delights had been secured, as more could not have been given thee, thou wouldst not have regretted that less was not offered.

Depart, therefore, and be thankful for all things; put thy trust in Him who alone can gratify the wish of reason, and satisfy thy soul with good; fix thy hope upon that portion, in comparison of which the world is as the drop of the bucket, and the dust of the balance. Return, my son, to thy labour; thy food shall again be tasteful, and thy rest shall be sweet; to thy con

tent also will be added stability, when it depends not upon that which is possessed upon earth, but upon that which is expected in Heaven.

Peace now dawned upon the mind of Hassan like the radiance of the morning: he returned to his labour with cheerfulness ; his devotion became fervent and habitual; and the latter days of Hassan were happier than the first.

THE RETURN OF CAMBYSES FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF THEBES.1

DARWIN.

WHEN heaven's dread justice smites in crimes o'ergrown
The blood-nursed tyrant on his purple throne,
Gnomes! your bold forms unnumber'd arms outstretch,
And urge the vengeance o'er the guilty wretch.
Thus when Cambyses led his barbarous hosts
From Persia's rocks to Egypt's trembling coasts,
Defiled each hallow'd fane and sacred wood,
And, drunk with fury, swell'd the Nile with blood;
Waved his proud banner o'er the Theban states,
And pour'd destruction through her hundred gates;
In dread divisions march'd the marshall'd bands,
And swarming armies blacken'd all the lands,
By Memphis these to Ethiop's sultry plains,
And those to Ammon's sand-encircled fanes.
Slow as they pass'd the indignant temples frown'd,
Low curses muttering from the vaulted ground;
Long aisles of cypress waved their deepen'd glooms,
And quivering spectres grinn'd amid the tombs ;
Prophetic whispers breathed from Sphinx's tongue,
And Memnon's lyre with hollow murmurs rung;
Burst from each pyramid expiring groans,

And darker shadows stretch'd their lengthen'd cones;
Day after day their deathful route they steer,
Lust in the van, and rapine in the rear.

(1) Cambyses having overturned Thebes, after ravaging the country divided his army, and one part of it perished by famine; the other part, sent to plunder the temple of Jupiter Ammon, was overwhelmed by the sands of the desert, so that none survived.

Gnomes! as they march'd, you hid the gather'd fruits,
The bladed grass, sweet grains, and mealy roots;
Scared the tired quails, that journey o'er their heads,
Retain'd the locusts in their earthy beds;

Bade on your sands no night-born dews distil,
Stay'd with vindictive hands the scanty rill.
Loud o'er the camp the fiend of famine shrieks,
Calls all her brood and champs her hundred beaks;
O'er ten square leagues her pennons broad expand,
And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand;
Perch'd on her crest the griffin Discord clings,
And giant Murder rides between her wings;
Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill,
And showers of tears in blended streams distil;
High poised in air her spiry neck she bends,
Rolls her keen eye, her dragon-claws extends,
Darts from above, and tears at each fell swoop
With iron fangs the decimated troop.

Now, o'er their head the whizzing whirlwinds breathe,
And the live desert pants, and heaves beneath;
Tinged by the crimson sun, vast columns rise
Of eddying sands, and war amid the skies,
In red arcades the billowy plain surround,
And whirling turrets stalk along the ground.-
Long ranks in vain their shining blades extend,
To demon-gods their knees unhallow'd bend.
Wheel in wide circle, form in hollow square,
And now they front, and now they fly the war,
Pierce the deaf tempest with lamenting cries,

Press their parch'd lips, and close their blood-shot eyes.—
Gnomes! o'er the waste you led your myriad powers,
Climb'd on the whirls, and aim'd the flinty showers!
Onward resistless rolls the infuriate surge,

Clouds follow clouds, and mountains, mountains urge;
Wave over wave the driving desert swims,

Bursts o'er their heads, inhumes their struggling limbs ;
Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush,

Hosts march o'er hosts, and nations nations crush,—
Wheeling in air the wingèd islands fall,

And one great earthly ocean covers all!

Then ceased the storm,-Night bow'd his Ethiop brow To earth, and listen'd to the groans below,

Grim horror shook,-awhile the living hill

Heaved with convulsive throes,-and all was still!

FALL OF A CLIFF.

REV. GILBERT WHITE.

THE months of January and February, in the year 1774, wero remarkable for great melting snows and vast gluts of rain; so that, by the end of the latter month, the land-springs, or levants, began to prevail, and to be near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764. The beginning of March also went on in the same tenor, when, in the night between the 8th and 9th of that month, a considerable part of the great woody hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high free-stone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a chalk-pit. It appears that this huge fragment, being, perhaps, sapped and undermined by waters, foundered, and was ingulfed, going down in a perpendicular direction; for a gate, which stood in the field on the top of the hill, after sinking with its posts for thirty or forty feet, remained in so true and upright a position, as to open and shut with great exactness, just as in its first situation. Several oaks also are still standing, and in a state of vegetation, after taking the same desperate leap. That great part of this prodigious mass was absorbed in some gulf below, is plain also, from the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, which is free and unencumbered, but would have been buried in heaps of rubbish, had the fragment parted and fallen forward. About a hundred yards from the foot of this hanging coppice, stood a cottage by the side of a lane; and two hundred yards lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farm-house, in which lived a labourer and his family; and just by, a stout new barn. The cottage was inhabited by an old woman and her son, and his wife. These people, in the evening, which was very dark and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their kitchens began to heave and part, and that the walls seemed to open, and the roofs to crack; but they all agree that no tremor of the ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever felt, only that the wind continued to make a most tremendous roaring in the woods and hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to bed, remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices. When daylight came, they were at leisure to contemplate the devastations of the night. They then found that a deep rift, or chasm, had opened under their houses, and torn them, as it were, in two, and that one end of the barn had suffered in a similar manner: that a pond near the cottage had undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at the shallow end, and so vice versá; that