home, though on many farms it is succeeded by a later and more general feast. Now, the first part of the ceremony is omitted, and the feast and merriment, with a handful of corn in the room, and decorations of grain and flowers, still recall the older and more picturesque custom. There is, too, the hunting of the wren on St. Stephen's Day, which has become simply the carrying round from house to house of a little dead bird decked in ribbons, and the singing of Manx songs. Formerly, there was the

chase and capture of the bird, before the procession. The origin of this singular custom has not yet been satisfactorily discovered by Manx antiquarians.

It appears, then, that when we have succeeded in landing in the Isle of Man

for the arrangements for disembarking are scandalously bad - and have escaped from the rough holiday-makers, we shall find many novel social habits well worth study among the Manx, as well as much bold and characteristic scenery.

publishes an entertaining account of the proceedings of a raven-tribunal, accidentally witnessed by him during a recent excursion in the Swiss mountains. Descending from the region of glaciers, he came upon a small secluded glen, surrounded by thick cover, concealed in which he was enabled to contemplate a strange spectacle. From sixty to seventy ravens had formed a circle round one of their fellows, obviously a misdemeanant, whose alleged delinquencies they were eagerly engaged in discussing with infinite clatter of croaking and wing-flapping. Every now and then they interrupted their debates for a brief space to listen to the energetic representations of the prisoner, who conducted his own defence with amazing fervor, the judges breaking out into a deafening chorus of comments and refutations after his every statement. Presently, having arrived at the unanimous conclusion that the arraigned bird had failed to exculpate itself, they suddenly flew upon him from all sides, and tore him to pieces with their powerful beaks. Having thus summarily executed their own sentence, they dispersed, leaving the remains of the dead offender bestrewing the very seat of justice, as a dread warning to all immorally-disposed ravens. A correspondent writing to the Daily Telegraph on the same subject says: "On a sultry summer afternoon I was riding leisurely on horseback along a quiet road in Norfolk not many miles distant from Norwich - when I was startled by hearing an unusual commotion, within a short distance, amongst the dwellers of an adjacent rookery. Quietly tying up my horse to a gate, I crawled some hundred feet or more to a gap in the hedge of a grass-field, where a rook 'trial by jury' was going on. The criminal -as undoubtedly he was-at first appeared very perky and jaunty, although encircled by about forty or fifty of an evidently indignant sable fraternity, and assailed by the incessantly vehement cawing of an outer ring, consisting of many hundreds, each and all showing even greater indignation than was manifested by

law. Scouts, too, were hovering in all directions, but so absorbed were they that my vicinity was unheeded. After a very few minutes the manner of the criminal suddenly and wholly changed. He bent his head, cawed weakly, as it were imploringly, and drooped his wings, as if pleading for mercy. It was useless. The select circle went in at once, and, picking him to pieces, left a mangled carcass in less time than I write of it. Then they and all the rest, scouts as well, set up a sort of exulting screaming, and flew away, some to their neighboring home, and others the greater number I may say-across the fields. On picking up the remains I found a shapeless mass, but was able to discern that it was a male bird."

NATURAL SPREAD OF THE APPLE-TREE

A

IN SOUTH AMERICA. - It is surprising how quickly the vegetation of many countries settled by Europeans has been modified. writer in Petermann's Mittheilungen on the flora of Chili south of the Valdivia River, states that the scenery between the Rio Bueno and its winding affluents reminds one very much of home. In the park-like prairies, associated with Fagus obliqua, a deciduous beech, are numerous scattered apple-trees, originally introduced from Europe. The apple-tree has spread from Valdivia to Osorno, and even crossed the Andes into north-western Patagonia, and thence eastward. Indeed, it has become so widely spread, and so general, that the Indians from the distant regions of the Argentine rivers Rio Negro and Rio Colorado, are called Manzaneros, or Apple Indians. As a matter of fact, they and their kin in the provinces of Valdivia and Osorno live far more on the fruit of the apple-tree than any European people, for it affords them both food and wine.

ONE DAISY AND TWO VIOLETS.

ONE daisy and two violets

Mix and mingle their faint sweets,
For they grew like soft regrets
On the grave of English Keats,
In that Rome in which the past
Folds dusky wings and sleeps at last.

Two violets and one daisy here

Meet me with their tender look, And my lost youth grows all clear, Like a pool in summer brook, When the sunshine manifold Turns all the pebbles into gold.

In that time a spirit bright

Came and took me by the hand, In his eyes was all the light

Of that wondrous pagan land
Where the gods still dwell, but we
Are cold at heart and cannot see.

One light finger touch'd my heart,
And as fairy clouds arise
When the wind's most cunning art
Rears them up against the skies,
So within me dreams rise up,
Like angels holding each a cup.

And I drank, and straightway came
Shapes of beauty, and their feet
Made rare music, just the same
As those melodies so sweet
Which this spirit sang, for he
Was one great throb of song to me.

There were forms of half-seen things,
Shadows that the dim woods keep;
Shapes of tender fashionings,

Such as those love who will reap
Dim fields of the past, but leave
Behind them aught that tends to grieve.

Glimpses into high abodes

Where the winds have never sound, Profiles of the idle gods

Lying half asleep, and crown'd
With a wreath of vine which they
Felt with their fingers all the day.

Naiads by the streams I saw,
Hamadryads by the trees;
Heard their voices in mute awe
Join together like soft seas,
When the winds aweary lie
For rest in hollows of the sky.

All the old life - ever young

To young hearts - was mine. I lay
Lapp'd in songs this spirit sung;
I had nought to do with day,
And the night was lit with beams
And splendors from his golden dreams.

Strange these simple flowers should bring
Back that lost time unto me;
Touch my dull day with the spring
Of what was, as when a tree,

SHERIDAN.

From Temple Bar.

"IN society I have met Sheridan frequently; he was superb!" So said Byron, who had met him often and heard him quiz De Staël and snub Coleman, and who said that "Sheridan could soften even an attorney." "Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to do," says Byron, "has been par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy ('School for Scandal'), the best the best farce and the best address (monologue on Garrick), and to crown all, delivered the very best oration (the famous Begum speech) ever conceived or heard in this country."

drama

A wit rather than a humorist, an orator more than a statesman, a brilliant writer of comedy and farce, Sheridan was equally at home in the salons of the great, in the repartee of the clubs, in the badinage and persiflage of the green-room, or in the debates and conflicts of the House of Commons.

Born of a mother of whom Dr. Parr said, "I once or twice met his mother, she was quite celestial," and of a father who was a man of letters, the instructor of Wedderburne, and the manager of a theatre, he yet started in life without means or powerful friends, and rose to be - alas for him! - the friend of princes, in whom he put his trust, and more fortunately the support of Fox and the Whig party, and their finest orator. He lived to give to the stage a comedy so bright and witty, so graceful and mirthful, that it keeps its popularity to this day, and he added the weight of his genius to the persecution of Warren Hastings in a speech which worked an assembly, already excited by the eloquent imagery of Burke, into a frenzy of enthusiasm.

This man, with all his genius, wit, eloquence, and fascinating manners, with inherited and acquired abilities, who had overcome all obstacles, and stood in the first rank in society and in the House of Commons, died poor, worn out by debauchery, and with bailiffs about him. Nevertheless, in recognition of the purity of his political life, in admiration of his splendid talents, when he passed away he

was carried, with the consent of the nation, to that Abbey to lie wherein is the secret hope of all our great men.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin in 1751; his grandfather was a scholar and the friend of Swift; his father was an actor of some celebrity in his day, a rival of Garrick, a teacher of elocution, and the author of a well-known pronouncing dictionary; his mother was the authoress of several plays, novels, and other works now wholly forgotten. At nine years of age Brinsley was brought over to England and placed at Harrow, where Moore tells us that "he was remarkable only as a very idle, careless boy, who contrived to win the affections and even admiration of the whole school, both masters and pupils, by the mere charm of his frank, genial manners, and by the occasional gleams of superior intellect which broke through all the indolence and indifference of his character." At Harrow his scholastic education may be said to have commenced and ended, for his father's circumstances were not sufficiently flourishing to admit of his being sent to a university, and in his twentieth year we find him an idler in Bath society - in which city his father was acting at the time - writing, in conjunction with a schoolfellow named Halked, a three-act farce, which no manager would accept, translating the "Epistles of Aristænetus," publishing a miscellany, which never went beyond the first number, and projecting other things which they fondly hoped would bring them fame and fortune, but which nobody appreciated except themselves. Some of the poems, however, that young Sheridan composed at this time, addressed to the reigning favorites of the pump-room, were far above mediocrity, although his invocations to Delia, and the complaints of Sylvio, would not be at all to modern taste.

Every one knows what the Bath of that day was like; it was the resort of valetudinarian reputations as well as of impaired constitutions, of gamblers, adventurers, fortune-hunters, scandal-mongers - and much worse. It was not a healthy atmosphere for a good-looking, fascinating, clever young fellow of twenty, who,