the mouth, or subsided into fits, or otherwise—
as often happens—misconducted himself.

There was a time (oh that wonderful twenty
years ago!), says Mr. Brunswick Senex the
great Eastern traveller, when these holy but
singular men used to perform a complete
series of juggling tricks—miracles to
astonish credulous Frank travellers, or silly female
votaries hidden behind the gallery lattices.
They would hold red-hot iron in their mouths,
carry balls of fire, handle burning hooks, and
do other wonders, once popular among
mediæval saints, and still so at English country
fairs.

The miracles / saw were of a dubious
kind. The old sheikh touched bad eyes that
were brought to him: touched them beyond
a doubt, but, for all I know, made them
only worse. He pressed palsied hands, too,
but, for all I saw, he left them palsied as his
own. Then, roused to greater enthusiasm by
these bold assertions to sainthood, enthusiastic,
perhaps prepaid, parents pushed forward with
baby children—mere coloured bundles of
drapery—and laid them down side by side, in
rows, before the white prayer-rug of the old
sheikh. The children threw themselves down
willingly, as with prepaid alacrity the fathers
and dervish assistants rolled them together just
as Punch rolls his row of victims when he is at the
crowning acme of his murderous and despotic
career. Then the old man in the yellow boots,
his arms held on either side by stronger disciples,
stepped leisurely on each child, pressing him
from head to foot with what he affected to be his
whole weight, but which was only his whole
weight minus the two large side slices of it held
up by his supporters. Then, as a bigger boy,
some twelve years old, laid himself low, the old
sheikh walked down the row of bodies laid with
their faces to the ground, and so miraculously
harmless was that old man's weight, that I vow,
on my honour as a traveller, I saw a baby boy
look up and smile as the yellow boot passed
over him. All the children rose as unhurt
as if the old man had been only a sparrow
that had hopped over them.

I had got to that pitch now, that I think, if
that old idiot's head had rolled off and proved to
be a brittle pumpkin; if that old sheikh had
turned into a rat and run down a hole in the
wainscot; or if all the brotherhood had
suddenly been transformed into a row of
howling jackals that had suddenly torn at us and
driven us a whirlwind of beasts and Turks
down the steep street, I should have treated
the whole transaction quite as a matter of
course.

The refrain and its effects on the mind are
well known to us, but the effect of monotony
and repetition generally,as used by some religious
sects and false faiths to obtain spiritual influence
over the mind, has not, I think, been duly
considered by psychologists. I can only say
for myself, that that mechanical swing of the
body of some dozen and odd dervishes, that
ways of that head, the measured dancing step,
and, to crown all, that cadenced howl at regular
intervals, even as clock beats, did anything but
steady my reason for the time being.

ONE TRACE LEFT.

        THEY dragged it through the miry street,

             The trunk of a fallen tree;
         And on its bark the drizzling sleet
             Fell damp and chillingly.

       Far from its native spot 'twas borne,
            Far from its leafy wood;
       And sister trees were left to mourn
            The gap where once it stood.

      It brought a memory of the dale
            When summer days were nigh,
      And breezes wafted from the vale,
             The violet's perfumed sigh;

     Of summer nights, that stealing down
            As softly as the dew,
     Left on the hills a misty crown,
           And darkened Heaven's blue.

     But now, instead of woodland hush,
           Or woodland zephyrs sweet,
     It dragged through falling sleet and slush
           Along the miry street.

    I thought. Is there no relic left,
         To tell its bygone pride?
    Have all its boughs been rudely reft?
         Has every leaflet died?

    I looked, and saw that round the tree,
       With tendrils fresh and green,
    The ivy lingered lovingly,
       To tell of what had been.

   This remnant of its beauty yet
       Clung fond and constant there,
   To bid me not in haste forget
       The wreck had once been fair.

    And thus I thought the human heart,
        Degraded though it be,
    Retaineth still some lovely part,
        Like this poor fallen tree.

    Dragged through the world's rough miry ways,
         Despised and scorned by all.
    Mementoes of its brighter days
        Will linger in its fall.

    The beauty that its Maker gave,
        The feelings pure and high,
    Can only perish in the grave,
        And die when it shall die!

    'Tis there, in some lone hidden spot,
         Which we pass by in haste:
     Each heart hath one forget-me-not,
         Amid its dreary waste.

    However rough, and rude, and dark,
        That human breast may be,
    Some beauty clingeth to its bark,
         Like ivy to the tree.

THE BRITISH MERCHANT IN
TROUBLE.

IT is distressing to find certain British
productions falling into contempt. The British
lion must be admitted to be left to us, but there
is no saying what even he might prove, if divested
of his terrible skin. Has he any bones? Does
he possess any blood and muscle? Or is he
merely stuffed with mouldy hay?

There is the British wine—our own juice of