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said to his companion that it was a comfort to him to have a human being by his side. We may well believe it when we think of the inhospitable desert in which he was dying.

Thus he passed the long silent hours of his last night on earth; early morning found him speechless or nearly so; all toil and care were soon to end. About eight o'clock his breath became more laboured, and then grew fainter; the death-dew gathered on his brow; his haggard features became if possible, still more shrunken; and peacefully and gently his chastened spirit passed into eternity.

When, some time afterwards, the friendly blacks gazed upon the dead body of the white men's chief, they wept bitterly and covered it with branches which they pulled from the trees and bushes near at hand.

King was now left alone in the dreary wilderness; he sought long and earnestly for traces of the blacks, subsisting the while on hawks, crows, and nardoo. He at length found the savages. They were very kind to him; and as he gained still further their good will by shooting birds and curing a sick woman, they permitted him to become a member of the tribe. He continued to live thus until he was rescued by a party which was sent out in search of Burke.*

When the news reached Melbourne that the explorers were in all probability lost, various expeditions were promptly organized to ascertain their fate, and, if possible, to afford them succour. Some of those expeditions proceeded by sea to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and discovered Burke's track on the banks of the river Flinders. A land expedition, under the command of Mr. Howitt, found King, as we have said, and liberally rewarded the savages who had been so kind to hi n.

In accordance with resolutions passed by both Houses of the Victoria Parliament, the remains of Burke and Wills, recovered by Mr. Howitt, were conveyed to Melbourne and honoured with a public funeral; a stately monument was shortly afterwards erected over the spot where they rest in the Melbourne General Cemetery.

We shall conclude this brief account of the celebrated Exploring Expedition of 1860 with the tribute of admiration paid to the memory of its leader by Sir Henry Barkly, who was then Governor of Victoria. In a letter addressed to Major Burke, the explorer's brother, he speaks thus: "This colony, indeed, may well be proud, not merely that such an achievement has been performed, but of the heroism and self-devotion exhibited in its performance; and I am sure that, when the simple narrative of the explorers comes to be read in the mother country, it will be felt that Ireland never sent out a truer or a braver son than Robert O'Hara Burke."

*

King's adventures after the death of his leader will be told in a third paper.

SONNET.

"My heart shall be thy garden.”— A. C. Thompson.

H

BY WILFRID MENNELL.

ER heart shall be thy garden; so she says.
O be a gentle gardener; tend with care
The delicate leaves and flowers unfolding fair,
And shine on them the sunshine of thy praise;
Upon their beauty turn a reverent gaze;
Sit shyly 'mong the shadows; and beware

Thou tread not where thine angel would not dare-
Nay, let her walk alone in some sweet ways!
Spare thou the lilies that, when plucked, but lend
A fading glory to life's robe of years;

Against rude winds the tender shoots defend;
And O, if any blight therein appears,

Cease not by day and night the bloom to tend,
And water it, if need be, with thy tears!

I

A YOUNG POET.

BY ETHEL TANE.

SAW the poets in a mighty hall,

Each singing out of his o'erflowing heart:
One sang to rich and poor, to great and small;
One to a group that stood with him apart;
One warbled lays to move a maiden's soul,

Of truth, and trust, and love that will not fail;
While other bards sang of the cannon's roll
In tones that made their gentle listeners quail.

But one there was a youthful singer he—
Who only gave sweet echoes of the rest,

Who only reproduced the melody

That had its birthplace in some older breast.
And many scoffed and called him "mocking-bird,"
While others harmed him more with lavish praise:

But when that voice of passion I had heard,
And gazed my fill upon the glowing face,
I paused in doubt and hope-for surely he,
With ears so true for every singer's tone,
Shall one day wake to nature's harmony,

And make her thrilling language all his own :
Rise in the ether on his own strong wings,
Sing the star's music-not man's renderings.

AIX AND THE FALLS OF GREZY.

BY MISS CADDELL, AUTHOR OF "LOST GENEVIEVE," &c.

IX-LES-BAINS in Savoy is undoubtedly one of the prettiest

A watering-places in the world. I say "watering-place" advis

edly, because it is neither a village nor a town, and, lacking the rustic cottages of the one and the great shops of the other, it is simply a watering-place and nothing more.

With the exception of a few narrow streets, inhabited for the most part by persons employed at the baths or working on the railways, it consists partly of hotels-some built on the American system of monster caravansaries; and some less extensive, but with gardens and seats in the open air to make them pleasant-and partly of many well-preserved ruins of Roman architecture, which, placed as they are, among the less picturesque and more formal buildings of the present day, fling the glamour of antiquity around a spot, so lovely and so fair already that it scarcely needs this addition to its charms to make it a "thing of beauty and a joy for ever."

The Romans were unhesitating believers in the curative nature of its waters; and, besides a triumphal arch, which forms the entrance into the courtyard of the Maison de Courcy, there is still to be seen a portion of a very beautiful temple to Diana, the remains of baths for invalids, and of baths also for their horses; while a quantity of other interesting ruins have been incorporated into the chateau of the Marquis d'Aix, which dates from the 16th century, and has been preserved from the renovations and rebuildings of modern times, less probably by the good taste than the poverty of its owners.

The modern bath-house, commenced by one of the Savoy rulers, but greatly enlarged and improved by "La Reine Hortense," as the inhabitants of Aix, to whom her memory is very dear, love to style the mother of the third Napoleon, is built on a scale of palatial magnificence; and yet, large as it is, it is barely large enough for the crowds who flock thither to seek healing in its waters.

The parish church stands at a little distance from it, and the space between the two buildings forms the prettiest of market-places, teeming on week days with vegetables, and fruits, and flowers, and becoming on Sundays and holidays a very fitting point of rendezvous for the processions, by which it is the great delight both of the pastor and his poor Savoyard congregation to celebrate the high festivals of the year.

Nothing can be more pretty and devout than some of these processions. Take, for instance, that of Corpus Christi. High Mass is over, the gates of the church are flung wide open, and amid the joyous ringing of the bells overhead, and the solemn pealing of the organ, blended with the soft voices of women and children underneath, the procession, which has been previously arranged inside the church, pours forth into the street beyond. I can scarcely pretend

at this distance of time to recall the precise order of the procession at which I assisted; but I know there were troops of nuns, some belonging to the schools and some to the hospital, and all with clasped hands and sweet, pale faces, evidently absorbed in prayer, and yet so intensely alive to their external duties as to be able to detect and check the slightest irregularity in the double line of little girls walking before them and beside them. There were Christian Brothersor brothers devoted, as the Christian Brothers are, to teaching-keeping watch and ward over the schoolboys, marching, like the girls, in double lines before them. There were pious guilds and charitable associations of all kinds, both of men and women, each following the banner of the particular confraternity to which he or she belonged, and bearing its badge either upon the breast or shoulder. There were bands of bright little maidens dressed in white and bearing baskets full of flowers on their arms. There were troops of baby boys in blue garments and silver winglets, representatives of the angels; and there were youths, a few years senior to these little ones, with white surplices and silver censers flinging incense on the air. There was the officiating priest bearing the Blessed Sacrament beneath the canopy, and surrounded by as many clergymen from the neighbouring villages as could find leisure to attend; and, last of all, there was the people-the men bareheaded, the women with clasped hands and downcast eyes, and every heart and soul among them stirred by the same faith and burning with the same desire-faith in the actual presence of their Divine Lord among them, and desire to express that faith by acts of love and gratitude, reverence and adoration, made openly and before all the world, on the very day which the Church herself has set aside for the public recognition of Jesus Christ as God and Man, in the ever adorable sacrament of the altar.

After leaving the church, the procession wound in and out among narrow streets and lanes, made fresh and pretty for the occasion by a number of "reposoirs," placed here and there at intervals, and by rose leaves and flowers of all descriptions, which the occupants of the houses on both sides of the street had showered down in rich abundance on the ground over which the Blessed Sacrament was to pass. It then entered the wide avenue of trees leading to the lake, proceeding down it until it reached the great wooden cross of St. Germain, where the last of the line of little altars had been erected. There, with glimpses of the blue lake at one end of the avenue, and the spire of the old church of Aix just visible at the other, benediction was once more given, after which the procession, returning to Aix, assembled in the market-place for the last and most solemn ceremony of the day.

The little square was soon filled to overflowing, but everything had been previously so well arranged that there was neither jostling nor confusion. The nuns, with their school children and poor patients from the hospital; the brothers, with their tribes of schoolboys, the guilds, corporations, fraternities, and brothers and sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, filled up nearly two sides of the square;

the space remaining was, in conjunction with the third, devoted to the people, and the altar from whence benediction was to be given occupied the fourth. Upon this altar, larger and more profusely ornamented than any of the little reposoirs by the wayside, the priest laid the Blessed Sacrament, and then he and his assistant clergy knelt down for a moment to adore it. But he soon stood up again, and taking the monstrance into his hand began slowly to raise it upwards. Even as he did so, the baby boys-a veritable band of "angels round the throne"-bowed down before it; the white-robed maidens flung the last and sweetest of their roses towards it; the snowy-surpliced youths tossed up their silver censers and scattered clouds of incense over it; the assistants knelt in profound adoration, and the voices of the singers grew softer and softer still until at last they died entirely away, and in the moment of mystic silence which ensued, the priest raised his Divine Lord high above his head and showed Him to his people. One long-drawn note from a silver bell gave notice of the fact, and people and priests, nuns and confraternities, and little children, all knew and felt that Jesus Christ their Lord and their God, their Father and their Redeemer was looking with loving eyes upon them, and pouring forth upon their heads a benediction, which coming, as it did, straight from his Sacred Heart to theirs, was as full of tenderness and love, and as full (in due measure) of gifts and graces, as that which He gave with uplifted hands to his disciples when He ascended in their presence from Mount Olivet to heaven.

It is hard to turn from such memories as these to things of more general but less touching interest; but I have undertaken to describe Aix, not in her spiritual but her material beauty, and therefore I must pass onwards.

Gambling having been long ago abolished, those who now visit Aix do so simply for the benefit of its waters, or else for the sake of the lovely country in which it nestles, and the innumerable excursions it is thus enabled to offer to the tourist.

The drive to Chambery, for instance, is well worth the two hours it will occupy, even without the prospect of the fair city at the end, and of a visit of inspection to its manufactory (the only manufactory, by the way, of the kind existing) for that most lovely of all materials for ladies' dresses, soft and shining as satin, and yet clear as muslin, which, under the name of the "Gaze de Chambery," is often, I am afraid, the sole object of the Parisian belle when she coaxes her husband to Chambery, under pretence of the picturesque. Long lines of walnut trees on either side of the road shed sweetness on the air and give you shelter from the sun. The wide valley of Aix and Chambery, undivided by hedge or wall, lies fair and smiling to the right, its arrowy lines of wheat and maize, vegetables and manycoloured trefoils, giving it the aspect of a gigantic ribbon-garden; while on the left, rich meadows, flushing rosy-red and purple in the multitude of wild flowers that run riot in the soil, slope downwards from the cliff wall overhead, and lay their fragance and beauty at your feet.

The rocks above this road contain a multitude of pathlets, intricate,

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