hesitatingly, and with a prefatory caution to spare my health, that my father, whose income could ill afford the requisite allowance to me, counted on my soon lightening his burden, by getting a scholarship. I felt how much provident kindness there was in all this-even in that hint of a scholarship, which was meant to rouse my faculties, and spur me, by affectionate incentives, to a new ambition. I was not less delighted than grateful.

"But poor Roland," said I, "and little Blanche---will they come with

us ?"

"I fear not," said my mother, "for Roland is anxious to get back to his tower and, in a day or two, he will be well enough to move."

"Do you not think, my dear mother, that, somehow or other, this lost son of his had something to do with his illness,--that the illness was as much mental as physical?"

"I have no doubt of it, Sisty. What a sad, bad heart that young man must have!"

'My uncle seems to have abandoned all hope of finding him in London; otherwise, ill as he has been, I am sure we could not have kept him at home. So he goes back to the old tower. Poor man, he must be dull enough there!-we must contrive to pay him a visit. Does Blanche ever speak of her brother?"

"No, for it seems they were not brought up much together at all events, she does not remember him. How lovely she is! Her mother must surely have been very handsome."

"She is a pretty child, certainly, though in a strange style of beauty such immense eyes!-and affectionate, and loves Roland as she ought."

And here the conversation dropped. Our plans being thus decided, it was necessary that I should lose no time in seeing Vivian, and making some arrangement for the future. His manner had lost so much of its abruptness, that I thought I could venture to recommend him personally to Trevanion; and I knew, after what had passed, that Trevanion would make a point to oblige me. I resolved to consult my father about it. As yet I had either never forced, or never made the opportunity to talk to

my father on the subject, he had been so occupied; and, if he had proposed to see my new friend, what answer could I have made, in the teeth of Vivian's cynic objections? However, as we were now going away, that last consideration ceased to be of importance; and, for the first, the student had not yet entirely settled back to his books.

I therefore watched the time when my father walked down to the Museum, and, slipping my arm in his, I told him, briefly and rapidly, as we went along, how I had formed this strange acquaintance, and how I was now situated. The story did not interest my father quite as much as I expected, and he did not understand all the complexities of Vivian's character-how could he ?-for he answered briefly, "I should think that, for a young man, apparently without a sixpence, and whose education seems so imperfect, any resource in Trevanion must be most temporary and uncertain. Speak to your uncle Jack-he can find him some place, I have no doubt-perhaps a readershipin a printer's office, or a reporter's place on some journal, if he is fit for it. But if you want to steady him, let it be something regular."

Therewith my father dismissed the matter, and vanished through the gates of the Museum-Readership to a printer, reportership on a journal, for a young gentleman with the high notions and arrogant vanity of Francis Vivian-his ambition already soaring far beyond kid gloves and a cabriolet! The idea was hopeless; and, perplexed, and doubtful, I took my way to Vivian's lodgings. I found him at home, and unemployed, standing by his window, with folded arms, and in a state of such reverie that he was not aware of my entrance till I had touched him on the shoulder.

"Ha!" said he then, with one of his short, quick, impatient sighs, "I thought you had given me up, and forgotten me-but you look pale and harassed. I could almost think you had grown thinner within the last few days."

"Oh! never mind me, Vivian: I have come to speak of yourself. I have left Trevanion; it is settled that I should go to the university-and we all quit town in a few days."

"In a few days!-all!-who are all?"

"My family---father, mother, uncle, cousin, and myself. But, my dear fellow, now let us think seriously what is best to be done for you? I can present you to Trevanion." "Ha!"

"But Trevanion is a hard, though an excellent man; and moreover, as he is always changing the subjects that engross him, in a month or so, he may have nothing to give you. You said you would work-will you consent not to complain if the work cannot be done in kid gloves? Young men who have risen high in the world have begun, it is well known, as reporters to the press. It is a situation of respectability, and in request, and not easy to obtain, I fancy; but still-"

Vivian interrupted me hastily— "Thank you a thousand times! but what you say confirms a resolution I had taken before you came. I shall make it up with my family, and return home."

"Oh! I am so really glad. How wise in you!"

Vivian turned away his head abruptly

"Your pictures of family life and domestic peace, you see,' he said, "seduced me more than you thought. When do you leave town?"

Why, I believe, early next week.” "So soon!" said Vivian, thoughtfully. "Well, perhaps I may ask you yet to introduce me to Mr. Trevanion; for-who knows ?-my family and I may fall out again. But I will consider. I think I have heard you say that this Trevanion is a very old friend of your father's, or uncle's?

"He, or rather Lady Ellinor, is an old friend of both."

indeed she ought to be my father's

son."

Vivian looked unsatisfied with my explanation, but did not question me farther. He himself was the first to turn the conversation, and he did this with more affectionate cordiality than was common to him. He inquired into our general plans, into the probabilities of our return to town, and drew from me a description of our rural Tusculum. He was quiet and subdued; and once or twice I thought there was a moisture in those luminous eyes. We parted with more of the unreserve and fondness of youthful friendship---at least on my part, and seemingly on his---than had yet endeared our singular intimacy; for the cement of cordial attachment had been wanting to an intercourse in which one party refused all confidence, and the other mingled distrust and fear with keen interest and compassionate admiration.

That evening, before lights were brought in, my father, turning to me, abruptly asked if I had seen my friend, and what he was about to do?

"He thinks of returning to his family," said I.

Roland, who had seemed dozing, winced uneasily.

"Who returns to his family?" asked the Captain.

66

66

Why, you must know," said my father, that sisty has fished up a friend of whom he can give no account that would satisfy a policeman, and whose fortunes he thinks himself under the necessity of protecting. You are very lucky that he has not picked your pockets, Sisty; but I daresay he has? What's his name?"

"Vivian," said I---" Francis Vivian."

"It was only for a time, for a trial, that I was there," said I, evasively : "out at nurse, as it were, till the Alma Mater opened her arms---alma

"Vivian!" interrupted Roland--"Vivian !---I wonder if it be the son of Colonel Vivian ?"

"He is certainly a gentleman's son," said I; "but he never told me what his family and connexions were."

แ

"Vivian," repeated my uncle--poor Colonel Vivian. So the young man is going to his father. I have no doubt it is the same. Ah!"

"I know nothing of either, except by gossip," said my uncle, moodily. "I did hear that Colonel Vivian, an excellent officer, and honourable man, had been in-in-(Roland's voice faltered)—in great grief about his son, whom, a mere boy, he had prevented from some improper marriage, and who had run away and left him-it was supposed for America. The story affected me at the time," added my uncle, trying to speak calmly.

We were all silent, for we felt why

Roland was so disturbed, and why Colonel Vivian's grief should have touched him home. Similarity in affliction makes us brothers even to the unknown.

"You say he is going home to his family-I am heartily glad of it!" said the envying old soldier, gallantly.

The lights came in then, and, two minutes after, uncle Roland and I were nestled close to each other, side by side; and I was reading over his shoulder, and his finger was silently resting on that passage that had so struck him-"I have not complained -have I sir ?-and I won't complain!"

FIFTY years since, the book before us would have earned for its author the sneers of critics and the reputation of a Munchausen: at the present more tolerant and more enlightened day, it not only obtains credit, but excites well-merited admiration of the writer's enterprise, energy, and perseverance. "The rich contents and great originality of the following work," says Professor Carl Ritter, in his preface to Mr. Werne's narrative, "will escape no one who bestows a glance, however hasty, upon its pages. It gives vivid and life-like pictures of tribes and territories previously unvisited, and is welcome as a most acceptable addition to our literature of travel, often so monotonous." We qutte coincide with the learned professor, whose laudatory and long-winded sentences we have thus freely rendered. His friend, Mr. Ferdinand Werne, has made good use of his opportunities, and has produced a very interesting and praiseworthy book.

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remind the reader, that the river Nile is formed of two confluent streams, the Blue and the White, whose junction is in South Nubia, between 15° and 16° of North Latitude. The source of the Blue Nile was ascertained by Bruce, and by subsequent

travellers, to be in the mountains of Abyssinia; but the course of the other branch, which is by far the longest, had been followed, until very lately, only as far South as 10° or 11° N. L. Even now the river has not been traced to its origin, although Mr. Werne and his companions penetrated to 4° N. L. Further they could not go, owing to the rapid subsidence of the waters. The expedition had been delayed six weeks by the culpable dilatoriness of one of its members; and this was fatal to the realization of its object.

We can conceive few things more exciting than such a voyage as Mr. Werne has accomplished and recorded. Starting from the outposts of civilisation, he sailed into the very heart of Africa, up a stream whose upper waters were then for the first time furrowed by vessels larger than a savage's canoe-a stream of such gigantic proportions, that its width, at a thousand miles from the sea, gave it the aspect of a lake rather than of a river. The brute creation were in proportion with the magnitude of the water-course. The hippopotamus reared his huge snout above the surface, and wallowed in the gullies that on either hand run down to the stream; enormous crocodiles gaped along the shore; elephants played in herds upon

the pastures; the tall giraffe stalked amongst the lofty palms; snakes thick as trees lay coiled in the slimy swamps; and ant-hills, ten feet high, towered above the rushes. Along the thicklypeopled banks hordes of savages showed themselves, gazing in wonder at the strange ships, and making ambiguous gestures, variously construed by the adventurers as signs of friendship or hostility. Alternately sailing and towing, as the wind served or not; constantly in sight of natives, but rarely communicating with them; often cut off for days from land by interminable fields of tangled weeds,-the expedition pursued its course through innumerable perils, guaranteed from most of them by the liquid rampart on which it floated. Lions looked hungry, and savages shook their spears, but neither showed a disposition to swim off and board the flotilla. The cause of science has countless obligations to the cupidity of potentates and adventurers. May it not be part of the scheme of Providence, that gold is placed in the most remote and barbarous regions, as a magnet to draw thither the children of civilisation? The expedition shared in by Mr. Werne is an argument in favour of the hypothesis. It originated in appetite for lucre, not in the thirst for knowledge. Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt, finding the lands within his control unable to meet his lavish expenditure and constant cry for gold, projected working mines supposed to exist in the districts of Kordovan and Fazogl. At heavy cost he procured Austrian miners from Trieste, a portion of whom proceeded in 1836 to the land of promise, to open those veins of gold whence it was reported the old Venetian ducats had been extracted. Already, in imagination, the viceroy beheld an ingot-laden fleet sailing merrily down the Nile. He was disappointed in his growing expectations. Russegger, the German chief of the expedition, pocketed the pay of a Bey, ate and drank in conformity with his rank, rambled about the country, and wrote a book for the amusement and information of his countrymen. Then he demanded thirty thousand dollars to begin the works. An Italian, who had accompanied him, offered to do it for less; mistrust and disputes arose,

and at last their employer would rely on neither of them, but resolved to go and see for himself. This was in the autumn of 1838; and it might well be that the old fox was not sorry to get out of the way of certain diplomatic personages at Alexandria, and thus to postpone for a while his reply to troublesome inquiries and demands."

"It was on the 15th October 1838," Mr. Werne says, "that I--for some time past an anchorite in the wilderness by Tura, and just returned from a hunt in the ruins of Memphis-saw, from the left shore of the Nile, the Abu Dagn, (Father of the Beard,) as Mohammed Ali was designated to me by a Fellah standing by, steam past in his yacht, in the direction of those regions to which I would then so gladly have proceeded. Already in Alexandria I had gathered, over a glass of wine, from frigate-capain Achmet, (a Swiss, named Baumgartner,) the secret plan of the expedition to the White Stream, (Bach'r el Abiat,) and I had made every effort to obtain leave to join it, but in vain, because, as a Christian, my discretion was not to be depended upon."

The Swiss, whom some odd caprice of fate, here unexplained, had converted into an Egyptian naval captain, and to whom the scientific duties of the expedition were confided, died in the following spring, and his place was taken by Captain Selim. Mr. Werne and his brother, who had long ardently desired to accompany one of these expeditions up the Nile, were greatly discouraged at this change. which they looked upon as destructive to their hopes. At the town of Chartum, at the confluence of the White and Blue streams, they witnessed, in the month of November 1839, the departure of the first flotilla; and, although sick and weak, from the effects of the climate, their hearts were wrung with regret at being left behind. This expedition got no farther than 6° 35' N. L.; although, either from mistakes in their astronomical reckoning or wishing to give themselves more importance, and not anticipating that others would soon follow to check their statements, they pretended to have gone three degrees further south. But Mehemet Ali, not satisfied with the result of