A ROSE FROM MRS. BROWNING'S DESERTED GARDEN.

I mind me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun,

With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.

The beds and walks were vanished quite ;

And wheresoe'er had struck the spade,

The greenest grasses nature laid,

To sanctify her right.

I called the place my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I.

The sheep looked in, the grass to espy,
And passed it ne'ertheless.

The trees were interwoven wild,

And spread their boughs enough about
To keep both sheep and shepherd out,
But not a happy child.

Adventurous joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in
Bedropt with roses waxen-white,
Well satisfied with dew and light
And careless to be seen.

It did not move my grief to see
The trace of human step departed,
Because the garden were deserted,
The blither place for me!

Friends, blame me not: a narrow ken,
Hath childhood twixt the sun and sward :

We draw the moral afterward

We feel the gladness then.

The gladdest hours for me did glide

In silence at the rose-tree wall:

A thrush made gladness musical,

Upon the other side.

A LAY OF AN EARLY ROSE.

A rose once grew within
A garden April-green,

In her loneness, in her loneness,
And the fairer for that oneness.

A white rose delicate,

On a tall bough and straight! Early comer, early comer, Never waiting for the summer.

Her pretty guests did win
South winds to let her in,
In her loneness, in her loneness,
All the fairer for that oneness.

"For if I wait," said she, "Till times for roses be,For the musk-rose and the moss-rose, Royal-red and maiden-blush rose,—

"What a glory then for me,
In such a company?

Roses plenty, roses plenty,
And one nightingale for twenty?

"Nay, let me in," said she,
"Before the rest are free,-
In my loneness, in my loneness,
All the fairer for that oneness.

"For I would lonely stand, Uplifting my white hand, On a mission, on a mission, To declare the coming vision.

"Upon which lifted sign

What worship will be mine? What addressing, what caressing,

And what thank, and praise, and blessing!"

So, praying, did she win
South winds to let her in,
In her loneness, in her loneness,
And the fairer for that oneness.

-Poor Rose, to be misknown!
Would she had ne'er been blown,
In her loneness, in her loneness,
All the sadder for that oneness !

Some word she tried to say-
Some no-all, well away!
But the passion did o'ercome her,
And the fair frail leaves dropped from her-

Dropped from her fair and mute,
Close to a poet's foot,

Who beheld them smiling slowly,
As at something sad yet holy :

Said, "Verily and thus

It chanceth eke with us;

Poetry singing sweetest snatches,

While that deaf man keeps the watches."

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

A CHAPTER ON INSECT LIEE.

Walking in our rose-garden this pleasant fine day, let us inquire a little into the habits and character of the Aphides with which our favourite flowers are sure to be more or less molested, and in order to do this in the best manner, let us take out the first volume of the "Episodes of Insect Life," as we have so often done, and turning to page 172, read in the sunshine and with an aphis-stricken rose-bush before us, what that clever writer has to say on the subject.

"Let us," says he, "early in the spring, look a little closely at the leaf-buds of a rose-bush which we shall find even now occupied by aphis-tenantry, such as have recently emerged from minute black eggs, deposited last autumn on the branches. These are all green, of small size and without wings, but later (towards the end of May) a single flowerbud is likely to present us with two or three kinds of these infesting sap-suckers differing in size, form and colour. We shall therefore venture to anticipate the appearance of summer rose-buds, and, with them, that of the numerous