THE LONDON AND PARIS LADIES' MAGAZINE OF FASHION, CRANKY TOM. POLITE LITERATURE, MARCH, MDCCCLII. shaggy kangaroo-dog to him, he took the road, coast. ETC. Wide moleskin trousers covered his nether parts, and these were belted over his upper clothes with a broad stripe of kangaroo-skin fastened in front with three steel buckles. Add to this, short, broad-pointed, brown boots, that had oftener been wet with dew than Warren's or any other body's blacking, and you have Cranky Tom, as complete and excellent a specimen of the Australian pioneer as ever drank water from the Torrance, dined on kangaroo-flesh, held a plough, drove a bullockteam, hunted stray steers, blazed the old growth of grass, and prayed for rain. lour. Over his cotton under-dress was a frock of dark blue flannel, open at the breast, and profusely ornamented with roses, thistles, and Tom Burd was one of those strong, brawny, shamrocks, wrought in green and red worsted "WELL, and what now, Tom? Is it to be hearty, active, handy men that seem to have-memorials of that triune nation far over the bush or biggin? Do you come back to swing been made expressly to clear the way for a su- deep, of which Tom often thought, and to the hatchet and grub the stump, or do you re-perior civilization. In a city, where the division which he again and again went back in his main amongst those who dwell in cities?" of labour is so minute, and where talent and dreams. The person addressed as Tom drew up his skill are so highly developed by being conmoleskin trousers with a sudden hitch, expec- centrated on what are termed the practical torated a large amount of tobacco-liquor di- branches of professions, Tom would scarcely luted with saliva, and puckered up his mouth have been able to win his bread. He would have with a quiet meaning smile, as he thrust his been a mere labourer, a hodman to masons, a large bony hand into his trousers-pocket, and, coal-porter, or, at the best, one of those Jacksrattling the guineas deposited there, exclaimed, of-all-trades who have the fame of never be"Do you hear that, Mr. Cameron? That's my ing master of any. No joiner would have emdischarge from the bush as plain as gold can ployed him as a joiner; no mason as a hewer say it. I shall no more be called Cranky Tom, or builder; and yet, in all the colonies of Ausnor Merry Tom, nor Slashing Tom. I shall tralia, there was not a more handy, useful, or pitch away the hatchet, leave splitting, and essentially important man. Standing upwards fencing, and bullock-driving to those as likes of six feet high, and being compactly built of it, and I shall settle down in the city with the firm and clean bone, brawn, and muscle, Tom little girl who always calls me good Tom; and was able to perform prodigies of physical I shall drive my own horse, and ride in my strength; and as his shoulders were broad, own waggon, and become a person of substance his chest ample, his spirits light, and his hopes and importance." bright and inspiring, there seemed to be nothing that could ruffle his temper or fatigue his vigorous frame. As he walked along, his feet fell with the firm heavy tread of one who had been accustomed to toil; but yet he stepped with an elasticity that portended great muscular activity. Labour had not stiffened one of his joints nor cramped one of his physical energies; and his clear ruddy complexion and peaceful blue eye gave evidence of his having breathed salubrious air and lived a temperate life. As he trudged on his way with his great shaggy dog at his heel, and cast his eyes now on the far expanse of yellow prairie land, and now on the dark outline of the bush which clustered on the plains and covered the face of the gently undulating slopes, he seemed to have been formed for such a scene. The halfsavage landscape where the long kangaroo- love and joy are stirring up the deepest foungrass grew up amongst the box and myrtle-tains of our hearts! Poetry! sweet and magic trees and amidst which the fat lazy steers were poetry! that like the finger of the Creator emluxuriating in nature's profusion; the huge bodies our best aspirations, and writes with rewhite dog, with its long, rough, hard, shaggy newed brightness upon our memories the joys coat, its powerful limbs, and thoughtful saga- of the past, the beatitudes of the present, the cious eye; and the brawny, coarsely-dressed labouring man, formed a tout ensemble of half- hopes of the future! Home dwelt in the spirit savage life and its accessories that was admi- of that rough child of nature, like the fabled treasure in the head of the humble toad; and rably in keeping in all its parts. poetry came over his soul like incense from flowers to soften and refine him. "I am glad to hear that you are so resolved," said the good farmer, smiling-" I am glad for your own sake. We shall miss you however, Tom, my boy, in the woods, on the harvest-field, and at the winter hearth. The crack reaper shall no longer be here to lead the corn-cutters with joke and song; and the brawniest thrasher in the settlements shall no more make the barn resound with his swinging flail; but good luck to you, Tom, and a happy fortune," said the farmer, with a hearty shake of the hand; "and," he continued, holding up his finger warningly, and looking in the face of the lumberer with an admonitory smile, "beware of your mortal enemy, rum!" Tom leant upon one foot, and then upon the other. He drew up his slacks with a half perplexed air, and then scratching his head, replied, in a half confused voice, "Well, Mr. Cameron, that I'm half-resolved on. You see, I've been without it for these two years that I've been in the bush, and I've never sought for it. I've stood to the custom of your house all that time, drinking nothing stronger than tea, and I mean to do the same when I have a wife and house of my own. So good-by, Mr. Cameron; it will be sundown before I reach Gardener's station to-night, and I mean to kiss my little girl in Adelaide on the day after to morrow. "Farewell, Tom," said the kind-hearted Scotchman, shaking the hand of the lumberer once more; 66 farewell, and remember, avoid as you would poison all that can intoxicate." "Ha! ha! no fears of me!" cried the young man with a wave of his hand, as, swinging his "Come on, Sneezer-come on, old boy," cried Tom, snapping his fingers, then bending down to stroke his dog. "You'll miss the bush and the plain mayhap, and the city folks may call you a rough customer, but the girl that loves me will love you too, boy. Rough dog and rough master are going home; and we'll rough it out through life together. Ah, what a trio we shall be-you, my little Bet, and I!"-and as the dog wagged his tail, bounded before his master, and barked in his face, as if he comprehended every word, and was answering him back right cheerily, the lumberer in the fulness of his heart, struck up that soul-inspiring ditty of Scotland and of love, "Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, For there the bonnie lassie lives, Home! holy, happy home! that ever rises before us like a dream of the better land, when (To be continued.) The lumberer wore a cap of kangaroo-skin, not like those nondescript articles of fashionable wear called hats, but formed to fit the head; from under this cap his long, yellow, sun-burned hair fell in ringlets clinging to his hirsute cheeks and round his brown muscular neck. He wore a shirt of yellow check, with Have the courage to set down every penny an ample collar laid over so as to expose his you spend, and add it up every week. tawnied throat; and his neck was loosely en- Have the courage to shut your eyes on large MORAL COURAGE. SONG OF THE MARINER'S NEEDLE. Ho! burnish well, ye cunning hands! For I would ride in regal state Bring ivory from the Indian main Now mount the wave, ye fearful ones! My strength will never fail. The lone Enchantress of the Deep, I rule its boisterous realm; Watch ye my lithe and quiv'ring wand To guide your straining helm. Ay, bend your anxious gaze on me, The Polar Star is dim, And driven darkness is awake With Ocean's awful hymn! For I commune with spirit forms Within my wizard cell, And mantling midnight melts before The magic of my spell. By many long, enduring links I clasp the Northern Star, And on that wiry, shadowed chain I visit her afar. And sapient eyes have watched me long, Ye know me as ye know the storm That heaps your heaving path; Ye love me though, since mine is not The mystery of wrath! THE TOWER OF BABEL. THE ruins near Hillah are still, by the Arabs, designated Babel; and all historical records, as well as traditions, agree in representing these as the remains of the first city of Nimrod; the Babylon of Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and other historians. Here we are to seek the site of the Tower of Babel, built under the direction of Nimrod, apparently with the view of possessing a building so large and so high as should serve for a mark and a rallying point in these vast plains, and thus prevent that further dispersion to which they were destined. Coming as they did from a land of mountains, and from the sacred shade of Ararat, into flat plains, seemingly as boundless as the sea, and observing that in this plain-the unexplored extent of which must have been greatly exaggerated in their minds-any marked object, such as a tree, could be seen from a great distance, they concluded to set up a lofty tower, which would at once, as a common centre, be to them what the mount of the ark had been; and would at the same time declare their purpose not to disperse, and by affording a signal landmark from afar, protect them, as they thought, from being lost or accidentally dispersed in the illimitable plain. In this we may recognise the natural actions of men who, having these objects in has been reduced more than one-half. Only view, find themselves for the first time without three stories out of the eight which it formerly those landmarks and objects of distant recog-contained can now be discerned; yet the apnition which mountains afford. So they set pearance of the Tower of Nimrod is sublime about "to build a city," and therein "a tower even in its ruins. Clouds play around its whose top should reach unto heaven." They summit; its recesses are inhabited by lions; used for this purpose the materials still em- these were quietly basking on the heights when ployed in the same country, where there is no Porter approached it, and, scarcely intimidated stone, and where the dryness of the climate by the cries of the Arabs, gradually and slowly prevents the need of burnt bricks. They con- descended into the plains. structed their works of sun-dried masses of mud, cemented and strengthened with the bitumen which is abundantly produced in the same region. Two mighty heaps are found on the desolate site of Babylon, formed of the foundations and fallen superstructure of great ancient works thus constructed; and it is thought by some that one of these (either the Mujelibe or the Birs Nimrud) may present the foundations of the very building which those men undertook, but were prevented from completing; that Birs Nimrud may seem to have been the acropolis, the citadel, or palace of the later Babylon, and the tower left unfinished by the confusion of tongues, and upon which, in a later age, was built that famous temple of Belus of which glowing accounts have been left us by the Greek historians, and which was accounted one of the wonders of the ancient world. The ruins of this vast tower, notwithstanding all the degradations of man, generation after generation, and the waste of time, age after age, still remain an enduring monument at once of the ambitious impiety of this ancient race, and of the avenging justice of God. On the west side of the Euphrates, at the distance of a few miles from the other ruins of Babylon, stands this huge mountain mass of ruins, bearing the name of Birs Nimrud, the "Tower of Nimrod." Its present height, reckoning to the bottom of the tower, on the summit, is two hundred feet; the tower itself being thirty-five feet. Looking at it from the west, the entire mass rises at once from the plain in one stupendous, though irregular pyramidal hill. It is composed of fine bricks, kiln-baked. From the western side, two of its stories may be distinctly seen; the first is about sixty feet high, cloven in the middle by deep ravines. The tower-like looking ruin on the top is a solid mass, twenty-eight feet wide, of the most beautiful masonry; to all appearance it formed an angle of some square building, the ruins of which are yet to be seen on the eastern side. The cement which connects the bricks is so hard that Ker Porter found it impossible to chip off the smallest piece; and for this reason none of the inscriptions can be copied, as they are always on the lower surface of the bricks. It is rent from the top nearly half-way to the bottom; and at its foot lie several unshapen masses of fine brickwork, still bearing traces of a violent fire, which has given them a vitrified appearance, whence it has been conjectured that the tower had been struck by lightning. Sir Robert Ker Porter says "that there are immense fragments of brickwork of no determinate figure tumbled together, and cemented into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the action of the fiercest heat." We are naturally led to connect these appearances with the tradition that the Tower of Babel was overthrown by fire from heaven. The appearance of the hill on the eastern side evidently shows that this enormous mass 66 MISS HAYES, THE IRISH VOCALIST.-An incident, somewhat romantic in its character, formed the first introduction of Catherine Hayes to the late Hon. and Right Rev. Edmund Knox. Near to the see-house, then situated in Henry-street, is the town mansion of the Earl of Limerick, in whose family an aged relative of Miss Hayes resided. The gardens attached to these houses stretch in parallel lines to the banks of the Shannon, and were remarkable for their picturesque beauty. A woodbine-covered arbour near the river's brink was a favourite resort of Catherine Hayes, then a young and delicate child-timid, gentle, and reserved, shrinking from the sportive companionship of her playmates; her chief apparent source of pleasure being to sit alone, half-hidden among the leaves, and warble Irish ballad after ballad, the airs and words of which she appeared to have caught up and retained with a species of intuitive facility. One evening, while thus delightfully occupied, herself forgetting," and never dreaming but that she was "by the world forgot," some pleasure parties on the river were attracted by the clear silvery tones of her voice, and the correct taste she even then displayed. Boat after boat silently dropped down the stream, pausing in the shadow of the trees, whence, as from the cage of a sing ing-bird, came the warblings that attracted them. Not a whisper announced to the unconscious child the audience she was delighting, till at the conclusion of the last air, "The Lass of Gowrie," the unseen vocalist finished the ballad, dwelling on the passage, "And now she's Lady Gowrie," with that prolonged and thrilling shake which owes nothing to all the after cultivation her voice received, and which, in years to come, was to cause the critical and fastidious pit occupants of the Grand Opera to "rise at her," and to forget, in the passionate fervour of their enthusiasm, the cold formalities of etiquette. Then from her unseen auditory arose a rapturous shout of applause, the first intimation the blushing and half-frightened vocalist received that her 'native wood-notes wild" had attracted a numerous and admiring audience. The Right Rev. Edmund Knox was one of those unseen listeners, and his correct taste and refined discrimination at once discerned the germ that talent the matured growth of which has so happily proved the soundness of his judgment. That evening the open-air practice terminated; and the timid girl, who knew not the glorious natural gift she possessed, found herself suddenly a musical wonder, and heard, with a kind of incredulous delight, confident anticipations of her future celebrity pronounced. She was immediately invited to the see-house, where the kindest encouragement overcame her timidity, and she soon became the "star" of a series of musical reunions, given chiefly for her instruction by her kind patron. of |