from an opening, or a series of openings, in the clouds, namely, that they are like spokes in a wheel, the hub or centre of which appears to be just there in the vapory masses, instead of being, as is really the case, nearly ninety-three millions of miles beyond. The beams of light that come through cracks or chinks in a wall do not converge in this way, but to the eye run parallel to one another. There is another fact: this fan-shaped display of converging rays is always immediately in front of the observer; that is, exactly between him and the sun, so that the central spoke or shaft in his front is always perpendicular. You cannot see this fan to the right or left of the sun, but only between you and it. Hence, as in the case of the rainbow, no two persons see exactly the same rays. The eye sees what it has the means of seeing, and its means of seeing are in proportion to the love and desire behind it. The eye is informed and sharpened by the thought. My boy sees ducks on the river where and when I cannot, because at certain seasons he thinks ducks and dreams ducks. One season my neighbor asked me if the bees had injured my grapes. I said, "No; the bees never injure my grapes." "They do mine," he replied; "they puncture the skin for the juice, and at times the clusters are covered with them." "No," I said, "it is not the bees that puncture the skin; it is the birds." "What birds? » "The orioles." "But I haven't seen any orioles," he rejoined. "We have," I continued, "because at this season we think orioles; we have learned by experience how destructive these birds are in the vineyard, and we are on the lookout for them; our eyes and ears are ready for them." If we think birds, we shall see birds wherever we go; if we think arrowheads, as Thoreau did, we shall pick up arrowheads in every field. Some people have an eye for four-leaved clovers; they see them as they walk hastily over the turf, for they already have them in their eyes. I once took a walk with the late Professor Eaton of Yale. He was just then specially interested in the mosses, and he found them, all kinds, everywhere. I can see him yet, every few minutes upon his knees, adjusting his eyeglasses before some rare specimen. The beauty he found in them, and pointed out to me, kindled my enthusiasm also. I once spent a summer day at the mountain home of a well-known literary woman and editor. She lamented the absence of birds about her house. I named a half-dozen or more I had heard or seen in her trees within an hour,-the indigo bird, the purple finch, the yellowbird, the veery thrush, the red-eyed vireo, the song sparrow, etc. "Do you mean to say you have seen or heard all these birds while sitting here on my porch?" she inquired. "I really have,” I said. "I do not see them or hear them," she replied, "and yet I want to very much." "No," said I; "you only want to want to see and hear them." You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush. I was sitting in front of a farmhouse one day, in company with the local Nimrod. In a maple tree in front of us I saw the great-crested flycatcher. I called the hunter's attention to it, and asked him if he had ever seen the bird before. No, he had not; it was a new bird to him. But he had probably seen it scores of times. seen it without regarding it. It was not the game he was in quest of, and his eye heeded it not. Human and artificial sounds and objects thrust themselves upon us; they are within our sphere, so to speak: but the life of nature we must meet half-way; it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must be initiated; it is an order the secrets of which are well guarded. Complete. From the Century Magazine, December, 1899. 777 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON (1821-1890) ICHARD FRANCIS BURTON, explorer and Orientalist, made him self a double reputation, first by his daring explorations of the remotest regions of Africa, Arabia, South America, and Iceland, and again by his books of travel and his celebrated translation of the "Arabian Nights." He wrote "some thirty volumes" of travels, into which as episodes he frequently interjects admirable essays on the life and habits of the peoples among whom he traveled. He was born, according to the weight of standard authority, in Hertfordshire, England, March 19th, 1821; though it is proper to mention that in "Cabinets of Irish Literature," in which extracts from his books appear, his birthplace is given as "Tuam, County Galway." After serving in the East Indian army, he began his career as an explorer in 1853, by making in disguise a pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca. In 1854, he made with Speke a celebrated exploration of East Africa. In his later travels he was accompanied by Lady Burton, a woman of remarkable intellect, who, after his death on October 20th, 1890, took the responsibility of burning his "Scented Garden," a manuscript collection of Arabic stories translated literally. She also edited his "Arabian Nights," with a view to make its circulation possible in countries where Oriental standards of literature and morals are not generally accepted. THE ROMANTIC LOVE AND ARAB POETRY HE author of certain "Lectures on Poetry, Addressed to Working Men," asserts that passion became love under the influence of Christianity, and that the idea of a virgin mother spread over the sex a sanctity unknown to the poetry or the philosophy of Greece and Rome. Passing over the objections of deified Eros and immortal Psyche and of the virgin mother,— symbol of moral purity,- being common to all old and material faiths, I believe that all the noble tribes of savages display the principle. Thus we might expect to find, wherever the fancy, the imagination, and the ideality are strong, some traces of a sentiment innate in the human organization. It exists, says Mr. Catlin, amongst the North American Indians, and even the Gallas and the Somal of Africa are not wholly destitute of it. But when the barbarian becomes a semibarbarian, as are the most polished Orientals, or as were the classical authors of Greece and Rome, then women fall from their proper place in society, become mere articles of luxury, and sink into the lowest moral condition. In the next state, "civilization," they rise again to be "highly accomplished," and not a little frivolous. Were it not evident that the spiritualizing of sexuality by imagination is universal amongst the highest orders of mankind, I should attribute the origin of love to the influence of the Arab's poetry and chivalry upon European ideas rather than to mediæval Christianity. In pastoral life tribes often meet for a time, live together whilst pasturage lasts, and then separate perhaps for a generation. Under such circumstances youths, who hold with the Italian that— "Perduto e tutto il tempo will lose heart to maidens, whom possibly, by the laws of the clan, they may not marry, and the light o' love will fly her home. The fugitives must brave every danger, for revenge, at all times the Bedouin's idol, now becomes the lodestar of his existence. But the Arab lover will dare all consequences. "Men have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for love," may be true in the West; it is false in the East. This is attested in every tale where love, and not ambition, is the groundwork of the narrative. And nothing can be more tender, more pathetic, than the use made of these separations and the long absences by the old Arab poets. Whoever peruses the "Suspended Poem" of Lebid will find thoughts at once so plaintive and so noble that even Doctor Carlyle's learned verse cannot wholly deface their charm. The author returns from afar. He looks upon the traces of hearth and home still furrowing the desert ground. In bitterness of spirit he checks himself from calling aloud upon his lovers and his friends. He melts at the remembrance of their departure, and long indulges in the absorbing theme. Then he strengthens himself by the thought of Nawara's inconstancy, how she left him and never thought of him again. He impatiently dwells upon the charms of the places which detain her, advocates flight from the changing lover and the false friend, and, in the exultation with which he feels his swift dromedary start under him upon her rapid course, he seems to find some consolation for woman's perfidy and forgetfulness. Yet he cannot abandon Nawara's name or memory. Again he dwells with yearning upon scenes of past felicity, and he boasts of his prowess,— a fresh reproach to her,—of his gentle birth and of his hospitality. He ends with an encomium upon his clan, to which he attributes, as a noble Arab should, all the virtues of man. This is Goldsmith's deserted village in El Hejaz. But the Arab, with equal simplicity and pathos, has a fire, a force of language, and a depth of feeling, which the Irishman, admirable as his verse is, could never rival. As the author of the Peninsular War well remarks, women in troublesome times, throwing off their accustomed feebleness and frivolity, become helpmates meet for man. The same is true of pastoral life. Here between the extremes of fierceness and sensibility, the weaker sex, remedying its great want, power, raises itself by courage, physical as well as moral. In the early days of El Islam, if history be credible, Arabia had a race of heroines. Within the last century, Ghaliyah, the wife of a Wahhabi chief, opposed Mohammed Ali himself in many a bloody field. A few years ago, when Ibn Asm, popularly called Ibn Rumi, chief of the Zubayd clan about Rabigh, was treacherously slain by the Turkish general, Kurdi Usman, his sister, a fair young girl, determined to revenge him. She fixed upon the "Arafat-day " of pilgrimage for the accomplishment of her designs, disguised herself in male attire, drew her handkerchief in the form of “lisam" over the lower part of her face, and with lighted match awaited her enemy. The Turk, however, was not present, and the girl was arrested, to win for herself a local reputation equal to the maid of Salamanca. Thus it is that the Arab has learned to swear that great oath "by the honor of my women." The Bedouins are not without a certain Platonic affection, which they call "Hawa (or Ishk) uzri, "-pardonable love. They draw the fine line between amant and amoreux: this is derided by the townspeople, little suspecting how much such a custom says in favor of the wild men. In the cities, however, it could not prevail. Arabs, like other Orientals, hold that in such mat |