numbers. When, on the borders of the cultivated low, continuous roar, like that of distant thunder; ! country, he makes his appearance in small troops then, as the wind sweeps them forward, the black or bands, people not only make themselves merry, battalions show their fronts in the sky, alighting in but likewise fat with him; they take him, strip off countless millions as they advance. The terror of his wings, fry him in oil, broil him on the gridiron, the population then makes itself evident: the when he tastes like a shrimp; or pound him with climb trees, and boot and shout, to scare a way the meal, and make cakes - not very savory, perhaps heedless and invincible intruders; they kindle enor- of his bones. In what way St. John ate him, is mous fires on the mountain-tops, which diffose their not stated, but it was probably after being grilled, smoke in dark volumes; ther cut broad treaca when, with the sweet wild-honey of Palestine, he across the plains, and flood them with water, — al| constituted no bad food. Commentators and po- in vain: the locusts by their multitudes extinguish lemical writers have been desirous of altering the the fires ; fill up tbe trenches with their bodies, ani text, where it is said that the Baptist lived for a march over them; climb up the trees after the while on locusts and wild-honey, though why he natives, wbom the speedily bring to the ground. should not have caten what is still eaten every day pour into the towns and villages, invade the bousa all along the confines of Syria, throughout Barbary, through doors and windows, crawl into the beds, in all parts of the Arabian peninsula, and in our cover the walls like tapestry, eating everything they colony at the Cape of Good Hope, it seems difficult can find, tumbling into the sugar-basins, plunging to understand.

into the milk jugs and tca-cups, making free with The Hottentots used formerly to look out for the the skirts of the gentlemen's coats, filling tber appearance of the locust-clouds as for a period of pockets, creeping up their sleeves, and down their jubilee. Up to that time, they were usually meagre, necks, covering the skirts of the ladies dresses i weak, and drooning in spirits; but when their side and out, spreading themselves over cradles, ap! winged manna from the desert had descended what is worse, gnawing the flesh from tbe cbeeks among their habitations during a few weeks, they sleeping infants. Such are some of the blessings of became fat, strong, sleek, and frisky, so that they the Holy Land ! hardly looked like the same individuals. In the One fact connected with the invasion of the 15Hindu-Chinese countries, where nature is bountiful custs might almost suffice to reconcile the Motor to profusion in almost every variety of human food, medan to the pig. The sumana and the samarme the natives nevertheless evince a strong preference follow the invaders and feed upon them yaracion for the locust family, since they fry crickets and ly; but what is the devastation committed by the grasshoppers in oil, and esteem them a great dainty. little bills compared with the wholesale slangbia The Arabs of the desert, who exhibit the same perpetrated by a vast drove of hogs! Fill Me penchant, are not a little nettled if you turn up potamia, the Decapolis, and the skirts of the deser. your nose at their breakfast, and inquire whether a with pigs, and the Turks and Druses might theactlocust be not as good as an ovster, a crab, a lobster, forward sleep in peace, for not only would Maste or, if the traveller be a Frenchman, as a snail or a Hog devour the invaders when ther had reached frog. We have an old proverb which says: * It years of discretion, but he would plough down deze never rains but it pours." This is exactly the case into the earth in search of their delicate eons, with the locusts. If they presented themselves by thus frustrate the hopes of the ladies of the fro hundreds of thousands, or even by millions, people ily. As it is, they multiply and devastate = might contrive to deal with them by frving, grilling, they please, for the few pigs kept by the Christes pounding, and baking by railfuls in ovens; but of Svria and Palestine are no match at al for the usually, when ther visit any region, it is in swarms | winged army. Nor, in fact, would anything bea and clouds which darken the whole atmosphere for match for so devouring a host, if once sufiered miles; and when they reach a green place, they acquire its natural dimensions, — for arithme descend upon it with a noise like that of a high breaks down in the attempt to ascertain the sun wind, or the beating of innumerable drums in the of its rank and file, which sometimes cover distance. They conduct themselves, however, not earth to a depth of four feet; and when cara like a disorderly rabble, but like a well-ordered forwards by hurricanes, and drowned in the sea. army, with a Genghis, a Timur, or a Napoleon at cumber the shore for leagues with a black TORTY its bead, marching forward in squadrons and ing mass, sometimes a whole fathom in denth. She columns, without turning to the right hand or to the infects the air far and wide, and produces pet left, facing everything, overcoming everything, lence. gawing everything to pieces with their saw-like A traveller of the last century, who witnessed teeth. They eat up everything green, — the grass ravages of locusts in Spain, concluded that the from the meadows, the leaves and bark from the must be indigenous to the country, because it is trees, the blossoms and fruit from gardens, the neared to him to be an utter impossibility that thatch from houses. Volner, in imitation of the shonld traverse the Mediterranean with their su: Hebrew prophet. observes that the plains before wings. Another reason which he discovered i n them look like a verdant carpet ; but when they lieving them to be a distinct species was the eth *** had passed over it, eating, burning, and poisoning of their wings, –a delicate and brilliant mint 3 everything with their saliva, it exhibited the appear accordingly reasoned and physiologized il try the ance of a volcanic region covered with lava, seoriæ, himself in possession of a new sustein, het hy and ashes. Syria and the rountries north of Mount ized the home of the Spanish insect in Katmando Atlas are often desolated by the locnst. Sometimes He was umquestionably mistaken. In Itar els se a few light skirmishete preceding the main host, hind Mogadore, on the opposite noast at this cause the hearts of the inhabitants to thrill with er travellers appear to intit tnt mutur ses 2 terror, for they know what they have to expect. stationed one of the cradles of the wird They arrive, drifting with the wind from the south who convert themselves into the minsten * Ver or the southeast. At first, a gentle murmur is gis, when any devoted land in the vients Asam heard high in the air; tben a loud buzzing; then a to become a prer to famine and S ants : have there seen them,” he says, — “millions of small of the vermin, he becomes almost unmanageable; green things were just starting into being." But now bearing his long snake-like neck as high as he you must search much further if you would learn is able into the air, then ducking his head, and whence they come, and where lies their genial bed thrusting his nose into the sand, as if wishful in some and procreant cradle, - beyond the mighty chain way to escape from the consciousness of the approach of Atlas, — beyond the Niger,beyond the Red of the pest. If you give him the bridle, he instantSea, and the sands of Mohammed's native country, lý turns his back upon the enemy, and scours away and the vast levels of the Sahara, extending with in the opposite direction as swiftly as a moderate little interruption from the banks of the Nile to the railway train, that is, at the rate of about eighteen Atlantic Ocean. There, if you are curious in the miles an hour. genesis of insects, you may, on a fine morning in Towards the beginning of the present century, a spring, just as the dewy, pearly, poetical light of prodigious body of lucusts was precipitated across dawn is diffusing its mystery over the earth, behold the Black Sea upon the steppe lying east of Odessa, the sandly waste heaving with life, and from millions where it committed the most indescribable devastaof matrices, (liscern multitudes, not of green, but of tion. To destroy the invaders, columns of serfs tiny black things, emerging into light.

were marched down from the interior; but on With a rapidity which almost belongs to miracle, arriving at the scene of action, were almost parathey augment in size, and direct their march to lyzed by the phenomenon they witnessed. For wards the north, attracted thitherwards, we may miles, the whole surface of the plain, converted almost be sure, by the scent of vegetation, which into a black color, seemed to be alive and in mobrings to their diminutive and infinitely fine or- tion, for the scaly bodies of the locusts, closely gans the intimation that endless pastures are at pressed and locked together, presented the aphand. Then, if they belong to the Asiatic brood, pearance of a huge dusky cuirass reflecting with a they direct their footsteps towards Tadmor in the strange glitter the rays of the sun. The mass being wilderness; and after devastating the palm-groves in motion, advanced inland, slowly but steadily, and desecrating the marble colonnades of Zenobia, murmuring like the surges of the ocean, putting the where Longinus meditated on the Sublime, reach the sheep, the cattle, the horses, and the inhabitants on verdant plains of Damascus, which they strip, and all sides to flight. “A stench not to be expressed by sear, and wither up, as if millions of burning rollers words was emitted from the bost as it crawled forhad been driven over the soil. From this point, ward, the living devouring the dead, for lack of other they diverge east and west from the vicinity of the provender. 'Putting their mattocks, spades, pickEuphrates and the spurs of Taurus to the borders axes, and other implements into immediate requisiof the Serbonian bog, " where armies whole have tion, the serfs speedily excavated a trench several sunk,” maddening the lazy inhabitants of Syria, who, miles in length across the track of the locusts; but instead of displaying their energy in extirpating ere they had finished, the enemy was upon them, the seeds of what they are plagued with, wait in and soon demonstrated the futility of their device. stupid apathy till it comes upon them with resistless In the course of a few minutes from their reaching force.

the brink of the excavation, the foremost ranks had It is usual to remark that nothing turns the lotust been pushed into it by those that followed, and aside from the track he has selected ; but this must filled it up from edge to edge, so that the multitude be understood of ordinary obstacles existing in a continued its march apparently without interruptolerably level country. He never attempts to scale tion; then everything combustible was collected, Lebanon or Anti-Lebanon, from which he is scared and set on fire in front of the column, with the away by the snows, the forests, and the moisture same result. The whole Black Sea seemed to be they hold in their embrace. He is a dry animal, and transformed into locusts, which, from its low shores, accords his horrid preference to hot and arid regions. came up in countless myriads, setting at defiance It is only when be ceases to be a free agent that he all the arts and industry of man. Several columns traverses great rivers and seas, when he has been of the invaders filed off towards the east, and caught up in the gripe of the whirlwind, and dashed alighted amid the vineyards of the Crimea, which forward involuntarily into places which he knows they soon changed into a waste of apparently dry not, and if any choice were left him, would shrink and sapless twigs. Russia appeared to be on the from with abhorrence. If, in June or July, you hap- eve of a calamity like that which fell upon it about pen to be traversing the burning belt of the Teha- the middle of the seventeenth century, when the ma, extending from Akaba's Gulf to Bab-el-mandeb, destruction of the harvests occasioned a famine, you may often behold from your dromedary black which was followed by a plague, so that the populaclouds in the form of columns or shattered and tion of whole provinces was thinned almost to exbroken awnings, extending raggedly over the sky termination. In the present instance, the elements for miles, swarms of locusts hurrying before the west came to the deliverance of man. Before a strong wind from the Sahara across the Red Sea. Some- west wind, masses of black clouds came pouring up times the gust suddenly changing, submerges them from the Bosphorus, which covered the atmosphere, in the waves; sometimes they are wrecked, and piled and ultimately descended in floods of rain. At the up in pestilential drifts from Jiddah to Mokha ; touch of descending Jove, the locusts were parasometimes, by the strength of the hurricane, they lyzed, and as the celestial moisture continued to are wafted far into the Hedjaz, and pollute the sa-drench them in pitiless fashion, they gave up the cred precincts of Medina and Mecca. There is ghost, and bequeathed their filthy corpses to the however, we believe, no instance on record of their husbandman for manure; not, however, without invading the district of Tayf, where exquisite gar- sundry fevers and dysenteries. dens lavish on the thirsty Arab a profusion of grapes, It is a potable fact that Egypt, though it lies in pomegranates, dates white and golden, bananas, the very beart of locust-breeding countries, is selquinces, apricots, peaches, and the sweetest straw- dom visited by the pest, the reason probably being, berries in Asia. As soon as your dromedary sniffs, the extreme moisture of the air, saturated incessantas he does from a great distance, the nauseous odor ly by exhalations from the Nile. People talk at en ** ** LUM 4 tur ******** in :1

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and mitigate the terrors which the advent of the lo- no reason to doubt - sent to Leipsic in due course. cust inspires. Its winged enemy, the samarmar is But unforeseen events induced the composer to alnot, as they affirm, a native bird, but a stranger ter his plans. The proposed rejoicings greatly irrifrom Khorasan, which is allured westward by a very tated the Catholic section of the population, and to rare device. The pasha of the province sends such a height did party spirit rise, that disturbances forth, orce in a certain number of years, an envoy took place in several of the principal cities. These with a large suite to Meshed, on the eastern confines events led to a general foreboding that the fête would of Persia, near which, in a plain between four not be allowed to take place quietly, and theremountains, is a mysterious fountain. There, with fore, in the exercise of what must have been a wise much ceremony and devotion, they fill a chest with discretion, Mendelssohn withdrew his symphony till water, cover it closely, place it on the back of a it could be heard under more auspicious circumstancamel, and immediately retrace their footsteps to-ces. Nearly two years and a half passed by, howwards the banks of the Euphrates. All possible ever, before a favorable opportunity presented itcare is taken to prevent the evaporation of the water self. In the mean time the work had been rehearsed in the chest, which, operating like a talisman, draws at the Paris Conservatoire, and for two months the after it the samarmar in troops. So long as one composer was in expectation of its immediate per: drop of liquid remains, the devourer of locusts will formance. To this suspense the advent of the cholremain also; but the moment the chest becomes dry, era put an effectual, if untoward ending, and the the devourers of the locust turn their bills east- honor of first playing the “ Reformation” sympboward, and fly to the mystic spring in the plain be- ny eventually fell to the lot of Berlin, where it was tween the four mountains. Such being the state of given in November, 1832, at a concert for the Orpublic opinion in Irak and Diarbekir, the pasha is chestral Widows' Fund. Immediately after being compelled to accommodate his policy. to it, and, at produced with so much difficulty, it was withdrawn whatever expense, to replenish the chest as often as for reasons the exact nature of which can only be public rumor reports it to be dry. It often is en- guessed. The balance of probability is clearly in tirely exhausted for years, but if the multitude and favor of Mendelssohn's dissatisfaction with his work, the samarmar remain ignorant of the fact, the for- and his consequent intention to make improvements mer will rest contented, and the latter will eat lo- he never found time even to commence. But difficusts as usual. What purposes such insects as the cult as it is to tell why the composer refused to publocust answer in the creation, it is impossible for us lish the sympbony, the conduct of his executors in to say; they may be intended as a spur to the in- keeping it back for twenty years is far more inexdustry and inventive powers of man, and be de- plicable. In the one case there is a choice of reasigned to convince him that, if he will not work, sons; in the other, so far as the public can see, neither shall he eat. They have, no doubt, been there are no reasons at all. very long in producing this conviction, but the pe- Seldom has a symphony been sketched under riods of nature are not measured by man's wants more favorable conditions than those Mendelssohn and conveniences. In many parts of the East, enjoyed in the present instance. Designing to comeverything seems to imply the near approach of po- memorate a leading event in a great religious revolitical revolutions, which will give the land new | lution, the scope and plan of the work was too masters, and at the same time introduce improved obvious to be mistaken. There could be no other systems of agriculture, and more rational forins of way of adequately fulfilling its intention than by belief.

illustrating the downfall of the old and the rise of the new faith. But this was not all. Each faith

had its representative music, which supplied the MENDELSSOHN'S « REFORMATION”

composer with a facile means of expression. On SYMPHONY.

the one hand were the ancient and impressive meloThis work — the last and greatest of the compos- dies of the Catholic Church, on the other the vigorer's musical remains as yet given to the world — has ous and stirring volkslieder which the tact of Luther now been twice performed, and twice received with so skilfully turned to account. Here were materials enthusiasm. At the Crystal Palace, where, on the ready for use not likely to be overlooked by any 30th of November, it was heard for the second time writer of a “ Reformation” symphony, much less in its history, and at the concert of Mr. Barnby's by Mendelssohn, whose discrimination was on an choir in St. James's Hall, on December the 11th, equality with his musical genius. The work, it need audiences of varied culture and taste were unani- hardly be said, is precisely what these considerations mous in its praise. Thus cordially accepted, the would suggest. It depicts the rise, progress, and production of the symphony becomes a musical final success of rebellion against the ancient faith, event of first magnitude, and its history and char-personifying both the old and new order of things acter are made matters of general interest. The by help of distinctive melodies closely connected story connected with it can be briefly told.

| with each. Hence it follows that the meaning of In 1830 Protestant Gerinany was preparing to the symphony is far more clear than is usual in celebrate the tercentenary of the “ Confession of cases where it has been left unexpressed in words. Faith," presented by Luther and Melancthon to the Only one movement, as will presently be seen, is at Emperor Charles V. at Augsburg. It was almost all ambiguous, and even that is susceptible of an inevitable that Mendelssohn, then but twenty-one interpretation, having probability obviously on its years of age, should take advantage of such an op- side. How far this intelligibleness increases the portunity for conspicuously employing his talents interest with which the work is beard we need not and extending his fame. At all events he set about stop to show. writing a symphony, avowedly intending it for per- The symphony is divided into three parts, and formance at Leipsic on the occasion of the festival. subdivided into seven movements, of which two beThe work was done in good time, copied at Weimar long to the first part, one to the second, and four to (where Mendelssohn was staying on a visit to Goe- the last. It opens with a short Andante (in D the, just before starting for Italy) and — there is major) written so as to resemble a diapason piece