THE NAMELESS DEAD

WHY do you wail, O Wind? why do you sigh, O Sea?

Is it remorse for the ships gone down, with this pitiless shore on the lee ?

Moan, moan, moan

In the desolate night and lone!
Ah, what is the tale

You would fain unveil

In your wild weird cries to me?

A gleam of white on the shore !-'tis not the white of foam,
Nor wandering sea-bird's glimmering wing, for at night no sea-birds

roam.

'Tis one of the drowned-drowned

Of the hapless homeward-bound.
Last night, in the dark,

There perish'd a bark

On the bar; and 'twas bound for home!

A woman's cold white corpse-a woman so young and fair! See, the cruel storm has entwin'd with weeds the wealth of her weltering hair;

And the little, the little hand

Lies listless and limp on the sand.
They had bound her fast

To the wreck of a mast;

But the wild waves would not spare!

Look, how they bound and leap-cast themselves far o'er the shore,

Striving to seize on their stranded prey, and carry it off once more !

Or is it remorse or dread,

Or a longing to bury its dead,

That makes the surge

On the ocean-verge

So incessantly howl and roar?

SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. F.S. VOL. XII.

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Where do they list for her step? where do they look for her face?

Where are they waiting to see her once more in the old familiar place? Dead, dead, dead!

In vain will their tears be shed;

For not one of them all,

Alas, will fall

On that bosom's marble grace!

Why do you sigh, O Sea? why do you wail, O Wind?

Why do you murmur, in mournful tone, like things with a human mind?

Let us bear her away to a grave in the churchyard's calm green breast,

Where the sound of the wind and waves in strife may never her peace molest.

Though we cannot carve her name,

She will slumber all the same;

And the wild-rose bloom

Shall cover her tomb,

And she shall have perfect rest!

TOM HOOD.

ARAB HOSPITALITY

To regard the Arab with wonder has long been the proper function of all European writers, and for some thousands of years yet the untamable rover of the desert will in all probability be an interminable source of astonishment. The interest, moreover, which we bestow upon him has little chance of ever being reciprocated. Our ways are to him objects of less curiosity than the doings of orangoutangs and chimpanzees are to ourselves; and all he requires of us is, to be let alone. He knows himself he is a wonderful being-as wonderful as the Great Pyramid, and a good deal older as a race. He despises your progress, your railways, your steamships, and your electric telegraphs. His tastes and his wants remain pretty nearly the same as they were in the days of Abraham; and his ways of satisfying them are pretty nearly the same also. His costume is still the same as it was three thousand years ago, and the very fashion of his wife's jewelry is unchanged also since the days of the patriarchs. Mahomet alone, with the edge of the sabre, has been able to make some impression on his granite nature; but even that was of a superficial character.

The French in Algeria have been trying their hands on the Arab, but not with much success. He still remains the same indigestible element to civilisation as when they went there. 'Put the tail of a greyhound into a straight tube for twenty years,' said an Arab chief to General Daumas, it will curl up again the moment you take it out.' It is the same with the Arab. No art, no form of education, will change him a whit. Take a Frenchman and an Arab,' said the same individual; cut them up into little bits, boil them in a caldron, and make broth of them; the broth of the Arab will no more mix with that of the Frenchman than oil and vinegar. will find the broth of Frenchman and Arab separate.'

You

However, since we have no new solvent to propose on this insoluble subject, let us descend from loose generalities, and consider a little the best feature of Arab life-its hospitality, taking as our guide in the main a late book of the same General Daumas, who has passed years in studying the habits of the tribes of the Sahara, and is an intimate friend of Abd-el-Kader himself. Hospitality has always been practised lavishly among the Semitic races, and with good reason, for without it almost all travel would have been impossible in the vast solitudes which they have ever loved to inhabit.

Abraham, when he sat in the tent-door in the heat of the day in the plains of Mamre, and lifted up his eyes and looked, and lo, three