Touch, touch me not, nor wake me,

Lest grosser thoughts o'ertake me;

From earth receding faintly with her dreary din and jars. What viewless arms caress me?

What whispered voices bless me,

With welcome dropping dew-like from the weird and wondrous stars?

Alas! dim, dim, and dimmer

Grows the preternatural glimmer

Of that trance the South Wind brought me on her subtle wings of balm,

For behold! its spirit flieth,

And its fairy murmur dieth,

And the silence closing round me is a dull and soulless calm! -Southern Literature.

2.

DEFINITIONS.-I. Crys'tal, clear; transparent. Sub'tle (sut'l), light; delicate. 3. Strănd, shore of the sea. 4. Bland, mild; gentle. 5. Un'der tune', faintlydefined melody. 6. Lăn'guor (lăn'gwer), listlessness; indolence. 7. Trans põrts', conveys from one place to another; removes. 8. Splen'dor, brightness; magnificence. 9. Mys'tic al, obscure; involving secret meaning. 10. Gird, encircle; surround. II. En thrall'ing, enslaving; holding in thrall. 12. Grōss'er, coarser. 13. Weird, unearthly. 14. Pre'ter nǎt'u ral, beyond what is natural. 15. Trance, ecstasy; half-conscious delight.

LESSON XLII.

A Beautiful Japanese Home.

Isabella Bird.

The best work of travels on this "magical country " is the production of an English lady, Miss ISABELLA BIRD. During the year 1878 she traveled twelve hundred miles in the interior of the country, mostly in regions where not a single European man or woman had ever been seen, and with no other attendant than a Japanese lad, named Ito, eighteen years of age. She was received everywhere with the utmost gentleness and kindness, not meeting with a single instance of incivility or extortion. The following selection is taken from her book, " Unbeaten Tracks in Japan."

1. I don't know what to write about my house. It is a Japanese idyl. There is nothing within or without that does not please the eye, and, after the din of villages, its silence, musical with the dash of waters and the twitter of birds, is truly refreshing. It is a simple but irregular twostoried pavilion, standing on a stone-faced terrace approached by a flight of stone-faced steps. The garden is very bright with peonies, irises, and azaleas now in blossom.

2. The mountain, with its lower part covered with red azaleas, rises just behind. A stream which tumbles down it supplies the house with water, both cold and pure; and another, after forming a miniature cascade, passes under the house and through a fish-pond with rocky islets into the river below. The gray village lies on the other side of the road, shut in with the rushing Daiya, and beyond it are high, broken hills, richly wooded, and slashed with ravines and waterfalls.

3. Kanaya's sister, Yuki, a very sweet, refined-looking woman, met me at the door and divested me of my boots.

The two verandas are highly polished, and so are the entrance and the stairs which lead to my room, and the mats are so fine and white that I almost fear to walk over them in my stockings. The polished stairs lead to a highly polished, broad veranda with a beautiful view, from which you enter one large room, which being too large, was at once made into two. Four highly polished steps lead from this into an exquisite room at the back, which Ito occupies, and another polished staircase into the bath-house and garden.

4. The whole front of my room is composed of sliding windows which slide back during the day. The ceiling is of light wood crossed by bars of dark wood, with supporting posts of dark, polished wood. The panels are of wrinkled sky-blue paper splashed with gold. At one end are two alcoves with floors of polished wood. In one hangs a wall picture, a painting of a blossoming branch of the cherry on white silk-a perfect piece of art, which in itself fills the room with freshness and beauty. The artist who painted it painted nothing but cherry blossoms.

5. On the shelf in the other alcove is a very valuable cabinet with sliding doors, on which peonies are painted on a gold ground. A single spray of azaleas in a pure white vase hanging on one of the polished posts, and a single iris on another, are the only decorations. The mats are very fine and white, but the only furniture is a folding screen with some suggestions of landscape in India ink.

6. I almost wish that the rooms were a little less exquisite, for I am in constant dread of spilling the ink, indenting the mats or tearing the paper windows. Downstairs there is a