family, they had to receive his religion as well as his person. Through him his wife became a Christian ; his father-in law's became a patron of his son-in-law's faith; his children were, brought up 'in the fear of the Lord ;' his son had became a sheik of the tribe—the father-in-law having died. All the surrounding tribes have become favorable to the new religion, and have pledged their swords in its defence.

But a dervish, a zealot of the Moham medan faith, had for a long time been en deavoring to stir up opposition and perse cution. He strove to have Eandall's sons thrown out of employ of the Turkish Government, and failing in this, he turned his assault upon a daughter of tho foreigner, and charged her with witch craft and apostacy from the true faith. She was brought before the meghs, com posedof 114 venerable sheiks and offendis to answer charges which involve her life- She, although but fourteen years of age, and dressed in the neatest manner, with a placid face, and a calm, hoartj^, and unfaltering trust, responded, ' Most venerable fathers, I will reply in person ;' and then with fervor, and faith, and power, holding her Bible in her hand, and frequently reading passages from it, she made a defence worthy of an apostle, and when she was finished, the unanimous verdict was in her favor, and the chiefs of the tribes pledged each other their swords anew to defend all christains who thought and felt as Eosa did. But the old dervish breathed revenge, and determindd to take that young life. The trial was in Oct. 1872. In. Jnne, 1873, while Eosa was teaching a class of forty-two little girls in a grove, the dervish stealthily approached, and before anyone was aware he had murdered the maiden and fled. In the last letter from Lady Arzalia Le Avish Eandall, giving all the particulars of her child's trial and tragic death, occurs this beautiful sentence and earnest request: —' Pray for me. that my piety may be as humble as the violet, as enduring as the olive, and as fragrant as the Orient.-[New York Sunday Mercury.

A Gambler's Victim.

The distinguishing characteristics of the San Francisco gambler of to-day are ob trusiveness in the sunlight, where his faultless make-up excites the envy of the brainless fops, who, imitating his style of dress, sigh with envy that the insouciance of their ideal is beyond their grasp ; and invisibility by night, so perfect that not the keenest of our Argus-eyed policemen can ever discover him. The ' John Oak hurst' type of Bret Harte's creation finds no counterparts here. The gambler whose pledge can be relied upon ; whose sense of honor is, outside of his business, as keen as that of the most upright; whose word is as good as his bond, lives only in novels. So at least, one 'young man about town,' whose residence is on Geany-streut. avers. A few months ago he was prevailed upon by some who were older in folly than himself to accompany them to the green table, and defy the tiger in his lair. He went, and soon became a regular habitue. Two weeks ago he found himself stripped of all he possessed by the insatible beast, and unable to meet a tithe of the debts of honor he had contracted. He had become intimate with the professional gentlemen who owned the gilded cage of man-eater, and to him he then unbosomed himself. The gambler condoled with his young friend, learned the particulars_ of his financial condition, and gave him some advice. The victim was a stock-broker's clerk. The tempter explained to him how he could 'borrow' a larg3 some of money from his employer, and in a single night at the gaming table win back all that he had lost, and more, when he could return the embezzled funds and no one woulcl be the Miser. The unfortunate youth did as his mentor suggested. He lost all the money he had taken, and then, when frenzied by hislossesho broke out in curses against him who had lured him to ruin, he was forcibly ejected from the den. The next day his defalcation was discovered. His employer of course discharged and meditated prosecuting him, but upon the penitent fully unbosoming himself he consented, on account of his youth aud the disgrace to his family, to leave the punishment of his crimes to his conscience. And this is the story of but one man.

Roses.

A moderate liking for roses as good things in their places has been justly considered one of the results of home education which are least open to objection. It is however, by no means general among persons who have taken so promient a part in public life as to have attracted the attention of his tory; and who share with the black-beetle a positive distaste for the rose. The famous Chevalier de Guise could not smell a rose without feeling uncomfortable; and Venieri, one of the Doges of Venice, suffered under the same disqualification for the pursuits of gardening. Anno, of Austria, wife of Louis XIIL, could not even look at a rose in a painting without being seized with tantrums. Nevertheless many people who are willing as a rule to take examples from the great have persisted in entertaining friendly senti ments towards this flower, and every time that the spring and early summer bring back the pretty vegetable they fall to telling one another all they know about it. In the East there is still a belief that the first rose was formed by a tear of the

prophet Mahomet, but nations of more cool and disciplined imagination have sometimes admitted that its origin is most in obscurity. Eoses were used very early iv history among the most potent ingredients of love philters. They seem to have been imported by the Eomans for Egypt until the reign of Domitian. Antiochus slept upon a bed of rose-leaves. Mark Antony begged that Cleopatra would cover his tomb with these flowers, and ' raea rosa was a favourite term of endearment among Eoman lovers, as who should say ' mon chou' (my cabbage) now-a-days in France. Homer has adorned the shield of Achilles and the hel met of Hector with roses. Among the Greeks it was a custom to leave bequests for the maintainance of sepulchral rose gardens over the grave of the testator ; and at Torcallo, near Venice, an inscrip tion may still be seen which shows that this fashion was adopted in Italj. In Stock's collection of engravings on stone there is a beautieful design cut in garnet. It represents ajbutterfly settling on a rose, and it is supposed to commemorate tho death of ayoung girl- In Turkey, a stone rose is often sculptured above the graves of unmarried women. A charming bas relief on the tomb of Mdme. de la Live, who died at the age of twenty-one, represents Time mowing his rose with a scythe. According to Indian mythology Pagodasiri, one of the wires -of Vishnu, was found in a rose. Zoroaster is said to have made- a rose tree spring out of the earth and bud and blossom in the presence of Darius, who had called upon him to perform a miracle. In Babylon a preparation of shoe-leather was much esteemed when it had been impregnated with the scent nf roses ; and Abdulkari, an eminent Turk, who wanted to live there, being made aware of this fact, discovered an ingenious way to profit by it. In reply to a demand which he had made for the freedom of the city the Babylonians sent him a bowl brimful of water, to signify that there was no room among them for an intruder. Abdulkari placed a rose-leaf on the surface -of the water without spilling a drop of it, and, having thus indicated that he might be received without making a mess, he obtained the object of his desire. Charlemagne recommended the cultivation of the rose in his ' Capitulation.' The Persians of Shiraz stop their wine-bottles with roses, which give the wine a pleasing smell; and during the festival of Abrizan, which takes place during the equinox, Per sian ladies throw roses at each other when they pay visits. At Eome it was the prac tice of the Church to bless the rose on a special day set apart, which was called Eose Sunday, The custom of blessing the golden rose seems to have begun in the eleventh or twelfth century. The benedic tion was pronounced with particular solemnity on the fourth Sunday in Lent, and the golden rose thus consecrated was given as a mark of the Soverign Pontiff's favour to some prince or princess. Alexander 111, who had been received with great honour during a journey which he made in France, sent the golden rose to Louis the Young as a sort of graceful compliment. Subsequently the giving of the golden rose became an authoritative act, by which the Pope officially recognised the rights of Christian Sovereigns. Thus Urban V, gave the golden rose to Joan, Queen of Sicily, in 1368, thereby preferr ing her over the King of Cyprus. Henry VIII. of England received a golden rose both from Julius 11. and from Leo X. Towards the close of the last century the golden rose appears to have been given almost indiscriminately to any travelling prince who would pay a sum equivalent to about £400 in fees for it.

In one of the books attributed to Solo mon eternal wisdom is compared to the plantations of rose-trees at Jericho. Prin cess Nourmabal, the most lovely lady in the harem of Great Mogul, had a canal filled with rose-water, and rowed about on it^with her august consort. The heat of the sun disengaged the essential oil trom the water, and their Majesties having observed the fact, invented otto of roses. The Emperor Heliogabalus filled a fish pond with rose-water; it is nowhere said whether the fishes approved of this proceeding. When the Soldan Saladin, who had so much trouble with hard-fisted English King Eichard and his turbulent Christain friends, took Jurusalem in 1188 he would not enter the Temple, which he profanely called a mosque, till he had had its walls washed with rose-water; and Sanut assures us that five hundred camels were no more than sufficient to carry the puryfying liquid. Also, after the taking of Constantinople by Mahoment 11. in ' 1455, the church of St. Sophia was solemnly purified with rose-water before it was converted into a mosque. The high priest of the Hebrews wore a crown of roses when he offered up certain sacrifices under the Mosaic dispensation ; and it was, perhaps in remembrance of this fact that the Synod of JMismes, which was held in the third century,enjoined every Jew to wear a rose on his breast as a distinguishing mark "of inferiority. In many countries the Jews still celebrated the festival of Easter Flowers, during which they ornament their lamps, chande liers, and beds with roses. Thus it hap pened that these fiowers were hateful to the early Christians, and are often con demmed in the writings of the Farthers who professed that they could not under stand that pious people could think with equauimity ofroses when they remembered the crown of thorns ; afterwards this hostile feeling S9ems to have died out.

When Mario Antoinette passed through Nancy on her it?>\y to be married with Louis XVI, the ladies of Lorraigne pre pared her a bed strewed with roses. In the Middle Ages roses were hold so precious in France that a Royal license was necesary to grow them.—[Pall Wall Gazette.

Madame do Maintenon's Influ ence with Louis XIV.

The amount of influence exercised by Madame de Maintenon after her mar riage with the King has been a subject of much dispute from her own day to ours. Those who had forfeited or failed to win her favor, and indemnified their overt adulteration by secret eal umnjr, ascribed every failure in war or policy to her sinister action. To St. Simon or La Princesse Palatine she is the evil principle of French polities, a mysterious shade gliding about the dark recesses of the Court, touching and perverting everything, put appear ing frankly nowhere Her admirers declared, and still declare, that her in fluence was powerless except for good. It is not very difficult to understand how these opposite impressions were produced. Madame de Maintenon's influence might easily be at once both very great and very limited; great in the dispensation of favors and pro motions—a matter of supreme interest to the courtier world—and limited as to the great lines of policy pursued. The King's habit of working with his Ministers in her cabinet, his occasiona references to her, with tho complimenl tary query, ' What thinks your soli dity on this point ?' filled the trqup o place hunters with the alarmed convicf tion that her authority was paramount and that one had to please her or die, When again, we find her relating, with her usual proud humility, that her apartment was so full that it was like a crowded church ; that Generals, Min isters —nay, the King's sons—waited in her anteroom till she could receive them ; and that the circle of ladies around her was so close that she could hardly breathe, we may take it for granted that all this conrfc was not paid for nothing, and that that astute world knew well what it was about when it took so much trouble. On the other hand, she seems not to have been so much incapable of as pro foundly indifferent to politics, which went nearer to boring her stocial patience than perhaps anything else. She lacked entirely the intellectual audacity and ambition, the fervor and freedom of spirit, which yield to bold political initiative and courageous play for a great stake in that high game. And if she had had such qualities, we may be quite sure she would not have been long a favorite of Louis XIV A less keen eye than hers would have measured the robust stubbornness of the man, his mortal dread of being ruled, and vanity so sensitive that no services, however long or valuable, failed to wound it. She knew the fate of Colbert, of Louvois, and finally of Montespan ; and to leave no doubt on the matter, she did make some timid attempts in the way of direct influence, without success. ' I did not please in a conversation on the works now going on, and my regret is to have given offence without profit. Another building here will cost a hundred thousand francs. Marly will soon be second Versailles. There is no help for it but prayer and patience.' ' The King will' allow only his ministers to talk to him about business. He took it ill that the Nuncio addressed him self to me. I should be well content with the life of slavery I lead if I could do some good. I can only groan over the turn things! have taken.' These avowals are made to an intimate friend, Cardinal Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, and cannot have been sooth ing to self-esteem. Then contrast them with this report of an eye-witness : ' I have seen her sometimes when tired, vexed, disquieted, and ill, assume the most smiling air and cheerful tone, amuse the King by a thousand inven tions, entertain him alone for hours at a stretch, without repetition, weariness or scandal. When he left; her room at ten at night, and her bed curtains were being drawn, she would say to me with a sigh, ' I can only tell you that I am worn out.'' And yet it is certain that she had influence of no common kind. It is in no. wise surprising. The King's partiality for her was such that he could not pass a quarter of an hour in a crowded court saying a word in her ear—their unbroken inti macy and contact for thirty years, must have given opportunities enough, by the right word inserted in the right place, by the well-chosen epithet at tached to a name for honor or disgrace, i even by eloquent silence, to turn the

scale and make or . : the fortuues o* soldier or civilian, a^ the case might be. Thus her reputation is not much served by the distinction just made. After all, the selection of the personnel of a Government is a highly important point, and it would seem that her action in this regard was, on the whole, injurious. Her partiality for Villeroi, Chamillart, and Voisin cost France dear, if she had as much to do with their promotion as is alleged.—Fort nightly Review.

Beauty.

Tiieub is something in beauty, whether it dwells in the human face, in the pencilled leaves of flowers, the spark ling surface of a fountain, or that aspect which genius breathes over its statue, that makes ua mourn its ruin. I should not envy that man his feel ings who could see a leaf wither or a flower fall without some sentiment of regret. This tender interest in the beauty and frailty of things around us, is only a slight tribute of becoming grief and affection ; for nature in our adversities never deserts us. She even comes more, nearly to us in our sor rows, and, lending lis away from the paths of disappointment and pain into her soothing recesses, allays the an guish of our bleeding hearts, binds up the wounds that have been inflicted, whispers the meek pledges of a better hope, and, in liarmoy with a spirit of still holier birth, points to that home where decay and death can never come. — Constantinople.

Mr. Green, Author.

At a recent lecture, de-ivered at the Wellesley-street Christian Association, Mr Worthington spoke highly of a little work of special literary interest, by Mr Green, but few then knew any thing about cither the auther, or his work. We therefore give the follow ing brief sketch :

John Eichard Green is chiefly known to American readers through his work, A Short History of the English People. A wider, and, we think, more agreeable acquaintance with him will be formed in the volume of papers re published from Macmillan's and The Saturday Review, entitled Stray Studies from England and Italy. The 'studies' are twenty-five in number and embrace a very large and diverse range of"topics. He discourses of the London poor and of iEueas ;,of Lambeth and its Arch bishops ; of Venice and Tintoretto ; of the 'Farly History of Oxford;' of ' Hotels in the clouds ;' of 'The Poetry of wealth,' and of 'Buttercups.' By the latter he symbolises tho English girl of fifteen of whom he gives us this lively picture :

Her whole charm lies in her freedom from solf-eonseiousnesi ; she has a re served force of shyness behiud all her familiarity, and of a very defiant sort of shyness. Her character, in fact is one of which it is easier to feel the beauty than to analyze or describe it. Like all transitional pha?es, girlhood is full of picturesque inequalities, strange slumbers of one faculty and stranger developments of an -ther ; full of startling effects, of contracts and surprises, of light and shade, that no other phase of life affords. Uncon sciously, month after month, drifts the buttercup on to womanhood; uncon sciously she lives in the past of the child. She comes to us trailing clouds of glory, as Wadsworth sings, from her earlier existence, from her home, her school-room, her catechism. The girl of twenty summers,'whose faith has boon wrecked by clerical croquet, looks with amazement on tho implicit faith which the buttercup retains in the clergy. Even on the curate, shy and awkward as he is, she looks as on a being sacred and ineffable. Perhaps his very shyness and awkwardness create a sympathy between the two, and rouses a keener remorse for her yawns under bis sermons, and a keener j gratitude for the heavenly generosity with which he bestowed on her the confirmation ticket. Free as she is from fancies, her conception of the daily life of her cleryman shows amus ingly enough that she can attain a very fair pitch of idealism. We remember the story of a certain person of our acquaintance <vhe owned to a meek lit tle buttercup his habit of carving a book in his pocket for reading in leisure hours. 'Ah, yes,' replied the eager little auditor, with a hush of real awe in her voice—'the Bible, of course !' Unluckily it was the Physiolocjie die Gout.

Mr. Green is a mostagreeable writer, a man of large and active sympathies?, a lover of his fellows; a hater of all shams and hollow pretences, a close

observer of men and things, and we commend his book as a considerable contribution to current literature.

Curiosities at Pyramid Lake.

Habvet Tompkins has just returned I from Pyramid Lake and the new mining district. He don't think much of the mines, but says that as a natural curiosity the country cannot be beaten. He and six others went across to the island, a distance of six miles, and amused themselves in kill ing goats and rattlesnakes, and viewing the odd scenery about the lake. Upon the island an area of four acres was found literally covered with bird's iippK". and these were arranged with wouucrful regularity, the plat resem bling a checker board. Ihe nests are not kept in very good order, and eggs are strewn over the ground in all directions. The nests are made of pebbles generally, and sometimes the eggs are deposited on the bare rocks. Young pelicans and gulls by thousands line the shore, and other thousands cover the ground, so that care is neces sary to prevent stepping upon them. The island would be a good place to study incubation, as the ovum is there found in every state of development. The rocks upon the island are uni formly of a honey-combed structure, and specimens of petrifaction are numerous, Mr. Tompkins brought in a petrified pelican nest, which con tained two eggs. These are covered by a white porous deposit, which gives the specimen a fine appearance. One of the eggs is broken, and the inner coating is as smooth and regular as when first laid. The party brought in other varieties in the form of horns, rattles, pelican bones,feathers, etc.; and from their researches we argue that this island would be a. very interesting study to the naturalist.— Reno Gazette, June 17 th. ,

How Adelina Patti Dresses.

Patti has lost nane of her great popu larity and sings as beautifully as ever, says a London correspondent. I was at Covent Garden the other night, and saw her looking unutterably pretty. Anything more artistic and graceful than the picture she made that night 1 have rarely seen. Her box was on the ground tier, and I was close to her, and could feast my eyes at leisure. She was dressed, as she very often is, entirely in white, without a thread of color upon her. Her dress was of white silk—not glossy silk, but of a dull ribbed texture, ft was simply made, the front of the skirt being perfectly plain, with tunic or apron, and the back part or train berng divided from the front by a pleating of silk and tulle. The bodice was slightly open in front, with a thick quilling of tulle around the iieclc, and the sleeves were tight to the elbow and then broken into a voluminous frill. Her long, white gloves, of course, reached up to the sleeve, and she did not commit the incongruity of putting bracelets over her gloves, she wore, in fact, no jewelry round her neck or in her ear.s, but the lilac in her hair was fastened by some magnificent diamond sprays. 1 La divina Adelina' looked excessively wel in this costume—for it was simple, and, with the exception of the diamond clasps in her hair, was not beyond the I reach of the most mederate income. If, is true that on many persons such a dress would have made no effect, and that Mmc Patti's graceful, pretty head and figure would give eliect to any material made in any manner. It was amusing to me to watch the sen sation she created amony the audience The Duke of Connaugh ■;, the Princess Beatrice, and tho Princess Charlotte of Eussia were in the royal box, but they were eclipsed in point, or interest by Mme. Pofctl. All tho opera glasses were leveled at her.

When a man has business that does not piy, he usually begins to lo.jJt round for a, partner to share his losses with him.

Many men are like a tombstone, in the respect that ' Here lies' uoulu be appro priately engraveu upon them. A juryman remarked : -May it please your honor, I am deaf in one oar.' ' Then,' said the judge, ' leave the box, for a jurcr must hear both sides.'

Whatever dillicuUies you have to encounter, be not perplexed, but think only what is 3'ight to do in the, sight of Him who seeth all things t and bear wihout repining the result..

A pedagogue was about to flog a pupil for having said he vns a fool, when the boy cried out, ' Oh, don't, don't! I won't call you so any more—l'll ncvv.i- say what I think again, in all the days of my life.'

A young Tenesse girl recently married an entire stranger, alleging that she should have plenty of time to become acquainted with him afterwards.

Evening? XC 1876