IR ONIR ONIRO NIRONI RONIRO,
WE HAVE TAKEN TWENTY CANNON,

with the key-word written over it as many times as
necessary. We then look for the first letter of the sen-
tence, w, and find it in the table, in the column most to
the left: looking then for 1, the first letter of the key, we
bring the finger down until it reaches the line which
begins with w; there we find the letter F.
F, there-
fore, in this case, stands for w. The next letter in
the sentence is E, and the corresponding letter in the
key, R: this, by following the same rule, gives w as
the representative of E. Proceeding in this manner,

we have the sentence thus:-
:-

WE HAVE TAKEN TWENTY CANNON.
FW WOEW HOTWB GEWBGH UPAWFB.

Although this method may appear tedious in writing, it is, after a little experience, far from being so in practice. A common card applied in the following manner, makes the operation quicker. Let c be one corner of the card; D, the letter in the sentence; and E the letter of the key, which stands above it; bringing, then, the edges of the card close to D in the upper row, and to E in the column most to the left, we see at once that I is the letter of the cipher.

C

G

CH

E

F G

H

I

FORTY DAYS' WANDERINGS IN AN AMERICAN FOREST.

THERE is a class of men on the St. John's River, in East Florida, whose employment consists in felling and squaring the huge forest-trees which grow in its neighbourhood; they live, during the season most favourable to their operations, in small isolated loghuts, near the banks of the river, the married men having their families under the same roof. At the time of the year we are alluding to, the country is visited during the fore-part of the day by very heavy fogs, which completely prevent the traveller from ascertaining the direction in which he is moving. One of the men we have been describing had left his cabin to proceed to the hummock, at which he had been at work, and anxious to reach the spot, he incautiously proceeded in the supposed direction during the continuance of one of these fogs, but, to his alarm, as soon as the fog dispersed, he saw the sun at its meridian height, and could not recognise a single object around him. Fancying, as he had walked at a rapid rate, that he had gone beyond the spot, he turned back, and proceeded in a contrary but his efforts to discover his road were direction; useless, and the sun set on the forest, leaving him a houseless wanderer. "The night was spent in the greatest agony and terror. I knew my situation," he said to the narrator; "I was fully aware, that unless Almighty God came to my assistance, I must perish in those uninhabited woods. I knew that I had walked more than fifty miles, although I had not met with a brook from which I could quench my I knew that if I should not meet with some thirst ; stream I must die, for my axe was my only weapon,

IRONIR ON IRON IRON IRON IRO FW WOEW HOT W BGE WBGHUPAW F B

with the key-word above them: he then looks in the upper row for 1, and down the column at the head of which that letter stands, until he arrives at F, casting his eye then to the left, he finds at the left-hand extremity of the row in which F stands, the letter w; this is the letter required, and in this manner he proceeds with the remainder of his task.

This method of secret writing appears to be as secure as any, and almost impossible to decipher without the key; this key also may be changed as often as necessary, and a different one employed with different correspondents.

Other methods have been employed which may more properly be called concealed than secret writing, such as shaving a slave's head, writing with a stain or colour, not easily obliterated, on the crown, and allowing the hair to grow,-then sending the messenger on his errand; if he arrived safe, the writing could be read by again removing the hair. Another method was to wind a narrow slip of cloth or paper, in a spiral manner, round a stick of a determinate size, and then writing on the paper from one end of the stick to the other; when the paper is unrolled, the writing would be unintelligible, but if rolled round another stick of the same size, it would be again legible.

within a few yards, or even feet of me, not one of them could I kill."

For several days and nights he continued to wander thus without food, until, he continued, " God must have taken pity on me, for as I ran wildly through those dreadful pine barrens, I met with a tortoise." This he killed with one blow of his axe, and having sucked the blood to allay his thirst, he made a hearty meal on the carcase; this night he slept soundly. In the morning he awoke much refreshed, and proceeded on his wanderings with greater spirit, while in the course of the day he killed a racoon, which he found sleeping. The remainder of his wanderings we shall describe in the words of the celebrated naturalist Audubon, from whose description we have abridged the above.

"Days passed, nay weeks, in succession; he fed now on cabbage-trees, then on frogs and snakes; all that fell in his way was welcome and savoury; yet he became daily more emaciated, 'until at length he was scarcely able to crawl. Forty days had elapsed, by his own reckoning, when he at length reached the banks of the river; his clothes in tatters, his once bright axe dimmed with rust, his face begrimed with beard, his hair matted, and his feeble frame little better than a skeleton covered with parchment: There he laid himself down to die. Amid the perturbed dreams of a fevered fancy, he thought he heard the noise of oars far away on the silent river. He listened, but the sounds died on his ear. was indeed a dream, the last glimmer of expiring hope; and now the light of life was about to be quenched for ever, but again the sound of oars awoke him from his lethargy: he listened so eagerly that the hum of a fly could not have escaped his ear; they were indeed the measured beats of oars: and now, joy to the forlorn soul! the sound of human voices thrilled to his heart, and awoke the tumultuous

It

Ir mankind had been perpetuated without their milder companions, a strong and iron race would have inhabited the earth. There is something in the active spirits and powers of the manly portion of our common species. which loves difficulties, enterprise, exertion, dangers, and personal display. These qualities and propensities would too often animate self-love and selfishness into continual strife, civil discord, and battle, if no softer and kinder companions were about such beings, to occupy some portion of their thoughts and attentions, to create and cherish milder and sweeter feelings, and to provide for them the more soothing happiness of a quiet home and a domestic life. Tenderness, sympathy, good humour, pleasures more grateful than those of irritation and contest, and awaken the sensibilities that most favour intellectual and moral cultivation.-SHARON TURner.

A SWISS VALLEY.

AT the foot of Monte Rosa, in the district of Varello, there is a small borough of 1200 inhabitants, called Alagna, where there has not been a criminal trial, not even a civil suit, for the last four hundred years. In case of any wrong committed, or any very blameable conduct, the guilty person, marked by public reprobation, is soon compelled to quit the country. The authority of fathers, like that of the patriarchs, continues absolute all their lives, and at their death they dispose of their property as they please, by verbally imparting their last will to one or two friends, whose report of it is reckoned sufficient; no objection is ever made to such a testament. Not long since a man died worth four thousand pounds sterling, a large fortune in that country; he bequeathed a trifle only to his natural heir. The latter met accidentally, at the neighbouring town of Varello, a lawyer of his acquaintance, and learned from him that he was entitled, legally, to the whole property thus unkindly denied him, and of which, with his assistance, he might obtain possession very shortly. The disinherited man at first declined the offer, but, upon being strongly urged, said he would reflect upon it.

For three days after this conversation he appeared very thoughtful, and owned to his friends. that he was about to take an important determination. At last it was taken, and, calling on his legal adviser, he told him, "the thing proposed had never been done at Alagna, and he would not be the first to do it."

The property of these simple people consists of cattle. In their youth the men visit foreign countries for purposes of trade, the stock of many of them consisting wholly of figures representing green parrots, Chinese mandarins, and other objects, cast in plaster, and stuck on a board, which they carry on their heads, but they rarely fail to return home with the money thus gained; and even those whom superior talents, or better opportunities, have enabled to amass a fortune, still seek that dear native land again, and return unchanged by foreign manners. -SIMOND'S Switzerland.

SIMPLICITY of conduct and of manners, the unquestionable indications of sound sense and of a correct taste, exonerate their happy possessors from the whole of that toilsome load which the enslaved and feeble minds of artificial characters constantly sustain.

TO THE EVENING BREEZE.

SPIRIT that breathest through my lattice! thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day!
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow;
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,—

Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray,
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorch'd land, thou wanderer of the sea!

Nor I alone:-a thousand bosoms round

Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,

Lies the vast inland, stretched beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth
God's blessing, breathed upon the fainting earth!
Go rock the little wood-bird in his nest;

Curl the still waters, bright with the stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,-

Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange, deep harmonies, that haunt his breast;
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And 'twixt the o'ershadowing branches and the grass.
The faint old man shall lean his silver head

To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moisten'd curls that overspread
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep;
And they who stand about the sick man's bed,
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.
Go! but the circle of eternal change,

That is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,
Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,

Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.-BRYANT.

THERE is no slight danger from general ignorance; and the only choice which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government, is either to fall by the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, or with them, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant.-COLERIDGE.

He keeps the Lord's day best that keeps it with most religion and with most charity.-BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR. AFFECTATION may be compared to a coat of many pieces and divers colours, ill fitted, and neither stitched nor tied.

WISE sayings often fall on barren ground: but a kind word is never thrown away.—Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd.

in slender streaks, but at length it glowed with redness. The prospect was disclosed like the gradual drawing up of the curtain in a theatre. The view was gradually unfolded, until the heat became so powerful as to attract the mists from the various lakes, which in a slight degree obscured the prospect. The shadow of the mountain was flung many miles, and showed the form of its summit. I counted between twenty and thirty lakes, either in this county or Merionethshire. The day proved so excessively hot, that the journey cost me the skin of the lower part of my face."

"At another visit," he writes, "a vast mist enveloped the whole of the mountain. The prospect below was horrible. It gave an idea of numbers of abysses, concealed by a thick smoke furiously circirculating round us; very often a gust of wind formed an opening in the clouds, which gave a fine and distinct view of lake and valley. Sometimes they opened only in one place, at others in many, exhibiting a most strange and perplexing sight of water, fields, rocks, or chasms, in fifty different places." This mountain is noted among botanists for the numerous scarce plants which are found on its rocks. Near its summit, a spring of fine, clear, well-tasted water is found, extremely cold. Our view of this celebrated mountain is taken from the village of Beddgelart, which is delightfully situated in the midst of a tract of beautiful meadows, and six miles from the summit of the mountain.

Beddgelart is famous for the well-known tradition respecting the death of a favourite dog. This story, although it has often been the subject of the poet's pen, and the painter's pencil, is still, perhaps, worth repeating.

It is said that Llewellyn the Great came to reside at Beddgelart during the hunting-season, with his

wife and children, and one day, the family being absent, a wolf entered the house. On returning, his greyhound, called Cilliart, met him, wagging his tail, but covered with blood. The prince, being alarmed, ran into the nursery, and found the cradle in which the child had lain, overturned, and the ground covered with blood. Imagining the greyhound had killed the child, he immediately drew his sword and slew him; but on turning up the cradle, he found under it the child alive and the wolf dead. This so affected the prince, that he erected a tomb over the faithful dog's grave, where afterwards the parish church was built, and called from this accident, Bedd Cilihart, or the Grave of Cilihart.

IN the Island of Ceylon, the Jackdaws are extremely impudent and troublesome; and it is found very difficult to exclude them from the houses, which on account of the heat are built open, and much exposed to intruders. In the town of Colombo, where they are in the habit of picking up bones and other things from the streets and yards, and carrying them to the tops of the houses, a battle usually takes place for the plunder, to the great annoyance of the people below, on whose heads they shower down the loosened tiles, leaving the roofs exposed to the weather. They frequently snatch bread and meat from the dining-table, even when it is surrounded with guests, always seeming to prefer about near houses, and rarely to be met with in woods or the company of man, as they are continually seen hopping retired places. They are, however, important benefactors to the Indians, making ample compensation for their intrusion and knavery; for they are all voracious devourers of carrion, and instantly consume all sorts of dirt, offal, or dead vermin; they, in fact, carry off those substances, which, if allowed to remain, would, in that hot climate, produce the most noxious smells, and probably give rise to putrid disorders. On this account they are much esteemed by the natives; their mischievous tricks and impudence are put up with, and they are never suffered to be shot or otherwise molested.-STANLEY'S Familiar History of Birds.