under various forms and names, but always with the same view, and the same mode of action. Having no great object to accomplish, even the best of them are compelled to descend to littlenesses. Being commissioned to carry out no extensive scheme of policy, but simply to annoy, impede, and pester, with diplomatic good-humour, a dreaded rival, all their actions necessarily correspond with their object, and are small, crooked, obscure, or insignificant. In Abyssinia, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, everywhere we have encountered an ill-paid Frenchman labouring with commendable perseverance to undo what we have done, to prolong, if he cannot ultimately prevent the attainment of our desires, or if he is powerless in both these capacities to misrepresent our actions and libel our policy. In Egypt, the personal character of the present French consul-general has given a little more variety and openness to proceedings essentially similar. M. Barrot has not publicly wished the success of the railway, and privately opposed it. He has declared, with a frankness perhaps disagreeable to his Government, that his intention is ever to resist the execution of this project, and if we are to believe report, has given his reasons pretty plainly.

Let us listen to his principal argument. "I am afraid that if the railway ever is made we shall never have the canal." The railway then stands in the way of some other project, which is at once a favourite and of apparent inferiority. We presume that even the French consul will acknowledge that the canal is not a thing to be loved per se. Is it not then extraordinary that such an argument as this should be seriously put forward? Are we not at liberty to infer that France patronises the canal simply in order to stifle the project of the railway? Is there any other explanation of so strange a process of reasoning? Are we not forced to believe, when we hear the two schemes put into such curious opposition, that they really occupy in the mind of the speaker, a position very different from what he avows? M. Barrot patronises the canal, affirms its vast superiority, its importance to the cause of civilization and humanity; and yet fears that the establishment of the railway would prevent the canal ever being made; he must conclude then that the former would fulfil all the useful purposes of the latter, that it is acknowledged in fact to be the only feasible work, and that the canal is merely put forward as a blind.

We do not intend to enter into the question of the actual

RAILROADS IN EGYPT.

practicability of this "Great Cut" as it has been called, from Suez to the Mediterranean; but will simply observe that the vast cost of its formation, the length of time it would occupy, and the little comparative benefit that would arise from it, would be sufficient to deter any reasonable person from the attempt, even if all the real advantages its most sanguine promoters propose were However, if not to be obtained by more economical means.

France really desires to perform this stupendous work, let her undertake it, but let her not endeavour to prevent Great Britain from constructing a railway, which will in fact be indispensable to carry to her field of action the requisite materials, and the supplies for the vast numbers of men, whom for perhaps a quarter of a century it will be necessary to employ !

It now remains only to inquire how it is that we have suffered France successfully to oppose us in this particular. Certainly there has not been any remarkable reluctance on the part of our Government to give it support. Opinions have changed since a British minister so singularly thwarted the desire of Mohammed Lord Aberdeen in October, 1843, Ali, and rejected his overtures. after the French consul had dissuaded the Pasha from commencing the railroad, forwarded the most positive instructions to Colonel Barnet, our consul-general in Egypt, to give every support to the undertaking; but we are sorry to say that the supineness or indifference of this gentleman, or it may be the persuasion of his bosom friend, the French consul-general, prevented him from fulfilling those instructions and induced him to neglect in a most singular manner his duty to his employers and his country. On him rests the responsibility of having been the means of preventing, instead of assisting the execution of a work of such paramount importance to British interests, both in a commercial and political point of view.

Let us hope that Lord Palmerston, with his accustomed energy, will pursue the example set him by his predecessor. We hear that the question has already been presented to him, and that it has occupied his most serious attention. It will be necessary, howWhatever goodever, for him to bear in mind one circumstance. will he may possess and evince, nothing will avail unless strenuous, urgent and precise instruction be given to the new consul-general. No doubt must be suffered to remain on Mr. Murray's mind as to how far he may go in his support; but armed with distinct orders, having in view a specific object, he must be enabled to go

to the Pasha and explain himself fully and freely; he must make opportunities of exerting his influence if he cannot find them, and, finally, he must remember that a petty jealousy and an affectation of rivalry are unworthy the character of a British representative. If what we here counsel be a prophecy; for we do not flatter ourselves that it will affect the decisions of Government or the conduct of its representative-of whom indeed we have great hope; we shall soon have to congratulate the Pasha on the commencement of a work which will confer great blessings on the industry and commerce of his country, whilst it multiplies its chances of independence, of security against foreign aggression; and to announce to Great Britain that the best route to the vast possessions in Asia is indeed open and secure, and that she need no longer fear any interruption in her constant communications with the Indies, with China, with Australia, and that important country now beginning to unfold its riches before us, the vast island of Kalamantan.

"THE HOUR AND THE MAN."

He is a little gentle child,

Upon a tender mother's knee,

On whom the dawn of life has smiled
In its unclouded infancy;

On her is fixed the soft blue eye,

The wondered gaze, the upward look,

And in her loving smile he reads
The first sweet page of nature's book.

He is a little merry boy,

A creature formed of smiles and tears,
All full of energy and mirth,

And thoughtfulness beyond his years;
Among his little friends he bounds

A thing of life and glee,

But lists with soul-filled eyes of grief
At tale of misery.

The infant and the child expand

In th' open brow of the fearless youth,
The clear glad eye, the generous hand,
The earnest flush of conscious truth;

'Tis the same tender infant child,
The same glad boy of merry mood,
On whom the parents' thoughtful eye
Rested with deep solicitude.

With what emotion now he reads
Of actions brave, of high-souled deeds,
Perchance of martyr band;

How kindles his blue earnest eye,
How heaves his breast the deep-drawn sigh,
And oh how longs that sympathy

To stretch a helping hand!

Pass some few years, young eager soul,
Thy wayward passions to control,
To ripen all thy worth;

And thou shalt find a mission high
To rescue human misery,

Ordained thee from thy birth;

Deep hid in the Almighty plan-
The hour is come-and thou the Man.

FABLES FOR FOOLISH FELLOWS.

No. I.

MORE FRIGHTENED THAN HURT; OR, THE WISE GOOSE AND THE FOOLISH SPARROWS..

IN the green suburbs of a great city which shall be nameless, there was a waste, wide-open, wild spot of many acres which, time out of mind, had afforded free commonage to all the geese, ducks, sparrows, and small fowl of the village, to say nothing of the donkeys, and donkey-boys, and schoolboys, and illiterate boys, between twelve and two at mid-day, and from five till it was time for boys, donkeys, ducks, geese, and sparrows, to go in and go to bed at a good hour in the evening; for all these free-commoners had, no doubt, had it impressed upon their young minds, either by precept or example, and especially the geese and the donkeys, that

" Early to bed, and early to rise,

Was the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise."

But alas the day!-this long-neglected Noman's land was no

more to run wild: no more to resound with whoops and halloos, brayings, chucklings, cacklings, and chirpings. One of those rich men who would not steal a goose from a common for the world, but think it no dishonesty to steal a common from a goose, got this ownerless land into his hands, some say by underhanded means -inclosed it-levelled it-planted it-laid it out as an ornamented garden-made here à pleached alley, and there a gravelled walk-here a bed and there a bed for flowers-built a comely villa in the centre of all-stuck up scarecrows for one sort of offenders and words of warning for another, letting them learn what they would get by trespassing; for, to add insult to injury, at one angle of the inclosure they might read this inscription-" Beware of the Gaol!" and at another angle this-" This is one way, but not the nearest, to the County Prison." In other words, whoever trespassed on these premises was assured that he would be prosecuted according to law.

The obstinate donkeys and rebellious boys resisted, for some time, so gross an innovation on their liberties, and broke through here and clambered over there; and the one got fined and the other pounded for their pains. The ducks and geese waddled, as they had been used to waddle daily, to their old wild wandering-place, and cackled and clamoured and quaquaked, and thought it scandalous that they should be barred out of their right of commonage; but about the time of the coming in of green peas the ducks were reduced to silence, and a little while after Michaelmas sage and onion subdued the geese by their offensive odour. The sparrows and small birds showed that they had a spirit which would not, and could not, and should not be put down in a hurry; and for a time they trespassed with impunity. Cherry-clacks, scarecrows, (to which they paid no attention, as they were sparrows,) and the going off of a gun occasionally, were tried in vain to warn them off-they would not take warning, and grubbed up the ground as audaciously as ever, till the gardener hit upon a plan of guarding his beds, which brought them to their senses by frightening them out of them; and soon not one of them was bold enough to venture further than the ledge of the palings or the tiptop of an old hawthorn overhanging the grounds.

The oddest and wildest of fowls had taken possession of the garden, and kept it. The most experienced sparrow of those parts had never seen a specimen of such a bird, with so long and