With rushing winds and gloomy skies The dark and stubborn Winter dies: Far-off, unseen, Spring faintly cries, Bidding her earliest child arise; March!

I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. There is every thing which can gratify the eye -- high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins.

There is a degree of confidence exhibited towards strangers in Sweden, especially in hotels, at post-stations, and on board the inland steamers, which tells well for the general honesty of the people.

I cannot assume emotions I do not feel, and must describe Jerusalem as I found it. Since being here, I have read the accounts of several travellers, and in many cases the devotional rhapsodies -- the ecstacies of awe and reverence -- in which they indulge, strike me as forced and affected.

Oh! what waves of crime and bloodshed have swept like the waves of a deluge down the valley of the Rhine! War has laid his mailed hand on those desolate towers and ruthlessly torn down what time has spared, yet he could not mar the beauty of the shore, nor could Time himself hurl down the mountains that guard it.

The native Jewish families in Jerusalem, as well as those in other parts of Palestine, present a marked difference to the Jews of Europe and America. They possess the same physical characteristics -- the dark, oblong eye, the prominent nose, the strongly-marked cheek and jaw -- but in the latter, these traits have become harsh and coarse.

We follow and race In shifting chase, Over the boundless ocean-space! Who hath beheld when the race begun? Who shall behold it run?

Departed suns their trails of splendor drew

Across departed summers: whispers came

From voices, long ago resolved again

Into the primeval Silence, and we twain,

Ghosts of our present selves, yet still the same,

As in a spectral mirror wandered there.

Sweeter than the stolen kiss Are the granted kisses.

The Prophet's words were true;

The mouth of Ali is the golden door

Of Wisdom.

When his friends to Ali bore

These words, he smiled and said: And should they ask

The same until my dying day, the task

Were easy; for the stream from Wisdom's well,

Which God supplies, is inexhaustible.

Melrose is the finest remaining specimen of Gothic architecture in Scotland. Some of the sculptured flowers in the cloister arches are remarkably beautiful and delicate, and the two windows -- the south and east oriels -- are of a lightness and grace of execution really surprising.

The nearest approach I have ever seen to the symmetry of ancient sculpture was among the Arab tribes of Ethiopia. Our Saxon race can supply the athlete, but not the Apollo.

So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no superiors. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose type has descended to us in the Venus de Medici.

True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics.

Those who would attain to any marked degree of excellence in a chosen pursuit must work, and work hard for it, prince or peasant.

In the glory which overhangs Palestine afar off, we imagine emotions which never come, when we tread the soil and walk over the hallowed sites.

There may come a day

Which crowns Desire with gift, and Art with truth,

And Love with bliss, and Life with wiser youth!

Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare The summer to its rose may bring; Far sweeter to the wooing air The hidden violet of spring. Still, still that lovely ghost appears, Too fair, too pure, to bid depart; No riper love of later years Can steal its beauty from the heart.

Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force.

The view of the Rocky Mountains from the Divide near Kiowa Creek is considered one of the finest in Colorado.