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After our journeys in South Africa and Abyssinia, it was suggested to my husband that a survey of the Hadhramout by an independent traveller would be useful to the Government; so in the winter of 1893-94 we determined to do our best to penetrate into this unknown district, which anciently was the centre of the frankincense and myrrh trade, one of the most famed commercial centres of 'Araby the Blest, before Mohammedan fanaticism blighted all industries and closed the peninsula to the outer world.

There he enters Parliament and is about to contract a fortunate marriage when he incautiously defends the Chevalier in conversation, fights a duel, and, although his antagonist is only wounded, he finds his reputation blighted by the stigma of Jacobitism.

He knew how his unaccustomed hands had laboured with the spade at forming a little primitive bridge over the beck in the hollow before winter streams should make it too deep for fording; how he had cut down branches of the mountain-ash and covered them over, yet decked with their scarlet berries, with sods of green turf, beyond which the brilliancy crept out; but now it was months and years since he had been in that garden, which had lost its charm for Sylvia, as she found the bleak sea-winds came up and blighted all endeavours at cultivating more than the most useful things pot-herbs, marigolds, potatoes, onions, and such-like.

The mountains of Niederwald cast a considerable shade around, and the mixture of woods and vineyards is highly picturesque, but the vines being mostly blighted, had this year the same autumnal tint as the trees.

"And yet," said Anne to herself, as they now moved forward to meet the party, "he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have. I cannot believe his prospects so blighted for ever. He is younger than I am; younger in feeling, if not in fact; younger as a man. He will rally again, and be happy with another." They all met, and were introduced.

"O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to Heaven at all!"

If "style," in Venice, sits among ruins, let us always lighten our tread when we pay her a visit. Our steps were in fact, I am happy to think, almost soft enough for a death-chamber as we stood in the big, vague <i>sala</i> of the three sisters, spectators of their simplified state and their beautiful blighted rooms, the memories, the portraits, the shrunken relics of nine Doges.

If we drop our tears, Who loved him as few men were ever loved, We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan With him whose life stands rounded and approved In the full growth and stature of a man. Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope, With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope! Wave cheerily still, O banner, halfway down, From thousand-masted bay and steepled town!

Down she stumbled, the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars and into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her.

That Tasmania is a country with many resources especially mineral wealth as yet undeveloped, is a conclusion at which most people will arrive, even after a short visit to the colony; but, how soon and in what way this development will take place depends, of course, upon the character of the inhabitants, and this character will, no doubt, improve as the remembrances of the convict life, which has so blighted this beautiful island, gradually recede into the dim distance of the past.