(To be continued.)

REFLECTIONS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "DEIRDRE."

Inscribed to Oliver Wendell Holmes.

A CALL from mountain-tops and waving pines,
The Muse's wakening voice, my heart inclines
To sing to you a song that must be sung,
Sweet Horace of our modern land and tongue,
Who paintest mankind's thoughts as they arise,
With kindly pencil dipped in rainbow dyes;
Whose genial verse this glad conclusion shows:
The sum of human joys outweighs the woes!
My soul, like Israel's prophet, shuns to praise
The Ignis Fatuii of our later days,

Whose lanterns lead me but to vague abysms
Of proverbs, problems, sound, and syllogisms,-
Writers who, in strange medleys proving nought,
With tiresome reasonings split the hair of thought;
Who all their mental faculties apply

To analyze the motive of a fly;

Who, if a poplar leaf they trembling find,
Give doleful disquisitions on the wind;

Or, if the cat within the dairy sips

The luscious cream until she smacks her lips,

Or some wild urchin steal a worthless pin,

Pour forth about the origin of sin

Dim floods of thought on Destiny and Will

All stolen from Whately, Spencer, Kant, and Mill!
Tom Jones disports himself through Fielding's pages.
To show the natural man to future ages;
The characters in Peregrinus Pickle

All teach us wisdom, while our sides they tickle;
They argue not from what their acts ensue,
But tell us what they are from what they do.
In Shakspere's verse each form and shade of life
Is told by common acts of peace or strife:
Macbeth, the regicide, by Duncan's death,
Of false ambition lives the length and breadth;
Hamlet, the soul by reckless fancy led,

Paints more by what he did than what he said;
And sweet Ophelia with madness strove
By suffering to show the power of love,
And showed it better, as in death she lay,
Than all the sham philosophers can say!
Wise Homer tells us not the final source

Of thought that made Ulysses build the Horse;
Enough 'twas built, and we behold the man
Who first conceived and made the wondrous plan.
And so with all the mighty ones who run
Through ancient story; from Anchises' son,
Pelides, Hector, Agamemnon proud,
Ajax the Moon-mad,-all the valiant crowd
Who shook their banners round the walls of Troy,
To him who lived men's torments to destroy-
The kind Herakles-unto him who stole
The spark from heaven that fired the foetal soul;
The wise old poets, with keen logic, sought
To tell us from their actions what they thought.

Give me my logic, then-if I must drink

The golden draught-from minds that clearly think,
And write their thoughts in proper, technic way,
That shows me the pure gist of what they say.
But give me no inversions,-give me not
For weary hours to wade some dreadful plot,
At first philosophy, at last a novel,

Where Hodge speaks bastard logic in his hovel,
And all the characters are of one school,
With syllogistic cant the only rule!

Or, if with poesy my mind I feed,

Give me the pipings of the grand old reed

That great ones kissed, and blew in strains that ran
With heavenly solace through the mind of man.
Give me the fond, the gay "Arabian Nights,"
With all their treasures and their dear delights;
With Grimm and Andersen to range the shore
Of pristine legend and enchanted lore;

Or with Cervantes' knight to feel the thwack
Of rustic cudgels on my noble back,
To slay chimeras, with love's subtlest art
To woo and conquer fair Dulcinea's heart,
Or charge the wind-mills, and half dead to lie,
With Sancho Panza and his proverbs by!
Give me the thought direct, that brightly runs
O'er interstellar spaces, planets, suns,

Through earth's hard crust and hell's Tartarean main,
From Milton's and from Dante's wondrous brain!
Give me with Homer through the battle wind,
With all my shouting myrmidons behind,

To urge the snorting steeds, and break the wood
Of Trojan lances by Scamander's flood;
Or, with bright Tasso, on the sounding plain
To couch the spear, and breast the arrows' rain
From walls of high Jerusalem, and show
My knightly prowess 'gainst the Paynim foe;
Or, with sweet Spenser, travel dales and woods
To look on nature in her different moods,
To stray with Una through enchanted groves,
And kiss the flower of innocence she loves,
To conquer dragons with the Red Cross Knight,
With Calidore behold the Graces bright,
Or lay the iron flail of Talus strong
On the proud backs of Ignorance and Wrong!

Or, if to verse at home my soul incline,
Give me the polished thoughts that nobly shine
Like pearls of price, or threads of virgin gold,
Through silken pages, where the tale is told
Of that weird Stethoscope, wherein the flies
The doctors stunned with their deceiving cries,
And with the Deacon let me ride away

Through summer woods, upon the One Hoss Shay,

Talk with the Autocrat, and hear the Poet,

And drink life's subtlest charm, and scarcely know it!

Or give me him, high culture's noble son,

The Scholar and the Poet both in one,

Whose verse of varied movement falls and swells

In melody like his cathedral bells:

Now full and grandly calm, now soft and tender,
Sparkling with wit, and bright with passion's splendor.
With him down Fancy's river let me sail,
And, with Sir Launfal, find the Holy Grail,
Or set myself some merry hours to spend
With quaint Hosea Biglow for my friend,
Or by the kitchen fire to sit in clover,
And do the blessed Courtin' ten times over!

Or give me him who called the armèd dead-
The Skeleton-from out his narrow bed

By Newport Tower; with him the blasts I'll brave,
And tell mad stories of the Norland wave

In the King's hall, and there, to test my truth,
Hold up in Alfred's face the Walrus Tooth!
I'll seek, with Hiawatha, the bright West,
The infinite Green Prairies of the Blest,
I'll wander by Atlantic's coast, and see
The lovely meadows of sweet Acadie;
In the warm forge with Gabriel blithely sing,
The bellows blow, and make the anvil ring,
See fair Evangeline in coif and tassel,
And smoke a pipe with Benedict and Basil!

Or let me look on Death with him whose gaze
Found philosophic lore in youthful days

'Neath the grim ribs, with many a thought to bless
And soothe the human heart in its distress.

Or place my hand in his, and let me go

To sylvan places where sweet waters flow,
And sit me down beside some crystal stream,
And list to sounds like music in a dream—
The wood's dim stirrings, voice of all wild things,
The murmur of innumerable wings,

The song of birds, the wave, the zephyr's fan,
And in all blended hear the pipe of Pan!
Or I will wander out 'neath summer skies,
With Concord's sage to look in Nature's eyes,
And find therein new hopes for future years,
The while she whispers in our listening ears
Weird sentences and sibylline decrees

From cave and bank of flowers, rock, fern, and trees,
And brook that, singing, through the greenwood travels,
Whose meanings he-her Priest-alone unravels!

Or, snow-bound, let me, lingering, cheer the mind.

In happy converse with companions kind,
And with them watch the pearly wonders gleam
O'er forest, plain, rough glen and gelid stream,

Or frosty magic on the panes assume

New forms of light, transcending summer's bloom.
And, if I had them not, then let me ride

With Skipper Ireson, feathered, tarred, and dyed,
Through Marblehead, with rope-coils round my wrists,
And hear the yells, and feel the fishwives' fists

Till I repent me, and roll back the wain

Of truant thought to nature's joys again!

ENGINEER CROSSING THE CHASM OVER THE RIMAC.

IT somewhat surprises the American tour- | ist in Peru that no detailed description has appeared in the United States of the great railway over the Andes, especially as it has been the work of an American. The writer of this account, therefore, takes peculiar pleasure in introducing the journey to the readers of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, in the hope, not only of imparting to others something of the novel enjoyment he himself experienced in it; but also of presenting some of the most remarkable difficulties and VOL. XIV.-29.

impressive features of this truly Cyclopean undertaking.

A visit to Peru rewards the traveler with an extensive field of study and pleasure, in the beauty and grandeur of its scenery, the variety of its climates and productions, the romance of its history, and in the archæological remains that represent its very ancient civilization. When to these attractions is added one of the essential elements of modern progress,-easy railroad communication in its highest development,-it be