Lubin. Can we not grow it here? I should like a field of sugar-canes much better than a field of potatoes. Dick. I daresay you would, my fine fellow; but the cane requires a great deal more heat than we ever have in Old England. Only black men seem to be able to endure the fatigue of hoeing the plantations under a burning tropical sun. It is something like a gigantic reed, with a jointed stem, twelve or fourteen feet in height, bearing on the top a graceful drooping tuft of flowers; that is to say, it would do so if the cane were not cut down before the flowers had time to form. These canes are carried to a mill, where all their sweet juice is crushed out. Lubin. There is some treacle on the table; is that squeezed out of a cane? Dick. That is the liquid which drains from the sugar, the part which will not harden into grains like the brown sugar there in the cupboard. Lubin. And how comes this loaf-sugar to be so white? [He drops a fifth lump into his tea.] Dick. It is carefully cleared and refined. Nelly. And when did sugar first come to Europe? Dick. I have heard that it was brought over by Marco Polo, a famous Venetian traveller, in the middle of the thirteenth century; but sugar had been known to the Chinese nation for two thousand years before that. Lubin. And so those funny fellows with their hair in long tails were feasting on all kinds of sweets when our poor forefathers— Dick. Were eating berries and acorns! Lubin. Ah, well, we shall make up for lost time now. [He drops a sixth lump into his tea. Matty laughing puts the sugar basin out of his reach.] Nelly. Can sugar be got from nothing but canes? Dick. O yes; many plants contain sugar, but few in sufficent quantity to make it worth our while to cultivate them for the purpose. The maple has been used in America; and in France the beet-root has been tried. Matty. What! that vegetable that is of such a lovely bright red, that I often wish I could dye my bonnet ribbons with the juice? Dick. That's it, Matty; that is what has been cultivated for the sake of the sugar that it yields. Napoleon Bonaparte at one time encouraged the growth of beet-root, in the hope of ruining our West Indian plantations by providing a substitute for their canes. Nelly. What is a substitute, Dick? Dick. Something that will take the place of another thing. Matty. And did Napoleon's plan produce much sugar? Dick. I do not know about that; I only know that it was the cause of the production of one of the cleverest epigrams that ever was written, faulty though it may be in spelling and grammar. Lubin. Give us the epigram, Dick, if it is anything funny or merry. Dick. "Says Bony, 'I now have a substitute found, And no longer require your sweet.' 'Very well,' says John Bull, 'I will then use the cane, Since you are content to get beet." [All the children laugh except Lubin, who rubs his head, as he cannot make out the joke.] Nelly. But now that the French and we are allies— Dick. They will help to buy our cane sugar in a friendly way; and in a friendly way we will help to eat up their sweetmeats. Matty, just hand in your box of bon-bons! A. L. O. E. CXLVII. CHARACTER OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. To all the charms of beauty and the utmost elegance of external form, Mary added those accomplishments which render their impression irresistible. Polite, affable, insinuating, sprightly, and capable of speaking and of writing with equal ease and dignity. Sudden, however, and violent in all her attachments, because her heart was warm and unsuspicious. Impatient of contradiction, because she had been accustomed from her infancy to be treated as a queen. No stranger, on some occasions, to dissimula tion, which, in that perfidious court where she received her education, was reckoned among the necessary arts of government. Not insensible of flattery, or unconscious of that pleasure with which almost every woman beholds the influence of her own beauty. Formed with the qualities which we love, not with the talents that we admire, she was an agreeable woman rather than an illustrious queen. The vivacity of her spirit, not sufficiently tempered with sound judgment, and the warmth of her heart, which was not at all times under the restraint of discretion, betrayed her both into errors and into crimes. To say that she was always unfortunate, will not account for that long and almost uninterrupted succession of calamities which befell her. We must likewise add that she was often imprudent. Her passion for Darnley was rash, youthful, and excessive; and though the sudden transition to the opposite extreme was the natural effect of her ill-requited love, and of his ingratitude, insolence, and brutality, yet neither these nor Bothwell's artful address and important services can justify her attachment to that nobleman. Even the manners of the age, licentious as they were, are no apology for this unhappy passion; nor can they induce us to look on that tragical and infamous scene which followed upon it with |