Chapter 6

Letters from Parma, of the 9th instant, announce that the resolution has been taken at Vienna to deprive the Duke of Parma of the administration of his states, and to put in a regency, of which Ward is to be the head. The elevation of Ward affords not only a singular instance of the mutability of human affairs, but of the tendency of the Anglo-Saxon race, when transplanted to foreign countries, to emerge to eminence, and surpass others by the homely but rare qualities of common-sense and unfaltering energy. Ward was a Yorkshire groom. The Duke of Lucca, when on a visit to this country, perceiving the lad's merit, took him into his service, and promoted him, through the several degrees of command in his stable, to be head-groom of the ducal stud. Upon Ward's arrival in Italy with his master, it was soon found that the intelligence which he displayed in the management of the stables was applicable to a variety of other departments. In fact, the duke had such a high opinion of Ward's wisdom, that he very rarely omitted to consult him upon any question that he was perplexed to decide. As Louis XII. used to answer those who applied to him on any business, by referring them to the Cardinal d'Amboise, with the words: 'Ask George,' so Charles of Lucca cut short all applications with 'Go to Ward.' He now became the factotum of the prince, won, in the disturbances which preceded the revolutionary year of 1848, a diplomatic dignity, and was despatched to Florence upon a confidential mission of the highest importance. He was deputed to deliver to the Grand Duke the act of abdication of the Duke of Lucca. Soon after, in 1849, when the Duke of Lucca resigned his other states to his son, Ward became the head counsellor of this prince. Ward was on one occasion despatched to Vienna in a diplomatic capacity. Schwarzenberg was astonished at his capacity; in fact, the _ci-devant_ Yorkshire stable-boy was the only one of the diplomatic body that could make head against the impetuous counsels, or rather dictates, of Schwarzenberg; and this was found highly useful by other members of the diplomatic body. An English gentleman, supping one night at the Russian ambassador's, complimented him upon his excellent ham. 'There's a member of our diplomatic corps here,' replied Meyendorff, 'who supplies us all with hams from Yorkshire, of which county he is a native.' Ward visited England. The broad dialect and homely phrase betraying his origin through the profusion of orders of all countries sparkling on his breast, he rarely ventured to appear at evening _soirées_. Lord Palmerston declared he was one of the most remarkable men he had ever met with. Ward, through all his vicissitudes, has preserved an honest pride in his native country. He does not conceal his humble origin. The portraits of his parents, in their home-spun clothes, appear in his splendid saloon of the prime-minister of Parma.--_Newspaper paragraph._

DURATION OF PLANTS.

The several kinds of plants vary exceedingly in their degrees of longevity, some being annual, perfecting their growth within a year, ripening their seeds and perishing; others are perennial, and continue to grow and flourish for years and centuries. Warm and cold climates have much influence on the duration of plants, and, in some few instances, plants that are annual in cold climates become perennial when transplanted into warm regions, and the contrary when transplanted from warm to cold ones. There are some kinds of trees that are very short-lived, as the peach and the plum; others reach a great age, as the pear and the apple. Some kinds of forest-trees are remarkable for their duration, and specimens are in existence seemingly coeval with the date of the present order of things on our globe. The oak, chestnut, and pine of our forests, reach the age of from 300 to 500 years. The cypress or white cedar of our swamps has furnished individuals 800 or 900 years old. Trees are now living in England and Constantinople more than 1000 years old, of the yew, plane, and cypress varieties; and Addison found trees of the boabab growing near the Senegal, in Africa, which, reckoning from the ascertained age of others of the same species, must have been nearly 4000 years of age. It may be remarked, that plants of the same variety attain about the same age in all climates where they are produced.--_American Courier._

THE RETURN TO LEZAYRE.

BY THE REV. JAMES GILBORNE LYONS, LL.D.

Lezayre is the name of a beautiful district in the Isle of Man.

I came to the place where my childhood had dwelt, To the hearth where in early devotion I knelt-- The fern and the bramble grew wild in the hall, And the long grass of summer waved green on the wall: The roof-tree was fallen, the household had fled, The garden was ruined, the roses were dead, The wild bird flew scared from her desolate stone, And I breathed in the home of my boyhood--alone.

That moment is past, but it left on my heart A remembrance of sadness which will not depart: I have wandered afar since that sorrowful day, I have wept with the mournful, and laughed with the gay; I have lived with the stranger, and drank of the rills Which go warbling their music on loftier hills; But I never forgot, in rejoicing or care, That mouldering hearth, and those hills of Lezayre.

Yet droop not, my spirit! nor hopelessly mourn Over ills which the best and the wisest have borne: Though the greetings of love, and the voices of mirth, May for ever be hushed in the homesteads of earth; Though the dreams and the dwellings of childhood decay, And the friends whom we cherish go hasting away, No young hopes are scattered, no heart-strings are riven, No partings are known in the households of Heaven.

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End of Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456, by Various