ZARAZILIA.

SHE was so beautiful! the dark brown hair,
In clustering ringlets fall-just kissed her cheek-
And 'neath the altar of her forehead fair,
Like pure twin angels, prayed her eyes so meek.
An all-unravelled mystery,

A seraph from her birth,
In her so holy gentleness,
She was but half of earth.

And if she met you, with a sweet surprise
Just as, with fairy step, she passed you by,
She'd raise to yours, her spiritual eyes,

As though she loved you, without knowing why.
And when the maiden spoke to you,

The music of her voice

Like accents heard afar in dreams,
Bade memory rejoice.

"WE ARE NOT OUR OWN.”

WE are not our own, to live and die,
Catching at pleasures as they fly;

We are not our own-when a mighty crowd
Cries, with a voice all deep and loud,

"We perish! we perish! oh, give us bread:
Fill us and feed us, as you have been fed;"
When the pale, shrunk lip, and the hollow eye
Bespeak them fainting, and like to die;
When the strong man groans in his bitterness,
And the infant wails in its weak distress;
Turn not away from the sigh and the moan;
Remember, oh, man, thou art not thine own.

We are not our own-when slavery's blight
Rests on this world, so fair and bright;
When millions of human beings wear
Fetters and chains, and about them bear
Letters blazoned in blood and fire,

That mark them the slaves of oppression dire;
When war stalks forth with its murderous hand,
And deals desolation and death through the land;
When each man seems eager to stamp on his brow
The Cain-mark of crime, the sighs of woe;
While the lash is uplifted, the war-trumpet blown,
Say, shall we live to ourselves alone?

We are not our own in the eager strife

With truth and error, death and life;
There's a mission of mercy and love to fulfil;
Shall others be stirring, and we be still?

No! through the length and breadth of the land,
Lift up the voice and stretch the hand;

Shout to the manacled slave-"Be ye free!"

To the warrior-"Spare thou, as God spareth thee!"

Give food to the famished, the fainting sustain;
Seek to strengthen the tempted, alleviate pain;
We dare not live to ourselves alone;

While there's aught to be done, "We are not our own!"

A CHAPTER ON RINGS.

Ir is astonishing how much of interest lies within the circumference of a ring, with what a variety of events its use is blended, and how many important ones it has figured in. Old as the oldest records of human history, we find it used amongst the Egyptians, as a type of trust and badge of power, at the period when the shepherd sons of Jacob sold their brother. Even previous to that great epoch in the life of the wise and well-favoured Joseph, when Pharaoh, investing him with a rank only second to his own, bestowed as the sign of it the ring that was on his finger, we find the signet mentioned; so that in all probability the inventor of the fashion of wearing them, who Pliny tells us is unknown, may have been that primal artificer in brass and iron, old Tubal Cain himself.

The signet rings worn by the Israelites, and other Eastern nations, appear to have borne inscriptions and devices like our own; for in the description of the breast-plate of the high priest, it is distinctly stated

that the twelve precious stones with which it was set were inscribed with the names of the children of Israel, "like the engravings of a signet, every one with his name according to the twelve tribes."

Very tragic in Scripture are the occasions on which we usually find the signet referred to: Jezebel seals the warrant for the death of Naboth with her husband's, the king's; and the decree for the massacre of the Jews, which the beauty and policy of Esther prevented, was sealed with the ring of Ahasuerus.

From an expression of the prophet Jeremiah's, we find that the Jews wore their signets on the right hand; and the importance in which they were held may be gathered from the same passage.*

But besides the Hebrews and Egyptians, the Babylonians, Chaldeans, and Persians are known at a very early period to have made use of the signet. The despatches which Alexander sent into Europe he sealed (according to Quintus Curtius) with his own ring, but those which he wrote into Asia bore the signet of Darius.

Pliny imagines, from their not having been mentioned by Homer, that the Greeks were ignorant of the use of the ring, until the time of the Trojan war; after which period they wore them, as English wives do, on the third finger of the left hand, and gave the same reason, namely, that this finger communicates by a small nerve with the heart, which was presumed by

* Jer. xxii. 24.

sympathy to act upon it, and prevent the hand lending itself to any dishonourable action.

From the Greeks the Sabines are supposed to have borrowed the custom of wearing rings, which they did as early as the time of Romulus; but a long period seems to have elapsed before the Romans adopted them, and no traces of their official use, as an appendage to the statues of their kings, is to be found before the reigns of Numa and Servius Tullius.

Pliny, who has left us much interesting information on this subject, tells us that the ancient Romans made use of gold, silver, and iron rings, as distinguishing marks of the condition or quality of the wearers; and that all were originally worn on the little finger.

Marius, in his third Consulate (650 of the Roman year), is said to have been the first who wore a golden ring. And we also learn that not even a senator was allowed to wear this precious circlet, unless he had been ambassador at a foreign court, nor could he then (if given him in public) except upon public occa

sions.

Subsequently the gold ring became the badge of a knight; but in progress of time these primitive distinctions, which limited the people to the wearing of silver ones and bound the slave's finger with iron, became lost, and we find the gold annulus of the patrician girdling the broad fingers of the plebs, and even granted by Severus as a privilege of the common soldiers; nor could the edict issued by Nero, forbidding