barism, I am lost in an exulting admiration. Look at the bold barriers of Palestine! See how the infant liberties of Greece were sheltered from the vast tribes of the uncivilized north by the heights of Hæmus and Rhodope! Behold how the Alps describe their magnificent crescent—inclining their opposite extremities to the Adriatic and Tyrrhene Seas-locking up Italy from the Gallic and Tuetonic hordes, until the power and spirit of Rome had reached their maturity, and until she spread far her laws and language, and planted seeds of many mighty nations !

Thanks be to God for mountains! Their colossal firmness seems almost to break the current of time itself: the geologist in them searches for traces of the earlier world, and it is there too that man -resisting the revolutions of lower regions-retains through innumerable years his habits and his rights, while a multitude of changes has remoulded the people of Europe, while languages, laws, dynasties and creeds have passed over it, the children of the Celt' and the Goth, who fled to the mountains a thousand years ago, are found there now, and show us in face and figure, in language and garb, what their fathers were: that there the fiery heart of freedom is still found and will be so for ever.-W. HOWITT.

RAIN IN SUMMER.

How beautiful is the rain !
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain !

The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His feverish brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain !

In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand ,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,

And the vapours that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man's spoken word.

From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures and his fields of grain.
As they bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.

LONGFELLOW.

THE SONG OF THE BROOK.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern

To bicker down a valley.
I chatter over stony ways,,

In little sharps and trebles;
I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret

By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow. I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars,

I loiter round my cresses.
With graceful sweeps I sing and flow

To join the brimming river;
For men may come, and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

TENNYSON. THE MILL-STREAM.

A child looks into the mill-stream,

Where fish glide in and out, The dace with the coat of silver,

And the crimson-spotted trout.

He plays with the diamond waters,

He talks to the droning bees,
He sings, and the birds sing with him,

He runs as to catch the breeze.

A perfume from wood and meadow

Is wandering round the boy; He is twining a garland of lilacs,

And joyous he thinks not of joy.
He prays in the eve and morning:

For the heavens seem always near,
And he thinks that each childish murmur

Is a charm that the angels hear.
O Life! O beautiful picture !

O light, and perfume, and love!
O the grace of the heart that is tender!

O the dream that can lift us above!

O Life! no longer a problem,

But a something to see and enjoy,
A brightness on stream and on meadow,

A breeze round a dancing boy.
Back, back to the fair blue morning

Otwild Hope and of Fancy wild,
Let me watch the fish in the mill-stream,
With the eyes and the heart of a child.

Fraser's Magazine.

THE WILLOW AND RIVER.

The willow grows beside the river,

And the boughs hang o'er its flow, Till the green leaves, as they quiver,

Kiss the waves that run below.

The river murmurs to the willow

With a sad, mysterious tone, As the bubbles of each billow

Gurgling break on bank or stone.

THOUGHTS ON THE SEA.

The joy of song, which hath such deep control,

Now on my mind a shadowy world hath brought, Stirring the hidden depihs of heart and soul

With glorious thought; For it brings with it images of thee,

Immeasurable sea!

The mind in its immensity expands

To take within its range so vast a theme, And clothes the thoughts with hues of other lands,

As in a dream, Giving to words a light, a power, a sense

Of passionate influence.

Oft when a boy, upon thy breast I lay

Floating or swimming-changing with my whims, Feeling the warmth of the bright sun-beam play

Upon my limbs ;
Or diving through the waves with glee as wild

As an unconscious child.

Alone I've stood beside thy sounding shore,

List’ning to the wild music of thy voice; And while the moaning winds would sigh and roar,

I would rejoice; I love to be familiar with each sound

Which echoed far around.

But soon I had a boat with swelling sail,

And many a day reposed beneath the sky, Catching the breeze until it prov'd a gale,

And waves were high; And when the storm was raging in its height

I felt a deep delight.

I've heard the sea-gull screaming o'er my head,

I've seen the stormy petrel on my track, But none had power to stop me where I led

Or keep me back; And I maintain'd companionship with thee,

Unfathomable sea.

A HYMN OF THE SEA.

The sea is mighty, but a mightier sways
His restless billows. Thou whose hands have scoop'd
His boundless gulfs and built his shores, Thy breath,
That moved in the beginning o'er his face,
Moves o'er it evermore.

The obedient waves
To its strong motion roll and rise and fall.
Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up,
As at the first, to water the great earth,
And keep her valleys green. A hundred realms
Watch its broad shadow floating on the wind;
And in the dropping shower with gladness hear
Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth
Over the boundless blue, where, joyously,
The bright crests of innumerable waves
Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands
Of a great multitude are upward flung
In acclamation. I behold the ships
Gliding from cape to cape, from isle to isle,
Or stemming towards far lands, or hastening home
From the old world. It is Thy friendly breeze
That bears them with the riches of the land,
And treasures of dear lives, till, in the port,
The shouting seamen climbs and furls the sail.

These restless surges eat away the shores
Of earth's old continents: the fertile plain
Welters in shallows; headlands crumble down;
And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets
Of the drown'd city. In the middle sea,
Creator! thou dost teach the coral worm
To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age
He builds beneath the waters, till, at last,
His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check
The long wave rolling from the southern pole
To break upon Japan. Thou bidd'st the fires
That smoulder under ocean, heave on high
The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks
Places of refuge for the storm-driven bird.
The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts
With herb and tree: sweet fountains gush: sweet airs
Ripple the living lakes, that, fringed with flowers,
Are gather'd in the hollows. Thou dost look
On thy creation, and pronounce it good.
Its valleys, glorious with their summer green,
Praise thee in silent beauty; and its woods,
Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join
The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn.-BRYANT.