It will be given. Look! how the rolling ground,
At every swell, nearer and still more near
Moves toward the father's outstretched arm his boy.
Once he has touched his garment: - how his eye
Lightens with love, and hope, and anxious fears!
Ha, see! he has him now!-he clasps him round;
Kisses his face; puts back the curling locks,
That shaded his fine brow; looks in his eyes;
Grasps in his own those little dimpled hands;
Then folds him to his breast, as he was wont
To lie when sleeping; and resigned, awaits
Undreaded death.

And death came soon and swift And pangless. The huge pile sank down at once Into the opening earth. Walls-arches-roofAnd deep foundation stones-all-mingling—fell!

NOTES.-Herculaneum and Pompeii were cities of Italy, which were destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79 A. D., being entirely buried under ashes and lava. During the last century they have been dug out to a considerable extent, and many of the streets, buildings, and utensils have been found in a state of perfect preservation.

CXVI. HOW MEN REASON.

My friend, the Professor, whom I have mentioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that somebody had been abusing him in some of the journals of his calling. I told him that I did n't doubt he deserved it; that I hoped he did deserve a little abuse occasionally, and would for a number of years to come; that nobody could do anything to make his neighbors wiser or better without being liable to abuse for it; especially that people hated to have their

little mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing something of the kind. The Professor smiled.

Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. It will not take many years to bring you to the period of life when men, at least the majority of writing and talking men, do nothing but praise. Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay. I don't know what it is, whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is through experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty, but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old.

As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty, we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later, we have carved it, or shut up our jackknives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. So I am glad you have a little life left; you will be saccharine enough in a few years.

Some of the softening effects of advancing age have struck me very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are gentle and placid as young children? I have heard it said, but I can not be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An old man, whose studies had been of the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear little nursery stories read over and over to him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I remember a person of singu

larly stern and lofty bearing who became remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in the later period of

his life.

And that leads me to say that men often remind me of pears in their way of coming to maturity. Some are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must be made the most of, for their day is soon over. Some come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. And some, that, like the Winter Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the rest have had their season, get their glow and perfume long after the frost and snow have done their worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough in August may have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. Milton was a Saint Germain with a graft of the roseate Early Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet-skinned old Chaucer was an Easter Beurré; the buds of a new summer were swelling when he ripened.

-Holmes.

NOTES.-The above selection is from the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table."

Lochiel. See note on page 214.

The Duke of Wellington (b. 1769, d. 1852) was the most celebrated of English generals. He won great renown in India and in the 'Peninsular War," and commanded the allied forces when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.

Easter Beurré, Saint Germain, Winter Nelis, Early Catherine and Jargonelles are the names of certain varieties of pears.

Milton. See biographical notice on page 312.

Chaucer, Geoffrey (b. 1328, d. 1400). is often called The Father of English Poetry." He was the first poet buried in Westminster Abbey. He was a prolific writer, but his "Canterbury Tales" is by far the best known of his works.

CXVII. THUNDERSTORM ON THE ALPS.

CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing

To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet, as if a sister's voice reproved,

That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep-
All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast,

All is concentered in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all Creator and defense.

The sky is changed! and such a change! O night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

And this is in the night. Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be

A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,-
A portion of the tempest and of thee!

How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea!

And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again, 't is black, and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between
Heights which appear as lovers who have parted
In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,

That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;
Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
Love was the very root of the fond rage,

Which blighted their life's bloom, and then-departed! Itself expired, but leaving them an age

Of years, all winters,-war within themselves to wage.

Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,
The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand!
For here, not one, but many make their play,
And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand,
Flashing and cast around! Of all the band,

The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
His lightnings, -as if he did understand,

That in such gaps as desolation worked,

There, the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.

-Byron.

NOTE.-Lake Leman (or Lake of Geneva) is in the southwestern part of Switzerland, separating it in part from Savoy. The Rhone flows through it, entering by a deep narrow gap, with mountain groups on either hand, eight or nine thousand feet above the water. The scenery about the lake is magnificent, the Jura mountains bordering it on the northwest, and the Alps lying on the south and east.