The sun being at an immensely greater distance, has a less powerful action, but of the same kind. As the earth revolves in twenty-four hours on its axis, any one point on its surface is brought once under the moon, and once into the position opposite; and at each position experiences the rise or protuberance of the waters just mentioned; in other words, two daily tides, or high water twice in every twenty-four hours. Such is the elementary conception of the Newtonian theory of tides. But, in the developement of the vast system of gravitation, Newton clearly saw that it would be utterly in vain for him to attempt following out the principle into all the varied and complicated results to which it led. He contented himself with verifying all its great leading points, and leaving the minuter details to his successors. That is to say, all the apparent irregularities in the progress of the tide-wave, all the variations in the time of high-water at different places, all the particular effects of the obstructions occasioned by the varied forms of continents, and the changes in the depths of the sea, were to be examined and described; and then again the theory was to be brought to bear upon them, so as to show whether it would afford a satisfactory explanation. At new and full moon, when the sun's and moon's action conspire, the tides are highest, and are called spring tides; but at the first and last quarters of the moon, the action on one body tends to counteract that on the other; and the tides, both at ebb and flow, are smallest, and are called neap tides. 1. What phenomena powerfully claim our attention ? 2. Who first satisfactorily accounted for these phenomena ? 3. When are the tides highest? - and what are they called? 4. When lowest ?—and what are they then called? LESSON CLXII. -JUNE THE ELEVENTH. Troy. On this day, B. C. 1184, Troy was taken by the Greeks, after a siege of ten years. All Greece united to avenge the cause of Menelaus, and every prince furnished a certain number of ships and soldiers. According to Euripides, Virgil, and Lycophron, the armament of the Greeks amounted to 1000 ships. Homer mentions them as being 1186, and Thucydides supposes that they were 1200 in number. The number of men which these ships carried is unknown; yet, as the largest contained about a hundred and twenty men each, and the smallest fifty, it may be supposed that no less than 100,000 were engaged in this celebrated expedition. Agamemnon was chosen general of all these forces; but the princes and kings of Greece were admitted among his counsellors, and by them all the operations of the war were directed. The most celebrated of the Grecian princes, or those who most distinguished themselves in this war, were Achilles, Ajax, Menelaus, Ulysses, Diomedes, Protesilaus, Patroclus, Agamemnon, Nestor, Neoptolemus, &c. The Grecian army was opposed by a more numerous force. The King of Troy received assistance from the neighbouring princes in Asia Minor, and reckoned among his most active generals Rhesus, king of Thrace, and Memnon, who entered the field with 20,000 Assyrians and Æthiopians. Many of the adjacent cities were reduced and plundered before the Greeks approached the walls; but when the siege was begun, the hostile forces on each side gave proofs of valour and intrepidity. The army of the Greeks, however, was visited by a plague, and the operations were not less retarded by the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles. The loss was great on both sides; the most valiant of the Trojans, and particularly of the sons of Priam, were slain on the field; and, indeed, so great was the slaughter, that the rivers of the country are represented as filled with dead bodies and suits of armour. After the siege had been carried on for ten years, some of the Trojans, among whom were Æneas and Antenor, betrayed the city into the hands of the enemy, and Troy was reduced to ashes. The poets, however, assert that the Greeks made themselves masters of the place by the following artifice: They secretly filled a large wooden horse with armed men, and led away their army from the plains, as if to return home. The Trojans brought the wooden horse into their city, and in the night the Greeks that were confined within the sides of this huge machine rushed out and opened the gates to their companions, who had returned from the place of their concealment. The greatest part of the inhabitants were put to the sword, and the others carried away by the conquerors. FILIAL AFFECTION EXEMPLIFIED. 1. What happened on this day, B. C. 1184? 235 2. How many men, on the part of the Greeks, is it supposed were engaged in this celebrated expedition ? 3. What befel the army of the Greeks? 4. By what artifice do the poets say Troy was taken? LESSON CLXIII.- -JUNE THE TWELFTH. Filial Affection exemplified. DURING the French revolution, while the war was raging in La Vendée, the Duke de Rochefoucault, who with his daughter had been condemned to die, as adherents to the Bourbon cause, found in the resources of that affectionate girl the means of concealing himself till a period arrived more favourable to that justice which he successfully claimed. His daughter's first care was to place him under the roof and protection of an artisan, who had formerly been a domestic in the duke's service, after which she procured an asylum for herself. They were thus both secure from the immediate power of their persecutors; but as the duke's property was confiscated, and as compassion is apt to grow weary of its good offices, the means of their bare subsistence were soon worn out. While the daughter was suffering under the extreme of poverty, she learnt that her father's health was declining for want of due nourishment. She now saw no way but to devote her life to save her father's, and she instantly made the resolve. A general of the republic at that very time was passing through the city in which was her place of concealment, and to him she wrote the following letter: "Citizen General, Wherever the voice of nature is heard, a daughter may be allowed to claim the compassion of men in behalf of her father. Condemned to death at the same time with him who gave me being, I have successfully preserved him from the sword of the executioner, and have preserved myself to watch over his safety. But in saving his life, I have not been able to furnish all that is necessary to support him. My unhappy father, whose entire property is confiscated, suffers at this moment the want almost of every thing. Without clothes, without bread, without a friend to save him from perishing of want, he has not even the resource of the beggar, which still furnishes a little hope, that of being able to appeal to the compassionate, and to present his white hairs to those that might be moved to give him aid: my father, if he is not speedily succoured, will die in his place of concealment, and thus, after snatching him from a violent death, I shall have to sustain the mournful reflection of having betrayed him to one more lingering and painful—that of dying of cold and hunger. Be the judge, citizen general, of the extent of my misfortune, and own that it is worthy of pity. One resource only is left to me. It is to cast myself upon your generosity. I offer you my head, I undertake to go, and to go willingly, to the scaffold, but give immediate succour to my dying father. Below I give you the name of my place of concealment; there I will expect death with pleasure, if I may promise myself that you will be touched with my prayers, and relieve my old and destitute parent." The soldier had no sooner read this letter than he hastened to the asylum of Madame de Rochefoucault, and not only relieved her father, but secretly protected both, and after the ninth Thermidor, procured the restoration of M. de Rochefoucault's property, by a revision of their sen tence. 1. To whom did the daughter of the Duke de Rochefoucault write? 2. What offer did she make to the general ?—and for what object? 3. Was her application successful? 4. What is meant by the ninth Thermidor? LESSON CLXIV.-JUNE THE THIRTEENTH. The Unbeneficed Old Bachelor. MR. SIDNEY was a tall stout gentlemanly man, inclining to threescore, with a composed gravity of countenance and demeanour, a bald head most accurately powdered, and a very graceful bow,-quite the pattern of an elderly man of fashion. His conversation was in excellent keeping with the sedate gravity of his manner,-smooth, dull, common-place, exceedingly safe, and somewhat imposing. He spoke so little, that people really fell into the mistake of imagining that he thought; and the tone of decision with which he would advance some second-hand opinion was well calculated to confirm the mistake. Gravity was certainly his chief characteristic, and yet it was not a clerical gravity either. He had none of the generic marks of his profession. Although perfectly decorous in word and thought, no stranger ever took Mr. Sidney for a clergyman. He never did any duty any where, that ever I heard of, except the agreeable duty of saying grace before THE UNBENEFICED OLD BACHELOR. 237 dinner; and even that was often performed by some lay host, in pure forgetfulness of his guest's ordination. Indeed, but for the direction of his letters, and an eye to a certain long-desired rectory, I am persuaded that the circumstance might have slipped out of his own recollection. His quality of old bachelor was more perceptible. There lurked under all his polish, well covered but not concealed, the quiet selfishness, the little whims, the precise habits, the primness and priggishness, of that disconsolate condition. His man Andrews, for instance, valet, groom, and body-servant abroad, butler, cook, caterer, and major domo at home; tall, portly, powdered, and blackcoated as his master, -and like him in all things but the knowing pigtail, which stuck out horizontally above his shirt-collar, giving a ludicrous dignity to his appearance; -Andrews, who, constant as the dial pointed 9, carried up his chocolate and shaving-water, and regular as "the chimes at midnight" prepared his white-wine whey; who never forgot his gouty shoe in travelling, (once for two days he had a slight touch of that gentlemanly disorder,) and never gave him the newspapers unaired ;-to whom could this jewel of a valet, this matchless piece of clockwork belong, but an old bachelor? And his little dog Viper, unparagoned of terriers, black, sleek, sharp, and shrewish; who would beg and sneeze and fetch and carry like a Christian; eat olives and sweetmeats and mustard; drink coffee and wine and liqueurs ;—who but an old bachelor could have taught Viper his multifarious accomplishments? fond Mr. Sidney was fond of a good dinner-very in fact, a perfect epicure. But if there be such a thing as a ruling passion, the love of whist was his. Cards were not merely the amusement, but the business of his life. I do not mean as a money-making speculation; for he seemed to regard it as far too important and scientific a pursuit to be degraded into an affair of gambling. It had in his eyes all the dignity of a study; an acquirement equally gentlemanly and clerical. It was undoubtedly his test of ability. He had the value of a man of family and a man of the world, for rank, and wealth, and station, and dignities of all sorts. No human being entertained a higher respect for a king, a prince, a prime minister, a duke, a bishop, or a lord. But these were conventional feelings. His genuine and unfeigned veneration was reserved for him who played a good rubber. His circle of acquaintance was pretty large; and on |