sex.

lege friendships were more like the romantic passion of a youth for a lovely girl than an attachment between persons of the same At college, too, his old habit of writing verses grew upon him to such a degree that by the time he was eighteen he had enough poems in his desk for a volume. His youthful poetry was pleasing enough, and generally creditable to him, though the fire and audacity of his later productions do not appear in it. As a specimen, the following lines may be given, written when he was about seventeen, on discovering that a tree that he had planted was dying:

"Young Oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground,
I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine,
That thy dark, waving branches would flourish around,
And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.

"Such, such was my hope when, in infancy's years,

On the land of my fathers I reared thee with pride.
They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,
Thy decay, not the weeds that surround thee can hide."

There was no harm in such mild verses as these, and there was some promise of better things.

On leaving college, he again resided with his mother, whose furious temper age had not subdued. In her paroxysms of anger, she would throw at him the poker and tongs, and not unfrequently he had to fly from the house before her. At the age of nineteen his first volume of verses appeared, entitled :

"Hours of Idleness. A Series of Poems, original and translated. By George Gordon-Lord Byron-a minor. Newark, 1807."

In his long and egotistical preface, he said that this, his first publication, would also be his last, as it was not at all likely that a man of his rank and expectations would pursue literature any farther. The volume had some success, received some praise in the press, and all was going well with it, until the first day of the year 1808, when that number of the "Edinburgh Review" appeared, which contained the celebrated article that stung the poet so cruelly.

"The poesy of this young lord," began the reviewer, "he

longs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit. . . . His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level than if they were so much stagnant water." And so on for three bantering pages, interspersed with specimens of the noble "minor's" stanzas.

This stinging satire, which would have crushed some young writers of verses, fixed Lord Byron in the career of letters. Promptly and vigorously he retorted in his poem, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," in which he sung thus of the editor of the "Edinburgh Review":

"Health to immortal Jeffrey! Once, in name,
England could boast a judge almost the same,
In soul so like, so merciful and just,
Some think that Satan has resigned his trust,
And given the spirit to the world again,
To sentence letters, as he sentenced men.
With hand less mighty, but with heart as black,
With voice as willing to decree the rack;

Bred in the courts, betimes, though all that law
As yet hath taught him is to find a flaw."

He proceeds to say that perhaps, if the whigs come into power, Jeffrey may become a judge, and if so, Jeffries, his predecessor on the bench, might greet him thus, while presenting him with a rope:

This witty poem, in which all the noted authors of Scotland were remorselessly lashed, ran through many editions, and sufficiently consoled the wounded self-love of the young poet. The fame, however, of Lord Byron, dates from his twentyfourth year, when the publication of the first cantos of Childe Harold revealed to England the full splendor of his talents.

"I awoke one morning," said he, "and found myself famous."

Such was his popularity at one time, that ten thousand copies

of one of his poems were sold on the day of its publication at a price equal to nearly ten dollars each. But his errors as a man soon lost him the esteem of his countrymen; he was almost as extravagant as his father, and quite as dissolute, and, like his father, he squandered the fortune of his wife after he had ceased to be a husband to her.

FERNANDO MAGALHAENS.

THIS name, Magalhaens, appears on our maps as Magellan. Every school-boy knows Magellan's Straits and Magellan's Archipelago, so named in honor of their heroic and ill-fated discoverer. They were not so named by himself, however. Good Catholic as he was, he called the passage between Patagonia and Terra del Fuego the Strait of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. But this appellation was more pious than convenient, and, after the tragic death of Magalhaens, navigators called the strait by the name it now bears.

Fernando Magalhaens, a native of Portugal, was a boy about twelve years of age when the news of Columbus' great discovery and safe return reached Oporto, the city of his birth and education. At that time, Portugal, under the rule of an enterprising and fortunate king, was far more powerful and important than she is at present. It was a Portuguese fleet that first found the way to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope; and this led to a great and profitable trade with the Indies, which for many years enabled Portugal to take a leading part in the discovery and exploration of the western world. When Magalhaens came upon the stage of action, the King of Portugal had a numerous fleet, a great revenue, an imposing name, and extensive possessions in Asia. Such was his importance, that the Pope, in deciding rival claims to the newly found lands and islands, gave one-half to Spain and one-half to Portugal.

Magalhaens entered the Portuguese navy at an early age, and served in it with distinction for many years. He was in that famous expedition of the renowned Admiral Albuquerque, which ravaged the coasts of Africa and Asia for five years, and captured an enormous booty. Magalhaens took part in the siege and

sack of Malacca, where Albuquerque took such a quantity of treasure that the king's share, which was one-fifth, amounted to five millions of dollars. In the division of this vast plunder, the leaders of the expedition quarrelled. Magalhaens, conceiving that he was defrauded of his proper share, threw up his commission, and never sailed again under the flag of his native country.

He made his way to the court of Charles V., then the first monarch in Europe, and offered his services to him. He now appears as the enemy of his own king. The great object of desire, on the part of the King of Spain and the King of Portugal, was the possession of the Spice Islands; and it was uncertain to which of those kings the Pope's Bull assigned them. Magalhaens told the ministers of Charles V. that those coveted islands were on the Spanish side of the line fixed by the Pope as the line of division, and offered to reach them by sailing to the west instead of the east. Like Columbus, Cabot, and Frobisher, this Portuguese navigator was fully possessed with the belief that there must be a western passage to Asia; and he took this method to enlist in the cause the avarice of the King of Spain.

Charles V. lent a willing ear to his arguments, and was convinced by them. Five vessels-the smallest sixty, the largest one hundred and thirty tons were placed under his command, and furnished with everything that could conduce to the success of the expedition. The crews of these vessels numbered two hundred and thirty-four, mostly of Spanish birth, and the captains of the ships were all Spanish. I need scarcely remind the reader that there has always been, between the Spanish and the Portuguese, a certain antipathy, the Spaniard being strongly disposed to look down with contempt upon the people of the little kingdom.

August 10th, 1519, Admiral Magalhaens sailed from Seville, and reached the coast of Brazil in the middle of December. He then steered to the south, and, sailing close in shore, looked out anxiously to find a break in the continent which would let him into the great ocean that washed the shores of Asia, and encircled the rich islands of which he was in quest. The broad