Spain-breakers. She married a second time, and Walter Raleigh was the son of her second marriage. To her teaching there is reason to think Raleigh owed that habit of God-fearing and God-loving which he never forgot, whether in the battles of Flanders, in the moments of his greatest discoveries, in the glorious success of his public career, or in the hour of death. She instilled into him that love of truth and that hatred of lying, which afterwards bore fruit abundantly, to the great terror of knaves. She informed him, doubtless, without much argument or showing cause, that to fear God and to honour the queen, to love true men and to knock liars overboard, was about the whole duty of man. She bade him recognise that England was the home of truth and of the purest form of religion, and that in the Pope and the Spanish king were to be found the implacable focs of freedom and goodness, the arch assertors of arbitrary power. She instilled into him that spirit which afterwards made Spaniards tremble when they saw his ship, and fight à l'outrance as against a foe that would not be beaten.

At the age of seventeen, after a short stay at Oxford, Walter Raleigh joined his kinsman, Henry Champernoun, who went with a hundred volunteers to help the French Huguenots against the tyranny of the League; and after serving with distinction in this business, he went as a gentleman volunteer to strike for freedom in Flanders, where the power of Spain was arrayed against the Lowlanders, who were fighting for existence. For ten years he was more or less engaged in soldiering, and then sailed with his half-brother, Humphrey Gilbert, on an expedition of discovery to the far west. The prosecution of the voyage was stopped by an engagement with some Spanish ships, which somewhat crippled the English; and Raleigh returning home, took service with Lord Gray, who was at the time doing his best to govern Ireland in an equitable fashion. Two years' service in Ireland, and then he came to court, whither his fame had preceded him, even before he took off his cloak to allow of the queen passing over the muddy ground.

Queen Elizabeth speedily took him into favour, made him captain of her body-guard, warden of the tin mines of Cornwall, gave him an estate in Ireland close to that of his friend and admirer, Edmund Spenser, the poet, and procured him to be returned as a member to Parliament. It is at his court time that we hear of his extravagance in dress, of his appearing on ordinary days in a white satin pinked vest, close sleeved to the wrist; over the body a brown doublet, finely flowered, and embroidered with pearl. In the feather of his hat a large ruby and pearl drop at the bottom of the sprig, in place of a button; his trunk hose, with his stockings and riband garters fringed at the end, all white, and buff shoes with white riband. After his acquisition of wealth by captures at sea, we hear of his shoes, on grand days, being worth more than £6,000 by reason of the jewels on them; of his suit of armour of solid silver, and of his sword and sword-belt studded all over with diamonds, rubies, and pearls. But Raleigh knew well enough how to dress in different style, and when occasion demanded, he could show, in all the simplicity of steel cuirass and shirt sleeves, his easy fighting trim. Besides, he was not given wholly to vanity while at court. He studied, he wrote, he experimented in chemistry, he planned expeditions for discovering new places across the Atlantic, and he busied himself with his Parliamentary duties. For several years he remained about the queen, but took part, nevertheless, in every attack that was made upon the Spanish power. An expedition fitted out at his cost discovered and attempted to colonise Virginia. The Spanish authority was defied and injured even in its strongest hold, and received, through the exertions of Raleigh and his friends, a check which all the cowardice and folly of James I. could not counteract. In 1588 the Spanish Armada appeared off Devon and Cornwall, and Raleigh joined with Drake in having a fling at the hated foe. He quitted the soft ease of the court, his scholarly pursuits, his chemical studies, his official duties, in order that he might with his own hand make a bloody mark upon the invaders, and help the wind and the waves which fought against them. Increased in worldly wealth, rich in knowledge, and in the favour of the queen, Raleigh fell suddenly into a disgrace, of which the most has been made by his detractors. There are, and there always have been, those whom Tom Hood well callsQuacks, not physicians, in the cure of souls, Who go about to sniff out moral taints, and call the devil over his own coals."

And these people have been busy with this disgrace of Raleigh. He had been guilty of the high indiscretion of falling in love with Miss Throgmorton, one of the queen's maids of honour. The queen hated lovers and love matches, and it was a serious offence in her eyes for one so near to her as Raleigh to run counter to her wishes in this matter. She was furious, and was determined to punish Raleigh. He had at the time a grand project in hand for intercepting the Spanish gold fleet on its return from the river Plate. He took time by the forelock, and hurried off to sea; but fearful lest his doing so should be misunderstood by the lady whom it most concerned, he wrote a note to Cecil, Secretary of State, explaining his conduct-a note which has been variously interpreted, as indicating an intention to forsake Miss Throgmorton, and as avowing an intention not to marry any one else. Which of the interpretations was right, we may judge by the event, for after his return Raleigh honourably married the lady.

Raleigh continued at sea till recalled by Elizabeth, captured the richest prize hitherto brought into an English port, and found on his return the favour of the queen withdrawn, and an order for himself to be sent to the Tower. In the Tower he languished for several months, writing piteous, even fulsome letters, in the hope of regaining his freedom, which was granted in the autumn of the same year. Elizabeth, so long as he did not bring his wife to court, renewed the favour which had been withdrawn. Raleigh resumed his place in Parliament, and strongly advocated the war with Spain. The queen gave him, about this time, the manor of Sherborne, and this he made it his task to cultivate. There, in the happy society of his "dear Bessie," for so he always called her, he lived a quiet life, enjoying rest and ease, and forethinking those projects of enterprise and adventure which were yet to link his name with fame.

His restless spirit could not brook retirement for long together. It drove him forth to prosecute that which had constantly occupied his mind-the search after El Dorado, and the upsetting of the Spanish power.

A strong sense of duty was in him to make him go forth and do this, and he went forth. The cruelties of the Spaniards practised upon the poor natives, their great insatiable avarice and manifold crimes, roused a terrible indignation in Raleigh's breast. He would put a stop to this sort of thing, and perhaps discover El Dorado at the same time. He left his wife and his noble boy, he gave up the sweets of leisure and of home, and off he went upon the ocean again. The quantities of gold found by the Spaniards in Peru and Mexico gave rise to the belief that somewhere there existed a sort of fountain-head of wealth, where gold was to be had for the taking. This inexhaustible well-spring of riches was supposed by Raleigh to be situated in the country now called Venezuela, but then styled Gniana, and subsequent discoveries have proved that he was right to some extent in his supposition. (See Vol. I., page 141.) Raleigh went to Guiana, made friends with the Indians, and won their affection and attachment. He told them of the queen across the sea, whose servant he was, and how she had sent him to deliver them from the cruelty of the Spaniards. In earnest of this he destroyed at Trinidad the town of San José, took the Spanish governor prisoner, and released five caciques, or chiefs, whom that wretch kept fast to one chain, and had their bodies "basted with burning bacon," in order to make them discover their gold. After many months of absence he returned to England, poorer than when he left it, because he would not enrich himself by pillage, as it was the fashion of the time to do. In spite of cold looks from those in office, he persevered in his plans against the Spaniards, and sent out Captain Keymis to succour the Indians of the Orinoco.

There was work cut out for him nearer home. The English council had resolved to burn the Spanish fleet in the harbour of Cadiz, and Lord Essex and Raleigh were sent to do it.

Terrible work there was, for Cadiz was a fortified place, and seemingly calculated by Nature to resist attacks. The Spanish fleet, well armed and manned, was lying under the protection the forts, and on land there was a large body of the best trained troops in the world, ready to oppose any attempt at storming. Raleigh was second in command; but he appears to have planned the attack, and to have undertaken the worst part of the execution of it. An awful fight ensued. "If any man, says Raleigh,“ had a desire to see hell itself, it was there most

lively figured." Amid blood, and smoke, and yells, and hurrahs, and the din of combat between deadly enemies, fifty-seven Spanish ships were burned and sunk, hundreds of men went to their account, and Cadiz was stormed and sacked. Raleigh got a wound in the leg which lamed him for life, and returned to England covered with glory.

The enmity of Spain did not allow of much repose; a second expedition, this time to the Azores, was entrusted to Essex, Raleigh being second. Some disagreement arose in consequence of Raleigh having, when Essex was not forthcoming with his squadron, seized the island of Fayal and carried it, of his own unassisted self. The men had not been friends, and this widened the breach between them. The general result of the expedition was a failure, and Essex tried to put the blame on Raleigh. But his honour was untouched, and for some years he lived a life of magnificence and comparative idleness in

London.

With the death of Elizabeth, a great change took place in the public policy of England; but before that policy could be announced, much less carried out, Raleigh cast about how he might avert it altogether. In concert with a few others, there is reason to think that he engaged in a conspiracy to place on the throne Lady Arabella Stuart, who was, according to the law regulating succession to private property, the rightful heir, instead of James I. The plot was never perhaps seriously entertained by the plotters themselves, and they certainly never took any overt steps towards executing it; but it was nevertheless discovered, and those privy to it, including Lady Arabella, were thrown into prison. Raleigh was tried and condemned upon the most inconclusive evidence, the prosecution being conducted with a vigour, not to say acrimony, most revolting.

The sentence of death was not ordered to be carried out; but was held in terrorem over the prisoner's head for eleven years, during which he was incarcerated in that dungeon which all are shown who visit the Tower of London. "No king but my father," said Prince Henry, the heir-apparent, "would keep such a bird in a cage." In that cage Raleigh wrote his "History of the World," pursued his chemical researches, wrote letters of counsel for Prince Henry, and pondered over projects of future discovery. There too he had the mortification to see the Elizabethan policy towards Spain turned completely backward. The feeble monarch who sat on the English throne was completely under the Spanish influence, even to desiring, above all things, a matrimonial alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta; everything was conceded to Spanish demands, the old English spirit was dead, or seemed to be so, and the glory which had surrounded the brows of Elizabeth was departed.

Vain were the applications for release made by Raleigh and his friends, till the royal cupidity was excited by a golden dream, which the prisoner caused to appear before it. Raleigh succeeded in convincing the court that he had reason to know the whereabouts of El Dorado. His former want of success was not considered any bar, for many others had failed to find the place; besides, it was shown that on his former voyage circumstances had conspired to prevent his reaching the spot he specially sought. The king was induced to grant him liberty to take the command of a new searching expedition; but the sentence of death under which Raleigh lay was not taken away by a pardon. The Spanish ambassador was reassured, when he heard of the intended expedition, by the assurance of the king that no harm was meant to the Spanish possessions beyond sea, and instructions were no doubt given to Sir Walter Raleigh to avoid collision with the Spaniards.

Of course such instructions were as the muzzle to the ox that is treading out the corn; as well forbid the old hunter to prick his ears and get excited at the music of the hounds, as forbid the old Spaniard chaser to interfere when a Spanish prey was in sight. However, there is no warrant for supposing that Raleigh meant to do anything but obey his orders. His squadron sailed, and after meeting with some disasters in the channel, proceeded on its way, and arrived after a long voyage at Guiana and the Orinoco.

a collision took place which resulted in the destruction of St. Thomas and the loss of a number of lives. Raleigh's own son was killed, his faithful friend Captain Keymis committed suicide, and the instructions, which were so particular against interference with the Spaniards, were violated. Raleigh himself and many of his men were ill with fever, some of the company began to murmur, and what for Raleigh was worse than all, gold could not be found. After another effort to discover El Dorado, Raleigh gave the order to return home, weary in spirit at his want of success and at the loss of his son George, sick in body, and his mind presaging something of the storm that was about to break upon him.

When he arrived at Plymouth he found a justification for his fears, for his wife who met him there told him how the Spanish ambassador had demanded satisfaction from the king, and how that James was exceedingly angry. Orders awaited Raleigh to repair immediately to London, and a few miles from Plymouth he was met by Sir Lewis Stucley, who was really commissioned to take him prisoner. Arrived in London, he was sent to the Tower, from which, in conjunction with some of his old companions, he tried to escape; but being betrayed was brought back, and once more lodged in the gloomy fortress.

James had written to the King of Spain-so anxious was he not to forfeit that prince's friendship-offering to put to death the great enemy of Spain, or, if Philip preferred it, he would send him to Spain to be dealt with there. The letter must have made Elizabeth turn in her grave; but the Spaniard wrote back to say "that it would be more agreeable to him that the punishment of Raleigh should take place in England; and as the offence was notorious, that its chastisement should be exemplary and immediate."

Sir Walter was accordingly brought to the bar of the Queen's Bench, not to be tried for what he had now done, but to receive notice that execution was granted under the sentence passed on him fifteen years before. His life, as being "God's high gift," he tried his utmost to guard from scathe and wrong; he used much eloquence to avert the sentence, for his wife and remaining child's sake; but his fate was already determined, and he was ordered to suffer on the morrow.

The last night of his life was spent by the prisoner in a manner according with his antecedents. He wrote a letter to the king, and one to his wife, the latter full of the most tender solicitude for the poor lady's welfare, giving her directions what to do after his death. He wrote, also, some verses on his coming death, and then lay down to rest. Next morning the Dean of Westminster attended him, and found him smoking his favourite tobacco, and partaking of a cup of sack. His demeanour was so calm and regular, that the dean chided him for levity, but afterwards confessed that he had not met a man so well prepared to die. He was quite cheerful in conversation, and seemed to think no more of his execution than if he had been going a journey. His dress was carefully attended to; he would not appear slovenly for the last time. He wore a "handsomely wrought cap, a ruff band, a black wrought velvet night-gown over a hare-coloured satin doublet, and a black wrought waistcoat, black cut taffety breeches, and ash-coloured silk stockings."

From the scaffold he made a speech, in which he quietly explained his conduct, professed his forgiveness of those who had injured him, and asserted his loyalty to the king. Не then called for the axe, and the headsman not bringing it at once, said, "I pray thee let me see it. Dost thou think I am afraid of it?" He tried the edge with his thumb, and said to the sheriff, "It is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." A witness of the scene said, "In all the time he was upon the scaffold, and before, there was not the least alteration in him, either in his voice or countenance, but he seemed as free from all manner of apprehension as if he had come thither rather to be a spectator than a sufferer."

The headsman, when Raleigh had laid his head upon the block, asked him to lay his face towards the east. "It is no great matter which way the head stands so the heart lies right," was the answer; and after a few moments of silent prayer, the signal was given for the stroke. The executioner failed to obey immediately, and the signal being again given, the dying man called out, "Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!" Well might the people say, "We had not such another head to cut off."

persistent; corolla inserted externally to a ring surrounding the base of the ovary, campanulate or imperfectly rotate, occasionally funnel-shaped, its tube ordinarily furnished with tonguelike scales alternating with the stamens; limb five-partite, imbricated in æstivation; stamens to the number of five having their filaments bent inwards during æstivation; anthers introrse; ovary composed of two carpels (Fig. 189).

The Hydrophyllacea are allied to the Polemoniaceae, differing from the plants of this order in the placental conformation. They are farther removed from the Boraginacece, although originally confounded with this natural order in consequence of a certain general resemblance of inflorescence.

This family is exclusively American, where abundant species are found mingled with Polemoniacea in the temperate regions on this

receptacle or upon a fleshy annulus between the calyx and Ovary; stamens inserted upon the tube of the corolla, four, didynamous, occasionally five, the fifth being sterile, occasionally only two; ovary unilocular; placenta parietal; fruit superior or inferior; seed dicotyledonous, containing little or no albumen.

The Gesneracea are herbaceous plants, rarely ligneous, usually possessing a tetragonal ramified stem; leaves generally opposite or verticillate; devoid of stipules, simple and almost always irregular in the length of their sides. The flowers are complete; inflorescence a cyme, corymb, or spike; calyx persistent; corolla tubular, or funnel, shaped, campanulate, or labiate; imbricated in æstivation; stamens with two anthers usually coherent, one or two celled; ovary consists of two carpels, but is unilocular;

190. GERARD'S GESNERA (GESNERA GERARDIANA). 191. VERMILION ESCHINANTHUS (ESCHINANTHUS MINIATUS).

side of the Tropic of Cancer, more especially towards the western coast. Between the tropics they are rare, and also beyond the Tropic of Capricorn. The pretty annuals known as nemophilas, the chief of which are the blue nemophila (Nemophila insignis) and the speckled nemophila (Nemophila maculata), belong to this natural order.

One species, the Canadian hydrophyl (Hydrophyllum Canadense), a hardy herbaceous perennial, is em

ployed in North America as a remedy for the bites of snakes, also for erysipelas caused by the contact of a poisonous North American plant, the sumach (Rhus pumila). Hydrophyllum Virginicum, a species now frequent in botanical gardens, has pinnatisect leaves, and white or blue corolla.

SECTION XLVIII.-GESNERACEE, OR GESNERWORTS. Characteristics: Calyx free, more or less adherent to the Ovary; corolla monopetalous, irregular, inserted upon the

192. MANY-FLOWERED ACHIMENES (ACHIMENES MULTIFLORA). 193. SCARLET MITRARIA (MITRARIA COCCINEA).

placenta parietal, opposed, one being on the right, the other on the left of the axis of the flower. Ovules reflexed; style simple. Fruit a berry or a capsule. Seeds pendent or horizontal (Fig. 190).

The Gesneraceae are, for the most part, inhabitants of the new conti. nent, especially towards the equator. Some are epiphytes attaching themselves to the trunks of trees. A few of this natural order are found in tropical India, especially in the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and on the southern slopes of the Himalaya Mountains.

These two families, although considerable in the number of their species, offer but little of importance in respect of useful properties. Columnea scandens, a little shrub of India, bearing pretty blue flowers, is cultivated in our hot-houses. Many other species of Gesneracea are in favour amongst cultivators; for example, the Eschinanthus miniatus, or vermilion æschinanthus (Fig. 191), and the Chirita Moonii, or Moon's chirita, from Ceylon,

of the former of which a representation is given. The Chirita Sinensis is acaulescent; its radical peduncle is blue or yellow, and divided into two or three pedicels, each bearing a flower. The Chirita Moonii is remarkable for its elevation, its beautiful foliage, and its pale violet corolla ornamented internally with a golden spot.

Mitraria coccinea, or scarlet mitraria (Fig. 193), is a little Chilian shrub, a beautiful spring-blooming plant for the greenhouse. Its stem and boughs are weak and slender, its peduncles opposed and unifloral. Its corolla is of a bright red. The Achimenes multiflora, or many-flowered achimenes (Fig. 192), is a Brazilian species, only introduced into Europe in 1843, remarkable, like all its congeners, for its general elegance of aspect and the long duration of its flowers.

READING AND ELOCUTION.-XXIV.

EXERCISES ON EXPRESSIVE TONE (continued.)

[To be marked for Inflections by the student.]

XV. CAUSES OF WAR.

What are sufficient causes of war let no man say, let no legislator say, until the question of war is directly and inevitably before him. Jurists may be permitted, with comparative safety, to pile tome upon tome of interminable disquisition upon the motivés, reasons, and causes of just and unjust war. Metaphysicians may be suffered with impunity to spin the thread of their speculations until it is attenuated to a cobweb; but for a body created for the government of a great nation, and for the adjustment and protection of its infinitely diversified interests, it is worse than folly to speculate upon the causes of war, until the great question shall be presented for immediate actionuntil they shall hold the united question of cause, motive, and present expediency, in the very palm of their hands. War is a tremendous evil.

Come when it will, unless it shall come in the necessary defence of our national security, or of that honour under whose protection national security reposes, it will come too soon-too soon for our national prosperity-too soon for our individual happiness-too soon for the frugal, industrious, and virtuous habits of our citizens-too soon, perhaps, for our most precious institutions. The man who, for any cause, save the sacred cause of public security, which makes all wars defensive-the man who, for any cause but this, shall promote or compel this final and terrible resort, assumes a responsibility second to none, nay, transcendently deeper and higher than any which man can assume before his fellow-man, or in the presence of God, his Creator.-Binney.

XVI. A CHILD CARRIED AWAY BY AN EAGLE.

The great golden eagle, the pride and the pest of the parish, stooped down, and flew away with something in his talons. One single sudden female shriek, and then shouts and outcries, as if a church spire had tumbled down on a congregation at a sacrament! "Hannah Lamond's bairn Hannah Lamond's bairn!" was the loud, fast-spreading cry. "The eagle's ta'en off Hannah Lamond's bairn!" and many hundred feet were in another instant hurrying towards the mountain. Two miles of hill, and dale, and copse, and shingle, and many intersecting brooks, lay between; but in an incredibly short time the foot of the mountain was alive with people.

The eyrie was well known, and both old birds were visible on the rock-ledge. But who shall scale that dizzy cliff, which Mark Steuart, the sailor, who had been at the storming of many a fort, attempted in vain? All kept gazing, weeping, wringing of hands in vain, rooted to the ground, or running backwards and forwards, like so many ants essaying their new wings in discomfiture. "What's the use-what's the use o' ony puir human means? We have no power but in prayer!" and many knelt down-fathers and mothers thinking of their own babies-as if they would force the deaf heavens to hear!

Hannah Lamond had all this while been sitting on a rock, with a face perfectly white, and eyes like those of a mad person fixed on the eyrie. Nobody had noticed her; for strong as all sympathies with her had been at the swoop of the eagle, they were now swallowed up in the agony of eyesight. Only last sabbath was my sweet wee wean baptized, in the name o' the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" and, on uttering these words, she flew off through the brakes, and over the huge stones, up-up-up, faster than ever huntsman ran in to the death, fearless as a goat playing among the precipices.

No one doubted, no one could doubt, that she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not people who walk in their sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, climbed the walls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the edge of unguarded battlements, and down dilapidated staircases, deep as draw-wells, or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed and unseeing eyes, unharmed to their beds, at midnight? It is all the work of the soul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the agony of a mother's passion, who sees her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her breast, hurried

off by a demon to a hideous death, bear her limbs aloft wherever there is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and, fiercer and more furious far, in the passion of love, than any bird of prey heavy wings would fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her child, that ever bathed its beak in blood, throttle the fiends that with their in deliverance, before the eye of the all-secing God? No stop-no stay; she knew not that she drew her breath. Beneath her feet Providence fastened every loose stone, and to her hands strengthened every root. How was she evor to descend? That fear, then, but once crossed her heart as she went-up-up-up, to the little image made of her own flesh and blood. "The God who holds me now from perishing, will not the same God save me when my child is on my bosom?" Down came the ferce rushing of the eagles' wings

each savage bird dashing close to her head, so that she saw the

yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at once they quailed and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of an ash jutting out of the cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and the Christian mother falling across the eyric, in the midst of bones and blood, clasping her child-dead, dead, dead, no doubt-but unmangled and untorn, and swaddled up, just as it was when she laid it down asleep among the fresh hay, in a nook of the harvest field.

Oh! what a pang of perfect blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint, feeble ory, It lives-it lives-it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loud laughter, and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconscious innocent once more murmuring at the fount of life and love! "O Thou great and thou dreadful God! whither hast thou brought me, one of the most sinful of thy creatures? Oh! save my soul, lest it perish, even for thy own name's sake! O Thou, who diedst to save sinners, have mercy upon me."

Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of old trees-far, far down, and dwindled into specks-a thousand creatures of her own Was that the sound of the kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Is that her native strath ?waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in which stands the cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here And must she die-and, when her breast is exhausted, her baby too! those horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings will return; and her child will be devoured at last, even within the dead bosom that can protect it no longer.

Where, all this while, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half way up the cliffs. But his eye had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart sick; and he who had so often reefed the top-gallant sail, when at midnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights.

"And who will take care of my poor bedridden mother?" thought Hannah, whose soul, through the exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in its grasp that hope which it had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God!” She looked around, expecting to see an angel; but nothing moved except a rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling rock. Her eye, by some secret sympathy of her soul with the inanimate object, watched its fall, and it seemed to stop not far off, on a small platform.

Her child was bound within her bosom-she remembered not how or when-but it was safe; and scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down by brier, and broom, and heather, and dwarf-birch. There a loosened stone leapt over a ledge; and no sound was heard, so profound was its fall. There the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to follow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them, but she felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff.

Steep as the wall of a house was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivy centuries old, long ago dead, and without a single green leaf, but with thousands of arm-thick stems, petri. fied into the rock, and covering it as with a trellis. She bound her baby to her neck, and with hands and feet clung to that fearful ladder. Turning round her head and looking down, lo, the whole population of the parish, so great was the multitude, on their knees! and hush! the voice of psalms! a hymn breathing the spirit of one united prayer! Sad and solemn was the strain, but nothing dirgelike-breathing not of death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that tune-perhaps the very words, but them she heard not-in her own hut, she and her mother, or in the kirk, along with all the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy; and in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to wo saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into a winged creature.

Again her feet touched stones and earth. The psalm was hushed, but a tremulous sobbing voice was close beside her, and lo! a shegoat, with two little kids at her feet. "Wild heights," thought she, "do these creatures climb; but the dam will lead down her kid by the easiest paths, for oh! even in the brute creatures, what is the holy power of a mother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping baby, and for the first time she wept.

Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never touched before