Chaucer, whose native manners-painting verse
Well moralised, shines through the Gothic cloud
Of time and language o'er thy genius thrown.

Thomson.

Ex. 48.

Rivers of England.

:

Rivers, arise whether thou be the son
Of utmost Tweed, or Ouze, or gulphy Don,
Or Trent, who like some earth-born giant spreads
His thirsty arms along the indented meads,
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath,
Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death,
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee,

Or coaly Tyne, or ancient hallowed Dee,

Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name,
Or Medway smooth, or royal-tower'd Thame.

Milton.

Ex. 49.

The River Amazon.

This noble stream, which exceeds in magnitude the largest rivers in the Old World, takes its rise from two sources, the one of which is found in the glaciers of Lauricocha (one of the loftiest of the Cordillera range), the second in the summit of Mount Caillonia, in the same lofty chain. Swelled by the tributary streams of the Yupurce and the Rio Negro on the left bank, and by the Yavare, the Yutay, and the Yurna, the Mugua, the Rio de los Capanachuas, and the Pachera, on the right, it flows for a long period through mountain gorges of prodigious depth and surpassing beauty. After emerging from the Andes, it winds in a lazy current through the immense savannahs of South America, and does not reach the ocean till it has run a course of 315 leagues after its junction with the Rio Negro.

From its source to the sea is 1,035 leagues, or 2,700 miles. Its breadth, after it emerges into a plain, is generally from two to three miles, and its depth is seldom less than eighty fathoms. After its junction with the Xuaga, however, its expanse becomes so great that in mid-channel the opposite coasts can hardly be seen, and it flows in a vast estuary, so level that the traces of the tide are seen at the distance of

250 leagues from the sea coast. A vehement struggle ensues

at its mouth between the river flowing down and the tide running up; twice every day they dispute the pre-eminence, and animals equally with men withdraw from the terrible conflict. In the shock of the enormous masses of water, a ridge of surf and foam is raised to the height of 180 feet; the islands in the neighbourhood are shaken by the strife; the fishers, the boatmen, and the alligators withdraw trembling from the shock. At spring-tides, such is the vehemence of this collision, that the opposite waves precipitate themselves on each other like hostile armies; the shores are covered to a great distance on either side with volumes of foam; huge rocks, whirled about like barks, are borne aloft on the surface; and the awful roar, re-echoed from island to island, gives the first warning to the far-distant mariner that he is approaching the shores of South America.

Alison.

Ex. 50.

The Famous Rivers of the World.

And afterwards the famous rivers came,

Which doe the earth enrich and beautifie :

The fertile Nile, which creatures new doth frame;
Long Rhodanus, whose sourse springs from the skie :
Fair Ister, flowing from the mountains hie;

Divine Scamander, purpled yet with blood

Of Greeks and Trojans, which therein did die;

Pactolus glistening with his golden flood;

And Tygris fierce, whose streams of none may be withstood.

Great Ganges, Immortal Euphrates,

Deep Indus, and Mæander intricate,
Slow Peneus, and tempestuous Phasides,
Swift Rhene, and Alpheus, still immaculate,
Ooraxes feared for great Cyrus' fate,
Tybris renowned for the Romaines fame.
Rich Oranochy though but knowen late;
And the huge river which doth bear the name
Of warlike Amazons which doe possess the same.
The noble Thames, with all his goodly traine;
The Ouze whom men doe rightly Isis name;
The bounteous Trent, that in himself ense ames
Both thirty sorts of fish, and thirty streams;
The chaulky Kenet, and the Thetis gay,
The morish Cole, and the soft-sliding Breane,
The wanton Lee that oft doth lose his way,

And the still Darent, in whose waters cleane
Ten thousand fishes play, and deck his pleasant streame.

There was the speedy Tamar, which divides
The Cornish and the Devonish confines;

Through both whose borders, swiftly down it glides,
And meeting Plim, to Plimmouth thence declines :
And Dart, nigh chokt with sands of tinny mines :
But Avon marched in more stately path

Proud of his adamants with which he shines
And glisters wide, as als of wondrous Bath,

And Bristowe faire, which on his waves he builded hath.

And these the Severne followed in state;

And storming Humber, showing much his might;
Next came the Stoure inspiring terroure great,
Bearing his six deformed heads on hight;

And Mole, that like a nousling mole doth make
way still underground, till Thames he overtake.

His

Next these the plenteous Ouze came far from land,
By many a city and by many a towne,

And many rivers taken underhand

Into his waters, as he passeth downe,

The Cle, the Were, the Guant, the Sture, the Rowne
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a crowne
He doth adorne, and is adorned of it

With many a gentle muse, and many a learned wit.

Next these came Tyne, along whose stony bancke
That Romaine monarch built a brazen wall,
Which mote the feebled Britons strongly flancke
Against the Picks, that swarmed over all,
Which yet thereof Gualsever they doe call:
And Twede, the limit betwix Logris' land
And Albany and Eden though but small,
Yet often stainde with bloude of many a band
Of Scots and English both, that tyned on his strand.

:

Spenser.

Ex. 51.

A Wild Night at Sea.

A dark and dreary night; people nestling in their beds or circling late about the fire; want, colder than charity, shivering at the street corners; church towers humming with the faint vibration of their own tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment One!' The earth covered with a

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sable pall as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, their giant plumes of funeral feathers waving sadly to and fro; all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as creeping after them upon the ground, it stops to listen and goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows, like a savage on the trail. Whither go the clouds and winds so eagerly? If like guilty spirits they repair to some dread conference with powers like themselves, in what wild region do the elements hold council, or where unbend in terrible disport? Here ! Free from that cramped prison called earth, and out upon the waste of waters;-here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling all night long. Hither come the sounding voices from the caverns on the coast of that small island, sleeping a thousand miles away so quietly in the midst of angry waves; and hither, to meet them, rush the blasts from unknown desert places of the world. Here, in the fury of their unchecked liberty, they storm and buffet with each other, until the sea, lashed into passion like their own, leaps up in ravings mightier than theirs, and the whole scene is whirling madness. On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space roll the long, heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not; for what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling heap of rushing water, pursuit, and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, and savage struggling, ending in a spouting up of foam that whitens the black night; incessant change of place, and form, and hue; constancy in nothing but eternal strife. On, on, on they roll, and darker grows the night, and louder howl the winds, and more clamorous and fierce become the million voices in the sea, when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm, A ship!' Onward she comes, in gallant combat with the elements, her tall masts trembling, and her timbers starting on the strain; onward she comes, now high upon the curling billows, now low down in the hollows of the sea, as hiding for the moment from its fury; and every storm voice in the air and water cries more loudly yet, 'A ship!' Still she comes striving on; and at her boldness and the spreading cry, the angry waves rise up above each other's hoary heads to look; and round about the vessel, far as the mariners on her decks can pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down, and starting up and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful curiosity. High over her they break, and round her surge and roar, and, giving place to others, moaningly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in their baffled anger. Still she comes onward

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bravely. And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her all the night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights burning in her hull, and people there asleep; as if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seamen's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable depths below.

Dickens.

Ex. 52.

Dangers of the Deep.

'Tis pleasant by the cheerful hearth to hear
Of tempests, and the dangers of the deep,
And pause at times, and feel that we are safe;
Then listen to the perilous tale again,
And, with an eager and suspended soul,
Woo terror to delight us. But to hear
The roaring of the raging elements ;
To know all human skill, all human strength,
Avail not; to look around, and only see
The mountain-wave incumbent, with its weight
Of bursting waters, o'er the reeling bark ;—
Ah, me! this is indeed a dreadful thing :
And he who hath endured the horror once
Of such an hour, doth never hear the storm
Howl round his home but he remembers it,
And thinks upon the suffering mariner.

Ex. 53.

Night Scene on Lake Geneva.
Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake

With the wide world I've dwelt 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,

Southey.

That I with stern delights should ere have been so moved. It is the hush of night; and all between

Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,

Save darkened Jura, whose capped heights appear