experience of twenty additional years has not shown. me, that there is any necessary connection between a life of toil and a life of wretchedness, but it has rather taught me how possible it is to enjoy much happiness in very mean employments.

"The Old Red Sandstone," by HUGH MILLER.

1. GEOLOGY, the science which treats of the materials of which the crust of the earth is composed, and of the manner in which they are arranged.

2. QUARRY, a place where stones are hewn for building and other purposes.

3. DILUVIAL, a deposit of sand, gravel, &c., overlying other and older deposits.

4. STRATA, plural of stratum, a bed or layer spread out.

5. VERMILION, a bright red colour.

6. RATIO, the relation of one thing to another..

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LORD BYRON.

GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, was born at Dover in 1788, and died at Missolonghi, in Greece, in the year 1824.

Lord Byron inherited his title from his mother, with whom he spent the first years of his life; his father, Captain Byron, having died when the future poet was only three years old. He was afterwards educated at Harrow and Cambridge.

In some respects Lord Byron is one of the greatest of our English poets. The musical rhythm1 of his verse is unsurpassed; but unfortunately, in many of his poems, he has striven to make crime attractive, and vice appear like virtue.

The most justly praised of his numerous works is the "Pilgrimage of Childe Harold," in which, under an assumed name, he describes his impressions of Italy and other foreign countries. The force and delicacy of these descriptions may be judged from the following extract.

1. RHYTHм, the regular recurrence of accented syllables, which gives to poetry its harmonious flow.

THE RUINS OF THE COLISEUM.1

ARCHES on arches ! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies 2 of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
This long explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom

Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of the earth, which Time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling; and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in this ruined battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.

A ruin-yet what a ruin! from its mass,
Walls, palaces, half cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,

And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is neared; It will not bear the brightness of the day Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft

away.

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;

When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night-breeze waves along the air, The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear, Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's 4 head; When the light shines serene, but doth not glare, Then in this magic circle raise the dead: Heroes have trod this spot-'tis on their dust ye

tread. BYRON.

1. COLISEUM, the amphitheatre at Rome, erected by the Emperor Vespasian. At the time of its erection this was the largest building of the kind in the world; hence the name signifying gigantic.

2. TROPHIES, things taken from an enemy, and preserved as memorials of victory.

3. COLOSSAL, gigantic. The word is derived from the Colossus, a gigantic statue of Apollo, which stood at the entrance of the harbour of Rhodes.

4. FIRST CESAR, Julius Cæsar, he twice invaded Britain.

ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll !
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain,
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore ;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments 1 which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,

2

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's 3 pride or spoils of Trafalgar.4

8

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts :—not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play— Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime"

Dark, heaving-boundless, endless, and sublimeThe image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here. BYRON.

1. ARMAMENTS, the guns, &c., with which ships are armed for war; also land forces armed and equipped.

2. OAK LEVIATHANS, large wooden ships. The Leviathan is a large aquatic animal referred to in the Book of Job and other parts of the Bible, supposed to be a whale or crocodile; the word is now applied to anything of great size.

3. ARMADA, a fleet of armed ships; the term is especially applied to the fleet sent by Philip II. of Spain against Queen Elizabeth in 1688, A.D., which was partly destroyed by a tempest before it encountered the English fleet.

4. TRAFALGAR, see page 74.

5. ASSYRIA, the first of the great empires of old, situated west of Asia; capital, Nineveh. The capital and great part of the empire are now waste and ruined, and covered with sand.

6. GREECE, the third of the great empires of old, situated at the south of Europe.

7. ROME, the fourth great empire; it extended over the whole of south and south-west of Europe, and part of Africa and Asia; capital, Rome on the Tiber.

8. CARTHAGE, a powerful state north of Africa, long the rival of Rome. The modern town of Tunis stands on or near the ruins of the ancient Carthage.

9. TORRID CLIME, the north, and 23° south of hottest part of the earth.

torrid zone or tropics, extending 231° the Equator; and is consequently the (Lat. torreo, to burn.)

DUTCH EXPEDITIONS TO THE NORTHERN REGIONS.

PART I.

IN the year 1595, the States-General offered a reward of twenty-five thousand florins to any navigators, who