EVENING TRANQUILLITY.

How still this hour! the mellow sun
Withdraws his western ray,
And, evening's haven almost won,
He leaves the seas of day:
Soft is the twilight reign, and calm,
As o'er autumnal fields of balm
The languid zephyrs stray;
Across the lawn the heifers roam,
The wearied reaper seeks his home.
The laden earth is rich with flowers,
All bathed in crimson light;

While hums the bee 'mid garden bowers
With clustering roses bright;

The woods outshoot their shadows dim; O'er the smooth lake the swallows skim In wild erratic flight;

Moor'd by the marge, the shallop sleeps,
Above its deck the willow weeps.

'Tis sweet, in such an hour as this,
To bend the pensive way,
Scan nature, and partake the bliss
Which charms like hers convey;
No city's bustling noise is near;
And but the little birds you hear,
That chaunt so blithe and gay;
And ask ye whence their mirth began?
Perchance since free, and far from man.

Their little lives are void of care;
From bush to brake they fly,

Filling the rich ambrosial air
Of August's painted sky:

They flit about the fragrant wood;
Elisha's God provides them food,

And hears them when they cry;
For ever blithe and blest are they,
Their sinless course a summer's day.

Yon bending clouds all purpling streak
The mantle of the west;

And tremulously the sunbeams break
On Fentland's mountain crest;

Hill, valley, ocean, sky, and stream
All wear one placid look, and seem

In silent beauty blest;

As if created natures raised

To heaven their choral souls, and praised.

Above yon cottage on the plain

The wreathy smoke ascends; A silent emblem, with the main Of sailing clouds it blends;

Like a departed spirit gone

Up froin low earth to Glory's throne
To mix with sainted friends,
Where, life's probation voyage o'er,

Grief's sail is furl'd for evermore !-DELTA.

SPRINGS AND RIVERS.

THE tops of mountains, in general, abound with cavities and subterraneous caverns, and their pointed summits piercing the clouds, precipitate the water, which, penetrating easily through beds of sand and earth, forms a basin or cavern and issues out at the side of the mountain; many of these springs uniting, form rivulets, and these again, meeting in the plain, form rivers.

The great rivers of Europe are the Danube, the Rhine, the Elbe, the Weser, the Maine, and the Oder, in Germany; the Wolga and the Nieper in Russia; the Rhone, the Garonne, and the Seine, in France; the Thames, the Severn, and the Humber, in England; the Clyde in Scotland; and the Shannon in Ireland.

The rivers of South Britain are thus described :

-From his oozy bed

Old father Thames advanc'd his rev'rend head.
Around his throne the sea-born brothers stood,
Who swell with tributary urns his flood.
First, the fam'd authors of his ancient name,
The winding Isis and the fruitful Tame!
The Kennet swift, for silver eels renown'd,

The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crown'd;
Cole, whose dark streams his flow'ry islands lave;
And chalky Wey that rolls a milky wave:
The blue transparent Vandalis appears;

The gulphy Lee his sedgy tresses rears,

And sullen Mole that hides his diving flood;

And silent Darent stain'd with Danish blood.-POPE.

FILLING UP OF LAKE SUPERIOR.-About a thousand rivers and streams empty themselves into Lake Superior, sweeping in sand, primitive boulder stones, and drift timber, which sometimes accumulate so as to form islands in the estuaries. A lignite formation, indeed, is said to be now in progress similar to that of Bovey, in Devonshire. Within a mile of the shore, the water is about seventy fathoms ; within eight miles, one hundred and thirty-six fathoms ; and the greatest depth of the lake, farther from the shore, is unknown. Lake Erie, from similar causes, is gradually

growing shallower. Long Point, for example, has, in three years, gained no less than three miles on the water.

COLOUR OF RIVERS.-The Rhine, in its course from the Alps to Lake Constance is bluish; after its passage through the green waters of the Lake Constance it is a grass-green; and after repeated mixture with the rivers and streams of the Vorschweitz, Alsace, and the Black Forest, yellowish green. The Main, flowing from the ferruginous rocks and plains of Franconia, acquires a reddish yellow colour; during great degrees of cold it becomes greenish blue, owing to the deposition of the iron ochre; and when, if it is not coloured yellow by long continued rains, it flows onwards with an amber-gray colour. All the rivers of Bavaria, which are formed of waters from lakes and Alpine streams on the Iller, Lech, Iser, and the Inn, are bluish green in winter; in spring, grass-green; in autumn, pale herb

green.

BANKS OF THE RHINE.-In this fine country all are entirely of the opinion of Alcæus, that you cannot plant a better tree than the vine. On every spot of ground or of rock there is a vine; against every house, against every wall, is a vine; every garden is but a little arcade of arbours, formed by vines; every stick, every piece of wood, is a prop for a vine, or contributes to form a trellis. Lend me your walking-stick, men seem to say, to support my vinethe vine will support you, when the stick cannot: lend me your umbrella to prop my vine-the vine will some day shelter you from the wet much better than the frail silk. Every thing here is on the principle of the lever-power, fulcrum, weight: the power is the vine; the fulcrum, any piece of wood; the weight to be moved is dull care. A person who has had experience of the quality of grapes that may be raised in a small hothouse, will be able to judge of the produce of high sunny hills, extended for miles and miles. Does not the Rhine, on whose lovely banks these vines grow, flow into the sea? does not the sea communicate with the Thames, and the Thames with London? yet so detestable is our policy, that we permit our rulers to exclude, by an enormous tax, the sweet liquor that would flow naturally into our glasses.

THE BATHS OF BADEN.-The warm springs, loaded with sulphur and strongly impregnated with carbonic acid gas, issue from beneath a low eminence of limestone, which a few years ago was only bare rock, but is now clothed with artificial groves, and hewn out into romantic walks. Some of the sources belong to the town, others are the pro

perty of private individuals. In certain cutaneous diseases, the waters are specific; but persons who labour under such ailments are very properly compelled to bathe by themselves. The rest of the crowd, consisting principally of cripples from swellings or from contractions of the limbs, rheumatic and gouty patients, and not a few who, though in perfect health, take a strange pleasure in being in such a crowd, use the bath together, males and females mixed promiscuously, and sit, or move slowly about, for an hour or two, up to the neck in the steaming water. The ladies enter and depart by one side, and the gentlemen by another; but in the bath itself there is no separation; nay, politeness requires that a gentleman, when he sees a lady moving, or attempting to move alone, shall offer himself as her support during the aquatic promenade. There is no silence or dulness; everything is talk and joke. There is a gallery above, for the convenience of those who choose to be only spectators of the motley crowd, but it is impossible to hold out long against the heat. The vapours, which are scarcely felt when the whole body is immersed in the water, are intolerable when the body is out of it, and the sulphureous fumes immediately attack the metallic parts of the dress. A very fair and fashionable lady entered the bath one morning. The gentleman who expected her had scarcely taken her hand to lead her round, when her face and neck were observed to grow black and livid. A cry was raised that the lady was suffocating; some of her own sex immediately carried her out to the dressing-room, and speedily returned with a malicious triumph. The lady had painted, and the sulphur had unmasked her. Yet, though there is much idleness and listlessness in Baden, there is much less dissoluteness than in most German watering-places of equal celebrity. The reason is, the vicinity of Vienna. Acquaintances may be made in Baden, but the prosecution of them is reserved to be the amusement of the following winter in the capital.

THE HOT SPRINGS OF ITALY.-May I take the liberty of asking if you have any idea as to the cause of the large quantity of carbonic acid, which you have been so good as to inform us exists in most of the waters in this country?The stranger replied-I certainly have formed an opinion on this subject, which I will willingly state to you. It can, I think, be scarcely doubted that there is a source of volcanic fire at no great distance from the surface in the whole of southern Italy; and this fire acting upon the calcareous rocks of which the Appennines are composed, must con

stantly detach from them carbonic acid, which, rising to the sources of the springs deposited from the waters of the atmosphere, must give them their impregnation, and enable them to dissolve calcareous matter. I need not dwell upon Etna, Vesuvius, or the Lipari islands, to prove that volcanic fires are still in existence; and there can be no doubt that in earlier periods almost the whole of Italy was ravaged by them; even Rome itself, the eternal city, rests upon the craters of extinct volcanoes; and I imagine that the traditional and fabulous record of the destruction made by the conflagration of Phaeton, in the chariot of the sun, and his falling into the Po, had reference to a great and tremendous igneous volcanic eruption, which extended over Italy and ceased only near the Po at the foot of the Alps. Be this as it may, the sources of carbonic acid are numerous, not merely in the Neapolitan, but likewise in the Roman and Tuscan states. The most magnificent waterfall in Europe, that of the Velino near Terni, is partly fed by a stream containing calcareous matter dissolved by carbonic acid; and it deposits marble, which crystallizes, even in the midst of its thundering descent and foam, in the bed in which it falls.Sir Humphry Davy's Last Days of a Philosopher.

ODE TO SUMMER..

SUMMER, embowered in thy rich leafiness!
Flora and bright Pomona weave thy crown,-
And wreathed with flowers is every golden tress
That o'er thy sun-brown'd bosom wantons down;

The silvery stream that gurgles at thy feet,
Chaunts a rich fytte of noontide melody;
The winged people shun the scorching ray,
But where yon branches meet

Full oft their glancing forms flit beauteous by,
And swell the varied lay:

Yes, not a feathered chorister is mute,

Thine is the zenith beauty of the year,

Gardens have still their flowers, orchards have fruit;

Thy varied foliage yet is all unsere,

And rich thou art in many a leafy nook,

Where the pale bard his fever'd head may rest,
Rapt in Elysian rhapsody sublime,

Or o'er some favourite book

Poring, forget, in his secluded nest,

How speeds the fleet-wing'd Time.

Thine is the cloudless day, so long, that night
Seems but a twilight where the evening gray
Mingles with early day-break; carolling light,
The mower leaves his hut, and wends his way