the English princes and nobles; and as it was not yet prostituted by being too common, even the great deemed it an object of ambition to attain a character for literature. The four successive sovereigns, Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth may, on one account or other, be admitted into the class of authors. Queen Catherine Parr translated a book; Lady Jane Gray, considering her age, sex, and station, may be regarded as a prodigy of literature. Sir Thomas Smith was raised from being professor in Cambridge, first to be ambassador to France, then secretary of state. The despatches of those times, and, among others, those of Burleigh himself, are frequently interlarded with quotations from the Greek and Latin classics. Even the ladies of the court valued themselves on knowledge. Lady Burleigh, Lady Bacon, and their two sisters, were mistresses of the ancient as well as modern languages, and placed more pride in their erudition than in their rank and quality.

Queen Elizabeth wrote and translated several books, and she was familiarly acquainted with the Greek as well as the Latin tongue. It is pretended that she made an extemporary reply in Greek to the University of Cambridge, who had addressed her in that language. It is certain that she answered in Latin without premeditation, and in a very spirited manner, to the Polish ambassador, who had been wanting in respect to her. When she had finished she turned about to her courtiers and said, "I have been forced this day to scour up my old Latin that hath long lain rusting." Elizabeth, even after she was queen, did not entirely drop the ambition of appearing as an author; and, next to her desire of ambition for beauty, this seems to have been the chief object of her vanity. She translated Boethius on the Consolation of Philosophy, in order, as she pretended, to allay her grief for Henry the Fourth's change of religion. As far as we can judge from Elizabeth's compositions, we may pronounce that, notwithstanding her application and her excellent parts, her taste in literature was but indifferent. She was much inferior to her successor in this particular, who was himself no perfect model of eloquence.

He that can look with rapture upon the agonies of an unoffending and unresisting animal, will soon learn to view the sufferings of a fellow-creature with indifference; and in time he will acquire the power of viewing them with triumph, if that fellow-creature should become the victim of his resentment, be it just or unjust. But the minds of children are open to impressions of every sort; and, indeed, wonderful is the facility with which a judicious instructor may habituate them to tender emotions. have, therefore, always considered mercy to beings of an inferior species as a virtue which children are very capable of learning, but which is most difficult to be taught if the heart has been once familiarised to spectacles of distress, and has been permitted either to behold the pangs of any living creature with cold insensibility, or to inflict them with wanton barbarity. Dr. Parr.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF

CHAMOUNI.

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !

The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above'
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge. But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought; entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,

I

Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy :
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused
Into the mighty vision passing-there

As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake !
Green vales and icy cliffs all join my hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death-
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jaggéd rocks,
For ever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amidst their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nation

Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds !
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost !
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element !

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise !
Thou too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Off from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depths of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow-travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise,

Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices praises God.

S. T. Coleridge.

No two things differ more than hurry and dispatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one. A weak man in office, like a squirrel in a cage, is labouring eternally, but to no purpose, and in constant motion without getting on a jot; like a turnstile, he is in everybody's way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into everything, but sees into nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are he only burns his fingers.-Colton.

THE INTRODUCTION OF FLOWERS AND FRUIT INTO ENGLAND.

The greater number of our exotic flowers and fruits were carefully conveyed into this country by many of our travelled nobility and gentry. The learned Linacre first brought on his return from Italy the damask rose; and Thomas, Lord Cromwell, in the reign of Henry VIII., enriched our fruit gardens with three different plums. In the reign of Elizabeth, Edward Grindal, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, returning from exile, brought to England the medicinal plant of the tamarisk. The first oranges appear to have been introduced by one of the Carew family, for a century later they still flourished at the family seat at Beddington in Surrey. The cherry orchards of Kent were first planted about Sittingbourne by a gardener of Henry VIII.; and the currant-bush was transplanted when our commerce with the island of Zante was first opened in the same reign. The elder Tradescant, in 1620, entered himself on board a privateer armed against Morocco, solely with the view of finding an opportunity of conveying apricot into England, and it appears that he succeeded in his design. To Sir Walter Raleigh we have not been indebted solely for the tobacco-plant, but for that especially useful root which forms a part of our daily meal, and often the entire meal of the poor man-the potato. Sir Anthony Ashley first planted cabbages in this country, and a cabbage at his feet appears on his monument.

Sir Richard Weston first brought clover-grass into England from Flanders in 1645; and the figs planted by Cardinal Pole at Lambeth so far back as the reign of Henry VIII., are said to be still remaining there. Nor is this surprising, for Spilman, who set up the first paper mill in England at Dartford in 1590, is said to have brought over in his portmanteau the two first lime-trees, which he planted here, and which are still growing. The Lombardy poplar was introduced into England by the earl of Rochford in 1758. The first mulberry-trees planted in England are now standing at Sion House. By an Harleian MS.