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sons, residing in a cottage at the celebrated "Notch," a narrow defile of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, was destroyed by an avalanche of earth and water, not one being left to relate the events of that night of terrors. What gives to the event a peculiarly mournful interest, the house from which they had fled, doubtless on the first alarm, was left uninjured amid the surrounding desolation.

LESSON XII.-THE COTTAGE OF THE HILLS.

1. How sweetly 'neath the pale moonlight,
That slumbers on the woodland height,
Yon little cot appears, just seen

Amid the twining evergreen,

That fondly clings around its form.
Poor trembler, I have seen like thee,
Fond woman in her constancy,

E'en when the stormiest hour came on,
Cling closer to the much-loved one,
Nor dream, till every tie was parted,
That all within was hollow-hearted.
2. Yon little cot looks wondrous fair,
And yet no taper-light is there!
Say, whither are its dwellers gone?
Bird of the mountain, thou alone
Saw by the lightning from on high,
The mountain-torrent rushing by;
Beheld, upon its wild wave borne,
The tall pine from the hill-top torn.
Amid its roar, thine ear alone

Heard the shrill shriek-the dying groan-
The prayer that struggled to be free-
Breathed forth in life's last agony!
In vain-no angel form was there-
The wild wave drowned the sufferers' prayer
As down the rocky glen they sped-
The mountain spirits shriek'd and fled!

3. "Twas morning; and the glorious sun
Shone on the work which death had done-
On shattered cliff, and broken branch,

The ruin of the avalanche !

And there lay one, upon whose brow
Age had not shed its wintry snow;

The fragment in whose clenched hand told
How firm on life had been his hold,
While the curled lip, the upturned eye,
Told of a father's agony!

And there beside the torrent's path,

Too pure, too sacred for its wrath,

Lay one, whose arms still closely pressed
An infant to her frozen breast.

The kiss, upon its pale cheek sealed,
A mother's quenchless love revealed.
4. Sire, mother, offspring-all were there,
Not one had 'scaped the conqueror's snare,
Not one was left to weep alone;

The "dwellers of the hill" were gone!
The wild bird, soaring far on high,
Beheld them with averted eye;
The forest prowler, as he pass'd,
Looked down upon the rich repast,
But dared not banquet. "Twas a spell
Which bound them in that lonely dell;
And there they slept so peacefully,
That the lone pilgrim, passing by,
Had deemed them of a brighter sphere,
Condemned a while to linger here,
Whose pure eyes, sickening at the sight
Of sin and sorrow's withering blight,
Had sought, in tears, that silent glen,
And slumbered-ne'er to wake again.
5. And there they found them; stranger hands
Bore them to where yon cottage stands,
And there, one summer evening's close,
They left them to their last repose.
Such the brief page thy story fills,
Thou lonely "cottage of the hills."
E'en while I gaze, night's gloomy shade
Is gathering, as the moonbeams fade.
Around thy walk they faintly play-
They tremble-gleam-then flit away;
They fade-they vanish down the dell:
Lone "cottage of the hills"-farewell!-Anonymous.

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in the elastic crust of the globe, caused by the pressure of the liquid fire, vapor, and gases in its interior. Volcanoes are the chimneys of these internal fires, and when they get vent the earthquake always ceases.

2. It appears, from numerous observations, that the internal heat of the earth gradually increases as we descend below the surface, so that, at the depth of two hundred miles, the hardest substances must be in a state of fusion; but whether our globe is encompassed by a mere stratum of melted lava at that depth, or its whole interior is a ball of liquid fire seventy-six hundred miles in diameter, inclosed in a thin coating of solid matter, men of science are not agreed.

3. Some portions of the earth are much more subject to volcanoes and earthquakes than others. The range of the Andes, from Cape Horn to California, with a cross section embracing the Caribbean Sea, and extending westward quite across the Pacific Ocean, is one vast district of igneous action. A great volcanic chain, beginning at the northeastern extremity of Asia, follows the coast-line around Asia and Af rica, and thence up to the Canaries and the Azores, while a broad belt extends over the Mediterranean and a large part of Central Asia. Northwardly the volcanic fires are developed in Iceland with tremendous force; and the recently discovered antarctic land is an igneous formation of the boldest structure, whence a volcano in high activity rises twelve thousand feet above the perpetual ice of those polar deserts, and within nineteen and a half degrees of the south pole. On an average, twenty volcanic eruptions take place annually in different parts of the world.

4. Volumes might be filled with accounts of the destructive effects of earthquakes and volcanoes. Whole cities, of which Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiæ are examples, have been buried beneath the burning fire of liquid mountains. But where one city has been destroyed by lava, twenty have been shaken down by the rocking and heaving of earthquakes. Prominent on the list of the latter is the city of Antioch, in Asia Minor.

5. "Imagine," says Dr. Hitchcock, "the inhabitants of that great city, crowded with strangers on a festival occasion, suddenly arrested on a calm day by the earth heaving and rocking beneath their feet; and in a few moments two hundred and fifty thousand of them are buried by falling houses, or the earth opening and swallowing them up. Such was the scene which that city presented in the year 526; and several times before and since that period has the like calamity fallen upon it, and twenty, forty, and sixty thousand of its inhabitants have been destroyed at each time. In the year

17 after Christ, no less than thirteen cities of Asia Minor were in like manner overwhelmed in a single night.

6. "Think of the terrible destruction that came upon Lisbon in 1755. The sun had just dissipated the fog in a warm, calm morning, when suddenly the subterranean thundering and heaving began; and in six minutes the city was a heap of ruins, and sixty thousand of the inhabitants were numbered among the dead. Hundreds had crowded upon a new quay surrounded by vessels. In a moment the earth opened beneath them, and the wharf, the vessels, and the crowd went down into its bosom; the gulf closed, the sea rolled over the spot, and no vestige of wharf, vessels, or man ever floated to the surface."

7. One of the most singular effects produced, either by earthquakes or by the gradual pressure of the internal fires and gases, is the occasional raising of the earth's crust to a great extent. In South America, so late as the year 1822, an area of one hundred thousand square miles was raised several feet above its present level. In 1819 a strip in the delta of the Indus, fifty miles in length and less than twenty feet in width, was raised ten feet above the surrounding plain. Along the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, all the rocks and islands for a distance of one hundred miles have been gradually rising during the last hundred years, and in the central portion the elevation already attained is twenty-two feet.

8. Occasionally volcanic islands suddenly appear above the surface of the ocean; and when this is the case, or when an earthquake has its origin beneath the ocean's bed, an immense wave is sometimes driven upon the shore, overwhelming the inhabitants, and bearing their bodies to the ocean in its retreat. The earthquake which destroyed Lisbon in 1755 had its origin in the bed of the Atlantic, whence the shock extended over an area of about seven hundred thousand square miles, or a twelfth part of the circumference of the globe.

9. It was by an enormous wave, occasioned by an earthquake that had its origin in the bed of the Mediterranean, that the little maritime town of Scylla, on the coast of Naples, was destroyed in 1783. The waters passed with impetuosity over the shore of Scylla, and, in their retreat to the bosom of the deep, swept away four thousand human beings who had thought to find safety in the barrenness of the sands. This catastrophe is vividly portrayed in the following lines:

10.

DESTRUCTION OF SCYLLA IN 1783.

Calmly the night came down
O'er Scylla's shatter'd walls;
How desolate that silent town!
How tenantless the halls

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Where yesterday her thousands trode,
And princes graced their proud abode!
Low, on the wet sea-sand,

Humbled in anguish now,

The despot,* midst his menial band,
Bent down his kingly brow-
Ay, prince and peasant knelt in prayer,
For grief had made them equal there.
Again!-as at the morn,

The earthquake rolled its car;
Lowly the castle-towers were borne,
That mock'd the storms of war.
The mountain reel'd--its shiver'd brow
Went down among the waves below.

Up rose the kneelers then,

As the wave's rush was heard:
The silence of those fated men

Was broken by no word.

But closer still the mother press'd
The infant to her faithful breast.

One long, wild shriek went up,
Full mighty in despair;

As bow'd to drink death's bitter cup
The thousands gather'd there;

And man's strong wail, and woman's cry,
Blent as the waters hurried by.

On swept the whelming sea;

The mountains felt its shock,

As the long cry of agony

Thrill'd through their towers of rock;
And echo round that fatal shore

The death-wail of the sufferers bore.

The morning sun shed forth

Its light upon the scene,

Where tower and palace strewed the earth

With wrecks of what had been;

But of the thousands who were gone,

No trace was left-no vestige shown.-Anonymous.

LESSON XIV. THE OCEAN: ITS MORAL GRANDEUR.

"THE sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies."

1. There are two widely different aspects in which the ocean may be viewed. It may be regarded as an object of moral grandeur-"the symbol of a drear Immensity"-a Voice that sometimes "speaketh in thunders" to awe the world; a Power, terrible in its wrath, but lovely in repose; or it may be viewed as the great highway of commerce, and as a vast store-house of wealth: the laws which govern its tides, its waves, and its currents may be presented as objects of scientific regard, and the mysteries of its depths as

* The Prince of Scylla perished with his vassals.

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