and an enthusiastic passenger begged the captain to stop the vessel until midnight.

66

Why," said the latter, "it is midnight now, or very near it you have Drontheim time, which is almost forty minutes in arrears."

True enough, the real time lacked but five minutes of midnight, and those of us who had sharp eyes and strong imaginations saw the sun make his last dip and rise a little before he vanished in a blaze of glory behind Arnöe. I turned away with my eyes full of dazzling spheres of crimson and gold, which danced before me wherever I looked; and it was a long time before they were blotted out by the semi-oblivion of a daylight sleep.

BAYARD TAYLOR.

Bayard Taylor, an American traveler, writer, and poet, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1825. He was the author of many interesting works descriptive of his travels, as well as of other books in prose and verse. In 1878 he was appointed minister to Germany, and died there on December 19, of the same year.

Ulvsfiord (ulfs'fyôrd).- cliffs: high rocks.- Fugloe (fool'û). — Arnoë (ärn'î). -imperial: royal. — glacier: an immense field or stream of ice. aureole: a circle of light. Drontheim (tròn'yĕm).

arrears: behindhand. — semi-oblivion: half-forgetfulness.

Hohenlinden.

On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow;
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

But Linden saw another sight,
When the drum beat, at dead of night
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.

By torch and trumpet fast arrayed
Each horseman drew his battle-blade,
And furious every charger neighed
To join the dreadful revelry.

Then shook the hills with thunder riven;
Then rushed the steed to battle driven,
And louder than the bolts of Heaven,
Far flashed the red artillery.

But redder yet that light shall glow
On Linden's hills of stainèd snow;
And bloodier yet the torrent flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun,
Shout in their sulph'rous canopy.

The combat deepens. On, ye brave
Who rush to glory, or the grave!
Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry!

Few, few, shall part, where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet

Shall be a soldier's sepulcher.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

Linden: an abbreviation of Hohenlinden, a village of Upper Bavaria, famous for a victory gained there, December 3, 1800, by the French over the Austrians. Iser: a river of Bavaria. - dun : dark-colored. Frank: a Frenchman. Hun : a Hungarian. — sulph'rous canopy: a sulphurous cloud of smoke, rising from the powder used in the battle.

The Destruction of Pompeii.

The cloud, which had scattered so deep a murkiness over the day, had now settled into a solid and impenetrable mass. It resembled less even the thickest gloom

of a night in the open air than the close and blind darkness of some narrow room. But in proportion as the blackness gathered, did the lightnings around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and scorching glare. Nor was their horrible beauty confined to the usual hues of fire; no rainbow ever rivaled their varying and prodigal dyes. Now brightly blue as the most azure depth of a southern sky; now of a livid and snakelike green, darting restlessly to and fro as the folds of an enormous serpent; now of a lurid and intolerable crimson, gushing forth through the columns of smoke, far and wide, and lighting up the whole city from arch to arch, then suddenly dying into a sickly paleness, like the ghost of their own life!

In the pause of the showers, you heard the rumbling of the earth beneath, and the groaning waves of the tortured sea; or lower still, and audible but to the watch of intensest fear, the grinding and hissing murmur of the escaping gases through the chasms of the distant mountain.

Sometimes the cloud appeared to break from its solid mass, and, by the lightning, to assume quaint and vast mimicries of human or of monster shapes, striding across the gloom, hurtling one upon the other, and vanishing swiftly into the turbulent abyss of shade; so that to the eyes and fancies of the affrighted wanderers, the unsub

stantial vapors were as the bodily forms of gigantic foes the agents of terror and of death.

The ashes in many places were already knee-deep; and the boiling showers which came from the steaming breath of the volcano forced their way into the houses, bearing with them a strong and suffocating vapor. In some places immense fragments of rock, hurled upon the house roofs, bore down along the streets masses of confused ruin, which yet more and more, with every hour, obstructed the way; and, as the day advanced, the motion of the earth was more sensibly felt; the footing seemed to slide and creep-nor could chariot or litter be kept steady, even upon the most level ground.

Sometimes the huger stones, striking against one another as they fell, broke into countless fragments, emitting sparks of fire, which caught whatever was combustible within their reach; and along the plains beyond the city the darkness was now terribly relieved, for several houses, and even vineyards, had been set in flames; and at various intervals the fires rose sullenly and fiercely against the solid gloom. To add to this partial relief of the darkness, the citizens had, here and there, in the more public places, such as the porticoes of temples and the entrances to the forum, endeavored to place rows of torches; but these rarely continued long; the showers and the winds extinguished them, and the sudden dark