until they centered in a nail in the shelf: it passed down the back of the moulding, tore away a hard cement below, threw forward a false back of brick and iron, split the floor on each side of the hearth, rent off splinters two feet in length from the under-floor in the cellar, and went east and west through a stone wall into the earth. The greatest force was exerted in the chambercloset. The point of the umbrella was brass; and just beneath the wire which connects the whalebone, it was burnt off; and the silk, the stick, and the whalebone, were nearly consumed. Several folds in some woollen carpets were burnt, leaving not a vestige for a yard in a place; a fur muff, a cloth coat, and some other articles, were also much injured; a sleeve and part of the waist of the coat were destroyed-while the cotton lining, to which they were stitched, was left whole, and, excepting a small piece, was not even tender from scorching. A black sulphureous smoke arose from the spot, and filled the house. A lady was in the closet, with the door shut, and but a foot distant from the course of the lightning. The sound was dreadful, like cannon, at her ears, and the heat inexpressibly great, as if she were in the midst of flames. She spoke at first of intense light, but all consciousness of that has since passed from her mind. In this terrific and awful situation, she was preserved unhurt, came out immediately, and closed the door. It may be remarked, that she was clothed in cotton, and a roll of carpetting stood between her and the umbrella. Five boards were thrown down, and four rooms were filled with the smell of sulphur, and covered with soot. The electrical fluid entered four closets adjoining the room in the lower story-ran round china cups, plates, &c.raised and dissolved the gilding, or converted it into the purple oxide of gold-and, leaving a dark bluish path next to a nail, where it splintered the partition, escaped through the back of a door to a hinge. In a closet, without paint, it discoloured the wood three inches in width, broke four dishes, and drove out nine nails, four of them from a hinge; in a third, it left an aperture as large as a bullet-hole in the ceiling, split the floor three feet, and tore up four inches, about an inch wide; in a fourth, it overturned, tossed out, and broke large vials of medicines, pill-boxes, wafer-boxes, &c., drove four nails partly out of the hinges, and rent off a piece of the casement. On the top shelf lay several iron articles. It pierced the ceiling in the back room, came down in two branches, and so completely dissipated four cents, weighing about 165 grains, which lay upon a nail in the moulding, that, except a metallic stain on the lead paint of the shelf, not a trace of them remained; they appeared to have flashed away like gunpowder. In the chamber, eight feet from the chimney, it came out over the corner of a looking-glass in three places, the largest like a gimblet-hole-split the backboard of the glass into three parts, melted the gilding, and went off at an opposite corner, in one large place and nine small ones,

through the wall to a window in the room beneath-splintered the casement, by a nail, into five or six small pieces-and killed a rose-bush, which was tied to a nail on the outside of the house. Opposite, and fifteen feet from the chimney, hung a piece of embroidery; three small holes are left in the wall over one corner of it; two-thirds of the top of the frame, which is of mahogany, is split up to a corner, where it appears as if the fluid ran down the back of the glass to a basket wrought with gold thread, and, blackening it, passed off at another corner, through three small places in the wall, and came out in five points, like nailmarks, in the ceiling over a looking-glass in the first story, ran all over the gilding, and went off through the wall by the nails which support the glass. The paint in the chamber was turned of a very dark colour, with a metallic cast; the paper was red and blue; the red, excepting near the floor, has entirely disappeared. There was no lightning-rod on the house.-[Since writing the above, the chimney has been examined. A hole, an inch long, is found in the garret, four feet from the ceiling of the chamber where it came through: no crack or any other frac ture is to be seen. The rending effects of the lightning were not more conspicuous than they often are in similar cases; but the delicate selection made of metallic articles, the manner in which they were affected, and the minuteness of the ramifications of the fluid through the apartments, were very remarkable.]

Poetical Pictures in July.
Morning.

Oh, wake and join the choral lay,

That floats o'er woodland, tree, and bow'r;
Where wild birds flit on ev'ry spray,

And incense rolls from ev'ry flow'r.

The golden beams are far and wide

O'er the green earth and mountains thrown,

Joy sits exulting by their side,

And gladness o'er the earth is sown.
Wake, Lady, wake-the morn is up,
And summer insects round me sing;
The bee is in the honied cup

Of flow'rs, the lark upon the wing.
Fast from the bleached and hoary rock
The sun-lit waters downward urge,
But beauty mingles with the shock,
And forms the rainbow to the surge.
From mountain-top to sunny vale,
The bright earth and the sky above,
All nature tells the same glad tale,

And viewless echo answers-' Love'

1

Wake, Lady, wake-no dreams of thine,
Pure as those visioned scenes must be,
Can paint one picture so divine,

As that I wait to view with thee.

Spirit and Manners of the Age.

An Evening Scene.

[ From the German of Körner. ]

"Tis ev'ning; all is hushed and still: The sun sets bright in ruddy sheen, As here I sit, to muse at will,

Beneath these oaks' umbrageous screen; While wand'ring thoughts my fancy fill

With dreams of life when fresh and green, And visions of the olden time

Revive in all their pomp sublime.

While time hath called the brave away,
And swept the lovely to the tomb,
As yonder bright but fading ray

Is quenched amid the twilight gloom :
Yet ye are kept from all decay,

For still unhurt and fresh ye bloom,
And seem to tell, in whisp'ring breath,
That greatness still survives in death!
And ye survive!-'mid change severe,

Each aged stem but stronger grows,
And not a pilgrim passes here,

But seeks beneath your shade repose.
And if your leaves, when dry and sere,
Fall fast at autumn's wintry close,
Yet ev'ry falling leaf shall bring
Its vernal tribute to the spring.
Thou native oak, thou German tree,
Fit emblem, too, of German worth!
Type of a nation brave and free,

And worthy of their native earth!
Ah! what avails to think on thee,

Or on the times when thou hadst birth?

Thou German race, the noblest aye of all,

Thine oaks still stand, while thou, alas! must fall.

G. F. RICHARDSON.

Sketches in South Africa.
[By T. Pringle, Esq.]

The sultry summer noon is past
And mellow ev'ning comes at last,
With a low and languid breeze
Fanning the mimosa trees,

Which cluster o'er the tangled vale,
And oft perfume the panting gale
With fragrance faint-that seems to tell
Of primrose tufts in Scottish dell,
Peeping forth in tender spring,
When the blithe lark begins to sing.

But soon, 'midst Afric's landscape lone,
Such reminiscences are gone;

Soon we raise the eye to range

O'er prospects wild, grotesque, and strange-
Sterile mountains, rough and steep,

That bound abrupt the valley deep,
Heaving to the clear blue sky
Their ribs of granite, bare and dry;
And ridges, by the torrents worn,
Thinly streaked with scraggy thorn,
Which fringes Nature's savage dress,
Yet scarce relieves her nakedness.
Yet where the vale winds deep below,
The landscape wears a warmer glow;
There the spekboom' spreads its bowers
Of light-green leaves and lilac flowers;
And the bright aloe rears its crest,
Like stately queen for gala drest;
And gorgeous erythrina2 shakes
Its coral tufts above the brakes,
Brilliant as the glancing plumes
Of sugar-birds among its blooms,
With the deep-green verdure blending,
In the stream of light descending.
And now, along the grassy meads,
Where the skipping reebok3 feeds,
Let me through the mazes rove
Of the light acacia grove;
Now, while yet the honey-bee
Hums around the blossomed tree,

Portulacaria Afra.
2 Erythrina Caffra.
3 Antilope cinerea,

And the turtles softly chide
Wooingly on every side,

And the clucking pheasant calls
To his mate at intervals,
And the duiker1 at my tread
Sudden lifts his startled head-
Then dives affrighted in the brake,
Like wild-duck in the reedy lake.

My wonted seat receives me now-
This tall grey cliff with tufted brow,
Tow'ring high o'er grove and stream,
And gilded by the parting gleam.
With shattered rocks loose sprinkled o'er,
Behind ascends the mountain hoar,
Whose crags o'erhang the Bushman's cave,
(His fortress once, but now his grave);
Where the grim satyr-faced baboon2
Sits railing to the rising moon,
Or chiding, with hoarse angry cry,
The herdsman, as he wanders by.

Spread out below in sun and shade,
The shaggy glen lies full displayed,—
Its sheltered nooks, and sylvan bow'rs,
And meadows flushed with purple flow'rs3 :-
And through it, like a dragon spread,
I trace the river's tortuous bed.
And there the Chaldee willow weeps4,
Drooping o'er the dangerous steeps,
Where the torrent in his wrath
Has rifted out a rugged path,-

Like fissure cleft by earthquake's shock
Through mead and jungle, mound and rock:
But the swoll'n water's wasteful sway,

Like tyrant's rage, hath passed away,
Leaving alone, to prove its force,
The ravage of its frantic course.

Now o'er its shrunk and slimy bed

Rank weeds and withered wrack are spread,

The gazelle (Antilope grimmia), called duiker, or diver by the Cape colonists, on account of its peculiar mode of plunging among the bushes when pursued.

2 Simia cynocephalus, or Cercopethecus ursinus.

3 At certain seasons of the year, the grassy meads, or savannahs, along the river banks, are often thickly covered, for miles together, with the flowers of the purple amaryllis, and other splendid bulbous plants. 4 Salix Babylonica.