Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of feeling past away!

Spark of that flame-that flame of heavenly birth-
Which gleams-but warms no more its cherished

earth!

Clime of the unforgotten brave !1
Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was freedom's home or glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven crouching slave,
Say, is not this Thermopyla ??
These waters blue that round you lave,
Oh! servile offspring of the free,
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !2
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame :
For freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,

Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,

The mountains of their native land!
There points thy muse to stranger's eye,
The graves of those that cannot die !—
'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace
Each step from splendour to disgrace;
Enough no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.

"There is, perhaps," says Mr. Payne, "no instance in our poetical literature in which a continued simile, or comparison, is so beautifully sustained as that which runs through these lines." The form is so lovely, but the life has gone! No country had so brilliant a history as that of Greece in olden times: none has so fallen from its high estate. When the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, Greece fell under their power, and had to endure their cruel despotism until 1821, when she rebelled, and at last, with the help of England, France, and Russia, she obtained her independence. Lord Byron, like many other Englishmen, was very earnest in their cause. He devoted the last years of his life to their cause, and died there in 1824.

Lord Byron.

1. Clime of the unforgotten brave. The transition, in these lines, from deep pathos to daring energy is very striking.

2. Thermopylæ, Salamis.-The mere names would be enough to a Greek, without any description. They would recall the most splendid events in their eventful history. At Thermopyla, a vast Persian army was held at bay in a narrow defile by 300 Spartans under Leonidas. Persians having been told of a secret path, surrounded the heroic band, and slew all but one man, 480 B. C. At Salamis the Persian fleet were put to flight by the Athenians under Themistocles, also in 480 B. C.

The

LESSON VIII.

THE NATIONAL GALLERY.1

1. Picture galleries should be the working-man's paradise, a garden of pleasure, to which he goes to refresh his eyes and heart with beautiful shapes and sweet colouring, when they are wearied with dull bricks and mortar, and the ugly colourless things which fill the town, the workshop, and the

factory. For, believe me, there is many a road into our hearts besides our ears and brains; many a sight, and sound, and scent even, of which we have never thought at all, sinks into our memory, and helps to shape our characters.

2. Thus children brought up among beautiful sights and sweet sounds will most likely show the fruits of their nursing, by thoughtfulness, and affection, and nobleness of mind, even by the expression of the countenance. Never lose an oppor

tunity of seeing anything beautiful. Beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank for it Him, the fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in, simply and earnestly, with all your eyes; it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing.

3. Therefore I said that picture galleries should be the townsman's paradise of refreshment. Of course if he can get the real air, the real trees, even for an hour, let him take it. But how many a man who cannot spare time for a daily country walk, may well slip into the National Gallery, or any other collection of pictures, for ten minutes! That garden, at least, flowers as gaily in winter as in summer. Those noble faces on the wall are never disfigured by grief or passion.

4. There, in the space of a single room, the townsman may take his country walk-a walk beneath mountain peaks, blushing sunsets, with broad woodlands spreading out below it; a walk through green meadows, under cool mellow shades, and overhanging rocks, by rushing brooks, where he watches and

watches till he seems to hear the foam whisper, and to see the fishes leap.

5. And his hard-worn heart wanders out free, beyond the grim city-world of stone and iron, smoky chimneys, and roaring wheels, into the world of beautiful things—the world which shall be hereafter-ay, which shall be! Those landscapes, too, painted by loving, wise old Claude, two hundred years ago, are still as fresh as ever. How still the meadows are! how pure and free that vault of deep blue sky!

6. It is delightful to watch in a picture-gallery some street-boy enjoying himself; how first wonder creeps over his rough face, and then a sweeter, more earnest, awe-struck look, till his countenance seems to grow handsomer and nobler on the spot, and drink in and reflect unknowingly the beauty of the picture he is studying.

him a noble story Because he feels as story at which he

7. See how some labourer's face will light up before the painting which tells of bye-gone days. And why? if he himself had share in the looks. They may be noble and glorious men who are painted there; but they are still men of like passions with himself, and his man's heart understands them and glories in them; and he begins, and rightly, to respect himself the more when he finds that he, too, has a fellow-feeling with noble men and noble deeds.

Charles Kingsley (by special permission).

1. National Gallery.-A public collection of pictures purchased by the nation, and for the nation, to be seen in Trafalgar Square, London.

2. Claude. - A very celebrated

landscape painter, born 1600, lived chiefly in Rome, where he died, 1678. Several of his paintings are in the National Gallery.

LESSON IX.

POMPEII.

1. We have just returned from Pompeii. It lies on the southern side of the bay, about twelve miles from Naples, just below the volcano which overwhelmed it. The road lay along the shore, and is lined with villages. The first reached is Portico, where the king has a summer palace, through the court of which the road passes.

2. This village is built over Herculaneum, and the danger of undermining it has stopped the excavations of probably the richest city buried by Vesuvius. We stopped at a little gate in the midst of the village, and, taking a guide and two torches, descended to the only part of it now visible, by near a hundred steps.

3. We found ourselves at the back of an amphitheatre. We entered the narrow passage, and the guide pointed to several of the upper seats for the spectators, which had been partially dug out. They were lined with marble, as the whole amphitheatre appears to have been. To realise the effect of these ruins, it must be remembered that they are embedded in solid lava, like a rock nearly a hundred feet deep, and that a city which is itself ancient is built above them.

4. The carriage in which we came stood high above our heads, in a time-worn street, and ages had passed, and many generations of men had lived and died over a splendid city, whose very name had been forgotten. It was discovered in sinking a well, which struck the door of the amphitheatre.