Those near the horizon move

of which the Pole-star is the centre. in large circles; those higher up, in smaller ones. The Pole-star itself, though not immovable, describes so small a circle that our eyes cannot detect its motion.

The explanation of these curious sights is simple enough. Every point on the earth's surface is describing a circle round the Pole. If, therefore, one were to stand at that centre, he would see everything on the earth moving round him. But the Pole is a point so small, that, if a traveller covered it with his foot, he would, in the course of a day, make a complete revolution round himself. He is quite unconscious that he is turning round, for the same reason that a person, carried rapidly along in a railway carriage, is frequently deceived into the belief that he is at rest and the landscape in motion. Hence the stars, which are really at rest, seem to be moving; and the earth's surface, which, with men and air and everything on it, is actually turning round the Pole, seems to be at rest. But while the earth is thus turning on its axis once in every twenty-four hours, it is also wheeling round the sun once in a year. And the axis is so placed that during our winter the north end lies away from the sun, while during summer it lies toward him. To understand this, place a lighted lamp on a line with the wooden circle that forms the rational horizon of a globe, and at some distance from it. Tilt the globe up, till the North Pole is 67 degrees distant from the side of the horizon on which you have placed the lamp, and you have the relative positions of the sun and poles at our mid-summer. Remove the lamp to the other side of the globe, still keeping it in a line with the rational horizon. The North Pole then lies away from it, or is in shade; and the South Pole, which was formerly in shade, now lies toward the lamp. You have then the relative positions of the sun and poles at our mid-winter. It is, therefore, this lying from or lying toward the sun that, combined with the turning of the earth on its axis, causes the changes described above. At midsummer, the North Pole is 3,000 miles nearer the sun than the South Pole, and at midwinter 3,000 miles further away; but these slight variations of distance have no effect whatever on polar day and night.

THE ICE WORLD.

FAR in the North, what spectacle unknown
Allures the eye to gaze on it alone?

Amidst black rocks, that lift on either hand
Their countless peaks, and mark receding land;
Amidst a tortuous labyrinth of seas,
That shine around the Arctic Cyclades;
Amidst a coast of dreariest continent,
In many a shapeless promontory rent;
O'er rocks, seas, islands, promontories spread,
The Ice-Blink rears its undulated head;
On which the sun, beyond th' horizon shrined,
Hath left his richest garniture behind:
Piled on a hundred arches, ridge by ridge,
O'er fixed and fluid strides the Alpine bridge,
Whose blocks of sapphire seem to mortal eye
Hewn from cerulean quarries of the sky;
With glacier-battlements that crowd the spheres,
The slow creation of six thousand years,
Amidst immensity it towers sublime,—
Winter's eternal palace, built by Time.
All human structures by his touch are borne
Down to the dust; mountains themselves are worn
With his light footstep: here for ever grows,
Amid the region of unmelting snows,
A monument; where every flake that falls
Gives adamantine firmness to the walls.
The sun beholds no mirror, in his race,
That shows a brighter image of his face;
The stars, in their nocturnal vigils, rest
Like signal fires on its illumined crest;
The gliding moon around the ramparts wheels,
And all its magic lights and shades reveals;
Beneath, the tide with idle fury raves
To undermine it through a thousand caves;

Rent from its roof though thundering fragments oft Plunge to the gulf, immovable aloft,

From age to age, in air, o'er sea, on land,

Its turrets heighten and its piers expand.

MONTGOMERY.

THE AURORA BOREALIS.

MIDNIGHT hath told his hour: the moon, yet young,
Hangs in the argent west her bow unstrung;
Larger and fairer, as her lustre fades,

Sparkle the stars amidst the deep'ning shades:
Jewels more rich than night's regalia gem
The distant Ice Blink's spangled diadem ;
Like a new morn from orient darkness, there
Phosphoric splendours kindle in mid air,

As though from heaven's self-op'ning portals came
Legions of spirits in an orb of flame,-
Flame that from every point an arrow sends,
Far as the concave firmament extends:
Spun with the tissue of a million lines,
Glist'ning like gossamer the welkin shines:
The constellations in their pride look pale
Through the quick trembling brilliance of that veil:
Then suddenly converged, the meteors rush
O'er the wide south; one deep vermilion blush
O'erspreads Orion glaring on the flood,

And rabid Sirius foams through fire and blood;
Again the circuit of the pole they range,
Motion and figure every moment change,
Through all the colours of the rainbow run,
Or blaze like wrecks of a dissolving sun;
Wide ether burns with glory, conflict, flight,
And the glad ocean dances in the light.

MONTGOMERY.

THE FIRST ENGLISH VOYAGE TO THE ARCTIC SEAS. IN the month of May 1553, three vessels lay at anchor at Greenwich, ready to set sail on a voyage of discovery to the Northern Seas. So great was the interest excited in the expedition, that the Court, and as it were the nation, assembled to witness its departure. The young king himself (Edward VI.) was confined by illness, but the principal courtiers stood at the palace windows, the rest of the household mounted the towers, while the people lined the shore. The ships fired their guns, and the hardy seamen rent the air with their cheers, as the vessels dropped down the river.

The thought of the distant and unknown seas to which they were bound was either forgotten in the moment of exultation, or served but to heighten the enthusiasm.

The vessels, after stopping a few days at Blackwall, sailed down to Gravesend, and thence to the coast of Essex, where contrary winds, unfortunately, detained them for several days. Then, with a favouring gale, they quitted England and shaped their course for the open expanse of the German Sea. The sailors fixed their eyes on their native land as it gradually receded; and many, unaccustomed to distant voyages, grew sad at the thought that they were looking at it perhaps for the last time.

This was the first English expedition that ever sailed to the Arctic Seas. It was fitted out by the merchants of London, and placed under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby. Its object was to discover a passage by the North to the golden realms of the East.

By the middle of July the expedition had reached the North Cape in Norway, and saw before them the abyss of the Arctic Ocean stretching toward the Pole. Soon afterwards, amid the thick mists of a stormy night, one of the principal ships, commanded by Richard Chancellor, separated from the others, and never rejoined them. Willoughby's ship, however, and the remaining vessel, named the Confidence, continued the voyage.

The imperfect maps of those days seem not to have shown the true line of coast, and Willoughby was astonished at not discover

ing any appearance of a shore. Instead of finding, as he had expected, a continuation of the coasts of Norway, he was plunging deeper and deeper into the Northern Ocean. As he groped his way through these vast and stormy seas, land at length appeared, but it was high, desolate, and covered with snow, while no sound was wafted to him over the waves except the crash of its falling ice, and the hungry roar of its monsters. This was the coast of Nova Zembla; but he found no point at which a landing could be effected.

Turning to the south-west, the expedition at last came in sight of Russian Lapland; and then sailing westward they reached a point where they resolved to spend the winter.

The coast was naked and uninhabited, but yet, as the rigours of the northern winter had already set in, they determined to take up their quarters in the haven they had reached, till the ensuing spring. They were surprised by the appearance of rein-deer, foxes, Polar bears, and "divers beasts to them unknown, and therefore wonderful."

The narrative here closes, and the darkest gloom involves the fate of this first English expedition, for neither the commander nor any of his brave companions ever returned to their native land. After long suspense and anxiety, tidings at last reached home that some Russian sailors, while wandering along those dreary tracts, had been astonished by the view of two large ships, which they entered, and found the gallant crews all lifeless. There was found on board the journal of the voyage, with a note written in January, showing that at that date they were still alive. What was the immediate cause of a catastrophe so dismal and so complete,—whether it was the extremity of cold, of famine, or of disease, or whether all these ills had united at once to assail them,-can now only be a matter of conjecture. Thomson thus pathetically laments their fate :

"Miserable they,

Who, here entangled in the gathering ice,
Take their last look of the descending sun;

While full of death, and fierce with tenfold frost,
The long long night, incumbent o'er their heads,
Falls horrible. Such was the Briton's fate,

As with first prow (what have not Britons dared!)
He for the passage sought, attempted since
So long in vain."