the everworking Energy, which struck open their fountains and poured them down through the valleys? Ask of every region of the earth, from the burning equator to the icy pole, from the rock-bound coast to the plain covered with its luxuriant vegetation; and will you not find on them all the record of the Creator's presence? Ask of the countless tribes of plants and animals ; and shall they not testify to the action of the great Source of Life ? Yes, from every portion, from every department of nature, comes the same voice: everywhere we hear Thy name, O God; everywhere we see Thy love. Creation, in all its depth and height, is the manifestation of Thy Spirit, and without Thee the world were dark and dead. The universe is to us as the burning bush which the Hebrew leader saw: God is ever present in it, for it burns with His glory, and the ground on which we stand is always holy. The bright worlds, the planets. There are two kinds of stars-(1) fixed stars, which are like our sun, shining with their own light; (2) moving stars, like our earth, shining with the light they get from the sun. A hymn of ascription, a hymn ascribing or giving glory to God. Manifestation, the act of making THE GLORY OF GOD IN CREATION. THOU art, O God, the life and light Of all this wondrous world we see When day, with farewell beam, delays Through opening vistas* into heaven, When night, with wings of starry gloom, When youthful Spring around us breathes, Vista, a view as through an avenue of trees. Whose plume, &c. This is in allusion to the peacock, in whose tail are numerous spots like eyes; "plume," feather. Fires divine, heavenly fires; that is, the stars. AMONG THE ICEBERGS. E were twenty days out from Boston, and had miles a day. The schooner had proved herself an excellent seaboat. The coast of Greenland was about ten leagues away, obscured by a cloud. We had not yet, however, sighted the land, but we had made* our first iceberg, we had seen the "midnight sun," and we had come into the endless day. The first iceberg was made the day before we passed the Arctic Circle. The dead white mass broke upon us out of a dense fog, and was mistaken by the lookout* for land when he first caught the sound of breakers beating upon it. It was floating directly in our course, but we had time enough to clear it. Its form was that of an irregular pyramid,* about three hundred feet at its base, and perhaps half as high. Its summit was at first obscured; but at length the mist broke away, disclosing the peak of a glittering spire, around which the white clouds were curling and dancing in the sunlight. There was something very impressive in the stern indifference with which it received the lashings of the sea. The waves threw their liquid arms about it caressingly, but it deigned not even a nod of recognition, and sent them reeling backward, moaning and lamenting. As the fog lifted and rolled itself up like a scroll over the sea to the westward, iceberg after iceberg burst into view, like castles in a fairy tale. It seemed, indeed, as if we had been drawn by some unseen hand into a land of enchantment,* rather than that we had come of our own free will into a region of stern realities, in pursuit of stern purposes;-as if the elves* of the North had, in sportive playfulness, thrown a veil about our eyes, and enticed us to the very "seat eternal of the gods." It would be difficult to imagine a scene more solemnly impressive than that which was disclosed by the sudden change in the clouded atmosphere. From my diary I copy the following brief description of it: MIDNIGHT.-I have just come below, lost in the wondrous beauty of the night. The sea is smooth as glass; not a ripple breaks its dead surface, not a breath of air stirring. The sun hangs close upon the northern horizon; the fog has broken up into light clouds; the icebergs lie thick about us; the dark headlands stand boldly out against the sky; and the clouds and sea and bergs and mountains are bathed in an atmosphere of crimson and gold and purple most singularly beautiful.” In all my former experience in this region of startling novelties, I had never seen anything to equal what I witnessed that night. The air was warm almost as a summer's night at home, and yet there were the icebergs and the bleak mountains, with which the fancy, in this land of green hills and waving forests, can associate nothing but cold repulsiveness. The sky was bright and soft and strangely inspiring as the skies of Italy. The bergs had wholly lost their chilly aspect, and, glittering in the blaze of the brilliant heavens, seemed, in the distance, like masses of burnished metal or solid flame. Nearer at hand they were huge blocks of Parian marble,* inlaid with mammoth gems of pearl and opal. One in particular exhibited the perfection of the grand. Its form was not unlike that of the Coliseum, and it lay so far away that half its height was buried beneath the line of blood-red waters. The sun, slowly rolling along the horizon, passed behind it, and it seemed as if the old Roman ruin had suddenly taken fire. Nothing, indeed, but the pencil of the artist could depict the wonderful richness of this sparkling fragment of Nature. In the shadows of the bergs the water was a rich green, and nothing could be more soft and tender than the gradations of colour made by the sea shoaling on the sloping tongue of a berg close beside us. The tint increased in intensity where the ice overhung the water, and a deep cavern near by exhibited the solid colour of the malachite mingled with the transparency of the emerald; while, in strange contrast, a broad streak of cobalt blue ran diagonally* through its body. The bewitching character of the scene was heightened by a thousand little cascades which leaped into the sea from these floating masses the water being discharged from lakes of melted snow and ice which reposed in quietude far up in the valleys separating the high icy hills of their upper surface. From other bergs large pieces were now and then detachedplunging down into the water with deafening noise, while the slow moving swell of the ocean resounded through their broken archways. I had been watching this scene for hours, lost in reverie* and forgetfulness, when I was brought suddenly to my senses by the master's mate, who came to report, Ice close aboard, sir." We were drifting slowly upon a berg about the height of our topmasts. The boats were quickly lowered to pull us off, and, the schooner once more in safety, I went to bed. Boston, capital of Massachusetts. The lookout, the man at the mast- Pyramid, a structure gradually tapering to a point, each side being triangular. Land of enchantment, an imaginary lan, like that of fairyland, where things are under magical influence. Elves, fairies, wandering spirits. Parian marble, a white marble from Reverie, a dreamy train of thought . HA WALKING ON THE CEILING. AVE you ever thought how it is a fly is able to walk up a smooth pane of glass, or to stand on a ceiling with its head downwards? It is really a won |