green feet of its slippery stones, and the little Naiad weeps her impoverished urn.

7. Following the stream lower down, we come to a more sheltered and fertile region of the mountain, where pool succeeds pool, clear and deep, in which you can see the fishes lying motionless, or darting away like arrows when your foot shakes the bank or your shadow falls upon the

water.

8. There is now a wide level margin of grass on either side, as smooth as a shaven lawn; and meandering through it, little tributary rills trickle into the stream, their marshy channels edged with rare Alpine rushes, and filled with great spongy cushions of red and green mosses, enlivened by the white blossoms of the starry saxifrage.

9. Another variety of this flower grows everywhere around in large beds richly covered with yellow flowers, dotted with spots of a deeper orange. This lovely species descends to a lower altitude than any of its congeners, and may be called the golden fringe of the richly embroidered floral mantle with which Nature covers the nakedness of the higher hills. It blooms luxuriantly among a whole host of moorland plants, sufficient to engage the untiring interest of the botanist throughout the long summer day.

10. The curious sundew, a vegetable spider, lies in wait among the red elevated moss tufts, to catch the little black flies in the deadly embrace of its viscid leaves; the bog asphodel stands near, with its sword-shaped leaves and golden helmet, like a sentinel guarding the spot; the grass of Parnassus covers the moist greensward with the bright sparkling of its autumn snow; while the cotton-grass waves on every side its downy plumes in the faintest breeze.

11. Down from this flowery region the stream flows with augmented volume, bickering over the shingle with a gay, poppling sound, and leaving creamy wreaths of winking foam between the moss-grown stones that protrude from its bed. It laves the roots of the crimson heather and the palmy leaves of the lady-fern.

gleam upon its open face with "messages from the heavens;" the rainbow arches its waterfalls; the panting lamb comes to cool its parched tongue in its limpid waters; the lean blue heron, with head and bill sunk on its breast, stands motionless in its

shallows watching

for minnows all the long dull afternoon, while the dusky ousel flits from stone to stone in all the fearless play of its happy life.

13. Hurrying swiftly through the brown, heathy wastes that clothe the lower slopes, it lingers a while where the

trembling aspen and the twinkling birch and the rugged alder weave their leafy canopy over it, freckling its bustling waves with ever-varying scintillations of light and shade; pauses to water the crofter's meadow and cornfield, and to supply the wants of a cluster of rude moss-grown huts on its banks, which look as if they had grown naturally ou of the soil; and then, through a beach of snow-white pebbles, it mingles its fretting waters in the blue profound peace of the loch.

14. Such is the bright and varied course of the Alpine stream, with its floral fringe; and from its fountain to its fall it is one continuous, many-linked chain of beauty-an epic of Nature, full of the richest images and the most suggestive poetry.

REV. HUGH MCMILLAN.

LXXVII.—THE OLD CLOCK.

SOME

I.

(OMEWHAT back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.

Across its antique portico

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;
And from its station in the hall

An ancient time-piece says to all:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

II.

Halfway up the stairs it stands,

And points and beckons with its hands

From its case of massive oak,

Like a monk, who, under his cloak,

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!

With sorrowful voice to all who pass:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

III.

By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,
It echoes along the vacant hall,
Along the ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to say, at each chamber-door:
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

IV.

Through days of sorrow and of mirth,
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude

Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood;
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe:
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

V.

In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted hospitality;

His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;

But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning time-piece never ceased:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

VI.

There groups of merry children played;
There youths and maidens, dreaming, strayed.
O precious hours! O golden prime,

And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,

Those hours the ancient time-piece told:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

VII.

From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding-night:
There, in that silent room below,

The dead lay in his shroud of snow,
And in the hush that follow'd prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair:
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

VIII.

All are scattered now and fled,
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
"Ah! when shall they all meet again?"
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient time-piece makes reply:
'Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

IX.

Never here, forever there,

Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death and time shall disappear
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of eternity

Sayeth this incessantly:

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

LXXVIII.-BEAUTIFUL SIGHTS AT SEA.

THE most beautiful thing I have seen at sea-all the

TH

more so that I had never heard of it—is the trail of a shoal of fish through the phosphorescent water. It is like a flight of silver rockets, or the streaming of northern lights through that silent nether heaven. I thought nothing could go beyond that rustling star-foam which was churned up by our ship's bows, or those eddies and disks of dreamy flame that rose and wandered out of sight behind us.