LAKE LEMAN AND THE ALPS.

CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake
With the wild world I dwelt in is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing

To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved
That I with stern delights should e'er have been so
moved.

It is the hush of night, and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen, Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear Precipitously steep; and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more.

He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;

At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.

There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues,

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven,
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven,
That, in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty, and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

All heaven and earth are still-though not in

sleep,

But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;

And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep :

All heaven and earth are still :-From the high

host

Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast,

All is concenter'd in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

The sky is changed?—and such a change! Oh night,

And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone
cloud,

But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

And this is in the night :-Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,

A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again 'tis black,—and now, the glee

Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his

way,

The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand:
For here, not one, but many, make their play,
And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand,

Flashing and cast around: of all the band,

The brightest through these parted hills hath fork'd

His lightnings,-as if he did understand,

That, in such gaps as desolation work'd,

There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurk'd. . . .

The morn is up again, the dewy morn,

With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contain'd no tomb,-

And glowing into day: we may resume
The march of our existence: and thus I,

Still on thy shores, fair Leman! may find room
And food for meditation, nor pass by

Much that may give us pause, if ponder'd fittingly.

BYRON.

GEORGE STEPHENSON.

TOWARDS the close of the last century a bare-legged herd laddie, about eight years old, might have been seen, in a field at Dewley Burn, a little village not far from Newcastle, amusing himself by making clay engines, with bits of hemlock-stalk for imaginary pipes. The child is father of the man, and in after years that little

Y

fellow became the inventor of the passenger locomotive, and as the founder of the gigantic railway system which now spreads its fibres over the length and breadth, not only of our own country, but of the civilised world, the true hero of the half-century.

The second son of a fireman to one of the colliery engines, who had six children and a wife to support on an income of twelve shillings a week, George Stephenson had to begin work while quite a child. At first he was set to look after a neighbour's cows, and keep them from straying; and afterwards he was promoted to the work of leading horses at the plough, hoeing turnips, and such like, at a salary of fourpence a day. The lad had always been fond of poking about in his father's engine-house; and his great ambition at this time was to become a fireman like his father. And at length, after being employed in various ways about the colliery, he was, at the age of fourteen, appointed his father's assistant at a shilling a day. day. The next year he got a situation as foreman on his own account; and "now," said he, when his wages were advanced to twelve shillings a week-" now I'm a made man for life."

The next step he took was to get the place of "plugman to the same engine that his father attended as fireman, the former post being rather the higher of the two. The business of the plugman is to watch the engine, and see that it works properly-the name being derived from the duty of plugging the tube at the bottom of the shaft, so that the action of the pump should not be interfered with by the