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Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,
In youthfu' bloom, love sparklin' in her e'e,
Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw new gown,
Or deposite her sair-won penny

fee

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

IV.

With joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet,
And each for other's weelfare kindly spiers;
The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnoticed fleet;
Each tells the uncos that he sees and hears;
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;
Anticipation forward points the view:
The mother, wi' her needle and her shears,
Gars auld claes look amaist as well's the new ;
The father mixes a' with admonition due.

V.

Their master's and their mistress's command,
The younkers a' are warned to obey ;
And mind their labours wi' an eydent hand,

And ne'er, though out o' sight, to jauk or play; "And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway!

And mind your duty duly, morn and night! Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, Implore His counsel and assisting might :

They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright."

VI.

But now the supper crowns their simple board,
The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food;
The soupe their only hawkie does afford,

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood;
The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,
To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell,
And aft he's prest, and aft he ca's it guid;

The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell,

How 'twas a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell.

VII.

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace,

The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride;

His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare ; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care,

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And, Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn air.

VIII.

Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays;
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"
That thus they all shall meet in future days:
There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hyinning their Creator's praise.

In such society, yet still more dear;

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.

IX.

Then hameward all take off their sev'ral way:

The youngling cottagers retire to rest ;

The parent pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,
That He who stills the raven's clamorous nest,
And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride,
Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
For them and for their little ones provide;

But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside.

X.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad:
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
"An honest man's the noblest work of God :"

And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,

The cottage leaves the palace far behind; What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load, Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined !

XI.

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent :

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be bless'd with health, and peace, and sweet content.

And, oh, may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile !
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved Isle.

TO THE TEACHER: It will form a good exercise for the pupils to write out the poem in ordinary English with the aid of the following notes.

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As Geography treats of the surface of the earth, so Geology investigates the composition of its crust-the materials of which this crust is composed, their origin and formation. The earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter; but of this enormous mass, only that within a few thousand feet of the surface is accessible to man-that is to say, only the earth's crust or shell.

The materials composing this crust are rocks or minerals of various kinds-as granite, slate, sandstone, marble, coal, chalk, and clay. Some of these rocks occur in regular layers called strata. These stratified rocks, as they are termed, always keep the same relative position; thus chalk is never found below limestone, nor coal below slate. If,

therefore, slate is found near the surface in any part of the country, it would be useless to sink a shaft in order to find coal. The next thing to be remarked about these stratified rocks is, that at one time they must have been soft and plastic, like sand or clay; for we find embedded in them the remains of plants and animals. These remains have become petrified, or hardened into stone, and are known by the name of fossils.

The study of fossils has enabled the geologist to learn much about the past history of our globe. It used to be thought that the world was only a few thousand years old; but it is now almost certain that it existed for millions of

years before man was created. It is found that each system of rocks has its own peculiar fossils; just as in the world at the present time animals and plants are distributed according to soil and climate. In the hard slates of Wales and Cumberland, for example, we find the impressions of shells, seaweed, and shell-fish; whilst in other rocks are the remains of plants and trees; in others, various kinds of strange lizards and numerous animals now extinct; and in rocks more recently formed are the remains of animals nearly allied to those now in existence.

Thus the rocks may be regarded as the catacombs of various races of animals that have successively peopled the earth; or, again, they may be looked upon as the pages of a book on which the Creator has imprinted the records of past ages. As one class of plants is peculiar to the dry plain, and another to the swampy morass-as one family belongs to a temperate, and another to a tropical region-so, from the character of the fossil plants, we are enabled to arrive at some knowledge of the state of the earth when they flourished. In the same manner with animals: each tribe has its locality determined by the character of food and climate adapted to it; each family has its own peculiar structure for running, flying, swimming, plant-eating or flesh-eating, as the case may be; and thus, by observing the structure of the

fossil-animals, we can arrive at certain conclusions respecting the condition of the world at different epochs.

By comparing the fossils found in the various systems of rocks, we find that there has been a gradual progress from lower to higher forms of existence in the course of ages. In the oldest rocks of Great Britain-taking those as the oldest which occupy the lowest position-we find the remains of shell-fish; in those immediately above them traces of fishes with back-bones; next we find remains of reptiles, and then birds; while in the rocks of more recent formation we find species belonging to every existing order of animals except man. The same law holds with respect to fossil vegetation. The seaweeds and mosses of the earlier systems are succeeded by the ferns and firs of a semi-tropical climate in the coal-measures; and these, in turn, give place to the trees and plants of temperate regions in the rocks of a later date.

It thus appears that, during the countless ages that preceded the creation of man, the earth must have undergone great and numberless changes in climate and in the distribution of land and water. In this world of ours there is incessant change, and the solid fabric of the world itself is no exception to the rule. Everywhere, and at all times, the earth is, and always has been, subject to waste and repair,— here wasted and worn down by frosts, rains, rivers and tides, and there built up again by the deposition of the materials thus ground down and washed away.

The rocks thus formed are the stratified rocks, containing fossils, of which we have spoken. Rocks of this kind are also called aqueous rocks, being formed by the agency of water (Lat. aqua, water).

But there is another class of rocks, like granite, which has been formed under the action of fire. It is supposed that the internal parts of the earth are in the state of melted lava, such as pours over the crater of a volcano during an eruption, and that from the Creation this liquid rock has been gradually cooling and becoming solid rock. The mass

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