Before him, like a blood red flag,
The bright Flamingos flew :
From morn till night, he followed their
flight

O'er plains where the tamarind grew,
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,
And the ocean rise to view.

At night, he heard the lion roar,

And the hyæna scream,

And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds

Beside some hidden stream.

And it passed like a glorious roll of drums,

Through the triumph of his dream.

The forest, with their myriad tongues,
Shouted of liberty.

And the blasts of the desert cried aloud,
With a voice so wild and free,
That he started in his sleep, and smiled
At their tempestuous glee.

He did not feel the driver's whip,
Nor the burning heat of day,
For Death had illumined the Land of
Sleep,

And his lifeless body lay

A worn out fetter, that the soul
Had broken and thrown away.

I have chosen to give specimens of Longfellow's short poems in preference to extracts from his larger works, such as Hyperion, Evangeline, or the " Golden Legend." To criticise those more enlarged efforts of his thought, would require more space than can be afforded. I can only say, if I attempted this more ambitious task, I should be unable to pass such unqualified praise on his lengthy as I have done on his shorter poems.

But through the whole of his writings there is the same healthy feeling, the same steadfastness, the same resolve to struggle, and the same patient endurance. He says in his earnest poem "The light of the Stars"

And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art
That readest this brief psalm,

As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.

Oh, fear not, in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long-
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.

Any one who has not done his best feels, after reading Longfellow, gets fresh energy to work more sturdily. And if he has done his best, he re-anchors his faith in the rectitude of the universe, and walks on his way manfully. Longfellow is, in fact, the laureate of Hope, Faith, and Labour.

I love him because there is a charm about every thing he writes. He tinges with beauty the stern angularities of life. I love him because he cheers me in my daily labour; because he drops elysian balm in the cup of my existence; I love him because he teaches me self-reliance, because he inculcates duty, because he assists me to fix my gaze on the "Jura heights" of human destiny, and because he braces my energies with a strong purpose.J. P. E

THE STORY OF THE STARLIGHT.

IN TWO PARTS -PART I.

Night on the earth pour'd darkness; on the sea,
The wakesome sailor to Orion's star
And Helicè* turned heedful. Sunk to rest,
The traveller forgot his toil; his charge
The sentinel; her death-devoted babe,
The mother's painless breast. The village dog
Had ceased his troublous bay. Each busy tumult
Was hush'd at that dread hour; and darkness slept,
Lock'd in the arms of silence."-Argonautics.

WHO is there but loves the starlight, and would know some thing of its history? From the infant lisping

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are,

tne grey-headed patriarch standing at the brink of the grave, the starlight is a thing of beauty, of silence, and of mystery. When Palinurus of the Trojan fleet fell into the sea; when the boy Thales wandered in reveries; when the Arabs were guided through the desert; and the old mariners found beacons of light above them when darkness brooded on the sea, the story of the starlight was being told by sages, and the simple hearts of men were listening. Hence the story of the starlight form d

* Ursa Major.

the grandest feature of the old religions; hence the thinkers of all ages have looked upon the starry depths with eyes of wonder; and the modern time, cherishing the spirit of past ages, but eschewing its abortive aims, has sought to penetrate the mystery; and filled with awe and astonishment while receiving the revelations of the sky, in the place of predictive power and the priestly craft of astrology and augury, has laboured for a solid foundation for its philosophy, and a field of truthful inquiry for the legitimate exercise of its powers.

To a casual observer, the sky on a cloudless night, when the moon is absent, appears studded with innumerable stars, differing respectively in lustre, but scattered most irregularly over the whole of the black hemisphere. So richly sprinkled, and so indefinitely arranged do they appear, that it would seem equally impossible to arrange and classify, as to count them; yet, as regards the stars visible to the eyes only, the one is as easy as the other, However startling may be the statement, it is nevertheless true, that 1,000 stars is the utmost which may be counted in our hemisphere; and including both hemispheres, that is, the half of the heaven above us, and the half below, a keen experienced gazer will not be able to detect more than 3,000. The eye is bewildered by their twinkling and scattered appearance, and hence the delusion, as to their countless numbers. All the stars visible from the earth have been grouped into arbitrary forms of men, women, and brute creatures, and these groupings are termed constellations; each of the stars composing which has a name or number by which it may be referred to and recognised. Thus the heavens have localities and divisions of place, and we can as easily and definitely refer to such a star or such a constellation, as we can speak of villages, and cities, and countries on the earth. By this grouping and classification, astronomers are enabled to communicate the results of their observations in such definite and unmistakeable forms, that if any particular phenomenon be affirmed of any particular star, that identical star may be found on the instant by any other observer, and the statement verified or contradicted. Therefore, in telling the story of the starlight, we are making a narrative of those results which have been obtained by the unwearied watchings of men in times past and present; we are grouping together the facts and details of separate inquiries and observations, with the view of deducing a general outline of all the starry wonders by which we are surrounded, in such a way as to afford at least a glimpse of the constitution of the universe.

It may be premised, that, by reason of the earths suspension

in empty space, and constant motion from west to east upon its own centre, the heavenly bodies, which in reality are placed widely apart and at different distances from each other and from us, appear all to be projected on the surface of a great sphere of which we occupy the centre, and this great sphere, in consequence of our motion to the east, appears to be continually revolving to the west. Thus the stars rise in the east, pass over our meridian, and set in the west; those which are above us during the day being hidden by the daylight, and while at night the whole arch is studded with them, those in the west are constantly passing below the horizon out of view, while new ones are coming into view above the horizon of the east. If, in the absence of the moon, the heavens be attentively observed, some of the bodies will be seen to burn with a steady and unchanging lustre, and to be entirely exempt from the twinkling and blinking to which the others, however brilliant, are subject. This steady burning of the one and twinkling of the other marks the difference between the planet and the star, and is dependent upon another important distinction between them. The stars are situated in remote space, the planets are connected with the solar system, of which our earth is a member. The stars, although of enormous magnitude, and vastly superior to the planets in measurement, are yet so far from us as to appear to the eye only as points; they have no diameter, no breadth; whereas, the planets, being comparatively near, present a measurable surface, which can be detected with suitable instruments. Hence, the fluctuations in the density and purity of the atmosphere cause the apparent places of the stars to be continually changing; and hence the star itself is seen to twinkle. The planet having a breadth of surface which the eye can measure, suffers no such change of place, and burns steadily. So far one distinction between them. There is another: the planets shine with a borrowed light, deriving their light, in the same manner as our moon, from the sun. The stars shine by a light inherent in themselves and in constitution hold a parallel with our own sun.

It is of the stars, as thus distinguished from the planets, that we have especially to speak; and we have faith in the reader for an acceptance of the wonderful truths which modern astronomy enables us to unfold concerning them. To the eye alone the stars have different degrees of-lustre and apparent magnitude; and are, as already stated, easily recognised, grouped, and counted. But the moment we call the aid of the telescope, their numbers increase, and, with each augmentation of telescopic power, they come trooping forth from the darkness of

remote space in such myriads as to be not only countless, but most suitably compared to the sands upon the sea-shore. Thus, the old catalogue of Ptolemy enumerates only 35 stars in the constellation Ursa Major, or the Great Bear; while that of Bode, formed with the aid of the telescope, includes 338. Ptolemy assigns to Orion 38; Bode, 304; and this does not include the stars of lowest magnitude, which are sprinkled about the heavens with such richness as to have obtained the name of star-dust. The little cluster Presepe, which the ancients considered a compound of three stars, Galileo, with his imperfect telescope, discovered to be a congress of 36. The Pleiades appear to the eye to consist of six or seven stars, Rhieta, with the help of the telescope, counted 118. Within the square of Orion, the eye can only discern 22 stars, but the telescope discovers above 2,000; and in the Milky Way-the gleaming path of stars, which the Romans termed Via Lactea, and which Milton describes as 66 a broad and ample road, whose dust is gold, and pavement stars,"-as many as 250,000 stars have been counted in a zone only two degrees in breadth, which passed over the telescope in a single hour. The constitution of this belt is that of a succession of clusters of stars, so densely packed, and placed at such an immense distance, as to present the appearance of a broad belt of blended and hazy light. In fact, the telescope multiplies them without end, as points of light, scattered throughout space in limitless profusion: every point being, in all probability, a sun, attended with a train of habitable worlds, where the riches of creation may be unfolded in shapes unknown to us, and where beauty, thought, and intelligence may dwell.

So far, the general appearance of the heavens, as to the profusion of their starry wealth. It is one of the daring achievements of science, however, not content with general and vague appearances, to fathom that abyss from which the starlight comes, and thus acquire a knowledge of its wonderful details. What is the distance of a star? It is a bold question, and one which, however perplexing, may yet be answered! The astronomer, aware of the fact that the orbit, or yearly course of the earth, measures, from one side to the other, 186,000000 of miles, takes note of the position of a certain star, in this case, the star 61 in the right wing of the Swan. Night after night, he watches that star, and measures its apparent place or position in the heavens, at least sixteen times between sunset and sunrise. Six months after the first observation, the earth has gained the opposite side of her orbit, and is 186,000000 of miles distant from the spot where she was six months before.