in Mandeville, an English traveler, born about 1300, who wrote travels full of extravagant stories. Ferdinand Mendez Pinto uguese traveler, who wrote a marvelous account of his adventures Japan, etc. He died in 1583. e meaning of "posthumous" (post'ū-mus), when applied to the Id, writing, fame. — Find out something about Ulysses, and someut the Red Cross Knight. CXXV.-SKIPPER BEN. LUCY LARCOM. LARCOM, an American writer, born at Beverly Farms in Massachu1826, has won the attention of a wide circle of appreciative readers. says: "Her ballads have the true flavor and feeling of the breezy -land sea-coast." SAILING away! osing the breath of the shores in May, ropping down from the beautiful bay, ver the sea slope vast and gray! nd the skipper's eyes with a mist are blind; or a vision comes on the rising wind f a gentle face that he leaves behind, _nd a heart that throbs through the fog bank dim, Thinking of him again shall he walk at ease his blossoming apple trees, whisper and sway to the sunset breeze, the soft eyes float where the sea-gulls skim, Gazing with him. How they went down - was known in the still old town: the mad billows with hunger white, within hail of the beacon light, shone on a woman sweet and trim, Waiting for him. Beverly bells to the tide as it ebbs and swells! se tides with the dull years come and go, orain, etc. (5), is connected with "Pierces the memory," etc. lliteration in stanza 6; also one in stanza 7. (Alliteration is ʼn element of beauty in English speech. Such expressions as main," "time and tide," "wake and watch," are examples. should not seem studied or far-fetched.) 1. Ir is a strange thing how little, in g know about the sky. It is the part o which nature has done more for the sak man, more for the sole and evident purp to him and teaching him, than in any works; and it is just the part in wh attend to her. 2. There are not many of her other w some more material or essential purpose t pleasing of man is not answered by every organization; but every essential purpos might, so far as we know, be answered three days or thereabouts, a great, ugl cloud were brought up over the blue, a well watered, and so all left blue again with perhaps a film of morning and eve dew. 3. And, instead of this, there is not any day of our lives when nature is n scene after scene, picture after picture glory, and working still upon such exqui stant principles of the most perfect bea quite certain that it is all done for us, for our perpetual pleasure. And every placed, however far from other sources. of beauty, has this doing for him consta 4. The noblest scenes of the earth can known but by few; it is not intended tha ys in the midst of them: he injures them by nce; he ceases to feel them if he be always n. But the sky is for all; bright as it is, it Eoo bright or good for human nature's daily is fitted, in all its functions, for the perpetual nd exalting of the heart; for soothing it, and it from its dross and dust. etimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes ver the same for two moments together, almost its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, vine in its infinity, its appeal to what is imus is as distinct, as its ministry of chastiseof blessing to what is mortal, is essential. yet we never attend to it; we never make ect of thought, but as it has to do with our nsations; we look upon all by which it speaks re clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears o the intention of the Supreme that we are more from the covering vault than the light lew which we share with the weed and the ly as a succession of meaningless and monotidents, too common and too vain to be worthy ment of watchfulness or a glance of admi in our moments of utter idleness and insipidurn to the sky as a last resource, which of mena do we speak of? One says it has been another it has been windy, and another it warm. Who can tell me of the forms and ices of the chain of tall white mountains that e horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the unbeam that came out of the south, and smote ir summits, until they melted and moldered |