A SUMMER STORM IN THE PYRENEES.

ROBERT, LORD LYTTON ("Owen Meredith ")-b. 1831.

["Lucile, with all its lightness, remains his best poem as well as the most popular; a really interesting, though sentimental, parlor-novel, written in fluent verse, a kind of production exactly suited to his gifts and limitations. It is quite original, for Lytton adds to an inherited talent* for melodramatic tale-writing a poetical ear, good knowledge of effect, and a taste for social excitement."-E. C. STEDMAN.]

Ascending the mountain they slackened their pace,

And the marvellous prospect each moment changed face.

* Only son of Edward, Lord Lytton (Bulwer Lytton), novelist and poet.

The breezy and pure inspirations of morn

Breathed about them. The scarped ravaged mountains, all worn
By the torrents, whose course they watched faintly meander,
Were alive with the diamonded shy salamander.
They paused o'er the bosom of purple abysses,
And wound through a region of green wildernesses;
The waters went wirbling above and around,
The forests hung heaped in their shadows profound.
Here the Larboust, and there Aventin, Castellon,
Which the Demon of Tempest, descending upon,
Had wasted with fire, and the peaceful Cazeaux
They marked; and far down in the sunshine below,
Half dipped in a valley of airiest blue,

The white happy homes of the village of Oo,
Where the age is yet golden.

And high overhead
The wrecks of the combat of Titans* were spread.
Red granite and quartz, in the alchemic sun,
Fused their splendors of crimson and crystal in one;
And deep in the moss gleamed the delicate shells,
And the dew lingered fresh in the heavy harebells;
The large violet burned; the campanula blue;
And autumn's own flower, the saffron, peered through
The red-berried brambles and thick sassafras ;
And fragrant with thyme was the delicate grass;
And high up, and higher, and highest of all,
The secular phantom of snow!

O'er the wall
Of a gray sunless glen gaping drowsy below,
That aërial spectre, revealed in the glow
Of the great golden dawn, hovers faint on the eye,
And appears to grow in, and grow out of, the sky,
And plays with the fancy, and baffles the sight,
Only reached by the vast rosy ripple of light,
And the storm is abroad in the mountains!

He fills

The crouched hollows and all the oracular hills
With dread voices of power. A roused million or more
Of wild echoes reluctantly rise from their hoar
Immemorial ambush, and roll in the wake

Of the cloud, whose reflection leaves vivid the lake.
And the wind, that wild robber, for plunder descends
From invisible lands, o'er those black mountain ends;

* Titans. In Greek mythology there are two distinct stories of assaults upon heaven, one made by the Titans, the other by the giants, but the myths are often confused. The giants in their assault hurled huge rocks and trunks of trees.

He howls as he hounds down his prey; and his lash
Tears the hair of the timorous wan mountain-ash,
That clings to the rocks, with her garments all torn,
Like a woman in fear; then he blows his hoarse horn,
And is off, the fierce guide of destruction and terror,
Up the desolate heights, 'mid an intricate error
Of mountain and mist.

There is war in the skies!
Lo! the black-winged legions of the tempest arise
O'er those sharp splintered rocks that are gleaming below
In the soft light, so fair and so fatal, as though

Some seraph burned through them, the thunderbolt searching
Which the black cloud unbosomed just now. Lo! the lurching
And shivering pine-trees, like phantoms that seem
To waver above, in the dark; and yon stream,
How it hurries and roars, on its way to the white
And paralyzed lake there, appalled at the sight
Of the things seen in heaven!

Meanwhile

The sun, in his setting, sent up the last smile
Of his power, to baffle the storm. And, behold!
O'er the mountains embattled, his armies, all gold,
Rose and rested; while far up the dim airy crags,
Its artillery silenced, its banners in rags,
The rear of the tempest its sullen retreat
Drew off slowly, receding in silence, to meet

The powers of the night, which, now gathering afar,
Had already sent forward one bright signal star.

PARIS ELECTRICAL EXHIBITION.

(Opened 15th September 1881.)

Lucile (1860).

Our chief interest in the galleries of the building centres in the rooms lighted by the Swan and Edison electric lights respectively. By these inventions the long-sought problem of a subdivided electric light for domestic purposes has been solved. In both of them the light is produced by the heating to whiteness of a fine filament of carbon enclosed in a glass globe from which the air has been exhausted. The Swan lamps give about twelvecandle light each. The Edison lamps are made in two sizes, giving respectively eight and sixteen-candle light. Each is enclosed in a globe about one and a half inches diameter. The lamps are arranged in chandeliers of various ornamental shapes and on brackets like the ordinary gas brackets. They are lighted and extinguished by turning a tap having exactly the appearance

of an ordinary gas tap, the only difference being that in the case of the electric light it is not necessary to strike a match. The light is perfectly soft and steady and does not vitiate the air in any way, and can even now be supplied at a price lower than that charged for gas. The two rooms lighted by Mr. Swan are hung with pictures and tapestry, that the pleasant nature of the light may be appreciated. The rooms lighted by Mr. Edison are filled with the inventions with which his wonderful genius has enriched the world. Mr. Edison is thirty-four years of age. He began life as a newspaper boy,* and in his whole life has had only three months' schooling. In ten years he has invented the phonograph, the electric pen, a system of quadruplex teleg'raphy, the electro-motograph, the carbon transmitter, the carbon relay, a telephone, a fac-simile telegraph, and a perfect system of domestic lighting by electricity, besides countless smaller inventions. Most of these inventions may be seen at work in Mr. Edison's room in the Exhibition. With the enthusiasm of genius, Mr. Edison has been apt to announce the success of his inventions as soon as the solution of his difficulties lay clear before him in his own mind, forgetting, or rather refusing to see, the delays which invariably occur in carrying an idea into practical shape. These delays, being mistaken by the public for failures, exposed Mr. Edison to much obloquy three years ago; but now every promise then made has been more than fulfilled.

We We may conclude this article with an anecdote showing in what a high degree Mr. Edison possesses that "contempt of the impossible" which is the one necessary qualification of an inventor. One day at Menlo Park † he had been showing his phonographs and telephones to a friend, who at last remarked in a kind of despair, "Mr. Edison, you had better invent a machine to talk a hole through a deal board." In a week the machine was complete, and may now be seen in the Exhibition. It consists of a mouth-piece with a diaphragm across it, to the centre of which a light steel rod with a ratchet at the end is attached. On being sung to, the diaphragm and the rod vibrate rapidly, and the ratchet gearing into a little cog-wheel, causes it to revolve. The axle of the cog-wheel carries a minute drill. Many inventors have had as many brilliant ideas; few have

*On the Grand Trunk Railway.

+ Menlo Park, a post village in New Jersey, about twenty-four miles from New York. It is the seat of Mr. Edison's workshops and laboratories.

carried out as many in actual practical form.

The secret of

Mr. Edison's success in this direction may be summed up in his own words: "Whenever, by theory, analogy, and calculation, I have satisfied myself that the result I desire is impossible, I am then sure that I am on the verge of a discovery."

Athenæum (September 10, 1881).

END OF THE WAR OF THE ROSES.

JAMES GAIRDNER (of the Public Record Office, London, England). ["Probably no scholar in England is more thoroughly acquainted with the period of Richard III. than is Mr. Gairdner."-C. K. ADAMS.]

Henry landed at Milford Haven [August 7, 1485], at the farthest extremity of South Wales, where perhaps Richard had least expected him; and so small was the force by which he was accompanied that the news did not at first give the king very much anxiety. He professed great satisfaction that his adversary was now coming to bring matters to the test of battle. The earl, however, was among friends from the moment he landed. Pembroke was his native town, and the inhabitants expressed their willingness to serve his uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, as their natural and immediate lord. The very men whom Richard had placed to keep the country against him at once joined his party, and he passed on to Shrewsbury with little or no opposition. The king's "unsteadfast friendships," on the other hand, were now rapidly working his ruin. His own attorney-general, Morgan Kidwelly, had been in communication with the enemy before he landed. Richard, however, was very naturally suspicious of Lord Stanley, his rival's stepfather, who, though he was steward of the royal household, had asked leave shortly before the invasion to go home and visit his family in Lancashire. This the king granted only on condition that he would send his son George, Lord Strange, to him at Nottingham in his place. Lord Strange was accordingly sent to the king; but when the news arrived of Henry's landing, Richard desired the presence of his father also. Stanley pretended illness-an excuse which could not fail to increase the king's suspicion.

His son at the same time made an attempt to escape, and, being captured, confessed that he himself and his uncle Sir

* Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who became, after the victory of Bosworth, Henry VII.