the surface of the lake. It was divided into many squares or courts, built with greater or less magnificence, according to the rank of those for whom they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massy stone, joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the building stood from century to century deriding the solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation.

This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but some ancient officers who successively inherited the secrets of the place, was built as if Suspicion herself had dictated the plan. To every room there was an open and secret passage; every square had a communication with the rest, either from the upper stories by private galleries, or by subterranean passages from the lower apartments. Many of the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of monarchs had deposited their treasures. They then closed up the opening with marble, which was never to be removed but in the utmost exigencies of the kingdom; and recorded their accumulations in a book which was itself concealed in a tower not entered but by the emperor, attended by the prince who stood next in succession.

THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS.

HERE the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to know the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skillful to delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can enjoy. They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security. Every art was practiced to make them pleased with their own condition. The sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of public life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord was always raging, and where man preyed upon man.

To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained with songs, the subject of which was the happy valley. Their appetites were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and revelry and merriment was the business of every hour from the dawn of morning to the close of even.

These methods were generally successful; few of the princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full conviction that they had all within their reach that art or nature

could bestow, and pitied those whom fate had excluded from this seat of tranquillity, as the sport of chance and the slave of misery.

Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with each other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who in the twentysixth year of his age began to withdraw himself from their pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He often sat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the dainties that were placed before him; he rose abruptly in the midst of the song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of music. His attendants observed the change, and endeavored to renew his love of pleasure. He neglected their officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the fish playing in the stream, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes.

This singularity of his humor made him much observed. One of the sages, in whose conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him secretly, in hope of discovering the cause of his disquiet. Rasselas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were browsing among the rocks, began to compare their condition with his own.

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What," said he, "makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself: he is hungry and crops. the grass, he is thirsty and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased, he is satisfied and sleeps: he rises again and is hungry; he is again fed and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty, like him; but when thirst and hunger cease I am not at rest: I am, like him, pained with want; but am not, like him, satisfied with fullness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry, that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise can call the lutanist and singer, but the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow more wearisome to-morrow. I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely has

some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy."

his head, and seeing the moon rising, As he passed through the fields, and saw

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After this he lifted up walked toward the palace. the animals around him, Ye,” said he, are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity, for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from which ye are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated: surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments."

With observations like these the prince amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life from consciousness of the delicacy with which he bewailed them. He mingled cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find that his heart was lightened.

WE were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force on the plains of Marathon,* or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.† — Journey to the Hebrides.

* MARATHON. Among the noted battles of ancient times; fought between the Greeks and Persians 490 B. C.

+IONA. One of the western islands of Scotland. Interesting for the ruins of its ancient religious edifices, established by St. Columba 565 A. D.

GOLDSMITH.

1729-1774.

IN the long and brilliant list of writers who have made enduring contributions to English literature there is no dearer name than that of Oliver Goldsmith. He seems the personal friend of all who read his writings, and those who are familiar with the strange, sad story of his life cherish his memory with a tender affection. He was born in Ireland in 1729 and died in 1774, spending most of his life in London, where he enjoyed the friendship of Johnson and other eminent authors. His early career was full of vicissitudes; he sauntered through the first years of manhood with empty pockets and smiling lips, studying medicine by fits and starts, wandering through Europe, winning his bread by the exercise of his musical talents, and at last settling down in London to the miserable lot of a literary hack. But he made friends wherever he went ; that he won and retained the warm friendship of Samuel Johnson, a notoriously selfish man, is proof positive of the strength of his fascinations. He wrote his most famous works almost literally under the pressure of hunger; the manuscript of one of them was sold to discharge an execution, while the officers of the law waited in the author's lodgings. Goldsmith's nature was eminently lovable; there was no bitterness or guile in it; he loved his fellows and was in turn beloved. The qualities of his heart, as well as those of his intellect, are manifest in his writings, and give them the sweetness that the highest intellectual power or culture could not impart. In The Vicar of Wakefield his name will live forever, and, so long as poetry survives, The Traveler and The Deserted Village will be read and admired. His versatility was astonishing; he was a poet, a novelist, an essayist, and an historian, and won fame in each department of effort. Well has it been said of him, that "he touched nothing which he did not adorn."

THE SAGACITY OF THE SPIDER.

Of all the solitary insects I have ever remarked, the spider is the most sagacious, and its actions, to me, who have attentively considered them, seem almost to exceed belief. This insect is formed by nature for a state of war, not only upon other insects, but upon each other. For this state nature seems perfectly well to have formed it. Its head and breast are covered with a strong natural coat of mail, which is impenetrable to the attempts of every other insect, and its belly is enveloped in a soft pliant skin, which eludes the sting even of a wasp. Its legs are terminated by strong claws, not unlike those of the lobster; and their vast length, like spears, serves to keep every assailant at a distance.

Not worse furnished for observation than for an attack or defense, it has several eyes, large, transparent, and covered with a horny substance, which, however, does not impede its vision. Besides this, it is furnished with a forceps above the mouth, which serves to kill or secure the prey already caught in its claws or its net.

Such are the implements of war with which the body is immediately furnished; but its net to entangle the enemy seems to be what

it chiefly trusts to, and what it takes most pains to render as complete as possible. Nature has furnished the body of this little creature with a glutinous liquid, which, proceeding from the lower extremity of the body, it spins into a thread, coarser or finer as it chooses to contract its sphincter.* In order to fix its threads when it begins to weave, it emits a small drop of its liquid against the wall, which, hardening by degrees, serves to hold the thread very firmly. Then receding from the first point, as it recedes the thread lengthens; and when the spider has come to the place where the other end of the thread should be fixed, gathering up with its claws the thread, which would otherwise be too slack, it is stretched tightly, and fixed in the same manner to the wall as before.

In this manner it spins and fixes several threads parallel to each other, which, so to speak, serve as the warp to the intended web. To form the woof, it spins in the same manner its thread, transversely fixing one end to the first thread that was spun, and which is always the strongest of the whole web, and the other to the wall. All these threads, being newly spun, are glutinous, and therefore stick to each other wherever they happen to touch; and in those parts of the web most exposed to be torn our natural artist strengthens them, by doubling the thread sometimes six-fold.

Thus far naturalists have gone in the description of this animal : what follows is the result of my own observation upon that species of insect called the house-spider. I perceived, about four years ago, a large spider in one corner of my room, making its web, and though the maid frequently leveled her fatal broom against the labors of the little animal, I had the good fortune then to prevent its destruction, and, I may say, it more than paid me by the entertainment it afforded.

In three days the web was with incredible diligence completed; nor could I avoid thinking that the insect seemed to exult in its new abode. It frequently traversed it round, and examined the strength of every part of it, retired into its hole, and came out very frequently. The first enemy, however, it had to encounter, was another and a much larger spider, which having no web of its own, and having probably exhausted all its stock in former labors of this kind, came to invade the property of its neighbor. Soon, then, a terrible encounter ensued, in which the invader seemed to have the victory, and the

* SPHINCTER. A muscle that contracts or shuts the mouth of an orifice.