themselves were the varying dimensions of the valleys that remained between them. You would expect to see these ocean plains enjoying, as it were, a moment of repose, but during the hurricane's frenzy this was not the case. The waters had lost for a moment the onward motion of the billows, but they were far from being at rest. They preserved the green hues and foamy scarfs of the mighty insurgents that had passed over them.

The angry aspect which they presented to the eye that gazed, almost vertically, upon their boiling eddies, wheeling about in swift currents, with surface glowing and hissing as if in contact with heated iron, all this showed that their depths were not unvisited by the tempest, but that its spirit had descended beneath the billows to heave them up presently in all the rushing, convulsive violence of the general commotion. Both mountain and plain of the infuriated waters were covered with the white foam of the water against which the winds first struck, and which, from high points, was lifted up into spray; but in all other places, was hurled along with the intense rapidity of its motion, until the whole prospect, on the lee side of the ship, seemed one field of drifting snow, dashed along furiously to its dark borders by the howling storm.

In the meantime our ship gathered herself up into the compactness and buoyancy of a duck, and -except the feathers that had been plucked from her

she

wings before she had time to fold her pinions rode out the storm without damage, and in triumph. It was not the least remarkable, and by far the most comfortable circumstance in this combination of all that is grand and terrible, that, furious as were the winds, towering and threatening as were the billows, our glorious bark preserved her equilibrium against the fury of the one, and her buoyancy in despite of the alternate precipice and avalanche of the other.

True it is, she was made to whistle through her cordage, to creak and moan through all her timbers, even to her masts. True it is, she was made to plunge and rear, to tremble and reel and stagger; still she continued to scale the watery mountain, and ride on its very summit, until, as it rolled onward from beneath her, she descended gently on her pathway, ready to triumph again and again over each succeeding wave. At such a moment it was a matter of profound deliberation which most to admire — the majesty of God exhibited in the winds and waves, or his goodness and wisdom in enabling his creatures to contend with and overcome the elements even in the fierceness of their anger!

To cast one's eyes abroad in the scene that surrounds me, and to think man should have said to himself, "I will build myself an ark in the midst of you, and ye shall not prevent my passage-nay, ye indomitable waves shall bear me up; and ye winds

shall waft me onward"! And yet there we were in the fullness of this fearful experiment !

I had never believed it possible for a vessel to encounter such a hurricane without being dashed or torn to pieces, at least in all her masts and rigging; for I am persuaded that had the same tempest passed as furiously over a town, during the same length of time, it would have left scarcely a house standing. The yielding character of the element in which the vessel is launched is the great secret of safety on such occasions. Hence, when gales occur on the wide ocean there is but little danger; but when they drive you upon breakers on a lee shore, then it is impossible to escape shipwreck.

ARCHBISHOP JOHN HUGHES.

THE BIRD LET LOOSE

The bird let loose in Eastern skies,
When hastening fondly home,

Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies
Where idle warblers roam.

But high she shoots through air and light,

Above all low delay,

Where nothing earthly bounds her flight,

Nor shadows dim her way.

So grant me, God, from every care
And stain of passion free,

Aloft, through virtue's purer air,
To hold my course to Thee!
No sin to cloud- no lure to stay
My soul as home she springs;
Thy sunshine on her joyful way,
Thy freedom in her wings!

-THOMAS MOORE.

WONDERFUL INVENTIONS

I will first tell of the wonderful works of art and nature, that I may afterwards assign the causes and manner of them, in which there is nothing magical, that it may be seen that all magic power is inferior to these works, and worthless. And first for the quality and reason of art alone.

For instruments of navigation can be made without men as rowers, so that the largest ships, river and ocean, may be borne on, with the guidance of one man, with greater speed than if full of men.

Also carriages can be made so that without an animal they may be moved with incalculable speed; as we may assume the scythed chariots to have been with which battles were fought in ancient times.

Also instruments for flying can be made, so that a man may sit in the middle of the instrument, revolving some contrivance by which wings artificially constructed may beat the air, in the manner of a bird flying.

Also an instrument small in size for the elevation and depression of weights almost infinitely, than which nothing more useful could chance; for by an instrument three fingers high, and the same breadth, and a less volume, a man can snatch himself and his friends from all danger of prison, both to elevate and descend.

An instrument can also be easily made by which one man can forcibly draw a thousand to him, despite their will; and so of drawing other things. Instruments can also be made for walking in the sea or rivers, down to the bottom, without bodily peril. For Alexander the Great used these that he might view the secrets of the ocean, according to what Ethicus the astronomer narrates.

These things were done in ancient times, and are done in our own, as is certain, unless it may be the instrument for flying, which I have not seen, nor do I know any man who has seen; but I know that the wise man who planned this device completed it. And such things can be made almost infinitely, as bridges across rivers without pillars or any other support, and machines, and unheard-of devices.

-ROGER BACON (A.D. 1250).