that ignoble mob of firemen, engineers, waiters, and crew rushed for the boats, and abandoned the helpless women, children, and men to the mercy of the deep. Four hours there were from the catastrophe of the collision to the catastrophe of sinking!

9. O, what a burial was here! Not as when one is borne from his home, among weeping throngs, and gently carried to the green fields, and laid peacefully beneath the turf and the flowers. No priest stood to pronounce the burial-service. It was an ocean grave. The mists alone shrouded the burial-place. No spade prepared the grave, nor sexton filled up the hollowed earth. Down, down they sank; and the quick returning waters smoothed out every ripple, and left the sea as placid as before.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.

And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hands: and there was hiding in his power.

Before him went the pestilence and burning coals went forth at his feet. He stood and measured the earth; he beheld and drove the nations asunder; and the everlasting mountains were scattered and the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting. -Bible.

No man ever sailed over exactly the same route that another sailed over before him. Every man who starts on the ocean of life arches his sails to an untried breeze. Like Coleridge's Mariner, "He is the first that ever burst into that lonely sea." WILLIAM MATTHEWS.

XXX. PROCRASTINATION.

EDWARD YOUNG (1681-1765), until almost fifty years of age, made an unsuccessful effort to gain a fortune in public service. When he finally gave up this work he entered the service of the church. His one noted work is The Night Thoughts. It is in blank verse, and contains the meditations of nine nights. It is a work of little literary merit, but many expressions in it have become household sayings.

1. Be wise to-day. 'Tis madness to defer: Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.

2. Procrastination is the thief of time:

Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment, leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 't is so frequent, this is stranger still.

3. Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears The palm, that all men are about to live, Forever on the brink of being born.

4. All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel; and their pride,
On this reversion, takes up ready praise,
At least, their own: their future selves applaud.

How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodged in their own hands is folly's vails;
That lodged in fate's, to wisdom they consign:
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.

5. 'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool;

And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage: when young, indeed,
In full content, we sometimes nobly rest
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.

6. At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve:
In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

EDWARD YOUNG.

I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy, for within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with his native sea.

-Wordsworth.

XXXI. THE ALHAMBRA BY MOONLIGHT.*

WASHINGTON IRVING.

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) was born in New York city. He was the youngest son of William Irving, merchant, who had emigrated to America some twenty years before. His school education was not protracted beyond his sixteenth year, when he began to study law, but his literary training was acquired by the study at home of the older English writers. Early in 1807, in connection with his two brothers, he commenced the amusing serial, Salmagundi, which had an immediate success and decided his future career, determining the character of his writings. He finished his legal studies and was admitted to the bar, but never practiced the profession. In 1817 the commercial house in which Irving was a partner failed, and he was thrown upon his pen for subsistence. His masterpiece in historical composition is the History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which was published in 1828. He passed the closing years of his life at Sunnyside, on the Hudson. Washington Irving was never married; an early bereavement was mourned by him through life, and the memory of his betrothed was present on his death-bed. His style made him the most popular of American authors, though his literary activity was exercised in England rather than in America.

1. I HAVE given a picture of my apartment on my first taking possession of it: a few evenings have produced a thorough change in the scene and in my feelings. The moon, which then was invisible, has gradually gained upon the nights, and now rolls in full splendor above the towers, pouring a flood of tempered light into every court and hall. The garden beneath my window is gently lighted up; the orange and citron

*The palace or castle called the Alhambra consists of the remains of a very extensive and ancient pile of buildings in Spain, erected by the Moors when they were rulers of the country.

trees are tipped with silver; the fountain sparkles in the moonbeams; and even the blush of the rose is faintly visible.

2. I have sat for hours at my window inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the checkered features of those whose history is dimly shadowed out in the elegant memorials around. Sometimes I have issued forth at midnight, when everything was quiet, and have wandered over the whole building. Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate, and in such a place!

3. The temperature of an Andalusian midnight in summer is perfectly ethereal. We seem lifted up into a purer atmosphere; there is a serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame, that render mere existence enjoyment. The effect of moonlight, too, on the Alhambra, has something like enchantment. Every rent and chasm of time, every moldering tint and weather stain, disappears; the marble resumes its original whiteness; the long colonnades brighten in the moonbeams; the halls are illuminated with a softened radiance, until the whole edifice reminds one of the enchanted palace of an Arabian tale.

4. At such a time I have ascended to the little pavilion called the queen's toilet, to enjoy its varied and extensive prospect. To the right, the snowy summits of the Sierra Nevada would gleam, like silver clouds, against the darker firmament, and all the outlines of the mountain would be softened, yet delicately defined. My delight, however, would be to lean over the parapet of the Tecador, and gaze down upon Granada, spread out like a map below me: all buried in deep repose, and its white palaces and convents sleeping, as it were, in the moonshine.

5. Sometimes I would hear the faint sounds of castanets from some party of dancers lingering in the Alameda; at other