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tive of violent agitation in their neighbourhood. They are most commonly, and best seen, towards the borders of the visible disc.

Many fanciful notions have been broached upon the subject of the spots; but only one seems to have any degree of physical probability, viz., that they are the dark, or, at least, comparatively dark, solid body of the sun itself, laid bare to our view by those immense fluctuations in the luminous regions of its atmosphere, to which it appears to be subject. When the spots are attentively watched, their situation on the disc of the sun is observed to change. They advance regularly toward its western limb, or border, where they disappear, and are replaced by others which enter at the eastern limb, and which, pursuing their respective courses, in their turn, disappear also at the western.

The apparent rapidity of this movement is not uniform, as it would be were the spots dark bodies passing, by an independent motion of their own, between the earth and the sun, but is swiftest in the middle of their paths across the disc, and very slow at the borders. This is precisely what would be the case, supposing them to appertain to, and make part of, the visible surface of the sun's globe, and to be carried round by a uniform rotation of that globe on its axis, so that each spot should describe a circle parallel to the sun's equator, rendered elliptic by the effect of perspective. Their apparent paths also across the disc conform to this view of their nature, being generally ellipses, much elongated, concentric with the sun's disc, each having one of its chords for its longer axis, and all these axes parallel to each other.

LEIGH HUNT.

LEIGH HUNT, poet and essayist, was born A.D. 1784, and died in 1871. His poetical works are, The Story of Rimini, Captain Sword and Captain Pen, Legend of Florence, a drama, and minor poems published under the title of Foliage, etc. His prose essays were collected in the Indicator and Companion, and he subsequently wrote The Town, The Old Country Suburb, etc.

POETS CONTRASTED.

Ir a young reader should ask, What is the best way of knowing bad poets from good, the best poets from the next best? and so on; the answer is, the only and twofold way; first, the perusal of the best with the greatest attention; and second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty which made them what they are. Every true reader of poetry partakes a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature; and no one can be completely such, who does not love or take an interest in everything that interests the poet, from the firmament to the daisy, from the highest heart of man to the most pitiable of the low. It is a good practice to read pen in hand, marking what is liked or doubted. It rivets the attention, realises the greatest amount of enjoyment, and facilitates reference. It enables the reader also, from time to time, to see what progress he makes with his own mind, and how it grows up to the stature of his exalter.

If the same person should ask, What class of poetry is the highest? I should answer, undoubtedly, the epic; for it includes the drama, with narration besides; or the speaking and action of the characters, with the speaking of the poet himself, whose utmost is taxed to relate all well for so long a time, particularly in the passages least sustained by enthusiasm. Whether this class has included the greatest poet, is another question still under trial; for Shakespeare perplexes all such verdicts, even when the claimant is Homer; though, if a judgment may be drawn from his early narratives, "Venus and Adonis,"

and the "Rape of Lucrece," it is to be doubted whether even Shakespeare could have told a story like Homer, owing to that incessant activity and superfotation of thought, a little less of which might be occasionally desired even in his plays-if it were possible, once possessing anything of his, to wish it away.

Next to Homer and Shakespeare come such narrators as the less universal, but more intense Dante; Milton with his dignified imagination; the universal profoundly simple Chaucer; and luxuriant remote Spenser-immortal child in poetry's most poetic solitudes; then the great second-rate dramatists; unless those who are better acquainted with Greek tragedy than I am, demand a place for them before Chaucer; then the airy, yet robust universality of Ariosto, the hearty out of door nature of Theocritus (also a universalist); the finest lyrical poets, who only take short flights compared with the narrators; the purely contemplative poets who have more thought than feeling; the descriptive, satirical, didactic, epigrammatic.

It is to be borne in mind, however, that the first part of an inferior class may be superior to followers in the train of a higher one, though the superiority is by no means to be taken for granted; otherwise, Pope would be superior to Fletcher, and Butler to Pope.

Imagination, teeming with action and character, makes the greatest poets; feeling and thought the next; fancy (by itself) the next; wit, the last. Thought by itself makes no poet at all; for the mere conclusions of the understanding can at best be only so many intellectual matters of fact. Feeling, even destitute of conscious thought, stands a far better poetical chance; feeling being a sort of thought without the process of thinking—a grasper of the truth without seeing it. And what is very remarkable, feeling seldom makes the blunders that thought does.

An idle distinction has been made between taste and judgment. Taste is the very maker of judgment. Put an artificial fruit in your mouth, or only handle it, and

you will perceive the difference between judging from taste or tact, and judging from the abstract figment called judgment. This latter does but throw you into guesses and doubts. Hence the conceits that astonish us in the gravest and even subtlest thinkers, whose taste is not proportionate to their mental perceptions; men like Dante, for instance, who, apart from accidental personal impressions, seem to look at nothing as it really is, but only as to what may be thought of it. Hence, on the other hand, the delightfulness of those poets who never violate truth of feeling, whether in things real or imaginary; who are always consistent with their object and its requirements; and who run the great round of nature, not to perplex and be perplexed, but to make themselves and us happy. And, luckily, delightfulness is not incompatible with greatness, willing soever as men may be in their present imperfect state to set the power to subjugate above the power to please.

Truth, of any kind whatsoever, makes great writing. This is the reason why such poets as Ariosto, though not writing with a constant detail of thought and feeling like Dante, are justly considered great as well as delightful. Their greatness proves itself by the same truth of nature and sustained power, though in a different way. Their action is not so crowded and weighty; their sphere has more territories less fertile; but it has enchantments of its own which excess of thought would spoil-luxuries, laughing graces, animal spirits; and not to recognise the beauty and greatness of these, treated as they treat them, is simply to be defective in sympathy. Every planet is not Mars or Saturn; there is also Venus and Mercury. Thers is one genius of the south, and another of the north, and others uniting both. The reader who is too thoughtless or too sensitive to like intensity of any sort, and he who is too thoughtful or too dull to like anything but the greatest possible stimulus of reflection or passion, are equally wanting in complexional fitness for a thorough enjoyment of books. Ariosto occasionally says as fine things as Dante, and Spenser as Shakespeare; but the

business of both is to enjoy; and in order to partake their enjoyment to its full extent, you must feel what poetry is in the general as well as in the particular, must be aware that there are different songs of the spheres, some fuller of notes, and others of a sustained delight; and as the former keep you perpetually alive to thought or passion, so from the latter you receive a constant harmonious sense of truth and beauty, more agreeable, perhaps, on the whole, though less exciting.

SIR CHARLES LYELL.

SIR CHARLES LYELL, born A.D. 1797, is the author of Principles of Geology, Elements of Geology, and Travels in North America.

THE EARTHQUAKE AT LISBON.

In no part of the volcanic region of Southern Europe has so tremendous an earthquake occurred in modern times, as that which began on the 1st November, 1755, at Lisbon. A sound of thunder was heard underground, and, immediately after, a violent shock threw down the greater part of the city. In the course of about six minutes 60,000 persons perished. The sea first retired and left the bar dry; it then rolled in, rising fifty feet above its ordinary level. The mountains of Arrabida, Estrella, Julio, Marveno, and Cintra, being some of the highest in Portugal, were shaken, as it were, from their foundations; some of them opened at their summits, which were split and rent in a wonderful manner, and huge masses of them thrown into the subjacent valleys. Flames are related to have issued from these mountains, which are supposed to have been electric. They are also said to have smoked, but vast clouds of dust may have given rise to this appearance.

The most extraordinary circumstance was the subsidence of a new quay, built entirely of marble at immense expense.

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