before you on the table would not permit you to trace more definitely than I now could the streets, the highways, basins, wharves, and squares of the town. The hum of the city arose to my ear, as from a vast beehive; and I seemed the monarch bee, directing the swarm.

I heard the rattling of carriages, the hearty yo-heavos! of sailors from the docks that, begirt with spars, hemmed the city round. I was a spectator of all, yet aloof and alone. Increasing stillness attended my way; and at last the murmurs of earth came to my ear like the vast vibrations of a bell. My car tilted and trembled as I rose. A swift wind sometimes gave the balloon a rotary motion, which made me deathly sick for a moment; but strong emotion conquered all my physical ailings.

My brain ached with the intensity of my rapture. Human sounds had fainted from my ear. I was in the abyss of heaven, and alone with my God. I could tell my direction by the sun on my left; and, as his rays played on the aërostat, it seemed only a bright bubble, wavering in the sky, and I a suspended mote, hung by chance to its train. Looking below me, the distant sound and Long Island appeared to the east; the bay lay to the south, sprinkled with shipping; under me, the city, girded with bright rivers and sparry forests.

The free wind was on my cheek and in my locks; afar, the ocean rolled its long blue waves, chequered with masses of shadow and gushes of ruby sunlight; to the north and west, the interminable land, variegated like a map dotted with purple and green and silver, faded to the eye. The atmosphere which I now breathed seemed to dilate my heart at every breath. I uttered some audible expressions. My voice was weaker than the faintest sound of a reed. There was no object near to make it reverb or echo.

My 10barometer now denoted an immense height; and as I looked upward and around, the concave above seemed like a mighty waste of purple air, verging to blackness. Below, it was lighter; but a long, lurid bar of cloud stretched along the west, temporarily excluding the sun. The shadows rushed afar into the void, and a solemn sabbath twilight reigned around. I was now startled by a fluttering in my gondola. It was my carrier pigeon. I had forgotten him entirely. I attached a string to his neck, with a label, announcing my height, then nearly four miles, and the state of the barometer.

As he sat on the side of the car, and turned his tender eyes upon me in mute supplication, every feather shivering with apprehension, I felt that it was a guilty act to push him into the waste beneath. But it was done. He attempted to rise, but I outsped him; he then fell obliquely, fluttering and moaning, till I lost him in the haze. My greatest altitude had not yet been reached. I was now five miles from terra firma. I began to breathe with difficulty. The atmosphere was too rare for safe respiration.

I pulled my valve-cord to descend. It refused to obey my hand. For a moment I was horror-stricken. What was to be done? If I ascended much higher, the balloon would explode. I threw over some tissue paper to test my progress. It is well known that this will rise very swiftly. It fell, as if blown downward by a wind from the 12zenith. I was going upward like an arrow. I attempted to pray, but my parched lips could not move. I seized the cord again with desperate energy. Blessed Heaven! it moved.

I threw out more tissue. It rose to me like a wing of joy. I was descending. Though far from sunset, it was now dark about me, except a track of blood-red haze in

the direction of the sun. I encountered a strong current of wind. Mist was about me; it lay like dew upon my coat. At last, a thick bar of vapour being passed, what a scene was disclosed! A storm was sweeping through the sky, nearly a mile beneath; and I looked down upon an ocean of rainbows, rolling in indescribable grandeur, to the music of the thunder-peal, as it moaned afar and near, on the coming and dying wind.

A frightened eagle had ascended through the tempest, and sailed for some minutes by my side, looking at me with panting weariness and quivering 13mandibles, but with a dilated eye, whose keen 14iris flashed unsubdued. Proud emblem of my country! As he fanned me with his heavy wing, and looked with a human intelligence at the car, my pulse bounded with exulting rapture. Like the genius of my native land, he had risen above every storm, unfettered and free.

But my transports were soon at an end. He attempted to light on the balloon, and my heart sank; I feared his huge claws would tear the silk. I pulled my cord; he rose, as I sank, and the blast swept him from my view in a moment. A flock of wild-fowl, beat by the storm, were coursing below, on bewildered pinions; and, as I was nearing them, I knew I was descending. A breaking rift now admitted the sun. The rainbows tossed and gleamed; chains of fleecy 15rack, shining in 16prismatic rays of gold and purple, and emerald, "beautiful exceedingly," spread on every hand.

Vast curtains of clouds 17pavilioned the immensity brighter than celestial roses; masses of mist were lifted on high, like strips of living fire, more radiant than the sun himself when his glorious noontide 18culminates from the equator. A kind of aërial 19Euroclydon now smote my car, and three of the cords parted, which tilted my gondola

to the side, filling me with terror. I caught the broken cords in my hand, but could not tie them.

The storm below was now rapidly passing away, and beneath its waving outline, to the south-east, I saw the ocean. Ships were speeding on their course, and their bright sails melting into distance; a rainbow hung afar; and the rolling anthems of the Atlantic came like celestial hymnings to my ear. Presently all was clear below The fresh air played around. I had taken a noble circuit; and my last view was better than the first. I was far over the bay, "afloating sweetly to the west." The city, coloured by the last blaze of day, brightened remotely to the view.

me.

I

Below, ships were hastening to and fro through the Narrows, and the far country lay smiling like an Eden. Bright rivers ran like ribbons of gold and silver, till they were lost in the vast inland, stretching beyond the view; the gilded mountains were flinging their purple shadows over many a vale; bays were blushing to the farewell daybeams; and now I was passing over a green island. sailed to the mainland; saw the tall old trees waving to the evening breeze; heard the rural lowing of herds, and the welcome sound of human voices; and finally, sweeping over forest tops and embowered villages, descended with the sun, among a kind-hearted, surprised, and hospitable community, in as pretty a town as one could· desire to see, "safe and well."

4

WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.

1aëronaut, one who sails or floats in the air (by means of a balloon). 2 ecstacy, being out of one's self, as it were, through excessive joy or other overwhelming feeling. 3 gondola, a long, narrow, flat-bottomed boat used on the canals of Venice. Here it means the car of the balloon, made in the form of a gondola diagram, a figure, plan. 5 rotary, turning round like a wheel.

7

aërostat, a machine for supporting

8

physical, natural, bodily. weights in the air, a balloon. Long Island, an island near New York, in the United States. reverb, to bound or fly back, 10 barometer, see App. 1 lurid, dismal, gloomy. 12 zenith, the point in the sky exactly overhead. 13 mandible, the jaw (of a bird). Hiris, properly a rainbow; the ring which encircles the pupil or black spot in the centre of the eye. 15 rack, thin, light clouds. 16 prismatic, broken up, and displaying the colours of the rainbow. 17 pavilioned, covered like a tent ; a pavilion is a tent. 18 culminate, to come to its full height. Euroclydon. a tempestuous wind, spoken of in Acts xxvii. 14.

19

"I THOUGHT, Mr. Allan, when I gave my Bennie to his

this broad land made so The dear boy only slept

country, that not a father in all precious a gift,—no, not one. a minute, just one little minute, at his post: I know that was all, for Bennie never dozed over a duty. How prompt and reliable he was! I know he only fell asleep one little second; he was so young, and not strong, that boy of mine! Why, he was as tall as I, and only eighteen and now they shoot him because he was found asleep when doing sentinel duty! Twenty-four hours, the telegram said,-only twenty-four hours. Where is Bennie now?"

"We will hope, with his heavenly Father," said Mr. Allan, soothingly.

66

Yes, yes; let us hope: God is very merciful."

"I should be ashamed, father,' Bennie said, 'when I am a man, to think I never used this great right arm ’— and he held it out so proudly before me- for my country, when it needed it. Palsy it rather than keep it at the plough!'