A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand he took

What was there in its touch that all his fiery spirit shook?

5.

That hand was còld, a frozen thing,-it dropped from his like lead!

He looked up to the face abòve,-the face was of the dead!

A plume waved o'er the noble brow,-the brow was fixed and white:

He met, at last, his father's eyes,-but in them was no sight!

6.

Up from the ground he sprang and gàzed;-but whò could paint that gaze?

They hushed their very hearts, that saw its hōrror and amaze:

They might have chained him, as before that stony form he stood;

For the power was stricken from his árm, and from his lip the blood.

7.

"Father!" at length he murmured low, and wept like childhood then:

Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of wárlike mèn!

He thought on all his glórious hopes, and all his young renown,

He flung his falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down:

8.

Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly

mournful brów:

"Nō mōre, there is nō mōre," he said, "to lift the sword for, nów;

My king is fàlse-my hōpe betrayed! My father—Oh! the worth,

The glory, and the loveliness, are passed away from earth.

9.

"I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire, beside thee, yèt!

I would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had mèt!

Thou wouldst have known my spirit, thén;-for thee my fields were wón;

And thou hast pèrished in thy chains, as though thou hadst nó són!"

10.

Then, starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's réin,

Amidst the pale and wildered looks of all the courtier tràin;

And, with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp, the rearing war-horse led,

And sternly set them fáce to face-the king before the dead:

11.

"Came I not forth, upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss?

Bē still, and gāze thōu ōn, false king! and tell me, what is this?

The voice, the glance, the heart I sought,—give ànswer, where are they?

If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay!

12.

"Into these glassy eyes put light;-be still! keep down thine ire!

Bid these white lips a blessing speak,-this earth is not my sire:

Give me back him for whom I stròve, for whom my

blood was shed!—

Thou canst not? and a king!-his dust be mountains on thy head!"

13.

He loosed the stèed,-his slack hand fèll;-upon the silent face

He cast one lōng, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad plàce:

His hope was crùshed, his after fate untold in martial

strain:

His banner led the spears no more, amidst the hills of Spain.

MRS. HEMANS.

1. All the parts of a mountain which lie above the line of perpetual snow are, of course, covered every winter with fresh falls. As the snow does not melt above this line, it is clear that the thickness of snow ought to become greater and greater every succeeding year. The mountain, therefore, should always be getting higher and higher.

2. As a matter of fact, however, the snow does not go on accumulating in this way above the line of perpetual snow, and consequently the mountain does not grow any higher. What, then, becomes of the snow which falls every winter, if it does not melt ?

3. If the top of the mountain were a flat, level plain,

it is quite clear that the snow would become deeper and deeper every year, and so the mountain get higher and higher. But no mountain has a flat level top like this. The top of a mountain is always very uneven, and always slopes away into the valleys, which, in turn, lead into the low country below.

4. The snow which falls on the top of the mountain is thus unable to rest in the place where it fell. It is constantly slipping off the slanting sides of the mountain into the heads of the valleys, which in this way get choked with snow.

5. When a great thickness of snow is gathered together in the higher valleys, the lower layers of it are pressed upon by the upper layers, as well as by the fresh snow which is always pushing itself down from the mountain-top. Now, every school-boy knows that if snow is squeezed in the hands it becomes quite hard; and if you were to squeeze it hard enough you can really turn snow into ice.

6. Our hands are not strong enough to do this, but it can easily be done by putting snow into a machine, where it can be powerfully pressed together. What happens then, is this: The snow, pressing down from the lofty summit of the mountain, chokes the higher parts of the valleys, and by its own weight it becomes so squeezed together, that it ceases to be snow, and becomes clear, blue, solid ice.

7. If we were to go to any great range of mountains, like the Alps, in Switzerland, we should see this at once. We should see that the tops of the higher mountains are covered with great fields of eternal snow, and the valleys leading away from these are occupied by vast masses of solid ice. These rivers of ice are called "glaciers," from the French word glace, which means ice, and they are really "rivers of ice," because they are always moving slowly down their valleys.

8. In fact, the only difference between one of these ice-streams and an ordinary river is, that the former moves very slowly. It is only by watching a glacier, and by measuring its progress with proper instruments, that its movement can be found out. It moves only a few inches every day, and you would not think it was moving at all, if you simply looked at it.

9. Still, these great ice-streams, sometimes ten or twenty miles long, and hundreds of feet in thickness, are always moving slowly downwards, and hence they carry off, year by year, the snow which falls upon the mountain above the line of perpetual snow. Slowly but surely they push themselves down the sides of the mountain, till they get into the lower country, and then they are no longer able to resist the heat of the sun and the warmth of the air.

10. They now melt, and from the end of each of them proceeds a larger or smaller stream of water, icy-cold, and thick with the mud formed by the ice, as it grinds its way down the rocky valley which imprisons it. Some of the most famous rivers in the world, such as the Rhine, and the Ganges, begin as streams which issue from icy caverns at the end of great glaciers, high amongst the frozen mountains.

11. In California, high up on the summits of the Sierra Nevada mountains, there are many small glaciers, -the dying heads of great glaciers that, centuries ago, stretched in long lines down to the valleys below. John Muir has visited and located more than fifty of them, in the peaks of the Sierra Nevada. The largest of these are on Mount Shasta, and are two or three miles long. Most of them, however, are not more than half a mile in length. The Yosemite Valley lies in the track of a great glacier that moved down from Mount Lyell and surrounding peaks, into the Valley of the San Joaquin.