birth from the reign of the Fourth Edward; and where he grew, and for thousands of miles along the coast beyond him, millions of his contemporaries are awaiting the same fate.

With such facilities of access as I have described to the very heart and centre of your forest lands, where almost every tree can be rolled from the spot upon which it grows to the ship which is to transfer it to its destination, it would be difficult to over-estimate the opportunities of industrial development. But I have learnt a further lesson. I have had opportunities of inspecting some of the spots where your mineral wealth is stored, and here again the ocean stands your friend, the mouths of the coal-pits I have visited almost opening into the hulls of the vessels that are to convey their contents across the ocean. When it is further remembered that inexhaustible supplies of iron ore are found in juxtaposition with your coal, no one can blame you for regarding the beautiful island on which you live as having been especially favoured by Providence in the distribution of these natural gifts.

But still more precious minerals than either coal or iron enhance the value of your possessions. As we skirted the banks of the Fraser, we were met at every turn by evidences of its extraordinary supplies of fish, but scarcely less frequent were the signs afforded us of the golden treasures it rolls down, nor need any traveller think it strange to see the Indian fisherman hauling out a salmon on the sands whence the miner beside him is sifting the golden ore. I had also the satisfaction of having pointed out to me places where lodes of silver only await greater facilities of access to be worked with profit and advantage.

But perhaps the greatest surprise in store for us was the discovery, on our exit from the pass through the Cascade Range, of the noble expanse of pastoral lands and the long vistas of fertile valleys which opened out on every side as we advanced through the country; and which (as I could see with my own eyes, from various heights we

traversed) extended in rounded upland slopes or in gentle depressions for hundreds of miles to the foot of the Rocky Mountains; proving that the mountain ranges which frown along your coast no more accurately indicate the nature of the territory they guard, than does the wall of breaking surf that boars along a tropic beach presage the softly-undulating sea that glitters in the sun beyond.

LORD DUFFERIN.

THE GOD OF NATURE.

THERE lives and works

A soul in all things, and that soul is God.
The beauties of the wilderness are His,
That make so gay the solitary place,

Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms
That cultivation glories in, are His.

He sets the bright procession on its way,

And marshals all the order of the year;

He marks the bounds which winter may not pass,
And blunts his pointed fury; in its case,
Russet and rude, folds the tender germ
Uninjured, with inimitable art;

up

And, ere one flowery season fades and dies,
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.
The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.

Not a flower

But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,

Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires

Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth.

Happy who walks with Him! whom what he finds
Of flavour or of scent, in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In Nature, from the broad majestic oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with remembrance of a present God.

W. COWPER.

THE SITE OF VENICE.

FROM the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighbourhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth, in most places, of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated in others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of sea-weed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a crowded cluster of islands. The various plots of higher ground which appear to the north and south of this central cluster have at different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and encumbered

by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the metropolis.

The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet

(varying considerably with the seasons); but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux, which

frequently runs like a mill-stream. At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the uplifted level of the shallow sea.

But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of sea-weed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea-water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the bank with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide.

The scene is often profoundly impressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but in order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of