the heart of Italy, and end in Calabria-a line of eight hundred miles. Dalmatia and Albania are knots of hills; Pindus, and the mountains of Northern Greece, are bold offsets from the Eastern Alps.

Among those wonderful arrangements, the tablelands are perhaps the most wonderful. In the midst of countries where everything seemed to tend to the mountainous form, we find vast plains raised almost to a mountainous height, yet retaining their level. This form peculiarly occurs in latitudes of high temperature. The centre of Spain is a table-land of more than ninety-two thousand square miles-one-half of the area of Spain.

The country between the two ranges of the Atlas is a table-land, exhibiting the richest products, and possessing the finest climate of Northern Africa. Equatorial Africa is one immense table-land, of which, however, we can only conjecture the advantages. Whether from the difficulty of approach, the distance, or the diversion of the current of adventure to other quarters of the world, this chief portion of the African continent continues almost unknown to Europeans. The central region is a blank in our maps, but occasional tales reach us of the plenty, the pomp, and even of the civilization and industry of the table-land. The centre of India is a table-land, possessing, in that region of fire and fever, a bracing air, and a productive, though rugged soil.

The table-lands of Asia partake of the characteristic magnitude which belongs to that mighty quarter of the globe. That of Persia has an area of more than a million and a half of square miles. That of Thibet has an area of six times the extent, with a still greater elevation above the level of the sea-its general altitude being about the height of Mont Blanc, and in some instances, two thousand feet higher. The mean altitude of the Persian plateau is not above four thousand feet.

We have adverted to those formations of vast elevated plains, in the midst of countries necessarily exposed to extreme heat, as one of the remarkable instances of providential contrivance, if we must use that familiar word in such mighty instances of design for the comfort of animated being. We thus find, in the latitudes exposed to the fiercest heat of the sun, a provision for a temperature consistent with the health, activity, and industry of man. Persia, which, if on the level of the sea, would be a furnace, is thus reduced to comparative coolness; Thibet, which would be a boundless plain of fiery sand, exhibits that sternness of climate which makes the Northern Asiatic bold, healthy, and hardy.

If the Tartar ranger over those lofty plains is not a model of European virtue, he at least has not sunk to the Asiatic slave; he is bold, active, and has been, and may be again, a universal conqueror. The same qualities have always distinguished the man of the table-land, wherever he has found a leader. The soldiery of Mysore no sooner appeared in the field, than they swept all Hindostan before them; the Persians, scarcely two centuries since, ravished the sovereignty of the Mogul; and the tribes of the Atlas, even in our own day, made a more daring defence of their country, than all the disciplined forces of the Continent against Napoleon.

The two most remarkable ranges of Asia are, the Caucasus, extending seven hundred miles from west to east, with branches shooting north and south; and the Himalaya, a mountain chain of nearly three thousand miles in length, uniting with the Hindoo Loosh and the mountains of Assam. This range is probably the loftiest on the globe, averaging eighteen thousand feet-several of the summits rising above twenty-five thousand. Many of the passes are above the summit of Mont Blanc, and the whole constitutes a scene of

indescribable grandeur, a throne of the solitary majesty of nature.

But another essential use of the mountain chains is their supply of water-the fluid most necessary to the existence of the animal and vegetable world-and this is done by an expedient the most simple, but the most admirable. If the surcharge of the clouds, dashing against the mountain pinnacles, were to be poured down at once, it must descend with the rapidity of a torrent, and deluge the plains. But those surcharges first take a form by which their deposit is gradual and safe, and then assume a second form, by which their transmission to the plains is gradual and unintermitting. They descend on the summits in snow, and are retained on the sides in ice. The snow feeds the glacier; the glacier feeds the river. It is calculated that, without reckoning the glaciers of the Grisons, there are fifteen hundred square miles of glacier in the Alps alone, from a hundred to six hundred feet deep. The glacier is constantly melting, from the mere temperature of the earth; but, as if this process were too slow for its use, it is constantly moving downwards, at a certain number of feet a-year, and thus bringing the great body of ice more within the limit of liquefaction. All the chief rivers of Europe and Asia have their rise in the deposits of the mountain glaciers.

In addition to all these important uses, the mountains assist in forming the character of man. The mountaineer is generally free from the vices of the plain. He is hardy and adventurous, yet attached to home; bold, and yet simple; independent, and yet unambitious of the wealth or the distinctions of mankind. Whether shepherd or hunter, he generally dies as he lived; and, though daring in defence of his hills, he has seldom strayed beyond them for the disturbance of mankind. The Swiss may form an exception;

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but their hireling warfare is not ambition, but trade. Their nation is pacific, while the individuals let themselves out to kill or be killed. The trade is infamous and irreligious, offensive to human feeling, and contrary to human duty; but it has no more reference to the habits of the mountaineer than the emigration to California has to the habits of the clown of Massachusetts; the stimulant only is the same-the love of gold.

We have adverted to the mountain system of the globe, from its giving a remarkable illustration of the Divine expediency. We judge of power by the magnitude of its effects, and of wisdom by the simplicity of its means. In this instance, the whole of the results seem to arise from the single and simple act of raising portions of the earth's surface above the general level. Yet from this one act what a multitude of the most important conditions follow!-variety of climate, variety of production, the temperature of Europe introduced into the tropics, health to man and the inferior animals, the irrigation of the globe, the defence of nations, and the actual enlargement of the habitable spaces of the globe, by the elevated surface of the hills -not to mention the beauty and sublimity of the landscape, which depend wholly on the colours, the forms, and the diversity of mountains.

J. F. L.

WILLY'S RETURN.

CONCLUSION.

How calmly in our cottage home the number'd days stole on,
That yet remain'd ere from my love my brother must be gone!
While peace of mind revived him, till I almost deem'd it true,

That the balm that wrought his spirit's cure, would heal his sickness

too.

But it was not to be so.

Alas! life's current through the breast,

With swifter tide may hurry ere it stagnates into rest;
And rallying powers in dying eyes rekindle wasted fires,
As the flame leaps up above the lamp before the light expires.

Even thus it was, when at my side my brother feebly strolled
Once more amid the breezy fields we loved so well of old;
And watch'd all nature revelling beneath a spring-tide sky,

As if wild flowers could never fade, nor wild birds pine and die.

And thus when once-but once-we trod the church path 'neath the limes,

When the balmy air was ringing with the pleasant Sabbath chimes;
And both, with meek and chasten'd hearts, together went to pray,
For the last time where we knelt so oft in childhood's happy day.
Those brief yet blessed intervals of seeming health were given,
That we might gather strength to bend our will to that of Heaven;
And Willy, in their peaceful hours, to my attentive ear,
Reveal'd the long and sad details of all his wild career.

And this wound up the story-that the first rash step he trod,
Down sin's steep road, was heeding not the Sabbaths of his God;
While the pang that swelled remorse's cup of anguish to the brim,
Was the memory of the silent tears his mother shed for him.

Midsummer glow'd upon the hills from out a fervid sky,
And in the meadow lands around the new-mown hay lay dry,
When the last faint hope whose lingering smile had cheated me
decay'd,

And Willy sank as falls the grass beneath the mower's blade.
Yes, withering like a broken flower, I saw my brother lie,
Stretched out in utter helplessness, and waiting but to die;
Yet striving much to comfort me with faltering words of love,
And whispers of the better life awaiting us above.

God kept his soul in quietness, but gave him not to share

That clear foresight of coming joy that makes death's presence fair;
He had no ecstasies of hope, no rapturous dreams of bliss,
But the humbler trust befitting one whose life had been amiss.

Our parting came. All day I sat beside his dying bed,
To cool the fever'd lip and brow, and prop the languid head,
That lay as heavy on my breast as grief lay on my heart,
The while I watch'd how life and soul were struggling to depart.