Asking of his own heart, what brought him here. Here at my heart the outrage-but my words, Would only show my feebleness the more, Nor kingdom, which hath neither prince nor people, To overthrow this monster of a state, Proportioned like the columns to the temple, And making firm the whole with grace and beauty, Haply had I been what the senate sought, And still has individual means and mind; I stake my fame (and I had fame)-my breath (The least of all, for its last hours are nigh) And to your chiefs, accept me or reject me, Or nothing, and who has left his throne to be so. Byron's 'Doge of Venice! 144. THE ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK AT STRASBURG. The astronomical clock at Strasburg is composed of three parts, respectively dedicated to the measure of time, to the calendar, and to astronomical movements. The first thing to be created was a central moving power, communicating its motion to the whole of its mechanism. The motive power, which is itself a very perfect and exact timepiece, indicates on an outer face the hours and their subdivisions, as well as the days of the week: it strikes the hours and the quarters, and puts in motion divers allegorical figures. One of the most curious of these is the Genius placed on the first balustrade, and who turns, each hour, the sand-glass which he holds in his hand. The cock crows, and a procession of the apostles takes place every day at noon. In the calendar are noted the months, days, and dominical letters, as well as the calendarproperly so called, showing all the saints' days in the year. The plate on which these signs are marked revolves once in 365 days for the common, and 366 for the bissextile year; marking, at the same time, the irregularity which takes place three consecutive times out of four in the secular years. The moveable feasts, which seem as though they followed no fixed rule, are, nevertheless, obtained here by a mechanism of marvellous ingenuity, in which all the elements of the ecclesiastical computation-the milesimal, the solar cycle, the golden number, the dominical letter, and the epacts—combine and produce, for an unlimited period, the result sought. It is at midnight, December 31, that the other moveable feasts and fasts range themselves on the calendar in the order and place of their succession for the whole of the following year. The third division solves the problems of astronomy. It exhibits an orrery, constructed on the Copernican System, which presents the mean revolutions of each of the planets visible to the naked eye. The earth, in her movement, carries with her her satellite—the moon, which accomplishes her revolution in the space of a lunar month. Besides this, the different phases of the moon are shown on a separate globe. One sphere represents the apparent movement of the heavens, making its revolution in the course of the siderial day. It is subjected to that almost imperceptible influence known as the precession of the equinoxes. Separate mechanisms produce the equations of the sun, its anomaly and right ascension. Others, the principal equations of the moon, as its erection, anomaly, variation, annual equation, reduction, and right ascension. Others, again, relate to the equations of the ascending node of the moon. The rising and setting of the sun, its passage to the meridian, its eclipses, and those of the moon, are also represented on the dial. 145. A NATION'S DUTY. I have no notion of the country being called in a satisfactory state, and happy and prosperous, when such a state of things exists. You may have an ancient monarchy, with the dazzling glitter of the sovereign, and you may have an ancient nobility in grand mansions, and great estates, and you may have an ecclesiastical hierarchy, covering with worldly pomp that religion whose virtue is humility. But, notwithstanding all this, the whole fabric is rotten, and doomed ultimately to fall; for the great mass of the people on whom it is supported is poor, and suffering, and degraded. Now, is there no remedy for this state of things? If the government were just, if the taxes were moderate and equally imposed, if the land were free, if the schools were as prominent institutions in our landscape and in our great towns as prisons and workhouses are-I suspect that we should find the people gradually having much more selfrespect; they would have much more hope of improvement for themselves and their families, they would rise above, in hundreds and thousands of cases, all the temptations to intemperance; they would become generally, I say almost universally, more virtuous, and more as the good subject ought to be. Now this great and solemn question of the condition of a consider able portion of the labouring classes of this country can't be covered up. It must be met. It is a great work upon which the new electoral body and the new parliament will have to enter. It is a long way from Belgrave Square to Bethnal Green. We can't measure the distance from the palatial mansions of the rich to the dismal hovels of the poor, from the profuse and costly luxuries of the wealthy to the squalid and hopeless misery of some millions who are below them; but I ask you, as I ask myself a thousand times, is it not possible that this mass of poverty and suffering should be touched and should be reached? What is there that man can't do if he tries? The other day he descended to the mysterious depths of the ocean, and with an iron hand he sought, and he found, and he grasped, and he brought up to the surface the lost cable, and with it he made two worlds into one. I ask, are his conquests confined to the realms of science? Is it not possible that another hand, not of iron, but of justice and kindness, may be let down to moral depths even deeper than the cable fathoms, to bring up from thence Misery's sons and daughters, and the multitude who are ready to perish? This is the great problem which is now before us. It is not one for statesmen only. It is not for preachers of the Gospel only. It is one for every man in the nation to attempt to solve. The nation is now in power, and if wisdom abide with power, the generation to follow may behold the glorious day of which we, in our time, with our best endeavours, can only hope to see the earliest dawn.-John Bright. 146. HENRY VIII. If Henry VIII. had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black Prince, or of the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers, when a boy, to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirtyeight years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and, amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigour by a temperate habit and by constant exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not left to judge from the suspicious panegyrics of his contemporaries. His state papers and letters may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they lose nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly different, the perception is equally clear, the expression equally powerful, and they breathe throughout an irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this, he had a fine musical taste, carefully cultivated; he spoke and wrote in four languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of other subjects, with which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of his age; he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artillery, and new constructions in shipbuilding; and this, not with the condescending incapacity of a royal amateur, but with thorough workmanlike understanding. His reading was vast, especially in theology, which has been ridiculously ascribed by Lord Herbert to his father's intention of educating him for the Archbishopric of Canterbury; as if the scientific mastery of such a subject could have been acquired by a boy of twelve years of age, for he was no more when he became Prince of Wales. He must have studied theology with the full maturity of his understanding; and he had a fixed and perhaps unfortunate interest in the subject itself.-Froude. 147. IN THE INDIAN FOREST. A rustle! a roar! a shriek! and Amyas lifted his eyes in time to see a huge dark bar shoot from the crag above the dreamer's head, among the group of girls. A dull crash, as the group flew asunder; and in the midst, upon the ground, the tawny limbs of one were writhing beneath the fangs of a black |