an example which are at this hour inspiring thousands of the youth of England-a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength. SOUTHEY.

Regret for the Dead.-Ay! go to the grave of buried love, and there meditate! there settle the account with thy conscience for every past endearment unregarded of that departed being who can never, never, never return to be soothed by thy contrition! If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow, of an affectionate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its happiness in thy arms, to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged, in thought, word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart which now lies cold and still beneath thy feet;-then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul; then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailing tear,—more deep, more bitter, because unheard and unavailing.

Then weave thy chaplet of flowers, and strew the beauties of nature about the grave; console thy broken spirit, if thou canst, with these tender yet futile tributes of regret: but take warning by the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction over the dead, and henceforth be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living. WASHINGTON IRVING.

THUNDER-STORMS.

WHO has not watched the approach of a thunder-storm? Far away in the sky a dense black cloud appears, small in bulk when it first lifts its head above the horizon, but rapidly expanding, as it seems to climb the heavens. The

lower surface is dark in hue, but level in outline; whilst the upper assumes the aspect of dome-shaped mountains whitened with snow. This is the giant of the storm. His advent seems to be the signal for the appearance of numerous jagged cloudlets, which come trooping from their hidingplaces, and move to and fro in confusion, as if angry at the presence of the phantom, yet constrained to answer the summons. These vapoury myrmidons generally recede from each other, as if repelled; but, at length, yielding to the attraction of the master mass, they hasten towards it, and are soon absorbed in its huge bulk. When the giant has thus mustered his forces, and spread his vast form over many a rood of sky, he prepares to launch his darts, by flinging out long ragged limbs of vapour towards the ground. Meanwhile, the atmosphere is sultry and stagnant. The head aches, and the frame is enfeebled by a nameless languor. The very brutes become living electrometers. Gloomier and gloomier grows the scene. At length the big drops begin to descend. The wind comes and goes in feverish gusts, or fetches huge melancholy sighs. Suddenly the cloud is rifted, and a red bolt is hurled from the giant's arm, shattering some tall spire, splintering some stubborn tree, or reducing some proud man to a cindery corpse. Then the lips of the phantom part in thunder, and the firmament rings with the wild laughter of the spirit of the tempest, as if in mockery of the mischief he has done.

In order, then, to a thunder-storm, the first requisite is a mass of vapour in a state of electrical excitement; nor is it necessary that there should be two such masses or clouds, though, in many instances, there are two. An electrical tourney does, indeed, require two combatants; but the battle may be not between a cloud and a cloud, but between a cloud and the earth; and, in point of fact, the discharge is very frequently between the heavens and the earth.

A storm-cloud being formed in the atmosphere, let us see what will be its action on the earth. In the Leyden phial, the internal coating of tinfoil, when charged with positive. electricity, operates through the glass inductively, and attracts an equal quantity of negative electricity to the exter

nal lining of the jar. But as glass is a non-conductor, the two fluids, however anxious to amalgamate, can take no steps to that end, unless they can succeed in rupturing the vitreous barrier which lies between them. Should they, however, succeed in this, a vivid spark is seen, a sudden clap of artificial thunder is heard, and the electric equilibrium is straightway restored. Now, in the same manner, a cloud, charged with positive electricity, will produce by induction, while hovering over the earth, an opposite accumulation of negative electricity in the ground beneath.

Leyden Jar:-A thin glass jar coated on both sides, up to a certain height, with tinfoil. The wire, terminating in a metallic knob, communicates with the internal coating. The jar is charged by holding the knob near the conductor of an Electrical Machine: it is discharged by bringing the knob and the external coating into communication, by means of a flexible metal rod.

The interposed stratum of air between the cloud and the under-lying earth, being a non-conductor, will, for a time, like the glass of the Leyden phial, obstruct the amalgamation of the two fluids. But when these fluids have acquired sufficient intensity, or are brought into sufficient proximity, the aerial barrier will give way, a disruptive discharge will take place, and the electric equilibrium will be forthwith established amidst a blaze of light and a hideous crash of thunder. It is obvious that the same results may arise in the case of two clouds. For these, floating at different altitudes, and forming, with the interposed layer of air, an apparatus similar to the coatings and glass of the Leyden phial, will constitute an electric arrangement capable of producing a storm.

There are three classes of lightning-viz., 1. Forked lightning, where the discharge appears like a long luminous line, bent into angles and zigzags, and varying in colour from white to blue, purple, or red. It is called forked, because it occasionally divides into two or more branches before reaching the earth, and thus simultaneously strikes two or more objects. 2. Sheet lightning, which, instead of flashing to long distances, like the former, simply gilds the margin of the cloud from which it leaps, or else suffuses its

surface with a lurid radiance; and 3. Balls of fire, which do not, like the other lightnings, flame out for a moment and then vanish, but remain visible for a considerable time, and pursue a somewhat irregular course. This third class differs

so widely from the others, that doubts have been entertained of its belonging at all to the fraternity of lightnings. An ordinary flash darts from horizon to horizon in the thousandth part of a second; yet these globular lumps of fire traverse the air at such a leisurely pace that even the foot can sometimes outstrip them. While a terrible storm was raging at Milan, M. Butti had his attention withdrawn from the commotion in the heavens by a little human hubbub in the street. Guarda! guarda! cried a number of voices. On reaching the spot, he perceived a globe of fire moving along the middle of the street at some distance from the ground, but with an upward slant in its course. Eight or ten persons were in chase of the meteor, and by advancing at a quick step were enabled to keep up with its motion. M. Butti, anxious to know a little more of the strange traveller, ran on, and joined in the hue and cry. On it went for about three minutes more, still sauntering along at the same cool pace; but, at last, it came in contact with the tower of a church, and vanished with a moderate detonation.

The power of forked lightning is tremendous; and its effects are, in many instances, not a little singular. When the fluid happens to meet with some obstruction in its course, it frequently shatters the non-conducting object; and often it exerts, not only a linear force, like a cannon-ball, but also a radiating force, like a bombshell, bursting substances. asunder as if they had been charged with gunpowder. Some bolts will dash through resisting objects by tearing great openings, as was the case in a Cornish church, where apertures were made in the solid wall of the belfry, one of which was fourteen inches square and six inches deep. In other instances, lightning drills small holes, which are not less surprising for their perfect circularity of form. Some years ago, when a gentleman at Poole was writing before a desk during a thunderstorm, the lightning cut out from one of the window

panes a perfectly circular disc of glass, which fell upon the paper on which he was writing.

If the apertures just named may be said to indicate the breadth of the lightning when it strikes, there are occasions when it stamps its form on the soil, so as to leave longitudinal evidence of its transit. Fulgurites are tubes which the lightning constructs, when it falls upon a siliceous spot, by fusing the sand. They may be called casts of thunderbolts. They consist of hollow tubes, with a diameter varying from one-fiftieth of an inch to upwards of two inches, and frequently tapering as they descend until their extremities are reduced to a mere point. At the surface of the ground there may be a single tube only; but, at some little depth, this will perhaps separate into two or three branches; and these, again, sometimes throw off twigs a few inches in length, so that, taken as a whole, the lightning-sheath appears something like the skeleton of an inverted tree. The entire extent of the tubes often amounts to as much as thirty feet. Internally, they are lined with glass, as smooth and perfect as if it had been manufactured in a glass-house. Outwardly, they are composed of grains of quartz or sand, exhibiting decided traces of fusion, and glued together so as to form a rind or crust, which has been compared to the bark on the stump of an old birch-tree.

The power of fusing substances is a prominent property of lightning. The surfaces of rocks have been vitrified by this terrible meteor. Metals have been reduced to fluids when they interrupted its furious march. An American packet, the New York, was attacked by a storm on her passage to England, in April 1827; several links of an iron chain were melted, and, descending in glowing drops upon the deck, set fire to everything they touched; part of the chain is even said to have burnt like a taper. Connected with this power of fusion, there is one circumstance which is very remarkable. It would seem that lightning can develop sufficient heat to liquefy metallic bodies, without damaging or even singeing the more fragile materials with which they happen to be associated. Aristotle says that copper has been melted off a shield without the wood being injured;