"Two days later, I perceived a little colony busily at work in a pleasant vale, not a mile from this village; they had spades, pickaxes, and trowels; they were beginning to build, or rather, were preparing for building; there were men, women, and boys. I knew some of their features well again; they were the people of the late Pradines, who had got a grant of land, and were commencing a new hamlet; but with them were also many others, who were helping them in their work. Vigorously they laboured under my beams, and they sang as they laboured. So it was many nights when I looked.

"The people of Pradines never had been more happy; they never had tasted so sweetly, a s now, the milk of human kindness. Every village or pretty hamlet around sent something to their aid. It was generally a few assistant labourers who came in the name of the whole inhabitants to work at the building; some brought materials; the rich families also subscribed; and clothes, and food, articles of furniture, with some little money, were furnished to them in such abundance, that they became more affluent

than they had been in their old village, and were able to build better habitations than they had before enjoyed. The dwellers in the neighbourhood were also happy, for they understood the privilege of helping the distressed.

"Mercy is not strain'd;

It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.""

"On my second lunation after this time, I saw the people to whom the misfortune had befallen, already lodged in their new habitations, in a smiling valley of the Cevennes. Jaques and Marie had a very pretty chaumière; a rough trellis, formed of the thin branches of the unbarked pine, covered the front; already creepers were growing and enlarging their tendrils or their running shoots amongst its diamonds, It was a better chaumière than that in which they were to have lived in Pradines. I was there upon the evening of their wedding day, when they went into their new abode : I had not often looked upon a happier or a worthier pair."

CHAPTER IX.

THE MOON'S ACCOUNT OF SOME BEES IN THE OURALIAN

MOUNTAINS.

ON one of her peeps at me, the Moon addressed

me thus :

"There is no part of the earth on which you live that I do not visit; I cast my soft, chaste light upon the pinnacles of ice rocks at the pole, which glitter coldly under my beam. I look upon the snowy plains of Siberia, and the groves whence

"Spicy breezes, blow soft from Ceylon's isle.""

"The cairn-gorm sends back my reflection from the sides of its Scottish mountain bed; the soft beauties of Geneva's lake in Switzerland, and the grandeur of Lock Assynt and Loch Fine, in North Britain, are increased under my influence.

"And would'st thou view fair Melrose aright,

Go visit it by my pale clear light;

For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout the ruins gray.

When the broken arches are black in night,

And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When my cold light's uncertain shower

Streams on the ruined central tower.

When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;

When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to boot o'er the dead man's grave;

Then go-but go alone the while

To view St. David's ruined pile. "

"I see the whale sport on Greenland's coast, and the flying fish lift himself from his watery bed, more often, alas! to escape a pursuer, than to enjoy the charms of a new element.

"I wish to-day to give you an account of a humble but busy colony that lived in the Ouralian Mountains; but before I do so, I must tell you a little about those mountains themselves.

"The Ouralian chain knows each variety of

climate, from the intense cold that is experienced at the polar circle, to the sweet soft temperature enjoyed in the southern parts of the wide Russian empire. As you travel northwards from the region where this mountain chain first presents itself to view, the cold increases with every few versts of distance, (a verst is nearly equal to a mile); besides which, as you ascend each individual elevation, the air becomes more rare and keen in proportion as you gain in altitude or height. The highest of these mountains is not more than five thousand feet above the level of the sea, and they are more remarkable for their products, and as occurring in a country which is unusually flat, than as being in themselves magnificent.

66

The Russian people, however, who are used to vast plains, who from north to south, and from east to west, hardly know any thing of hill till they come to this natural boundary of their European empire, and who, till lately, had very little conception of the geography of the rest of the globe, call the chain the Semenoï Poias,' or girdle of the world; and they

6