A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,-
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!

And now again 't is black-and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

A Ship Foundering.

THEN rose from sea to sky the wild farewell,-
Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave,-
Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell,
As eager to anticipate their grave;

And the sea yawned around her like a hell,

And down she sucked with her the whirling wave,
Like one who grapples with his enemy,

And strives to strangle him before he die.

And first one universal shriek there rushed,
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed,
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

SECTION III.

SELF-HELP.

"Help

HERCULES and the Waggoner is an old fable and a true; but it is possible to read its moral wrong. thyself, and Heaven will help thee," is a false saying, if it be taken to mean, "There is no appeal but to thine

own effort."

From the very first it was ruled by the Supreme that it is not good for man to be alone; and this ruling has determined not only the undesirableness, but also the impossibility of absolute solitude and self-containedness. Self-help is thus reduced to mean nothing more than personal energy in grasping other and extrinsic help. And unless this be distinctly recognised, all the examples which are now-adays paraded of self-raised men must only tend to mislead those who are invited to imitate them.

Of universal application are the Apostle's questions— "Who maketh thee to differ from another? What hast thou that thou didst not receive ?" No mere conventional allowance of the truth that there is a Supreme Giver from whom we have received, will serve as a sufficient answer to these questions. That great Giver of every good and perfect gift, gives largely what he gives, by the intervention of others, as if to force upon us the conviction that self-help is not of self after all. Who, my brother, made you a wiser or a wealthier man than your fellows? He, you say, whose name may not be lightly named. Yes, but also this or that other one whose name I may cite at once-His agent in helping you to be the wise or wealthy man you

now are.

Let us take the career of one of the men most frequently named as an example of the power of self-help-William Herschel the eminent astronomer.

He is a musician, and plays the oboe in the band of the Durham Militia at Doncaster. For that Tyrtaean art of military music, he is in debt to the poor German musician his father; to say nothing of his debt to the mother that bare him, for the lungs to blow into his reed at all. At Doncaster, a certain Doctor Miller, having heard him perform a solo on the violin in a surprising manner, entered into conversation with him, and was so pleased, that he urged the youth to leave the militia band and come to live at his house for a time. Herschel did so, and, while at Doncaster, was principally occupied in violin-playing at concerts, at the same time availing himself of the advantages of Dr Miller's library to study in his leisure hours.

We thus see that he finds a helper in Dr Miller, and also that he has in himself such will and power of self-help, that he shall erelong leave concert-fiddling, as he has left oboeblowing, to read off that "music of the spheres" of which God's right hand has written the score on the blue page of heaven, with planets for notes, and the twinkle of the stars for quavers. While officiating at Halifax as organist, "he began," says the author of a popular book on "Self-Help," "to study mathematics, unassisted by any master," save, we must take leave to add, by one so long dead and gone as he who set forth axioms of geometry at the court of an Alexandrian Ptolemy! "Some recent discoveries in astronomy having arrested his mind"-surely the discoverers were helpers to the man-" and awakened in him a powerful spirit of curiosity, he sought and obtained from a friend the loan of a two-foot Gregorian telescope." So, there is the self-helper gone star-gazing at last, with a two-foot telescope lent him by a friend!

No mere self-help, then, was it that made Herschel the great astronomer of his time. He had at least the help of old Euclid and of a two-foot telescope. And as with Herschel, so is it, and so has it ever been, with the whole class of what are called self-raised and self-educated men. Has a man's education come by books? It is with only the widest mental reservation we may say "Here is a man selfeducated." He is debtor not merely to the thinkers, reasoners, tale-tellers, song-singers, students, and teachers who have lived before him, but even to the mechanical perpetuators of their acquisitions, from Cadmus to Gutenberg, and their latest successors in the type-foundry or the compositor's room. And what of the man whose education has

come rather by tools than by books? Has not his self-help left him debtor also to all the generation of the sons of Tubal Cain? Cunning human brains, through skilful human hands, have passed into those lifeless agents, by which he effects his designs. Hammer-help and chisel-help, help of rude water-wheel, or help of steam-power, all is manhelp and brother-help to the most independent and self-reliant of so-called self-helpers. We grant that, when the

H

human brotherly agent is unseen, it is hard for us, who are so slow to "walk by faith," to feel the personal obligation keenly. But the fact is undeniable that the book which we study, or the tool which we use, is really a personal emanation, and therefore lays us under obligation to some human helper. Trite as the saying is, it is none the less true that the copies of the Gospel which its Divine Author set in circulation to convert the world, were written on twelve human hearts and brains, and bound in twelve human bodies. Macmillan's Magazine.

ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS OF PLANTS.

PLANTS are classified into three divisions, corresponding to the threefold structure of the seed. Plants of the first division are called Dicotyledons, because in them the seed is composed of two cotyledons or seed-lobes. Those of the second division are called Monocotyledons, because their seeds consist of only one cotyledon; while the term Acotyledons is applied to plants-such as ferns, mosses, and lichens -which have no seeds, properly so called, and consequently no cotyledons. While Dicotyledonous and Monocotyledonous plants grow from seed, the Acotyledons are propagated by minute granular bodies, called spores or sporules, which are really nothing else than distinct plants, disjoined in a living state from the parents. Plants of the first division are also called Exogenous, and those of the second, Endogenous, from the different mode in which the stem is formed in each. In the stem of the former, new matter is formed by successive layers on the outside; in that of the latter, by successive layers on the inside, or towards the

centre.

Plants have two sets of organs, which perform the function of nutrition and the function of reproduction.

The nutritive organs are the root, the stem, and the leaves. The root gives stability to the plant in the soil, and, by the fibrils which it sends forth, collects materials for its food. For this latter purpose, the fibril roots, as well as the main root

itself (the caudex), are provided with soft porous terminations, which are called spongioles, from their peculiar efficacy in imbibing the surrounding moisture. When the moisture, which contains various nutritive substances, has been absorbed by the roots, it ascends (under the name of sap) through the stem to the leaves, where part of it is exhaled, and the remaining part subjected to an important chemical change, rendering it fit for being digested and assimilated. The way in which the leaves elaborate the sap into digestible food is unknown, though it is certain that they expose it to the action of air and of light, and also that they inhale from the air carbonic acid, decompose it, and then appropriate the carbon, which is known to be the main constituent of plants. After being changed and enriched in the laboratory of the leaves, the sap is sent back to the various parts of the plant, that it may feed and nourish them. In exogenous plants, it descends through the outer rim -that is, through the liber and alburnum, the inner bark and new wood-but in endogenous plants, through the innermost layer of the structure, which is also the most recently formed. In its descent, the sap deposits the various secretions requisite for the nourishment, health, and growth of the stem, the bark, and other parts; and at last reaching the root, whence it first started, it imparts hardness and tenacity to the fibrils, and furnishes matter to form new spongioles.

But plants are also generative. A plant "hath seed in itself." Besides vitalizing that which is necessary to the growth and conservation of each of its own parts, it is endowed with the power of giving existence to a new whole, and of providing the germ with the nourishment necessary for it until it is able to commence its independent being.

The organs of reproduction (except in the case of flowerless plants) are all contained in what is botanically called the flower. The flower consists of four parts or whorls, as they are technically termed the calyx, the corolla, the stamens, and the pistils. These are all believed to be merely transformations of leaves, altered so as to suit the particular