"Or has thy good woman, if one thou hast,

Ever here in Cornwall been?

For an' if she have, I'll venture my life

She has drunk of the well of St. Keyne."

"I have left a good woman who never was here," The stranger he made reply;

"But that my draught should be the better for that, I pray you answer me why?"

"St. Keyne," quoth the Cornishman, "many a time Drank of this crystal well,

And before the angels summoned her

She laid on the water a spell.

"If the husband of this gifted well
Shall drink before his wife,

A happy man henceforth is he,

For he shall be master for life.

"But if the wife should drink of it first,
God help the husband then!"

The stranger stooped to the well of St. Keyne,
And drank of the water again.

"You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes?"
He to the Cornishman said:

But the Cornishman smiled as the stranger spake,
And sheepishly shook his head.

"I hastened as soon as the wedding was done,
And left my wife in the porch;

But i' faith she had been wiser than me,

For she took a bottle to church."

NOTES.-ROBERT SOUTHEY, the friend, and for many years the neighbour, of Wordsworth, was born at Bristol, 1774.

He was a

most industrious writer both in prose and poetry; he died near Keswick, in 1843, having held the post of Laureate for thirty years.

The Well of St. Keyne is in a small village of the same name, and about two miles from Liskeard in Cornwall. St. Keyne, or Keyna, was the daughter of Brychan, Prince of Brecknock. The roof of the inclosure is very curiously supported by five trees.

EXERCISES.-I. Narrate the story upon which the poem is founded. 2. Paraphrase the first four stanzas. 3. Describe the position and surroundings of the well of St. Keyne.

In early times, many notions and theories relating to natural science were broached that now appear to us too ridiculous to be seriously entertained. One of these was, that the entire earth is a huge monster endowed with life, of which volcanoes and earthquakes are among the outward and visible signs; the rivers and streams its veins and arteries; mountains and valleys its raised and depressed features. Fanciful as is the idea, the analogy is sufficiently striking to supply us with some points of resemblance, and may help us to keep in mind some of the leading principles of the science of geology. In the first place, the earth has, as it were, a period of life and growth. As the rings of tissue in a plant

stem, or the teeth of a mammal, tell the age of the plant or animal, so do the strata, or rock layers, tell something of the growth of the earth's crust; not indeed in years, but in ages of unknown length. Then again, just as the circulation of the blood in the animal is ever changing its component parts, giving muscular tissue here, and withdrawing from it there; so the river currents and ocean tides are ever making alluvial deposits in one place, and breaking down and levelling in another ; and thus the earth has a natural history, which may be read in the composition and order of the materials of which its crust is composed. Hugh Miller was an ardent student of this history, and to him we now turn.

Hugh Miller was born in the second year of the present century, at Cromarty, on the north-east coast of Scotland. He took his first lessons in reading from a good dame in his native town, where, too, his uncle gave him lessons on Sunday evenings from the Bible and "Shorter Catechism." Later on he attended the parish school, where he read Virgil and Ovid in an English translation, and often entertained his fellowpupils with snatches from the stories of Gulliver, Philip Quarll, Robinson Crusoe, or Ulysses; or with the more veritable exploits of his sailor uncle. But probably his

In

best work was that done outside the schoolroom. his walks and rambles his senses were ever alert and active in the observation of the facts and phenomena about him. But we will let him tell his own story. the introductory chapter of his "Old Red Sandstone," he thus describes his first day's work :—

In

"I had been a wanderer among rocks and woods-a reader of curious books when I could get them, a gleaner

of old traditionary stories; and now I was going to exchange all my day-dreams and all my amusements for the kind of life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil!

"The quarry in which I wrought lay on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, or frith rather, with a little clear stream on the one side, and thick fir-wood on the other. It had been opened in the Old Red Sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay, which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet, and which at this time was rent and shivered, wherever it presented an open front to the weather, by a recent frost. A heap of loose fragments, which had fallen from above, blocked up the face of the quarry, and my first employment was to clear them away. The friction of the shovel soon blistered my hands, but the pain was by no means severe; and I wrought hard and willingly, that I might see how the huge strata below were to be torn up and removed. Picks, wedges and levers were applied, but they all proved inefficient, and the workmen had to bore into one of the inferior strata and employ gunpowder. The process was new to me, and I deemed it a highly amusing one. We had a few capital shots; and an immense mass of the diluvium came toppling down, bearing with it two dead birds that in a recent storm had crept into one of the deeper fissures to die in the shelter. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermilion, and its wings inlaid with the gold to which it owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth as if it had been preserved for a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker tribe, was variegated

with light blue and a greyish-yellow. I was engaged in admiring the poor little things and thinking of the contrast between the warmth and jollity of their green summer haunts, and the cold and darkness of their last retreat, when I heard our employer bidding the workmen lay by their tools. This was no very formidable beginning of the life I had so much dreaded. To be sure, my hands were a little sore, and I felt nearly as much fatigued as if I had been climbing among the rocks; but I had wrought and been useful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully as much as usual."

In this spirit did Hugh at fourteen years of age begin his life of toil; and work so begun was not likely to be either uninteresting or profitless. With his quarrying, our young workman became pretty well acquainted with the primary rocks of his native district, to which he added the study of the invertebrate animals of the seashore; and, indeed, laid the foundation of that intimate and thorough knowledge, which in after-years made him an authority that the first scientific men of all Europe were pleased to acknowledge.

We next find Miller working as a common mason; and he himself tells us that while travelling from place to place, working as one of a "squad," and lodging in highland bothies or in the hovels of lowland villages, he was following up systematically his early geological studies, and cultivating a more intimate acquaintance with the best English and Scotch authors. Work failing him in the north, he took employment at Edinburgh as a stone cutter, where he first studied the carboniferous rocks, which he took every opportunity of exploring in his evening walks; groping his way without assistance either from men or books.