A PERILOUS ADVENTURE.

THREE or four lads are standing in the channel below the great Natural Bridge of Virginia. They see hundreds of names carved in the limestone buttresses, and resolve to add theirs to the number. This done, one of them is seized with the mad ambition of carving his name higher than the highest there! His companions try to dissuade him from attempting so dangerous a feat, but in vain. He is a wild, reckless youth; and afraid now to yield, lest he should be thought a coward, he carves his way up ⚫ and up the limestone rock, till he can hear the voices, but not the words of his terror-stricken playmates!

One of them runs off to the village, and tells the boy's father of his perilous situation. Others go for help in other directions; and erelong there are hundreds of people standing in the rocky channel below, and hundreds on the bridge above, all holding their breath, and awaiting the fearful catastrophe. The poor boy can just distinguish the tones of his father, who is shouting with all the energy of despair,

"William! William don't look down! Your mother, and Henry, and Harriet are all here praying for you! Don't look down! Keep your eyes towards the top!"

The boy does not look down. His eye is fixed towards heaven, and his young heart on Him who reigns there. He grasps again his knife. He cuts

another niche, and another foot is added to the hundreds that remove him from the reach of human help from below.

The sun is half way down in the west. Men are leaning over the outer edge of the bridge with ropes in their hands. But fifty more niches must be cut before the longest rope can reach the boy! Two minutes more, and all will be over. That blade is worn to the last half inch. The boy's head reels. His last hope is dying in his heart, his life must hang upon the next niche he cuts. That niche will be his last.

At the last cut he makes, his knife-his faithful knife-drops from his little nerveless hand, and ringing down the precipice, falls at his mother's feet! An involuntary groan of despair runs through the crowd below, and all is still as the grave. At the height of nearly three hundred feet, the devoted boy lifts his hopeless heart and closing eyes to commend his soul to God.

Hark!- -a shout falls on his ears from above! A man who is lying with half his length over the bridge, has caught a glimpse of the boy's head and shoulders. Quick as thought, the noosed rope is within reach of the sinking youth. No one breathes. With a faint, convulsive effort, the swooning boy drops his arm into the noose.

Not a lip moves while he is dangling over that fearful abyss; but when a sturdy arm reaches down and draws up the lad, and holds him up before the tearful, breathless multitude-such shouting and such leaping and weeping for joy never greeted a human being so recovered from the jaws of death.

QUESTIONS.-What did the boys see on the limestone rocks? What did they resolve to do? What did one of them propose? Who came to witness his dangerous position? In what did his chance of safety lie? How was he at last saved?

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB'S ARMY.
THE Assyrian1 came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts2 were gleaming with purple and gold,
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

1

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,3
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever were still.

And there lay the steed with his nostrils all wide,
But through them there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.

And the widows of Asshur1 are loud in their wail

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;5
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,"
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the LORD! ^

"ABOVE THE CLOUDS."

IN 1856 an attempt was made, under the auspices of the British Government, to commence a series of observations in some region "above the clouds," where the serene and quiet air would be specially favourable for viewing the heavenly bodies. The island of Teneriffe1 was selected for this purpose, as combining more of the required advantages than any. other mountain within easy reach of Europe.

The expedition was under the direction of Piazzi Smyth, the distinguished astronomer at Edinburgh, who, in a remarkable and interesting work, has since published a narrative of the expedition. In an article contributed to a popular magazine he thus graphically describes the ascent of Teneriffe to a point high "above the clouds :

It was only a few days after on a morning also cloudy, and with north-east cloud too that the little party set forth from the town of Orotava, on the northern coast of Teneriffe, to climb the great mountain, and put to the only true test of actual practice their hopes of getting "above the clouds." Through long, winding, stony pathways, between vineyards and cactus plantations,2 between orange groves and fig-trees, they proceeded, always ascending; past gardens, and then past orchards, still ever ascending; past corn-fields and oat-fields, ascending yet higher; and then amongst natural vegetation only-ferns and heath and some few wild laurels ; and now, at a height of 3000 feet vertical, they are close under the cloud.

Before entering therein, let us pause for a moment and survey the beauties of creation in the region we are leaving behind. If, for that one purpose of severe astronomy, a position below the clouds is unsuitable, yet what an infinite amount of benefit for man to enjoy, and of beauty for him to contemplate, is connected therewith! Beneath the clouds are kindly rains and gentle dews; and these, assisted by a warm climate, encourage all those exquisite forms of vegetation which we have admired clothing the lower slopes of the mountain. Without these, where were the fruits to support human life; where the buds and blossoms and fading flowers which teach us many a lesson useful to life eternal ?

But duty now calls us on our upward way. Before many more seconds are passed, first, comes one cold hurrying blast, with mist upon its wings, and then another, and another. Then, in the midst of a constant dense wet fog, all creation is shut out of our view, except the few feet of sloping earth on which we are treading, and that appears of a dull gray; and the occasional spiders' webs seen across our path are loaded with heavy drops of moisture,

For half an hour we must toil on and on through this winding-sheet of gloom; perpetually on the same upward way, but strong in faith and hope of what must in the end be presented to our eyes; on still, and up higher, when suddenly a momentary break appears overhead, and a portion of sky is seen-oh, so blue-but it is lost again.

In a few minutes, however, another opening, another blue patch, is seen; and then another, and