4. This little bird was the herald of fair weather, and at sea always hails from the port of bright warm skies. The next morning we found ourselves sailing between shores basking in full summer sunshine.

5. Those who, after ten days of sorrowing and fasting in the desert of the ocean, have sailed up the Firth of Clyde, and thence up the Clyde to Glasgow, on the morning of a perfect mid-May day, the sky all sunshine, the earth all verdure, know what this experience is; and only those can know it.

6. It takes a good many foul days in Scotland to make one fair one; but when the fair day does come, it is worth the price paid for it. These fair days, I was told, might be looked for in May; we were so fortunate as to have several of them, and the day we entered port was such a one as you would select from a hundred.

7. The traveller is in a mood to be pleased after clearing the broad Atlantic, the eye is apt to flatter the scenes upon which it rests, and the deck of a steamer is a rare vantage-ground for sight-seeing. Yet, allowing for these favourable conditions, the Scotch sunshine is delightful and the scenery of the Clyde unequalled by any other approach to Europe.

8. It shows Europe in little, the scenes assorted and passed before you in the space of a few hours. The highlands and lochs and castle-crowned crags are on the one hand; the lowlands with their parks and farms, their halls, and matchless verdure on the other.

9. The eye loves a look of permanence and order, of peace and contentment; and these Scotch shores, with their stone houses, compact masonry, clean fields, grazing herds, ivy-clad walls, dense foliage, perfect roads and verdant mountains fulfil all the conditions.

10. We pause for an hour in front of Greenock, and

then, on the crest of the tide, make our way slowly upward. The landscape closes around us. We can almost hear the cattle ripping off the juicy grass in the fields. One feels as if he could eat grass himself. It is a paradise of pasture. 11. We can see the daisies and buttercups; and from over a meadow on our right, the song of the skylark reaches my ear. Indeed not a little of the charm and freshness of this part of the voyage was the impression it made as of going afield in an ocean steamer.

12. We had suddenly passed from a wilderness of waters into a verdant, sunlit landscape, where scarcely any water was visible. John Burroughs.

LESSON 23.-SHIP-BUILDING ON THE CLYDE.

1. The Clyde, soon after you leave Greenock, becomes little more than a large deep canal, enclosed between meadow banks, and from the deck of the great steamer only the most charming rural sights and sounds greet you. You are at sea amid fresh green parks and fields of clover and grain.

2. You behold farm occupations-sowing, planting, ploughing as from the middle of the Atlantic. Playful heifers and skipping lambs take the place of leaping dolphins and the basking sword-fish.

3. The ship steers her way amid turnip-fields and broad acres of newly-planted potatoes. You are not surprised that she needs piloting. A little tug with a rope at her bows pulls her first this way and then that, while one at her stern nudges her right flank and then her left.

4. Presently, we come to the ship-building yards of the Clyde, where rural scenes are strangely mingled with those of quite another sort. "First a cow and then an

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iron ship," as one of the voyagers observed. Here a pasture or a meadow, or a field of wheat or oats, and close beside it, without an inch of waste ground between, rise the skeletons of innumerable ships, like a forest of slender growths of iron, with the workmen hammering amid it like so many noisy woodpeckers.

5. It is doubtful if such a scene can be witnessed anywhere else in the world- an enormous collection of machinery, commerce, and building, in the midst of the quiet and simple life of inland farm lands. You could leap from the deck of a half-finished ocean steamer into a field of waving wheat or broad beans.

6. These vast ship-yards are set down here upon the banks of the Clyde so as to interfere as little as possible with the scene. One would say the vessels had come up out of the water like seals to sun themselves here on the grassy bank.

7. Of the factories and foundries that put the iron in shape, you get no hint; here the ships rise as if they sprouted from the soil, without waste or litter, but with an unceasing din. They stand as thickly as a row of cattle, almost touching each other, and in all stages of progress.

8. Now and then a stall will be vacant, the ship having just been launched; others will stand with flags flying and timbers greased or soaped, ready to take to the water at the word. Two such, both large ocean steamers, waited

for us to pass.

9. We looked back, saw the last block or wedge knocked away from one of them, and the monster ship sauntered down to the water, and glided into the current in the most gentle matter-of-fact sort of way. I wondered at her slow pace and the grace with which she took to the water. 10. The vessels are launched up and down the stream, owing to the narrowness of the channel. But to see such a brood of ships, the largest in the world, hatched upon

the banks of such a quiet little river, amid such peaceful country scenes is a new experience. This, then, is Britain; a little island, with little lakes, little rivers, quiet fields, but mighty interests and power that reach round the world. John Burroughs.

IRELAND.

LESSON 24.-OUTLINE, EXTENT, AND SURFACE.

1. Ireland is the smaller and more westerly of the two great islands of the British archipelago. Its northeastern coast approaches within about 13 miles of the south-west of Scotland at the North Channel; its eastern shores are separated from the west coast of England by the Irish Sea and St. George's Channel, which are from 60 to 100 miles wide; and the Atlantic Ocean surrounds it on the north, south, and west.

2. The shape of the island is on the whole more regular than that of Great Britain; its form may be

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compared to that of a rhomboid, as shown in the accompanying figure, having the angles at Fair Head in the north-east, Erris Head in the northwest, Mizen Head in the south-west, and Carnsore Point in the south-east.

3. The distance from Fair Head to Mizen Head is 300 miles. The average width of the country is about 100 miles; the distance from Halbert Point in the extreme east to Dunmore Head in the extreme west is 175 miles.

4. The extent of surface is 32,500 square miles, which is somewhat greater than that of Scotland, and equal to about one-fourth of the total area of the British Isles.

5. The highest portions of the surface of Ireland are