invasion. Philip of Spain was preparing against her an armament, for which all the resources of his vast empire were lavished, and which exceeded in magnitude any fleet ever before launched upon those waters. The expedition was blessed by the Pope, and in the boastfulness of anticipated victory, was called the invincible Armada. But Elizabeth was not dismayed. She had earned the confidence and affection of her people, and they now rose as one man to defend their country, their religion, and their queen. Mounted on horseback she addressed her troops at Tilbury, in a noble and patriotic speech; solemn prayers were offered up in all the churches, beacons were ready to be lighted on every hill, and armed vessels kept watch along the coast. On the 19th July, 1588, the great Armada entered the Channel, and, closely pursued by the English fleet, sailed past the southern counties to join the Prince of Parma, off Flanders. Ere this junction could take place, however, the light English vessels had proved more than a match for the heavy and unwieldy galleons. Storms drove the Spanish ships against each other in the narrow sea, and, after several days of skirmishing, the Armada was defeated, on the 7th August, in a general engagement, and the enterprise abandoned. The Spanish commander attempted to sail round the Orkneys, but a terrible tempest scattered his ships; some were wrecked off the Scottish isles, some on the coast of Ireland, others stranded on the Norwegian shore, and of all that mighty armament only a small and disabled remnant returned to tell the tale of disaster to Philip. This glorious victory was rightly regarded as the triumph of the Protestant cause. In England, public thanks were offered up to God for the signal deliverance; and in Holland, whose newly-won independence would have been lost if Spain had succeeded, medals were struck with the inscription, "Jehovah blew, and they were scattered."

Soon after the defeat of the Armada, died the earl of Leicester, a courtier upon whom the favour of the queen had showered wealth and honours more lavishly than his abilities or virtues deserved. His place was filled by the earl of Essex, a man of far superior capacity, generous and brave, but hasty and imprudent. Cecil, Lord Burleigh, the

great statesman, who had been Elizabeth's minister from the commencement of her reign, and whose wise counsels had greatly contributed to the prosperity and glory of his country, closed his long career in 1598.

The few remaining years of the great queen were disturbed by sanguinary wars in Ireland, and clouded by the execution of the ill-fated Essex, whose death she never ceased to lament. She died in 1603, in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign, leaving to her successor a kingdom which she had raised to the highest rank among European states, and a people free, loyal, and independent.

LESSON XV.-FRIDAY.

SELF-SACRIFICE.

They who labour for themselves, are sure to be disappointed. Let them gain their object: when gained, it becomes worthless. Whatever it may be, their cupidity always darts beyond it. "Vaulting ambition doth o'erleap itself, and falls on the other side." They, on the other hand, who labour for others in the spirit of self-sacrifice, are sure to succeed; for self-sacrifice has the unshakeable assurance of charity, which never faileth. It is the brightest emanation of that godliness, which has not only the promise of the world to come, but also the promise of this world. He who devotes himself to making others happy, will infallibly do so; it may be, not in the very way he designed, but what does that matter? He attaches no worth to the act, as springing from himself, as the creature of his own understanding and will. He is equally blest in seeing the good, of which he is allowed to be the instrument. Without feeling either regret or shame at finding that the purposes of the Divine mind are not in exact unison with his own, he is full of humble thankfulness to that Providence, which has so overruled his feeble and ill-directed exertions, as to bring good out of them, in spite of his own want of judgment to guide them. He who seeks after love in the spirit of self-sacrifice, will win love. He who seeks after glory in the spirit of self-sacrifice, will win glory. He who seeks after truth in the spirit of self-sacrifice, will win

truth. At the same time he will have obtained a privileged immunity from all those anxieties, and distractions, and fears; from all those vain hopes and gnawing desires, and cankering jealousies and rancorous animosities, and from that undying worm of envy, of which selfishness is the sole and prolific parent. Misfortune cannot befal him. Evil cannot touch him. Death cannot harm him. He has already passed through the gates of immortality. And what are all the moments of true and pure happiness that we enjoy here on earth, except fragments, precious fragments, of this " entire and perfect chrysolite ?"-J. C. Hare.

LESSON XVI.-MONDAY.

OROGRAPHY.

In Africa, the uniformity of the horizontal profile displays not merely the twofold division into high and low land, but also a similarity of configuration prevailing in each separate district. The great South African plateau rises on all sides by a succession of terraces to extensive table lands, so that the Table Mountains, seen from the sea, appear like small models of the high central mass of South Africa. The character of the low lands in the north is as uniform as that of the high land in the south. However much the number of oases and ridges of rocks may be increased on future maps by the testimony of adventurous discoverers, the low land of the Sahara must for ever stamp on North African nature a character of monotony. The two detached mountain ranges of very unequal magnitude in the north, which, bathing on one side in the coolness of the Mediterranean Sea, have invited across the civilisation of Europe, and sinking on the other into the dried-up oceanbed of Sahara, have arrested its further progress, both display in their highland character the rudiments of African mountain forms. This is seen in the plateau of Barca, much resembling a mountain promontory, and less clearly in the high land of Barbary; for the Atlas system, near the maritime plains of Morocco, is in its northern portions transformed into tracts abounding in mountain chains, which on the west rise even to the region of snow. Southern Africa under the

tropics would be as incapable of supporting life as Northern Africa is in its tropical regions, were it, like the latter, a lowland; and the part Africa took in ancient history would have been an impossibility, if it had not had in the north the Nile, the plateau of Cyrenaica, the highland of Numidia and Mauritania, and had it not possessed, in the pillars of Hercules, one side of the gate to the Thalassa of antiquity.

The main stem of America strongly contrasts with that of Africa. While in Africa vertical elevation appears to be limited to the minimum, the system of the Cordilleras displays a rapid interchange of elevation and depression upon a comparatively small base. There the plateau form, here the chain form, is the peculiar character of the elevation. The Andes, with a length of 9,200 English miles, form the most extensive system of mountain chains in the world. The width of their base increases from south to north; in South America it never exceeds 400 miles; in North America it amounts occasionally to 1,200; and where it is most contracted, at the isthmus of Panama, which only slightly connects the northern and southern continents, a complete depression divides the Cordilleras of North and South America. It is of the highest importance to the commerce of the world, that the system of the Cordilleras is most accessible from the side of the Mediterranean Sea of America, that it can be crossed most easily where it is narrowest, and that the coincidence of isthmus and depression, of horizontal and vertical diminution of space occurs, not only at Panama, but also southwards between the Atrato and the Bay of Cupica, and northwards between Lake Nicaragua and San Juan de Nicaragua, or Realego, and in the depression of Tehuantepec. The lofty chains of the Cordilleras are not, however, always separated by chasmlike longitudinal valleys, but in several instances run out to a considerable distance, and appear as huge boundary walls surrounding high plateaus. This is the case in Peru, Quito, New Mexico, and Upper California; while in Santa Fe de Bogota, Guatemala, and Mexico, such a boundary occurs only on one side. In the torrid zone, such highlands form the natural centres of cultivation, and the mountains appear as the finger-posts of the course of civilisation. Hence the native civilisation began and ended in the elevated tropical

M

plains, and its progress was from north to south; while the lowlands, the central highlands, and those lying nearer the pole, were occupied by savage nomadic tribes, until foreign civilisation from the east confined them within a central belt, running in a meridional direction. Besides the distinctly marked chain-form, and the frequent occurrence of elevated plains, with clearly defined boundaries, the system of the Cordilleras has a third peculiarity in its still active volcanoes. A range of volcanic mountains along the western shores, 9,200 miles in length, and rising to the limit of perpetual snow, marks the enormous longitudinal chasm out of which the Andes arose. At rare intervals the activity of the volcanic forces appears to be extinguished superficially in the maritime chain, and then to have passed over to the next chain eastward. Sometimes, also, and most conspicuously in the plateau of Anahua, a range of volcanoes crosses the meridional chain. The greatest elevations of the globe are not found in the American Cordilleras, but nowhere else are there so many important elevations near the sea.

LESSON XVII.-TUESDAY.

THE ATMOSPHERE.

The air, though considered simple and elementary by the ancients, is a mixture of at least three elastic fluids, equally subtle and invisible, and equally essential to the purposes which the atmosphere is intended to serve. These are the now well-known gases-nitrogen, oxygen, and carbonic acid. In the first, flame dies and no life can exist; in the second, bodies burn, and animals live, with great intensity; in the third, both life and flame are extinguished. Though so different in their properties when taken singly, the admixture of them, which forms our atmosphere, is adjusted-in kind and in the relative proportions of each-to the condition of things, both living and dead, which now obtains on the surface of the earth. Did the air consist of nitrogen only, the sun's rays would be the sole source of heat, wherever the atmosphere extended, and no existing plant or animal could flourish on the globe. Were it formed of oxygen only, fire, once kindled, would refuse to be extinguished, and confla