pandering to vice and all uncleanness. And happy is it that the last impression he leaves us is the best. He dictated "Divine Poems" when he was old, very old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see. He tells us there, in solemn and revering verse, his thoughts and aspirations, his regrets for the past, his hopes for the future. It is in an awful attitude that we leave him-moriturus nos salutat. His latest lines, if not quite sublime or pathetic, are all but both. Miratur limen Olympi:

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.

THE LAST WORDS.

BY MARY C. F. MONCK.

THE wintry night had fallen, the sleet drove thick and fast,
And with a dirge-like wail the trees swayed groaning in the blast;
But in a warm and cheery room the fire blazed high and bright,
And crimson draperies shut out the wildness of the night.
Yet places twain were vacant, their owners far away,
And tidings had come o'er the wave of battle and affray;
So 'twas on saddened faces, and looks of hope and fear,
The mellow homelight rested that last night of the year.

And they, for whom wild earnest prayers were poured with many tears,
The objects of that household's love-its trembling anxious fears-
One lay upon his death-bed; the other at his side,

Strove all in vain to stanch the flow of life's slow ebbing tide.
The dying arms were round his neck, the faltering accents strove
To utter to his straining ear the faint farewells of love-
The last, last priceless messages of that true heart and brave,
To those whose tears might never fall upon his early grave.
"Oh, brother!" thus he murmured, "to me it clearly seems
That dim foreshowings of our fate come to us in our dreams.
'Twas but a few short nights ago, in sleep, methought I stood
Again beneath our father's roof, my breast bestained with blood;
You all were there around the hearth; my mother's face was bowed,
But I felt that she was weeping-I heard her sob aloud ;
And on one place untenanted I saw the firelight shine :
I woke in horror as I knew the empty place was mine.

"I know you will go home again with glory and with fame,
To shed a new and brighter light upon our ancient name.
They'll welcome you with gladness, but grief will mar their joy;
My mother's heart will sorely yearn to greet her younger boy;

VOL. XXXVII.

E

My father's eagle eye will fail, his manly voice grow weak,
And bitter, bitter tears for me will stain our sister's cheek;
But when you sit with them again around the old fireside,
Oh, brother! brother, speak of me, and tell them how I died.
"Our father was a warrior, has still a warrior's heart;
"Twill cheer him in his grief to know I bravely did my part.
Tell him that on the battle-day I shrunk not from the foe,
That in the hottest strife I met the hand that laid me low.
Say that when overborne I fell 'mid fierce contending bands,
I gave my tattered ensign up to none but friendly hands.
Oh tell him all that I would say, and bid him not to weep
For him who met a soldier's death, and sleeps a soldier's sleep.
"Tell our mother that in those last hours of agony and pain,
I've longed to see her gentle face, and hear her voice again.
Could I but die within the arms that soothed my childhood's rest-
Could I but lay my weary head in quiet on her breast—
This hour had lost its pang for me. And now, when life wanes fast,
The blessed hopes she bade me know are with me to the last.
He who hath called me early, my soul from death can save:
She will not mourn as one who owns no trust beyond the grave.
"It is the last night of the year; when the pale dawn doth break,
My spirit to another life in heaven shall awake.

Oh, brother! it is soon to die-my life but just begun-
The fame I hoped my sword should gain, so near, and yet unwon!
I know they're speaking of us now, in that beloved home
To which with honour and renown I fondly hoped to come.
There will be sorrow in its halls for him whose day is done,
They'll think of him who went with you, when you return alone.
"You'll wander in the lonely glens that were so dear to me-
You'll tread the heath and climb the hills that I no more may see-
The woods, that echoed back our shouts of gleeful boyish play-
The streams, where we have cast our lines full many a summer day-
The chesnuts, where the stock-doves reared their nestlings year by year-
The hazels, where the clustering nuts drooped by the glassy mere,-
Our early haunts, our manhood's home, so still and passing fair,
You will return to them again, but I shall not be there.

"I shall not be forgotten; when my hounds go bounding by,
You'll think of him whose voice was wont to answer to their cry.
When other tones ring in your ear the gladsome sounds of
They'll bring to you one thought of those, which you shall hear no more.
Oh! then you will remember this long and fearful night,

yore,

And tears that bring no shame to strength shall rise and dim your sight,
And many a sad and mournful sigh your heart will heave for me,
And the low grave where I shall rest, far, far beyond the sea."

The faint head leaned more heavily, the low voice died away,
And the brother, in a last embrace, prest what was now but clay.
At morn they dug a narrow grave without the camp—and there
They covered in with alien soil that form so brave and fair;
And that dark mound of earth beneath the bill was all to show
That a noble and a loving heart slept dreamlessly below.

WINTER IN THE CRIMEA.

Ir is impossible, notwithstanding the comforting assurances of the Minister of War, and the accounts daily accumulating of supplies sent out and sending out, not to entertain the most serious apprehensions with regard to the welfare and the safety of our countrymen in the East. It has been the writer's fate to have spent several winters in Asia Minor, and he can testify that such winters are of extraordinary severity. Nor can there be much difference between the climate of Asia Minor and that of the Crimea, except in so far as a peculiarly continental climate always the most severe-is modified by the peninsular character of the country and its physical aspect. But such advantages as the Crimea apparently posesses over Lesser Asia, are almost counterbalanced by a more northerly latitude, and by the greater or less exposure, more especially of the steppe of Northern Crimea, to the truly continental winter of Russia.

At Angora, in Central Asia Minor, at an elevation of 2700 feet above the level of the sea, snow began to fall on the 16th of December, and continued, with slight intermissions, till the 4th of January. During this storm the thermometer fell, on the 19th of December, to 18 deg. below freezing point. On the 28th the thermometer was 15 Cent. +5 Far., or 27 deg. below freezing point. Not a native was to be seen in the streets, and the dogs were perishing in the bazaars. The most rapid streams were freezing in their course, the vapour of the mouth hung in icicles on the moustache; the cold was almost unendurable. Early in January the weather cleared up, and a fine clear frost set in, the atmosphere being at first filled with icy particles. This lasted till the latter end of the month, when winter broke up with rapid thawing, rain, and sleet.

The writer also passed great part of a winter on the Ishik Tagh. The thermometer varied at 10 in the morning between +2 and + 12, or from 30 to 22 deg. below freezing point, the snow was four feet deep, and utterly untrafficable. These dreary winter months passed without any possibility of extricating oneself from such a position, and with very few resources, were spent in a wood hut, with wood for fuel, and ordinary travelling clothes and equipage, with much privation and discomfort, but not the slightest sickness or suffering.

But such severe winters are by no means confined to Asia Minor. Being, in January, 1836, at Ain-Tab, a large town on the southern slope of the Taurus, immediately upon the plains of Syria, the thermometer was found to fall as low as at Angora, + 5 of Far., or 27 deg. below freezing point. There was a great deal of snow on the ground, and several caravans had been lost through the inclemency of the weather and the severity of the frost.

If this is the case, then, immediately above the-in summer-timeburning plains of Syria, nothing less can possibly be anticipated of the more exposed parts of the Crimea. This peninsula resembles somewhat in aspect the Isle of Wight. A range of hills, which assumes in parts a mountainous character, called the Yaila Tagh, "Summer Quarters

Mountains," or "Chalet Mountain," and which attains an elevation of 5180 feet in its culminating point, the Tshatir Tagh, or Table Mountain, lines the southern portion of the peninsula. This chain is strictly divided into two ranges, the Yaila Tagh and the Karahi Yaila; the Tschatir Tagh being between the two. The Karahi Yaila, or "Summer Quarters of the Black Horde," is a little more removed from the sea than the Yaila Tagh, but both leave a low fringe of shore, which corresponds to the undercliff of the Isle of Wight, and which, in point of climate, is the Crimean Tempe. Sheltered from the north winds, snow seldom lies in this favoured tract, which is the seat of the country-houses of the more wealthy merchants of Odessa and of the mansions of the nobility. At the picturesque pass of Baidar, the rocky hills come down close to the sea, leaving nothing but abrupt cliffs, which descend gradually to Cape Khersonese-the lighthouse of which is built upon the sands, and having the narrow inlet of Balaklava on its face. From this contour of country all the great rivers have their course northwards of the Crimean range of hills, and flow westward into the Bay of Kalamita, or eastward into the Silvash, or Putrid Sea, which is separated by the remarkable tongue of land called Arabat from the sea of Azov. At the head of these waters, and on the northern slope of the mountains, are the only three towns of the Crimea Simferopol, Karasu, and Baktchi-Sarai. The ports are Eupatoria, or Koslov; Sebastopol; Balaklava; Aloupka; Yalta; Aloushta; Kaffa, or Theodosia ; and Kertch. The shores of the Putrid Sea are barely fit for human habitation. The vast plains, or steppe, which stretch to the northward and occupy the greater part of the peninsula, impregnated with saline particles, hot and dry in summer, are cold and humid in winter, except when covered, for a period that varies between a month and six weeks, with snow, over which the usual Russian sledge conveyances can be driven with the greatest expedition. The peninsula of Kertch, it is to be observed, is less hilly, and has still more of an insular climate. The Tauric Chersonese, where the allies are stationed, rising gradually from the sea to the Tirka Kari hills, an offset of the Yaila Tagh, also possesses more of the humid climate of an island than the northern plains, or steppe, but is, at the same time, exposed to the cold winds that blow steadily from the continent when once winter is set in, and, in autumn and spring, to all the stormy vagaries of the Euxine, which has upon the present occasion more than vindicated its ancient renown.

Every school-boy knows how the ship Argo was nearly sunk by the stormy waters of the Euxine, and the adventurous Argonauts swallowed up in its turbulent depths. Arrian, who navigated the same sea in the time of the Emperor Adrian, nearly experienced a similar disaster.

The classic poets seized upon this evil repute of the Black Sea; and it is not a little remarkable that the rotatory character of its storms, as lately experienced off the Crimea, did not pass by unobserved by the ancients. Thus Virgil, describing a storm, specifies several winds as either blowing at the same time or in rapid succession:

Una Eurus notusque ruunt, creberque procellis
Africus.

And Ovid says, in still more express terms:

En., lib. i. ver. 89.

Inter utrumque fremunt immani turbine venti
Nescit, cui domino pareat, unda maris.
Nam modo purpureo vires capit Eurus ab ortu :
Nunc Zephyrus, sero vespere missus, adest:
Nunc gelidus sicca Boreas bacchatur ab Arcto:
Nunc notus adversa prælia fronte gerit.

Trist., lib. i., el. ii., ver. 25.

Arrian describes his fleet as being first incommoded by the north-west wind, called in that country, Thrascias; or by the Greeks, Sciron. It came, however, about to the south, and from thence to the south-west; so that, in the course of the tempest, the wind shifted to every point of the compass, like the storm above described by Ovid, once himself an exile in the Crimea.

The law of storms, as developed in modern times by the researches of Reid, Piddington, Maury, and Redfield, teaches us, that north of the Equator rotatory storms commence with a high barometer and light airs from the southward, succeeded immediately by a rapid fall of the mercury, the gale commencing at S.S.E., or S. by E. veering to S.S.W. and W., and ending at W.N.W. or N. W., while the path of the centre of the storm moves from the westward in an easterly direction. Hence the loss to our fleets arose from the most furious part of the gale finding the vessels anchored on a lee-shore, with a bad holding-ground. The remedy was to have put to sea the moment the fall of the barometer and the veering of the wind indicated that a severe rotatory gale had commenced.

The meteorological tables of Professor Dové, of Berlin, give for Sebastopol a mean winter temperature of 35 deg. 94 min., a mean spring temperature of 51 deg. 62 min., a mean summer temperature of 70 deg. 57 min., a mean autumn temperature of 53 deg. 76 min., and a mean annual temperature of 52 deg. 97 min.; giving as the difference between the hottest and coldest months only 36 deg. 88 min. But this does not give the extreme range of the thermometer. It would have required for that purpose to have had the maximum and minimum points. Colonel Sykes, an experienced practical meteorologist, compares this climate to that of Dijon, Paris, and London.

This comparison is further justified by the table of the temperature of the Crimea, compiled from the observations of Professor Steven, at Simferopol, made during twelve consecutive years, from the 1st of January, 1822, to the 1st of January, 1834. The place of observation was about 850 feet above the level of the sea, exposed to the east, but sheltered from the north winds. The elevation of the plateau on which our army is encamped is little short of this, and is exposed to all winds. These tables give the temperature of the winter and spring months as follows: