11. Of course I see its bearings upon climate, and could read a lesson quite glibly as to its usefulness as a condenser, and tell you gravely how much California has for which she may thank these heights, and how little Nevada; but, looking from this summit with all desire to see everything, the one overmastering feeling is desolation, desolation!

Next to this, and more pleasing to notice, is the interest and richness of the granite forms; for the whole region, from plain to plain, is built of this dense solid rock, and is sculptured under chisel of cold in shapes of great variety, yet all having a common spirit, which is purely Gothic.

12. In the much discussed origin of this order of building, I never remember to have seen, though it can hardly have escaped mention, any suggestion of the possibility of the Gothic having been inspired by granite forms. Yet, as I sat on Mount Tyndall, the whole mountains shaped themselves like ruins of cathedrals-sharp roof-ridges, pinnacled and statued buttresses more spired and ornamented than Milan's; receding doorways, with pointed arches carved into blank façades of granite, doors never to be opened, innumerable jutting points with here and there a single cruciform peak, its frozen roof and granite spires so strikingly Gothic, that I cannot doubt that the Alps furnished the models for early cathedrals of that order.

13. I thoroughly enjoyed the silence, which, gratefully contrasting with the surrounding tumult of form, conveyed to me a new sentiment. I have lain and listened through the heavy calm of a tropical voyage, hour after hour, longing for a sound; and in desert nights the dead stillness has many a time awakened me from sleep. For moments, too, in my forest life, the groves made absolutely no breath of movement; but there is around these summits the soundlessness of a vacuum. The sea stillness is that of sleep. The desert of death-this silence is like the waveless calm of space.

LESSON LXXII.

MRS. GARTH TEACHING HER CHILDREN.

BY GEORGE ELIOT.

Marian C. Evans (George Eliot), was born in Derbyshire, England, about the year 1820. She is now the wife of George H. Lewes, himself an author of decided talent. Among her best known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Romola, Silas Marner, Felix Holt, and Middlemarch. Her productions are scholarly, instructive, and powerful, and justly entitle her to the rank of leading novelist of the day. The following extract is from Middlemarch.

R. GARTH was not at the office, and Fred rode on to

a way outside town

a homely place with an orchard in front of it, a rambling, oldfashioned, half-timbered building, which before the town had spread had been a farm-house, but was now surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen. We get the fonder of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends have. The Garth family, which was rather a large one, for Mary had four brothers and one sister, were very fond of their old house, from which all the best furniture had long been sold. Fred liked it too, knowing it by heart even to the attic, which smelled deliciously of apples and quinces, and until to-day he had never come to it without pleasant expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now with the sense that he should probably have to make his confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom he was rather more in awe than of her husband.

2. Not that she was inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies, as Mary was. In her present matronly age, at least, Mrs. Garth never committed herself by overhasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth, and learned self-control. She had that rare sense which discerns what is inalterable, and submits to it without murmuring. Adoring her husband's virtues, she had very early made up her mind to his incapacity of minding his own interests, and had met the consequences cheerfully. She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all pride in tea-pots or children's frilling,

and had never poured any pathetic confidences into the ears of her feminine neighbors concerning Mr. Garth's want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been like. other men. Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or eccentric, and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as "your fine Mrs. Garth."

3. She was not without her criticism of them in return, being more accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and—where is the blameless woman?—apt to be a little severe toward her own sex, which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate. On the other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent toward the failings of the men, and was often heard to say that these were natural. Also, it must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in her resistance to what she held to be follies: the passage from governess into housewife had wrought itself a little too strongly into her consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the family dinner, and darned all the stockings.

4. She had sometimes taken pupils in a peripatetic fashion, making them follow her about in the kitchen with their book or slate. She thought it good for them to see that she could make an excellent lather while she corrected their blunders "without looking"-that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid Zone-that, in short, she might possess "education" and other good things ending in "tion," and worthy to be pronounced emphatically, without being a useless doll. When she made remarks to this edifying effect she had a firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not hinder her face from looking benevolent, and her words, which came forth like a procession, were uttered in a fervid, agreeable contralto. Certainly the exemplary Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her character sustained her oddities, as very fine wine sustains a flavor of skin.

5. Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in the kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several occupations at once there—making her pies at the well-scoured deal table on one side of that airy room, observing Sally's movements at the oven and dough-tub through an open door, and giving lessons to her youngest boy and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table with their books and slates before them. A tub and a clothes-horse at the other end of the kitchen indicated an intermittent wash of small things also going on.

6. Mrs. Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling her pastry-applying her rolling-pin and giving ornamental pinches, while she expounded with grammatical fervor what were the right views about the concord of verbs and pronouns with nouns of multitude or signifying many" was a sight agreeably amusing. She was of the same curly-haired, square-faced type as Mary, but handsomer, with more delicacy of feature, a pale skin, a solid matronly figure, and a remarkable firmness of glance. Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter would become like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a dowry—the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a malignant prophecy-" Such as I am she will shortly be."

7. "Now let us go through that once more," said Mrs. Garth, pinching an apple-puff which seemed to distract Ben, an energetic young male with a heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson. "Not without regard to the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea'—tell me again what that means, Ben."

(Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold her Lindley Murray above the waves.) "Oh-it means-you must think what you mean,' said Ben, rather peevishly. "I hate grammar. What's the use

of it?"

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To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can.

be understood," said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision. "Should you like to speak as old Job does?"

8. "Yes," said Ben, stoutly; "it's funnier. He says, 'Yo goo-that's just as good as ' You go.'

"But he says, 'A ship's in the garden,' instead of 'a sheep,' ,'" said Letty, with an air of superiority. "You might think he meant a ship off the sea."

"No, you mightn't, if you weren't silly," said Ben. "How could a ship off the sea come there?"

9. "These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of grammar," said Mrs. Garth. "That apple peel is to be eaten by the pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pastry. Job has only to speak about very plain things. How do you think you would write or speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of grammar than he does? You would use wrong words, and put words in the wrong places, and instead of making people understand you, they would turn away from you as a tiresome person. What would you do then?"

“I shouldn't care; I should leave off," said Ben, with a sense that this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.

10. "I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben," said Mrs. Garth, accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring. Having finished her pies, she moved toward the clothes-horse, and said, "Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday about Cincinnatus."

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'I know! he was a farmer," said Ben.

'Now, Ben, he was a Roman-let me tell," said Letty, using her elbow contentiously.

"You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was plowing."

Yes, but before that-that didn't come first-people wanted him," said Letty.

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'Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first," insisted Ben. He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his advice. And he was a brave man,