cade THE GIFT OF WILLIAM G. KERCKHOFF TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE LIBRARY OF FRIEDRICH KLUGE mnVEBSITY ^O: The English Reader. ?>aiinzuna-sband zu Th(' l^jio-lish Student. Lelirbuoh />ur KiiifiihruDg in die englische Spiaehc mid Laiuleskiinde. V..n Professor Dr. Emil Hausknecht, Oberlehrer ;in ti c c ' • • 1 i » • « "• e e • t • ' c ' n ' » ' I- t^ "^^ IMIALT. CUMEMS. Soito Francis Baron 1 Isaac Newton 2 Benjamin Franklin 8 Tlie Telephone 11 Charles Uarwin 13 The British Islands 17 The Lake District 19 The Cotton Towns . . . .' 19 Knives and Forks 22 Lincolnshire 24 i^ The Coal-Fiel.l • 26 (ji Niagara 2( The Canons of Colorado 30 ^ riic Koyal Gorge 30 " Tlu" (.harden of the Gods 31 H The Monnt of the Holy Cross 32 Voseniite Vallev :33 (^ Aspects from the World's Columbian Exposition ;34 3 A Visit to dockland in 1884 4:. ^ The British Constitution 49 The British Army and Navy ."jl Religion in the British Isles 52 Oi'ders 53 An English (iardi'n 54 English Animals 55 English Customs 56 English Manners 59 Forms of Address 61 How to write a Letti-r G2 A Formal Invitation and three Answers 65 Six Familiar Letters and Answers 65 A short Scene in a Theatre 73 IV Scite A Business Letter 75 Change, of Address "^S A Telegraphic Despatch 75 Letter ordering Books 76 Order 76 Application 76 Two Bills 77 Tavo Receipts 78 Six Business Letters and Answers 78 English and American Money ^1 English Weights and Measures 82 Cricket 83 Lawn Tennis 84 On board the Princess of Wales 85 Furnished Appartments to Let 88 A Visit 90 At Charing Cross Hotel 94 A London Ramble 96 A Skating Party 97 A Visit to the Lyceum 99 Shopping at Maple & Co's 100 Buyhig (jrloves at Whiteley's 105 Advertisements 106 Quips, Conundrums, Riddles Ill Capital Letters 113 Division of Syllables 114 Punctuation 115 Colloquial Phrases 116 In der Falte des hinteren Einbanddeckels besonders geheftet: Word-List. FRANCIS BACON. Frnnci.s Bacon, commonly known as Lord Bacon, was born in London in 1561, and died in 1626. He was made Lord Chancellor of England in 1618, in the reign of James I., with the title of Lord Verulam and afterwards Viscount St. Alban's, and was a great * political character. Bacon devoted much of his time to science, and, like his namesake Roger Bacon in the fifteenth century, he .seems to have foreseen many of the discoveries which were after- wards made. But his most usefiU work was a book called the s 'Novum Organum,' or 'New .Alethod,' published in 1020, in which he sketched out very fully how science ought to be studied. He insisted that no knowledge can be real but that which is founded on experience, and that the only true way to cultivate science is 12 to be quite certain of each step before going on fartlier, nor to be satisfied with any general law until you have exhausted all the facts which it is supposed to explain. For example, if you require to understand what heat is, and i-j how it acts, you must not be satisfied, he says, by merely making a few experiments on the heat of the sun and that of fin', and trying from these to lay down some general rule of how heat works. 'No, you must examine it in the sun's rays both when 20 they fall direct and when they are reflected; in fiery meteors, in lightning, in volcanoes, and in all kinds of flame; in heated solids, in hot springs, in boiling liquids, in steam and vapours, in bodies which retain heat, such as wool and fur : in bodies which you have 2* held near the fire, and in bodies heated by rubbing; in sparks produced by friction, as at the axles of wheels; in the heating of The Enclish Rea.itr. 1 damp grass, as in haystacks; in chemical changes, as when iron is dissolved by acids ; in animals ; in the effects of spirits of wine ; in aromatics, as for example pepper, when you place it on your 4 tongue. In fact, you must study every property of heat down to the action of very cold water, which makes your flesh glow when poured upon it. When you have made a list,' says Bacon, 'of all the conditions under which heat appears, or is modified, of the 8 causes which produce it, and of the effects which it brings about, then you may begin to speak of its nature and its laws, and may perhaps have some clear and distinct ideas about it.' ISAAC NEWTON. 12 In 1642, the same year in which Galileo died, a child was born at Woolsthorpe near Grantham in Lincolnshire, who was so tiny that his mother said ,she could put him into a quart mug'. This tiny delicate baby was to become the great philosopher Newton. 16 We hear of him that he was at first very idle and inattentive at school, but, having been one day passed in the class by one of his schoolfellows, he determined to regain his place, and soon suc- ceeded in rising to the head of them all. In his play hours, when 20 the other boys were romping, he amused himself by making little mechanical toys, such as a water clock, a mill turned by a mouse, a carriage moved by the person who sat in it, and many other ingenious contrivances. When he was fifteen his mother sent for 2i him home to manage the farm which belonged to their estate; but it was soon clear that he was of no use as a farmer, for though he tried hard to do his work, his mind was not in it, and he was only happy when he could settle down under a hedge with his 28 book to study some difficult problem. At last one of his uncles, seeing how bent the boy was upon study, persuaded his mother to send him back to school and to college, where he soon passed all his companions in mathematics, and became a Fellow of Trinity 32 College, Cambridge, in 1667. But even before this, in the year IGGO, hit; bu>y iiiiiid liail already Ijc^uu to work out tlit: tlirco greatest discoveries oi' liis life. In that y(.'ar lie discovered the reniarkahlo mathematical jjrocess called the MifltodofFlujionft,' which is almost the same as that now called the 'I)iff'< rential Cnl- 4 cnhts,' worked out about the same time by Leibniz, a great German mathematician. In that year he also made the discoveries about Li(flif mill ('i>lnin\ which we shall speak of by and by; and again in that year h<- tirst thought out the great Throrii of Gravitation, h which we must now consider. Theory of Gravitation. 1606. — In the course of his astro- nomical studies, Newton had come across a problem which he could not solve. The problem was this. Why does tlie moon always 12 move round the earth, and the planets round the sun? The natural thing is for a body to go straight on. If you roll a marbU; along the floor it moves on in a straight line, and if it were not sto])ped by the air and the tioor, it would roll on for ever. 117///. tJ/o). n; should the bodies in the ski) go rouiid loid ruiiiid, ((ltd not sfraiyht fori card? While Newton was still ])ondering over this question, the plague broke out in Cambridge in the year 1665, and he was forced 20 to go back to Woolsthorpe. Here he Avas sitting one day in the garden, meditating as usual, when an apple from the tree before him snai)ped from its stalk and fell to the ground. This attracted Newton's attention; he asked himself, Whji docs the npjdr fall f' and 24 the answer he found was, J^eeause the earth pulls it. This was not quite a new thought, for many clever men before Newton had imagined that things were held dow^n to the earth by a kind of force, but they had never made any use of the idea. Newton, on 28 the contrary, seized upon it at once, and began to reason further. If the earth pulls the a]iple, said he, and not only the apple but things very higii u}) in the air. why should it not })ull the moon, and so keep it going round and round the earth instead of moving 32 on in a straight line? And if the earth jndls the moon, may not the sun in the same way pull the earth and the planets, and so keep them going round and round with the sun as their centre, just as if they Avere all held to it by invisible strings? You can understand this idea of Newton's by taking a ball 4 with a piece of string fastened to it, and swinging it round. If you were to let the string go, the ball would fly off in a straight line, but as long as you hold it, it will go round and round you. The ball does not come to you, although the string pulls it, because 8 the sidev.'^ay pull of the string cannot check its motion onwards, but only alters its direction. This it does at ev^ery moment, causing it to move in a circle round you. In the same way the moon does not come to the earth, but goes on revolving round it. 12 Newton felt convinced that this guess was right, and that the force of graritatiou, as he called it, kept the moon going round the earth, and the planets round the sun. But a mere guess is not enough in science, so he set to work to prove by very difficult 10 calculations what the effect ought to be if it was true that the earth pulled or attracted the moon. To make these calculations it was necessary to know exactly tlte distance from the centre of the earth to its surface, because the attraction would have to be reckoned 20 as if all the mass of the earth Avere collected at the centre, and then as decreasing gradually till it reached the moon. Now the size of the earth was not accurately known, so Newton had to use the best measurement he could get, and to his great disappointment his 24 calculations came out ivrong. The moon in fact moved more slowly than it ought to do according to his theory. The difference was small, for the pull of the earth Avas only one-sixth greater than it should have been : but Newton was too cautious to neglect this 28 want of agreement. He still believed his theory to be true, but he had no right to assume that it was, unless he could make his calculation agree with observation. So he put away his papers in a drawer and Avaited till he should find some way out of the 32 difficulty. This is one of many examples of the patience men must have who Avish to make really great discoveries. Nowton waited sixteen yrars before he solved tlic |)robleiii, or sjxjkf to any oiio of the great thought in liis mind. I'mt more li^ht ctnic at hist; it was in 1666, when lie was only twenty-four, that Ik.' saw the ajj}de fall; and it was in 1682 that he hoard onf; day at the lloyal Society t that a Frenchman named Picart had measured the size of the earth very accurately, and had found that it was larger than had been supposed. Newton saw at once that this would alter all his cal- culations. Directly he heard it he went home, took out his papers, 3 and set to work again with the new figures. Imagine his satis- faction when it came out j)erfectly right! It is said that he was so agitated when he saw that it was going to succeed, that ho was obliged to ask a friend [to finish working out the calculation for 12 him. His patience was rewarded; the attraction of the earth exactly agreed with the rate of movement of the moon, and he knew now that he had discovered the law which governed the motions of the heavenly bodies. le NoAv let US speak about Newton's discoveries in Light and Colour. In the early part of the seventeenth century several people had tried to find out Avhat it was that gave rise to different colours. 20 An Italian Archbishop named Antonio de Dominis (died 1625) had' given a better explanation of the rainbow than Roger Bacon had given before him ; and Descartes had gone farther, and had pointed out that a ray of light seen through a clear, i)olishcd ])iece of glass, 24 cut into the shape of a prism, is spread out into ^ colours exactly like the rainbow; but no one had yiA ,-'\ yet been able to say what was the cause of these ^ different tints. Newton was the first to Avork this out in his usual 23 accurate and jiainstaking way. He tells us that in 1666 he 'procured a triangular glass pri>m. to trv therewith the celebrated phenomena of colours,' and in the very first experiment he was struck by a very curious fact. He 32 had made a round hole F, about one-third of an inch broad, in the window-slmttor, D E. of a dark room, and placed close to it a glass prism, ABC, so as to refract the sun-light upwards towards the opposite wall of the room, M N, making the line of colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet) which Descartes had pointed out, and which Newton called a spectrum, from specio, I behold. While he was watching and admiring the beautiful colours, the thought struck Newton's first Experiment oil Dispersion ot Light. him that it WaS CUrioUS the D E, Window shutter. F, Koiind hole in it. A B C, Glass prism. M N , WaU on which the SpCCtrum sllOuld be loug 111- siiectrum was thrown. 12 stead of round. The rays of light come from the sun, which is round, therefore if they were all bent or refracted equally, there ought to be a round spot upon the wall; instead of which it was long with rounded ends, like a sun 16 drawn out lengthways. What could be the reason of the rays falling into this long shape? At first he thought that it might be because some of them passed through a thinner part of the prism, and so were less refracted; but when he tested this by sending one ray 20 through a thin part of the prism, and another through a thick part^ he found that they were both equally spread out into a spectrum. Then he thought that there might be some flaw in the glass, and he took another prism ; still, however, the spectrum remained long^ 24 as before. Next he considered whether the different angles at which the rays of the sun fell upon the prism had anything to do with it, but after calculating this mathematically he found the difference was too small to have any effect. Finally, he tried whether 28 it was possible that the rays had been bent into curves in passing through the prism, but he found by measurement that this again was not the reason. At last, after carefully proving that none of these explanations 32 was the true one, he began to suspect that it must be something peculiar in the different coloured rays themselves which caused them to divide one from the other. To prove this he made the following;' C'X|jeriment: — He made a liole l-\ in the sliutter, a.s before, and passed the lij^lit tliroiigli the prism. A I> (\ tlirowiiij^ the spectrum upon a screen, ^I X. He then pierced a tiny hole through the screen at the point g; the hole in this board was so 4 small that the rays of only one colour could })as.s through at a time. ' Newton first let a red ray pass through, so that it was bent by the prism, H I K, on the other side of tiie screen, and nia understand it you must iirst know that any body which is to be electrified requires to be so placed that the electricity cannot pass away from it intn the earth. The best way to do this is to place 20 it upon a stool with glass legs, because electricity does not pass easily along glass. You must also know that when any substance is charged with electricity, if you bring your finger or a piece of metal near to it, a spark will pass between the electrified substance 2* iind your finger or the metal. Vou will now, I think, be able to follow Franklin's experiments. He put a person, whom we will call A, upon a glass stool, and made him rub the glass cylinder of an electrical machine with one 23 hand and place his other hand upon it to receive the electricity. Now, he said, if electricity is created by the rubbing, this person must be filled with it, for he will be constantly taking it from the machine, and it cannot pass away, because of the glass legs uiuler 32 the stool. But he found that A had no more electricity in him after rubbing the cylinder than he had before, neither could any 10 sparks be drawn out of him. He then took two people, A and B^ and placing each of them on a glass stool, made A rub the cylinder, and B touch it, so as to receive the electricity. Now notice care- 4 fully what happened. B was soon so full of electricity that when Franklin touched him, sparks came out at all points-, but what was still more curious, when Franklin went to A and touched him, sparks came out between them just as they had done between him 8 and B. This he explained as follows: 'A, B, and myself,' he said, 'have all our natural quantity of electricity. Now when A rubbed the tube, he gave up some of his electricity to it, and this B took, 1-2 so that A had lost half his electricity and B had more than his share. I then touched B, and his extra charge of electricity passed into me and ran away into the earth. I now went to A, and I had more electricity in me than he had , because he had lost half his 16 natural quantity, and so part of my electricity passed into him, producing the sparks as before.' This Franklin believed to be the case with all electricity, namely, that every body contains its own amount of it, but that 20 when for any reason it is distributed unequally, those which have no more than they can well carry, give some up to those which have less, till they have each their right quantity. And this ex- plained at once why a man cannot electrify himself, for so long as 24 he has no one else from whom he can procure electricity, he is only taking back with one hand what he gives out with the other. Those who had too much electricity were called by Franklin positively electrified, and those who had too little, ner/ativehj electrified, 28 but the terms positive and negative are now used differently, the one for vitreous the other for resinous electricity. We must here omit any account of Franklin's discovery of the fact that lightning is electricity. He proved this by flying a specially prepared kite 32 in a thunderstorm, and with the knowledge gained he invented the lightning-conductor. 11 Iti THE TELEPHONE. Wonderful as the electric telegraph i.s in its power to send messages almost instantaneously across the world, yet within the last tew years an instrument still more wonderful, and at the same 4 time even more simple, has been invented. This is the telephone, a small instrument which, when fastened to one end of a wire while a similar instrument is fixed at the other end , enables us to talk with a person miles distant from us, so that he can not only s hear the words we say but even recognise the tones of our voice. As usual many men have helped to bring this instrument ^ — ~^^ to perfection. Page in America, de la Rive and Reiss on the Continent, and Varley in Eng- land, have all made attempts to produce speaking at a distance, while Elisha Gray of Chicago produced an instrument working with a battery, by means of which vocal sounds could be transmitted. But to Professor l- BeUs Telephone. 2. Section of the same. r<..„l, ,„, D^n „x' T5 i.„ • J A.\ "1 Ii'on plate. 6, Soft iron cove, c c. Coil of Cjrranam Bel ot Boston is due the ;,, , . , i ^ , o ' silk-coveied wire wound rouna 6. , fastened to one end of it, and round this soft iron is a 32 coil of silk-covered copper wire. At a little distance from the soft 12 iron bar is placed an iron plate, a, with an opening above it in the wooden case enclosing it, and into this opening the person speaks. The vibrations of the voice make the particles of the iron 4 plate or diaphragm vibrate, so that the plate does not move up and down as a whole, but more probably quivers, as it were, throughout its whole surface. This vibration affects the soft iron bar, which, it must be remembered , is not a permanent magnet 8 but only made so by touching the permanent magnet below. So the magnetisation of the soft iron is altered at every sound accord- ing to the rate at which it vibrates and the form of the vibration. This alteration at once sets up electric cui'rents in the coil of wire 12 c, and these pass along the wire instantaneously to the person at the other end, even if they are miles away. This person holds an exactly similar telephone to his ear. The currents pass into the coil c, affect the soft iron h , and make the iron plate a vibrate 16 exactly in the same way as the similar plate did at the speaking- end. So the same sounds are returned to the air at exactly the same rate and of the same form as the sounds caused by the voice at the other end, and we hear the very tone of our friend's voice, 20 not because the sound vibrations have travelled, but because these have been changed into electric currents at one end, and they are changed back again into sound at the other. There are many difficulties still about the working of the telephone; other noises 24 sometimes interfere with the wire and make confusion, and the currents are so weak that a very little disturbance prevents their acting properly, but numerous improvements are constantly being made, and there are already many kinds constructed very differently 28 from the one described. Mr. Edison, the well-known inventor in America, has now constructed a carbon telephone which, when it is put in the circuit of a battery, enables words uttered 115 miles distant to be heard easily by a large audience, and the time may 32 come when speeches made in London may be listened to by crowded meetings in all parts of England. 13 ClIAKLKS DAIIWIN. Tlio Tlieory vt' X;itiii-;il Selection, or tlio I )ar\\ mi.ui theory as it is ottcii called, was cliicHy worked out Ijy the j^reat naturalist Charles Darwin, who was born in 1809 and died in 1BS2. When * he was only two-and-twenty, Mr. Darwin went in her Majesty's ship •Beagle' to survey the coast ot" South America and sail round the globe; and on his return he wrote an account of the geology and natural history ot* the countries he hat visited. He tells us himselt" » that even so early as this he noticed many facts which seemed to him to throw light on the difticult question of the origin of the dif- ferent species of plants and animals; and he spent twenty years carefully collecting in England all thf knowledge he could upon li the subject. But he did not publish it, for he wanted more and more evidence; and as Newton waited sixteen years for more con- vincing proof before he announced his theory of gravitation, so Mr. Darwin would have delayed much longer than he did if a I'J remarkable circumstance had not obliged him to speak. It happened that while ^Ir. Darwin was working in England, another great naturalist, ]Mr. Alfred E. Wallace, who was then in the Malay Archi]telago, also thought that he had discovered the 20 way in which animals are made to vary in the course of long ages. He sent home a paper on the subject, and, though lie had never heard of Mr. Darwin's theory, it Avas found that he had worked out the same result sometimes almost in the same words. 2i Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Hooker of Kew were so much struck with the fact that these two men had solved the problem almost precisely in the same way, that they begged Mr. Darwin to allow one of his papers, written many years before, to be published with ::s Mr. Wallace's, and the two essays were read the same evening, July 1, 1858, at the Linna-an Society. A year later, in November 1859, Mr. Darwin's famous work, 'The Origin of Species,' was published. 32 'The Theory of Natural Selection,' or the choosing out by 14 natural causes of those plants and animals which are best fitted to live and multiply, rests upon a few simple facts which you can understand. 4 Firstly, all living beings multiply so rapidly that there would be neither room nor food enough upon the earth for them if they were all to live; therefore immense numbers must die young, and those will live the longest and have children to follow them who 8 are best fitted for the kind of life they have to lead. Secondly, no two living beings are ever exactly alike; but children always inherit some of the characters of their parents, so that if any being has a peculiarity which makes it better fitted for 12 its life, and consequently lives long and has a large family, some of its descendants will most likely inherit that peculiarity. Now it is not difficult to understand that if useful peculiarities of different kinds are handed down in this way from parent to 16 child, those who inherit them will in time begin to be remarkable for different qualities. For example, suppose that in a nest of young birds, one with strong wings lives and has young because it can fly far and get food, while another also lives and has young because 20 its feathers are dark, and the hawks cannot see it in the grass. Then those descendants of the strong-winged bird which also have strong wings, will be most likely to live on in each generation, and will pass on this peculiarity to their children; while the descendants 24 of the dark-coloured bird will also survive in each generation exactly in proportion as their plumage is adapted to hide them; and thus the strong-winged birds and the dark-winged birds will in time be- come very different from each other. This is roughly the theory 28 of ^Natural Selection;' that nature allows only those animals to live which in some way escape the dangers which threaten their neigh- bours, and thus in time the race becomes altered to suit the life it has to lead. 32 There is one difficulty. It is clear that the strong-winged birds must not pair with the dark-winged birds, or otherwise both pecu- liarities would come out in the young birds, and the two kinds 15 would no longer roinaiii distinct. And this is the one stiindjling- block in the theory; we have never yet Ix-lmi ahh- to trai-i; out two varieties of an animal which have hciDnic so different that tliev do not pair together. Vou should fix this dilticulty lirndy in your 4 mind, because it is almost the only real one we shall mec^t with. Mr. Darwin's answer to it is, that we have only watched ))lant.s and animals for such a short time, and oven then not with this idea in our minds, so that we are not likely to have found a case s to help us. It has indeed been observed that animals, if left free to choose, do often pair with those which resemble themselves, and do in some cases show a dislike to those that differ; still this is not proved to be always the case, and it must be acknowledged to 12 be a diftieulty. Selection of Animals by 3Ian. — But now setting this aside, let us see what proof there is that animals vary, and that they can be picked out, so that any peculiaritiy may become stronger in each n; succeeding generation. The best instance is in pigeons. All our pigeons come from the common wild rock-pigeon; and the way in which all our })Outers, fan-tails, l)arbs, and other pigeons have been produced, is by merely picking out from the young ones those 20 which had either large crops, or \vider tails, or longer beaks, and pairing them together, so that the young birds had these peculiari- ties still more strongly. The same thing is true of our different kinds of oxen, sheep, horses, and fowls; so we see clearly that 24 different varieties can be produced by choosing out particular ani- mals. Man does this quickly, because he only attends to one pecu- liarity, which interests him; but nature does it very slowly, because no animal can live unless every part of it is fitted for its life better 2s than in those which are killed off. Selection by Natural Causes. — Now jMr. Wallace has cal- culated that one ])air of birds having four young ones a year, would, if all their children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren, 32 lived and were equally prolific, produce about tiro thousand niiUiot) deffccndant!^ hi fifteen years. And Mr. Huxley tells us that a single 16 plant producing fifty seeds a year would, if unchecked, cover the whole globe in nine years, and leave no room for other plants. It is clear, therefore, that out of these numbers millions must 4 die young, and it is only the most fitted in every way that can live and multiply. One example from Mr. Darwin's book will show you how complicated the causes are which determine what particular kinds shall flourish. He tells us that the heartsease and 8 the Dutch clover, two common plants, can only form their seeds when the pollen is carried from flower to flower by insects. Humble- bees are the only insects which visit these flowers, therefore if the humble-bees were destroyed in England there would be no hearts- 12 ease or Dutch clover. Now the common field-mouse destroys the nests of the humble- bee, so that if there are many field-mice the bees will be rare, and therefore the heartsease and clover will not flourish. But again, 16 near the villages there are very few field-mice, and this is because the cats come out into the fields and eat them ; so that where there are many cats there are few mice and many bees, and plenty of heart- ease and Dutch clover. Where there are few cats, on the contrary, '20 the mice flourish, the bees are destroyed, and the plants cease to bear seed and to multiply. And so you see that it actually depends upon the number of cats in the neighbourhood how many of these flowers there are growing in our fields. 2t But now let us suppose for a moment that among the field- mice there are some whose skin has a slightly peculiar smell, so that the cats do not eat them when they can find others. Clearly these mice Avould live longest and have most off"spring-, and of these 28 again, those with strong smelling skins would live; and so after a time a new race of mice would arise which would be independent of the cats, and the bees would have a poor chance of living, and consequently the flowers of bearing seeds. 32 But this might in the end give rise to quite a new race of plants, for it is believed that some moths would visit the clovers, only, as Mr. Darwin points out, they are not heavy enough to weigh 17 down the petals of the flowers so as to creej) inside tlieni. ]iiit as no two flowers are ever exactly alike, it is very likely that the petals of some blossoms will drooji a little more than in the others, and so if the bees became scarce, these blossoms with drooping petals * nu^ht live on, becanse the moths could creep into them and carry their pollen from flower to flower; and thus a new race of clover with drooping petals might spring up independent of the cats, the mice, and the bees, and would become a new species. THE BRITISH ISLAXPS. The British Islands lie off the north-west coast of Europe, standing on a great submerged plateau, covered by the southern half of the North Sea and the English Channel. These seas are u rather shallow, and if the North were to ftdl 200 feet, one would be able to walk across from England to Denmark and Holland. On the West the islands are washed by the waves of the deep Atlantic Ocean. i,-. The chief islands are Great Britain (by which we understand Eng- land and Scotland) and Ireland, but there are a number of smaller islands off the coast of Scotland, as the northern part of Great Britain is called ; the chief being the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and jo the Hebrides. Among the latter is the fiimous islet of Staffa, where Fingal's Cave is to be seen — a grand example of natural archi- tecture: formed of basaltic columns, which are as regularly placed and jointed, as it would be possible for a mason to place them. 2* They sup})ort a massive vaulted roof, from which resounding the waves produce a sweet and wild music. Off the southern coast of England is the picturesque Isle of Wight, called the Garden of Eng- land, while further out at sea are the fertile Channel Islands , the 28 sole remains of England's once extensive French possessions. The estimated area of Great Britain is 121,115 square miles, and in 1891 the population was 38,000,000 inhabitants. The public revenue amounted to £ 90,000,000, and the imports and exports 32 to £ 749,000,000. The English Kea-lor. 2 18 Between Great Britain and Ireland lies the Irish Sea, 130 miles across in its widest part (known as St. George's Channel), wdiile in the North at the North Channel Ireland approaches to within 4 13 or 14 miles of Scotland. In surface and outline Scotland is very different from England. While England has extensive plains, Scotland is a land of rugged mountains with only a limited area for cultivation. This latter part is called the 'Lowlands,' while 8 Inverness, the chief town of the mountainous district, is known as the Capital of the Highlands. Ireland has much fertile land, but thousands of acres are lost in bogs. Great Britain is bounded on the South by the English Channel, which at its narrowest part is 12 only 21 miles wide. The coast line is dotted with many favourite watering-places, as Hastings, Eastbourne, Brighton, and Bournmouth. Great Britain is 600 miles long, and its width varies from 30 to 280 miles. In the North and West it is mountainous, but with no 16 long ranges as in Italy, but there are separate highlands w^ith several depressions, which are generally made use of for canal pur- poses. In forests Great Britain is very poor, New Forest, Sherwood Forest, the Weald of Kent, and Epping Forest, being the most 20 important. But the country does not look bare, thanks to the deep green of its meadows and parks. The landscapes in the Lake District are renowned for their beauty, and the roadsides in Shakespeare's native country (near Stratford-on-Avon in Warwick- 24 shire) are most picturesque. Owing to its position as an island and to the Gulf Stream, which flows all round it, the climate of England is milder than that of Germany. The rivers, in spite of the shortness of their course 28 are navigable, and at full tide the largest ships even can reach the harbours, which lie far inland. The chief rivers of England are the Thames, the great Ouse, and the Tyne on the East, the Severn (which with its tributary, the Avon, falls into the Bristol Channel), 32 and the Mersey on the West; the Shannow, the largest river of Ireland, discharges itself into the Atlantic Ocean. At the present time a huge canal is being built between Liverpool and Manchester, that the latter town may have the advantage of being a port. During' tlic IMuldlo A^cs agriLultunj was tlio cliict' t.'in[)loymont of the inhabitaut.s of Great Britain, whjl.- the trade was in tlie hands of the Hanseatie mcix-hant-s of tlie •Steelyard.' IJut aft« r th»* discovery of America (1492), England's position as a coniniereial * state was vastly improved, and since the bravery of her citizens won fill- her the mastery of the sea (1588), she has become the first industrial state of the world. Her success in industrv i> rhirtlv owing to her large stores of coal and iron , which enable her to s manufacture for the whole world. In spite of the fjict that Ireland, too, is rich in iron ore, the lack of coal makes the natural richness useless, so though we might mention. Dublin, the capital, Cork, Belfast, 'The Manchester of Ireland,' and Limerick, we tind fewer 12 large towns in Ireland than in England, where from Newcastle and vjunderland to Birmingham we meet with an unbroken succession of manufacturing town upon manufacturing town, in the greatest industrial district of the Avorld. ic THE LAKE PISTRICT. The lake district lies within the southern half of Cumberland, the western half of Westmoreland, and the piece of Lancashire known as Furness. 20 This is the })layground of England, whither the young men go to climb the mountains, and. young and old. to be refreshed by the ever-changing beauty of lake and fell. In the season there are iilways tourists about, knapsack on shoulder, who make their way 24 on foot, or by^ the pleasant old stage-coach; railways have only penetrated into the beautiful valleys in a few places as yet. THE COTTON TOAVNS. There are more people in Lancashire than in any other county 23 of England, and by far the greater number of these are employed in some way or other about cotton; they >pin. or weave, or bleach, or print, or buy. or sell, co(t")t. o * 20 Manchester, a city with more than half a million of people, is the centre of this great manufacture. It stands on the Irwell, a tributary of the Mersey, and these are the two hardest worked 4 rivers in the world. Salford, on the other side of the Irwell, is joined to Manchester by bridges; the two make one monster, crowded town, or city, for Manchester is a bishop's see, and the cathedral is the fine old 8 church of St. Mary. It is one of the richest cities in the world, and has gay shops in Market Street, and some handsome buildings — the Town Hall and the Exchange, the Free Trade Hall and Owens College; but statues and buildings are alike grimy with the 12 smoke of the tall mill chimneys. Everywhere there are warehouses, some of them handsome, in which the cotton is stored — raw cotton for the mills, or manufactured goods for the shops. These, and the mills, and the endless streets of small brick houses where the 16 mill "hands" live, show that Manchester is a great manufacturing- town. A circle drawn round Manchester at a distance of ten miles or so from Market Street Avould take in a district which is almost 20 one huge town, or, indeed, one huge factory. Bolton, Bury, Middleton, Rochdale, Oldham, Ashton, Staleybridge , Stockport, which are all cotton towns, lie within this ring, and between them and the centre, Manchester, are endless '^cotton" villages and mills. 24 There are several reasons Avhy this particular district should be the chief seat of the cotton manufacture. Five centuries ago, when Edward III. married the daughter of the Earl of Hainault, a province of Belgium, he thought a great deal of the skill of her 28 country people in spinning wool and weaving cloth — cotton was not then known — so he invited a number of these Flemish clothiers to settle in England that they might teach his own people. Many of these came to Bolton, and were soon busy with their spinning 32 wheels and looms. Three centuries later, in the reign of Elizabeth, the king of France grievously persecuted his Protestant subjects; wherefore they also came, clever, industrious people, skilful spinners 21 ami weavers, to take refuge in tVicndly Knglaiul. when' thi-y w.-r.- made very welcome. Many ot" these tollowed the strangers who had first come to Bolton. Tiu'V came in tli<; saliots which mav still be heard clattering through the streets of many a foreign town ; t and these same sabots, wooden clogs with brass buckles, Iiavc- been worn in Lancashire ever since by men and women, lasses and lads, and a wonderful clatter they make as they come pouring out of the mills at noon. g Again, the high moor lands give rise to many streams which join the Mersey, and, on their way, supply water for bloaching- works and dye-works. Then, the towns within this circle lie upon a wide coal-field, in which the coal measures reach a depth of 12 7000 feet and yield capital coal. The beautiful cannel coal, whiih is bright and smooth like jet, is found in this disti'ict; it burns with a clear flame and hardly any smoke. The collieries supply fuel for the mighty engines which do is the work of the mills; and, close at hand, in Furness or in one ■of the neighbouring counties, is iron to make these same engines. Lastly, the Mersey and Irwell, with which many canals ani connected, carry the bales to the broad Mersey mouth, and on to eo Liverpool — the great j)ort of the west — where ships are waiting to carry the cotton stuffs of Lancashire over the wide world , and whither others are returning with the raw cotton to make fresh supplies. 24 There are several large cotton towns bevond this circle, most of tlieui upon out-lying collieries; — Burnley, Blackburn, Preston upon the pretty river Kibble, Chorley, Wigan, a very black coaling town with a beautiful old church; and Warrington. In ^Manchester, 23 Wigan, and Warrington there are iron and brass foundries where engines are made. Rochdale still carries on the old woollen manu- facture, and a great deal of silk is made in ^Mancliestcr. 90| OIYES AND FOEKS. Sheftield, which stands in a hollow surrounded by hills be- tween Avhich live small rivers flow to unite in the hollow, has been 4 called "the metropolis of steel". Nearly all the steel goods made in England bear the Sheffield mark ; indeed , there is hardly a country in the world where you may not find knives with "Shef- field" on the blade. Not only table-knives and forks, but pen- 8 knives, lancets, razors, scythes, saws, scissors, shears, spades, and shovels — every kind of steel implement, is made in Sheffield, and in the villages round it; generally in large manufactories, but many a cottage has its own forge, where some particular kind of knife 12 or edge-tool is made. Much coal is used in the preparation of steel, and Sheffield stands upon the Yorkshire coal-field. Water, too, is needful in some of the processes, and Sheffield has plenty; and for these 16 reasons Sheffield has become the centre of the steel manufacture^ but the iron out of which the steel is made is all brought from abroad. There is a mine in Sweden which furnishes better iron for this purpose than any other in the world; and many shiploads 20 of it are brought every year to Hull and carried thence to Shef- field. To change iron into steel , a certain quantity of carbon must be got into the iron: (burn a stick until it is soft and black, and 24 you will see charcoal, one of the most common forms which carbon assumes). To effect this, a huge oven, or pit, is filled with, first, a layer of charcoal, then a layer of iron bars, then a layer of charcoal, and so on, until the layers are about thirty deep. Then 28 the surface is covered with a kind of clay, and a fire of Sheffield coal is kindled underneath and kept up fiercely for many days. The iron is in a red-hot, or, perhaps, a white-hot state; the charcoal also is highly heated, and the iron seems gradually to absorb a 32 portion of charcoal into the very heart of every bar. When the bars are removed from the furnace they are in a blistered state; 23 then they :ir(.' known as hli^hr sfitl. and arc not yet tit tor nsc To make comttion strtl, the metal is heaterl a^^■lin and hammered with an enormou.s hammer to make it toiij^h. When we see "shear stfccl'' on onr tahle-knives, we must not 4 suppose they have been cut with a jiair of shears. Tliis kin 1. tried to make all the English jjeople belong to the ('Inirch of Kng- * land. The men of the Fens loved liberty too well to submit to any rule about such things, ;iiid many of them tonk ship for free • America. Many of these went from Boston, and in hniKPur nf them the Boston of the States is named. Spalding was a favourite landing-place for the black boats of the North-men, as it is the port for Stamford, one of the tive great huvdlis of Danelagh. Stamford is an important and busy town, with an iron-foundry and machine works. Near it is 'Burleigh i- House, by Stamford town,' which Ijelonged to Queen Elizabeth's famous minister, Lord Burleigh. It is a very splendid house, with 145 rooms, and containing many precious jticjtures and carvings and statues. Beautiful gardens surround the house, and in them lo may be seen a labyrinth or maze, and a wilderness, and smooth terraces, and musiL-al fountains, and many sorts of rare and l»cautiful flowers and trees. There is a story about a Lord of BurhMgh , which is told In' -'o Lord Tennyson, the poet, who is a Lincolnshire man, and so knows all about it, and who knows, too, how to tell stories in the most delightful way. This story is about a Lord of liurleigh who married a farmer's 24 daughter, she thinking all the time that he was poor like herself: 'And a gentle consort made he. And her gentle mind was such, That she grew a noble lady, 23 And the ]ioo])le loved her much. But a trouble weighed u))on her. And perplex'd her night and morn. With the burthen of an honour 3, Unto which she was not born. 26 So she droop'd and droop'd before him, Fading slowly from his side : Three fair children first she bore him, 4 Then before her time she died,' Lincolnshire is not without its uplands ; there are round, swell- ing chalk Wolds, which reach from the Humber to Spilsby. Farther west, running in a straight line through the county, are the Lincoln 8 Heights, upon which the Romans made their Ermine Street, which is a good road still. Lincoln city, with its castle and glorious cathedral, stands upon one of these hills; and the cathedral, one of the finest in 12 England, can be seen from all the flat country round. It has a famous bell, called 'Great Tom,' which measures more than two yards across at the mouth. This ancient city was once a great Roman town; and a single Roman gate still remains. There ai'e 16 engine works here, where steam ploughs, and thrashing and other machines used in farming, are made. The little piece of Lincolnshire to the west of the Trent is called the Isle of Axholme; it is low and marshy like the isles of 20 the Fens. THE COAL-FIELD. What should we do without coal"? We cook, we travel, we light our streets and our rooms, we work our great mills, and warm 24 our houses — all by means of coal. There are layers or beds of coal in many parts of the country, called coa\-fel(ls, though they certainly are not much like green fields. A well-stocked coal-cellar underground is one of the good 28 treasures our God has laid up for English people. In these fields, the coal lies in a number of layers, or strata, separated from one another by layers of slaty clay, called shale, and of coarse hard sandstone, called grit. These form what are I 27 known as coal-mcasiin:^ , where beds ot' sandstone, sliale, clay, and coal lie, one below another, to a great depth. The layers of coal, called seams, are usnally very thin. They are wide enough, stretching under a large tract of country, but are * often only a few inches deep and (with a single exception) never more than six or eight feet. There is a seam in Staffordshire thirty feet in thickness. The beds of grit and shale between the coal seams are a great deal thicker than the coal itself; many 4 different seams of coal, however, lie, one under another, at the same spot. The great northern coal-field of Northumberland and Durham supplies London, and all the east and south coast towns witli coal, 13 as well as a good deal of the continent. It reaches from the Tees to the Coquet; there it ceases, and re-appears further north, having a length of eighty miles in all, and a breadth -of from ten to twenty. lu Bishop Auckland, Brancepeth, Durham, and Chester-le-Street are the centres of the coal-mining in Durham, and they all have mining villages round them. Newcastle, Warkworth, Morpeth, Throckley, ^^'allsend, whence 20 the famous Wallsend coal comes. Hartley, ^^'illington , and many other villages and towns in Northumberland, are the homes of the })itmen who work in the neighbouring mines. From the Tweed to the Tyne, the coal extends along the coast, and even dips below .m the German Ocean; the miners at work in some of these pits may hear the sea rolling over-head. MAGARA. Of all the sights on this earth of ours which tourists travel to see, I am inclined to give the palm to the Falls of Niagara. 28 That the waters of Lale Erie have come down in their courses from the broad basins of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron; that these waters fall into Laic Ontario by the short and 28 rapid river of Niagara, and that the Falls of Niagara are made by a sudden break in the level of this rapid river is probably known to all who read this book. 4 All the waters of these huge inland seas run over that breach in the rocky bottom of the stream ; and thence it comes that the flow is unceasing in its grandeur, and that no eye can perceive a difference in the weight, or sound, or violence of the fall, whether 8 it be visited in the drought of autumn, amidst the storms of Avinter, or after the melting of the ice of the lakes in the days of early summer. This stream divides Canada from the States, the western bank 12 belonging to the British crown, and the eastern bank being in the State of New York. Up above the Falls, for more than a mile, the waters leap and burst over rapids, as though conscious of the destiny that awaits a; them. Here the river is very broad, and comparatively shallow, but from shore to shore it frets itself into little torrents, and begins to assume the majesty of its power. Even here, no strongest swimmer could have a chance of saving himself, if fate cast him in 20 even among those petty whirlpools. The waters though so broken in their descent, are deliciously green. Their colour as seen early in the morning, or just as the sun has set, is so bright as to give to the place its chiefest charm. 24 This will best be seen from the island — Goat Island, which divides the river above the Falls. Indeed the island is a part of that steep broken ledge over which the river tumbles; and no doubt in process of time will be worn away and covered with water. It 28 is a mile round, and is covered thickly with timber. The bridge by wich the island is entered is a hundred yards above the lesser Fall. This lesser cataract is terribly shorn of its majesty when compared with the greater Fall of the main stream. 32 We will go at once to the glory, and tho thunder, and the majesty, and the wrath of that upper turmoil of waters. Crossing Goat Island we come to that point at which the waters of the main 29 river begin to descend. TIic line of ledge stretehes .iwny to the Canadian shore inwards against tin- flood, — in, and in, and in till one is led to think that the depth assing round him in 30 their appointed courses. As he looks on, strange colours will show themselves through the mist ; the shades of gray will become green or blue, with ever and anon a flash of white; and then some gust 4 of wind bloAvs in with greater violence, and the sea-girt cavern will become all dark and black. THE CASONS of COLORADO. The chasm cut by the falls of Niagara is nothing compared 8 with the canons of Colorado. Canon is a Spanish word for a rocky gorge, and these gorges are indeed so grand, that if we had not seen in other places what water can do, we should never have been able to believe that it could have cut out these gigantic chasms. For 12 more than three hundred miles the River Colorado, coming down from the Rocky Mountains, has eaten its way through a country made of granite and hard beds of limestone and sandstone, and it has cut down straight through these rocks, leaving walls from half- 16 a-mile to a mile high, standing straight up from it. The cliffs of the Great Caiion, as it is called, stretch up for more than a mile above the river which flows in the gorge below ! THE ROYAL GORGE. 20 The crowning wonder of the wonderful country of Colorado is the Royal Gorge. Situated between Canon City and Salida, it is easy of access either from Denver or Pueblo. After the entrance of the canon has been made, surprise and almost terror comes. The 24 train rolls around a long curve close under a wall of black and banded granite, beside which the ponderous locomotive shrinks to a mere dot, as if swinging on some pivot in the heart of the moun- tain, or captured by a centripetal force that would never resign its 28 grasp. Almost a whole circle is accomplished and the grand amphi- theatrical sweep of the wall shows no break in its smooth and 31 zenitli-cutting faradi-. Will tin- joui'iify cinl Ik'P'? Is it a mistake that this crevice goes through the range? Does not all this maoil out