Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks, I pricked them into paper with a pin may; (And thou wast happier than myself the while, 8 Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast So thou, with sails how swift! hast reach'd the shore But higher far my proud pretensions rise- And, while the wings of Fancy still are free, 'My Mother's Picture.-This poem was written by Cowper on the receipt of his mother's picture in 1790. This was ten years before the poet's death. He had lost his mother when he was only six years old. 2 Elysian reverie.-Delightful contemplation: Elysium being the home of the blest. 3 Wretch.-Wretched. • Past'ral house. So called because it was the clergyman or pastor's house. The poet's father was a clergyman. Humour.-Capricious temper. Numbers.-Poetic lines. "Vesture's tissued flowers.—The flowers on his mother's dress; tissued, woven. Albion.-England: so called from its white cliffs of chalk [L. albus, white]. ON STRIKES. [From a speech by Mr. GLADSTONE, the eminent statesman, to Welsh colliers, who had "struck" for higher wages, and refused to return to work after they had gained their point, unless four men who had not struck were dismissed.] IF I understand the facts, they are these. A question arose between you and the Aston Hall Colliery Company as to wages. I say the more wages you can get the better, if they are used well. In that case none can have too much; and if they are used ill none can have too little. A question arose as to the amount of wages; and, as I understand, four workmen in the pit differed from the majority of workmen, as they thought fit to accept the wages offered by the Company. The majority, in the exercise of their undoubted right, refused to work for less than what they considered to be the value of their labour; but these men, who thought otherwise, though they were only four, had as good a right to form an opinion as the majority had; and if we have come in this country to refuse freedom of opinion and liberty of action to those who form a minority, in my opinion the sooner we get out of it the better. I am told these four men have committed no other offence except working upon terms which you were unwilling to accept; but as the allegation stands, these men for that offence are to be dismissed, or the general body of miners won't go to work in the pit. Well, I am very loth to believe that that demand has been made upon these grounds, and would first ask if I am correct in my statement. [This being admitted, Mr. Gladstone continued]:-That is a very serious matter. These men have done nothing. What right have you to ask that they shall demand certain wages? Do not suppose you will deny them the right of working for what they please. What is the nature of your right, which you enjoy in common with everybody else? Liberty of judgment and of action-that is the foundation of your right. It is not because you are a greater number, and that those who differ from you are a smaller number, but because you have a title to liberty; and that liberty, which the people of this country won for themselves, and have enjoyed for many generations, is the liberty of the few as well as of the many; and if one workman chooses to work for nothing in the face of a thousand other men, he has as good a right to do so as the thousand have to say what they will work for. Now, it seems you deny these four men the right which you claim for yourselves the right, namely, to work on terms satisfactory to the workers--and you are asking the Aston Hall Colliery Company to do that which, in my opinion, would be mean and dishonourable; and I would go further, and say that you here present would not have respected them if they had done as you required. You could not respect a man who, for his own interest, to please a majority, would turn round upon a few men who had stood by him in the time of his difficulty. I do not presume to say which side is right in this dispute; but as no one has any right to interfere with you, so you have no right to interfere with others. I think you know we all require learning in our duties one towards another. The rich have a great deal to learn in their duties to the poor, and employers in their relations to workmen; but, depend upon it, workmen have a great deal to learn also, and permit me to say they have a great Ideal to learn in their relations one to another. I have had discussions-friendly discussions-with leaders of trades' unions, and have spoken my mind very plainly on such matters as the attempts made to render the pay of a good workman equal to that of a bad workman, as the attempts made to repress a man from doing as much as he can do, as the attempts made to discourage the labour of women, and to limit the number of " young hands." But when Those errors will, I believe, cure themselves. it comes to an attempt to interfere with the liberty of others, it is a very serious matter. And I say to you as Englishmen, as men who possess and value liberty, there can be no true enjoyment of liberty where a man does not respect the liberty of everybody else just as much as he respects his own. THE DEATH OF THE BRAVE. LIGHT. REFLECTION AND REFRACTION. WE see an object by means of rays of light proceeding from that object to the eye. If, therefore, you are holding a candle for a person to look at something, you must take care that the light of the candle falls upon the thing he wishes to see. If, for instance, a person is looking at a picture on the wall by candle-light, the candle must be so held that its rays may fall upon the picture; then some of the rays will be absorbed by the picture, but most will be reflected, and of the reflected rays many will enter the eye of the spectator who is standing in a suitable position. We know that a crowd of spectators can see the picture at the same time; but if only one ray of light came from each point of the picture, then it could not be visible to more than one person in the room. It therefore follows that from each point of the picture numberless rays must proceed in all directions; and indeed the eye of each spectator receives not merely a single ray from each point of the picture, but a cone or pencil of rays like this: Fig. 1. When we look at a thing partly in air and partly in water— as, for instance, an oar of a boat-it appears to be broken. What is the explanation of this curious fact? Place a shilling at the bottom of a basin; then walk backwards until the rim hides the coin-or, what is the same thing, until a line drawn from your eye over the rim of the basin misses the shilling (fig. 2). Remaining in the same position, let water be poured into the basin, and the shilling |