handed a drinking-horn; it was a common feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. Long and fiercely, three times over, Thor drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a weak child, they told him. Could he lift that cat he saw there? Small as the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent up the creature's back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. "Why, you are no man," said the Utgard people; "there is an old woman that will wrestle you!" Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard old woman, but could not throw her.

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jötun, escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then: yet be not so much ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That horn you tried to drink was the sea. You did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the bottomless! The cat you would have lifted, - why, that is the Midgard-snake, the great world-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed to ruin! As for the old woman, she was Time, Old Age, Duration; with her what can wrestle? No man nor no god with her; gods or men, she prevails over all! And then those three strokes you struck - look at these three valleys; your three strokes made these!"

Thor looked at his attendant Jötun; it was Skrymir. It was, say Norse critics, the old chaotic rocky Earth in person, and that glove-house was some earth cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its sky-high gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the giant's voice was heard mocking, "Better come no more to Jötunheim!'

This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half-play,

not of the prophetic and entirely devout, but as a mythus
is there not real antique Norse gold in it?

the god of thunder.

Snor'ro (1179-1241), a historian and | Thor, the second principal Norse god;
high legal officer of Iceland.
O'din, a Norse god, regarded as the
source of wisdom and the protector
of culture and of heroes.

in dom'it a ble, not to be subdued.
per en'ni al, never failing; unceasing.

Jö'tun land, or Jö'tun heim (Ye'toon-
him), the land of the giants.
port man'teau, a travelling-case.
Mid'gard, in Norse mythology, the
abode of the human race.

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881) was a noted Scotch essayist, historian, and philosopher. This extract is from his "Heroes and HeroWorship."

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

ALFRED TENNYSON

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold, gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

Oh, well for the fisherman's boy

That he shouts with his sister at play!
Oh, well for the sailor lad

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on,

To their haven under the hill;

But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

THE closing scene of French dominion in Canada marked by circumstances of deep and peculiar inter The pages of romance can furnish no more striking epis than the battle of Quebec. The skill and daring of plan which brought on the combat, and the success a fortune of its execution, are unparalleled. A broad, of plain, offering no advantages to either party, was the fi of fight. The contending armies were nearly equal military strength, if not in numbers. The chiefs of both w men already of honorable fame. France trusted firmly the wise and chivalrous Montcalm; England trusted ho fully in the young and heroic Wolfe. The magnific stronghold which was staked upon the issue of the str stood close at hand. For miles and miles around, the pr pect extended over as fair a land as ever rejoiced the sig of man-mountain and valley, forest and waters, city a solitude, grouped together in forms of almost ideal beau

Quebec stands on the slope of a lofty eminence on 1 left bank of the St. Lawrence. A table-land extends we ward from the citadel for about nine miles. The port of the heights nearest the town on the west is called 1 Plains of Abraham. Wolfe had discovered a narrow pa winding up the side of the steep precipice from the riv For miles on either side there was no other possible acc to the heights. Up this narrow path Wolfe decided to le secretly his whole army and make the plains his batt ground!

The extraordinary daring of the enterprise was its safe The wise and cautious Montcalm had guarded against

the probable chances of war; but he was not prepared against an attempt for which the pages of romance can scarcely furnish a parallel.

Great preparations were made throughout the fleet and the army for the decisive movement; but the plans were still kept secret. A wise caution was observed in this respect; for the treachery of a single deserter might have imperilled the success of the expedition had its exact object been known. At nine o'clock at night, on the 13th of September, 1759, the first division of the army, sixteen hundred strong, silently removed into flat-bottomed boats. The soldiers were in high spirits: Wolfe led in person. About an hour before daylight, the flotilla dropped down with the ebb-tide. "Weather favorable; a starlight night."

Silently and swiftly, unchallenged by the French sentries, Wolfe's flotilla dropped down the stream in the shade of the overhanging cliffs. The rowers scarcely stirred the waters with their oars; the soldiers sat motionless. Not a word was spoken, save by the young general. He, as a midshipman on board of his boat afterwards related, repeated in a low voice to the officers by his side Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard," and as he concluded the beautiful verses, he said, "Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec!"

But while Wolfe thus in the poet's words gave vent to the intensity of his feelings, his eye was constantly bent upon the dark outline of the heights under which he was hurrying. He recognized at length the appointed spot (now called Wolfe's Cove), and leaped ashore. Some of the leading boats conveying the light company of the 78th Highlanders, had in the meantime been carried about two hundred yards lower down by the strength of the tide. These Highlanders, under Captain Donald MacDonald,

IIO

were the first to land. Immediately over their heads hu a woody precipice, without track or path upon its roc face. On the summit, a French sentinel marched to a fro, still unconscious of their presence.

Without a moment's hesitation, MacDonald and his m dashed at the height. They scrambled up, holding on rocks and branches of, trees, guided only by the stars t Half the ascent v shone over the top of the cliff.

already won, when for the first time, "Qui vive?" bro the silence of the night. "La France," answered the Hi land captain, with ready self-possession, and the sen shouldered his musket and pursued his round.

In a few minutes, however, the rustling of the trees clat hand alarmed the French guard. They hastily turn out, fired an irregular volley down the precipice, and f in panic. The captain, M. de Vergor, alone, thou wounded, stood his ground. When summoned to s render he fired at one of the leading assailants, but v In the meantime, nearly instantly overpowered.

hundred men landed, and made their way up the heig Those who had first reached the summit then took F session of the intrenched post at the top of the path wh Wolfe had selected for the ascent of his army.

Wolfe, Monckton, and Murray landed with the f division. As fast as each boat was cleared, it put ba for reënforcements to the ships, which had now also floa down with the tide to a point nearly opposite that of embarkation. The battalions formed on the narrow bea at the foot of the winding path, and as soon as complet each ascended the cliff, when they again formed upon plains above.

The boats plied busily; company after company ↳ quickly landed; and as soon as the men touched the sho