THOUGH she is innocent, young and fair, If a fallen sister wakes from her shame, And he locks her out in the dark to be, And the daughters of affluence riding by, And the priest, as of old, with ancient pride, And the modern Levite looks at least, Ob, Thou who did'st come in Thy wondrous love J. P. HUTCHINSON, N the month of March last we presented our readers with a view of Lake Geneva; this month we give them a view of Lucerne. The Lake of Lucerne is called also the Lake of Waldstadte, or of the Forest-towns. It is said to be about 1,408 English feet above the sea, and lies between the cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schweiz, and Underwalden. It is about twenty-five British miles in length, and from eight to ten in breadth, frequently much less. But its shape is very arms, which diverge irregular; in the western portion it has two great from what may be called its principal basin, and these measure about fifteen miles. Altogether it has a superficial area of nearly 100 miles. Its irregular formation throws it into detached parts, some of which are of considerable size, forming in a manner separate lakes, which take their names from the chief places on their banks; thus the Lake of Lucerne Proper, the Lake of Alpnach, the Lake of Stanz, and the Lake of Uri. Lucerne is the principal lake in the interior of Switzerland, and is bounded by the cantons of Unterwalden N Lucerne, Schweitz, and Uri. Its banks are redolent with memories of William Tell, the illustrious Swiss patriot, whose heroism resulted in the deliverance of the Swiss cantons from the German yoke in 1307. The waters of the Swiss lakes are noted for a remarkable blue tint. This colour is particularly observable in Lake Geneva, but, according to a traveller whose words we quote, the colour of the water of Lake Lucerne " is of a brighter blue than the Lake of Geneva, and as, unlike the latter, the Lake of Lucerne lies in a hollow formed by mountains which spring sheer from the water, the remarkable hue of the surface is everywhere heightened by contrast with the varying aspects of this lofty boundary. The mountains encircling the lake generally rise to a height of from 5,000 to 6,000 feet, and some of them, especially in the neighbourhood of Tell's Platte, in the upper reach of the lake, where the banks approach each other, exhibit in their huge perpendicular cliffs sections of contorted rock, which not only strike the geologist with surprise and admiration, but attract the wondering gaze of the ordinary observer. To glide along the banks, and cross and re-cross from one pretty Swiss village to another, in one of the noiseless little steamboats which traverse that more than cerulean expanse of water; to watch the mountains as they cast their great shadows over the lake, their slopes bared by the torrents of winter-more interesting still, showing their rounded and polished cliffs the unequivocal traces of ancient glaciers, and rearing their summits into the region of perpetual snow-to catch glimpses of the chalets (Swiss cottages) of the peasantry, perched amongst seemingly inaccessible precipices; or, what is a sight not less remarkable for its novelty to the visitor, to observe the phase of social life on the Swiss lakes which has given rise to those vast and gorgeous hotels and palatial 'pensions' (boarding-houses), which are resorted to by the multitudes who flock to this charming country from France, Germany, Russia, England, and the United States, in quest of health and pleasure;-whoever has spent a long summer day on Lucerne after this dreamy manner, when the climate, the sunshine, the blue and placid water, and the great silent hills had all something in harmony with a mind disencumbered of care, and a heart thrown lovingly open to the sympathies of nature, must have experienced the quiet delight which arises from the very consciousness of existence in a world of such beauty and goodness, and will gratefully revert to the recollections of a July day on the Lake of the Four Cantons as one of the happiest of his life.” The lake and its mountain barriers were next day witnessed under a different aspect. We ascended the Righi to witness the celebrated view of sunrise over the Alps. On the previous day the heat was overpowering on land, but pleasantly mitigated by the gentle airs of the lake as we skimmed over its surface. The excessive heat resulted in a thunder-storm, by which the fervour of the season received a temporary check. The sky had become ominously overcast, and when we began our ascent of the hill we heard the thunder rolling amongst the distant Alps. As we advanced we saw dark masses of electric clouds sailing towards the Righi from the opposite mountains, and as they hung suspended over the lake, casting their lurid shadows athwart its blue waters. Then came the portentous silence which precedes the storm, and then "Far along From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder. Not from one lone cloud, Back to the joyous Alps who call to her aloud." "One peal broke over the valley as I ascended towards the summit, beginning with a sharp, abrupt, hurtling sound, and bursting into a tremendous roar, which literally caused the ground to shake, and was reverberated from mountain to valley, near and afar. With that awful volley, louder than any thunder-clap I had ever heard before, the elemental war gave place to a deluge of rain. All night the mountain-top was illuminated by sheet-lightning. The morning broke sullenly in mist and vapour over the distant mountains, and we lost (some scores of us) the coveted spectacle of the sunrise; but I for one was compensated for the disappointment by having witnessed the grandeur, and felt the solemn joy, of a thunder-storm in the Alps." The City of Lucerne, capital of the canton of the same name, whence the name of the lake, is situated at the extremity of the north-western arm of the lake. Here the river Reuss issues from it and divides the city into two parts, communicating with each other by bridges. The houses are tolerably well built, and the streets clean. Early in the history of the Reformation, Lucerne, along with several other cantons, gave in its adherence to Catholicism. A large proportion, however, of Switzerland is Protestant. The German and French are spoken. The Protestant portions of this country form a fine field for Primitive Methodist Missionaries, where they might be trained for labouring in France. ELIJAH-" my God is Jehovah," or "God is Lord,"—is a name given in Hebrew to four individuals mentioned in the Old Testament. The second of these is Elijah the Tishbite. This great but mysterious personage is suddenly introduced upon the stage of this mortal life in 1 Kings xvii. 1. Here he is said to be a Tishbite, and, according to Calmet, "Tish beh is a city beyond Jordan, in the tribe of Gad, in the land of Gilead, the hilly region on the east bank of the Jordan." Dr. A. Clarke says, "Who his father was, or from what tribe he sprang, is not intimated; he seems to have been the prophet of Israel peculiarly, as we never find him prophesying in Judah." A celebrated divine, of no mean order, living in this our day, writes thus of him, "The history of Elijah is the history of the marvellous. The facts of his life throw the boldest fiction of romance into the shade. The two ends of his mortal life-his introduction to, and departure from, the world -are sublimely strange. As in the case of Melchisedec, we have no account of his father or mother, or early days. So dark is the mystery that hangs over the origin and first periods of this man's life, that we are left free to the conjecture that he came into the world at first in that cloudy chariot which bore him off at last. Most, if not all, the acts and events of his life are marvels. His first recorded words broke like thunder on the ear of his country. Confronting Ahab, the proud and idolatrous monarch of Israel, he said, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." The abruptness of this message to Ahab, who was one of the most wicked characters in Bible history, is somewhat toned down by the supposition of some of the Jewish rabbins "that Elijah and Ahab went to comfort Hiel the Bethelite in his grief concerning his sons. They fell into conversation respecting the possibility of the curses of Moses and Joshua being fulfilled, as recorded in Deut. xi. 16. Ahab contended that the Israelites did serve other gods, and yet the rain was not withheld. Whereupon Elijah, under the power of inspiration, uttered this remarkable prophecy." Such longcontinued absence of rain or dew would involve the destruction of all vegetation, on which the support of animal life depends. Ought we not to be thankful for the genial showers that water our beautiful sea-girt isle? How we suffered in agricultural districts from the droughts of 1869 and 1870. One family I knew were obliged to go seven miles for the water they needed, both for domestic purposes and for their thirsty cattle. However imminent the danger of his servants, God takes care of them. He saw that Elijah was now in a critical position, therefore" the word of the Lord came to him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith." "He went and did according unto the word of the Lord." Here he was miraculously fed. Divine Providence sometimes employs strange instruments to effect his purpose. The prophet's purveyors, whether they were men, or birds, were obeying the Divine behest, albeit unconscious of the same; yea, and doing it with unerring exactness. This is the first mention made of flesh meat being used for breakfasts and suppers. Historians tell us that no spot in Palestine is better fitted to afford a secure asylum to the persecuted than the river Cherith. On each side of it extend the bare desolate hills of Judea. The Kelt is one of the wildest ravines in that wild region. In some places it is not less than 500 feet deep, and just wide enough at the bottom to give passage to a streamlet like a thread of silver. The banks are almost sheer precipices of naked limestone, and here and there pierced with the dark openings of caves and grottoes, in some one of which Elijah probably lay concealed." The drought continuing, the brook dried up, and the word of the Lord came again to Elijah, directing him to remove to Zarepta, a Phoenician town, midway between Tyre and Sidon. It is only once more named in the Old Testament, and was many miles from the brook Cherith. The road to it lay through the domains of the persecuting Ahab; but He who gave the command to go could give strength to perform the journey. He was there located with a poor but pious widow, whose cruse of oil and barrel of meal were miraculously renewed as long as the prophet abode with her. Though the hills of Lebanon, with their caps of "eternal snow," towered between the brook Cherith and Zarepta, yet even there the drought had reached. That poor |