duke of Burgundy, who made peace with the king of France, and soon after turned his arms against his former allies. In 1436, Paris opened her gates to her native prince, after having been for seventeen years in the possession of the invaders; and from this time the provinces which England had acquired by victories, splendid but unjust, were, one by one, wrested from her, till, of all her continental possessions, Calais alone remained to her at the death of Charles VII.

Whilst these events were occurring in France, England was on the eve of a disastrous civil war. From the commencement of the regency a fierce struggle for power had been carried on between Gloucester and his uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, whilst the imbecility of the king rendered him the passive tool of the contending factions. When, in 1445, Henry married Margaret of Anjou, a bold and ambitious woman, the position of parties changed essentially. The earl of Suffolk, the great promoter of the match, stood high in the queen's favour. Gloucester had opposed it, and his ruin was determined on. At a parliament, held at Bury St. Edmund's, the duke was arrested on a charge of treason, and a few days afterwards was found dead in his prison. It was suspected that he had been murdered, and neither Suffolk, the queen, nor the cardinal were believed innocent of the crime. His death was soon followed by that of his rival, the cardinal; and in 1450, Suffolk was attainted, banished, and murdered at sea-a victim to popular hatred.

The death of Suffolk was succeeded by the revolt of Jack Cade, an obscure adventurer, who assumed the honoured name of Mortimer, and appeared in arms at the head of 20,000 Kentish men. He was at first successful, and made himself master of London, but afterwards fled, and was killed by Iden, sheriff of Kent, and many of his followers were executed as traitors.

In 1454, the mental incapacity of the king having been fully proved, parliament appointed the duke of York protector of the realm; and the duke of Somerset, leader of the queen's party, was committed to the Tower. The following Christmas, however, the king recovered sufficiently to enable Margaret to regain her influence, suspend the protectorate, and release Somerset. York retired to his estates, whence

he soon advanced towards London with a force of 3,000 men. The royal army met him at St. Alban's, and the "War of the Roses" began with a short but fatal conflict, in which Somerset was slain, and York remained master of the field. After the battle of St. Alban's, York resumed the protectorate, but was again dismissed by the haughty queen. For three years there were no open hostilities, but the nation was gradually attaching itself to one side or the other, and both parties were preparing for war; nor did a nominal reconciliation, which took place in 1458, alter the position of affairs.

LESSON XX.-FRIDAY.

PALESTINE-GEOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE.

Palestine is a small territory on the western border of Asia, comprehended between 30 deg. 40 min. and 33 deg. 36 min. north latitude, and between 33 deg. 45 min. and 36 deg. 20 min. east longitude. It is bounded on the north by the highlands of Syria and Phoenicia; east, by the deserts of Syria; south, by Arabia Petræa; west, by the Mediterranean. Its extreme length is about 180 miles; its width in the north scarcely exceeds twenty miles; whilst in the south it has been variously estimated at from forty-five to sixty miles. It contains 11,000 geographical square miles, a superficial extent equal to about one-fifth of England and Wales.

The name of Palestine was given, at first, to the country of the Philistines, who inhabited the south-western part of the land; but, by degrees, it became the term most frequently employed to signify the whole country. The original name was Canaan, after the youngest son of Hamı. It was also called the land of the Hebrews, as the possession of the descendants of Abraham, who came from the other side of the Euphrates;-the land of promise, and the land of Israel, from God having promised and given it to the Israelites; and the Holy Land, as being the scene of events recorded in sacred history. It received the name of Judea after the Babylonian captivity, because Judah was the chief of the tribes.

The country consists of two sets of highlands ranging north

and south, enclosing the valley of the Jordan, the lake of Tiberias, and the Dead Sea. These highlands are formed by the chains of Libanus and Anti-Libanus, which run nearly parallel through Palestine on opposite sides of the Jordan, and finally connect themselves with Mount Horeb and Sinai, near the Gulf of Suez. Both these chains give out numerous lateral spurs, some of the western range extending so as to project, like Mount Carmel, in bold headlands on the coast. These subordinate ranges, with the west declivity of Libanus, and the east declivity of Anti-Libanus, are by far the most fertile portions of the mountain system; for the mountains which surround the Dead Sea, and those to the west of the Jordan, are arid, stony, and full of precipices and caverns, and have a melancholy, desolate appearance, harmonizing well with that of the desert, by which they are bounded on the east. The principal mountains in the western highlands are-Carmel, Tabor, Gilboa, and the two heights of Ebal and Gerizim; on the east of Jordan is Mount Gilead. The river Jordan seems like the natural centre of the whole country. It flows from the low grounds of Mount Hermon in the north, and reaches first the waters of Merom, and then the Sea of Galilee, called also lake Tiberias, or Gennesareth, from whence it precipitates itself down a succession of rapids into the Dead Sea, the waters of which are calculated to be more than 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. From both sides of the western highlands several small streams run into the Mediterranean, or the Jordan, of which the most important is the Kishon; on its eastern side the Jordan receives the Yarmuk and the Jabbok, whilst farther southward the river Arnon fails into the Dead Sea. Palestine thus consists chiefly of rugged hills and narrow valleys. It possesses, however, the fertile plains of Esdraelon and Sharon on the west of Jordan; and on the east is the extensive and valuable plain of the Hauran, called Auranitis, which trenches on the desert.

As the scil of Palestine comprehends within a small area almost all the formations of the earth's surface, from the bright lively chalk to the black basalt; so does it possess every variety of climate, from the tropical temperature of the valley of Jordan, on the banks of the lake of Gennesa

reth, to the cold and raw atmosphere of the heights of Lebanon. By this great variety of climate a gradation of vegetable life is created, ascending regularly from the stunted productions of colder climates to the palm trees and tropical fruits of the south.

LESSON XXI.-MONDAY.

RAIN.

The condensation of vapour is attended by the extrication of heat. When, therefore, a mass of air passes into another of a temperature lower than the dew-point, and makes its first deposition of cloud, it may, in the very instant of deposition, elevate the temperature of the medium immediately around it slightly above the dew-point. In this case but a thin cloud will form. If, however, the difference of the temperature of the two media be great, or if the mass of heated air passes on, so as continually to change the medium which surrounds it, there will result a continual abstraction of heat, a continual depression below the dew-point, and a continual accumulation of vapour and thickening of the cloud. In the act of condensing, the moisture will have a continual tendency to accumulate on the particles already formed, until at length, becoming too heavy to be longer suspended, they will fall, and adding to their mass the moisture that lies in their path and that surrounds it, they will at length reach the earth in large drops under the form of RAIN. Here, then, is that second provision of God for watering the earth yet more abundantly than by the dew. "Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain upon thine inheritance," "the great rain of thy strength... to satisfy the desolate and waste grounds, and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth."

As elevated regions cause the formation of cloud, so do they favour the descent of RAIN-a fact with which every one who has lived in a mountainous district is sufficiently conversant. Obstructing the currents of the lower air, mountain ranges cause them to climb their sides, and, under the powerful contraction of the cold that reigns at their summits (especially during the night), compel them to give

out their vapour, in clouds and rain. Thus the irrigation of the earth is effected by the mountains. It is in the rains upon the mountains that all the great rivers of the world have their origin, and hence they are continually fed. Here, too, replenish themselves those mighty tanks, which, embowelled in mountain regions, by a thousand secret channels disseminate their waters under the surface of the soil, cherish the deep roots of trees, and feed the thirsty herbage, or gush out in the green places of the earth into springs, and fountains, and brooks. For this cause- as well as that He might infinitely multiply over the same narrow region the forms of vegetable nature by accumulating there all the varieties of climate-we may conceive the mountains to have been established, and to have been "weighed in scales, and the hills in a balance."

The mountain-ranges of the earth, however, are but a part in the great system of its high places; these but give rise to the rivers, whose course is afterwards controlled, and whose waters are replenished by more gradual variations in the level of the land.

All the great continental masses would seem gradually, and to the eye imperceptibly, to lift their surfaces from their shores towards their central regions; and it is upon these central elevated platforms that the great characteristic mountain-systems are, for the most part, builded up. Who will believe that they were not thus placed, in order that the waters which fall upon them, compelled from the clouds, should not lie accumulated and stagnant around their bases, but be directed by the gradual and various descent of the land in a devious course, and with a far-spreading influence to the sea?-Moseley.

LESSON XXII.-TUESDAY.

THE LAWS OF MOTION.

The investigation of forces which produce motion constitutes the science of Dynamics. The simplest principles to which the phenomena of motion can be reduced were expressed by Sir Isaac Newton in the form of three laws, known as the laws of motion.