"The children were all highly interested by this extract, but a secret awe crept over their minds, as they listened to the account of this dreadful visitation, and they felt thankful that a gracious Providence had placed him in this happy isle, where such tremendous convulsions are but seldom felt. "I learnt a passage from Cowper's 'Task,' the other day, mamma," said Emily, "in which he deplores a similar catastrophe, that occurred in Sicily some time ago: may I repeat it to my brother and sister?" "Certainly, my dear," replied Mrs. Bernard. Emily having received the approbation of her mother, immediately recited the following striking passage: "Alas, for Sicily! rude fragments now Lie scatter'd, where the shapely column stood. Her palaces are dust. In all her streets, The voice of singing and the sprightly chord Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show, Suffer a syncope and solemn passe, While God performs upon the trembling stage Of his own works, his dreadful part alone, How does the earth receive him? With what signs Of gratulation and delight, her king. Pours she not all her choicest fruits abroad, Her sweetest flowers, her aromatic gums, Disclosing Paradise where'er he treads? She quakes at his approach: her hollow womb Conceiving thunders, through a thousand deeps And fiery caverns, roars beneath his foot. "The hills move lightly, and the mouontains smoke, For he hath touch'd them. From the extremest point Of elevation, down into the abyss. His wrath is busy, and his arm is felt. The rocks fall headlong, and the valleys rise: The rivers die into offensive pools, And, charg'd with putrid verdure, breathe a gross And mortal nuisance into all the air. What solid was, by transformation strange, Grows fluid; and the fix'd and rooted earth, Tormented into billows, heaves and swells, Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl, Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense The tumult and the overthrow; the pangs And agonies of human and of brute Multitudes, fugitive on every side, And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene Migrates uplifted, and with all its soil Alighting in far distant fields, finds out A new possessor, and survives the change. Ocean has caught the phrenzy; and upwrought To an enormous and o'erbearing height, Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore Resistless. Never such a sudden flood. Upridg'd so high, and sent on such a charge, Possess'd an inland scene. Where sow the throng That press'd the beach, and hasty to depart,