His home no longer; He has become the denizen of a world More rare and beautiful than earth. With quickening pulse and grand emotion He gazes down upon the globe, Whose habitations he has left forever! Cities with their palaces and towers, Surging seas, leafy forests, and fields of grain, The towering mountain and the massy Icebergs of the Polar sea sweep past His sight like fading visions. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. _ALONE_. Far away from earthly care, Free as a bird, I soar through air, And think of thee in thy sad, lonely home, Watching and waiting for thy love to come. Dost thou hear me call thee, Sweet! Sweet! Many the years till we shall meet. My spirit home is bright and fair With flowers and birds and wonders rare. Seraphic the faces that on me smile, But the one I love is on earth the while, Will she hear me calling, Sweet! Sweet! Many the years till we shall meet. Many the years I’ll watch and wait Till I see thee at the golden gate, Then in my arms will I bear thee away To my jewelled home where sunbeams play. Then together we’ll sing, Sweet! Sweet! Well worth the waiting thus to meet. BARON VON HUMBOLDT. _THE EARTHQUAKE_. This mysterious and awful visitant, which convulses the earth apparently without warning, is, however, like all the manifestations of nature, preceded by signs which the observing and understanding eye can perceive and calculate upon as unerringly as the astronomer can determine the approach of a comet. The inhabitable earth is merely a shell or crust over the great mass of uninhabitable matter. The world beneath the earth’s surface is as diversified as the world above. It has its mountains, its streams, its plains, its caverns, and its internal volcanoes. As fearful storms, accompanied by lightning and rumbling thunder, sweep over the earth’s surface, so beneath the crust occur electric storms, accompanied with terrific combustions of gases, which in their efforts to escape convulse the outer earth, and in many cases rend the shell asunder. The earthquake which has recently (August 13, 14, 15, and 16, 1868) shaken the Pacific coast was occasioned by the discharge of the pent-up gases beneath, and also in part by the heated condition of the outer surface. The “tidal phenomenon,” as it is called, is the effect of the electrical condition of the earth beneath. The chemical components of the sea form a sensitive magnetic body, which is subject to attraction and repulsion, and as the magnetic current extended for several thousands of miles, and was caused by a collision of negative and positive forces, the sea was attracted and repulsed along the whole line of the internal commotion by the action of these forces. The northern portion of this globe has in times past suffered from convulsions similar to those which now visit the tropical climates.