Borne, by its wild excess of love,
Amid the conflict's heat,

Though timid as the turtle dove,-
In sickening anguish beat.

There was a youthful soldier's wife
Beside her bleeding husband kneeling,
Regardless of the thickening strife-
Lost in the ecstacy of feeling
Which gathers round the bursting heart
A moment ere all hope depart,

And swords might clash, and cannons roll,
Unheard, unheeded, in her ears;

Hers was that agony of soul

Which neither feels, nor sees, nor hears,

Save that one image of despair

The object of its hopes and fears: And her devoted love was there,

Expiring where he fell,

And murmuring to her tender care
A long and last farewell.

Her

eye

but saw the death-wound deep

That gash'd his manly chest ;

Her ear but heard the life-drops drip

On her own burning breast;

And still she strove to stanch their flow,
And bathed his quivering lip

With water from the spring

(That last sad solace of his woe)
Which he had lost the power to sip,

Though close beside him murmuring.

His moans grew more convulsed and low, His breath more deeply drawn and slow; But still his glazing eye

Gazed sadly on his helpless wife; And even when all grew vacancy, Its rayless, sightless, changeless stare, As if his love outlasted life,

Was fix'd on his young widow there. And must stern hands that mourner tear From her beloved dead?

Must she, the victim of despair,
Back to her native land be led,
In solitude to pine?

Must those who never parted part?
No! Heaven forbade a doom so dread,
And sent, as fortune more benign,
The ball which whistled to the heart.

She sunk upon her husband's clay,
And lock'd him in a last embrace;
And breast to breast, and face to face,
All lifeless there they lay;

She fearlessly in duty fell

With her own soldier boy,

'Mid cannons' roar, and battle's yell,

On the field of Fontenoy.

The existence and inflammability of coal gas have been known for more than two hundred years, but no one thought of applying gas to a useful object until the year 1792, when Mr Murdoch, an engineer residing at Redruth, in Cornwall, erected a little gasometer

and apparatus, which produced gas enough to light his own house and offices. Mr Murdoch appears to have had no imitators; but he was not discouraged; and in 1797 he erected a similar apparatus in Ayrshire, where he then resided. In the following year he was engaged to put up a gas-work at the manufactory of Boulton and Watt, at Soho. This was the first application of gas in a large way; but, excepting in manufactories or among scientific men, it excited little attention until the year 1802, when the front of the great Soho manufactory was brilliantly illuminated with it on the occasion of the public rejoicings at the peace. Accustomed as we are to the common use of gas, we cannot even now but be struck with such a display on a large scale; but the superiority of the new light over the dingy oil lamps used at that day, when thus brought into public view, produced an astonishing effect. All Birmingham poured forth to view the spectacle, and strangers carried to every part of the country an account of what they had seen. It was spread about everywhere by the newspapers, easy modes of making gas were described, and coal was distilled in tobacco pipes at the fireside over all the kingdom. Soon after this several manufacturers, whose works required light and heat, adopted the use of gas. A button manufactory at Birmingham used it largely for soldering. Halifax, Manchester, and other towns followed. A single cotton-mill in Manchester used above 900 burners, and had several miles of pipe laid down to supply them. The quantity made averaged 1250 cubic feet per hour, producing a

light equal to that of 2500 candles. Mr Murdoch, who erected the apparatus used in this mill, sent a detailed account of his operations to the Royal Society in 1808, for which he received their gold medal.

But although the use of gas was thus spreading in the manufacturing towns, it made little progress in London. This may be accounted for in some measure by the circumstance that no means had as yet been found out for purifying it. It was dirty, it had a disagreeable smell, and it caused headache when used in close rooms, besides spoiling delicate furniture.

A German of the name of Winsor discovered a means of purifying gas; and, in 1807, he lighted Pall Mall, which continued for some time to be the only street in London in which gas was used. A charter was granted to a Gas Company, the business of which steadily increased. Every street and alley in London are now lighted with gas; and there is scarcely a place in the kingdom without it. Gas is an elastic fluid, usually invisible and without colour, like common air. There are many kinds of gases; the common air which we breathe is composed principally of two different sorts of gases, about one part of oxygen gas and four parts of nitrogen gas. The coal gas which lights our streets and houses is called carburetted hydrogen gas, or carbon combined with hydrogen. This gas is produced from coal by distillation.