Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/424

418 appear before the judgment-seat of God — and would you have me rest?"

She expressed much anxiety lest those who had depended entirely upon her private charities should be left destitute, saying, "If I could wish for immortality upon earth, it would only be for the power of relieving the distressed." A short while before she expired, after receiving the sacraments of the Church, she lay with her eyes closed in silent prayer. One of her ladies, thinking she was asleep, whispered, "The empress sleeps." She instantly opened her eyes. "No," she said, "I do not; I wish to meet my death awake." "To Thee I am coming!" she suddenly exclaimed, and then passed away all that was mortal of the august Maria Theresa, on the 29th of November, 1780, in the sixty-fourth year of her age, and the forty-first of her reign.

Both as a queen and a woman, Maria Theresa commands the respect and admiration of posterity; and, amongst all her lofty titles, there is none which so completely sums up her reign and character as the endearing appellation bestowed by her own subjects — "Mother of her People."



 From The Popular Science Review.

the many marvellous stories which are told of the Norwegian lemming (Myodes lemmus, Linn.) there is one which seems so directly to point to a lost page in the history of the world that it is worth a consideration which it appears hitherto to have escaped. I allude to the remarkable fact that every member of the vast swarms which periodically almost devastate Norway perishes voluntarily, or at least instinctively, in the ocean. But as among my readers some may not be familiar with the lemming, a brief description of the animal itself will not be out of place. It is a vole, like our short-tailed field mouse, very variable in size and color. The claws, especially on the fore foot, are strong and curved, the tail is very short, the ears scarcely visible, and the beadlike, black eyes seem always to notice objects above them rather than those in any other direction. During the summer these animals form their nests under stones, usually betraying their habitations by the very care which they take to keep them sweet and clean. In winter, however, they form long galleries through the turf and under the snow in search of their food, which is exclusively vegetable; and it is at this time that those ravages are caused which have led the Norwegians in former times to institute a special form of prayer against their invasions. There are several species of lemming, easily recognizable, and with well-marked geographical range; but it is to the Scandinavian species only that the following old description applies. "It lives on the shoots of the dwarf birch, reindeer lichens, and other mosses; it hisses and bites; in winter it runs under the snow; and about every tenth year, especially before an extremely severe winter, the whole army of animals, in the autumn and at night, migrates in a direct line." According to Olaus Magnus they fall from the clouds; and Pennant narrates that "they descend from the Kolen, marching in parallel lines three feet apart; they traverse Nordland and Finmark, cross lakes and rivers, and gnaw through hay and corn stacks rather than go round. They infect the ground, and the cattle perish which taste of the grass they have touched; nothing stops them, neither fire, torrents, lakes, nor morasses. The greatest rock gives them but a slight check; they go round it, and then resume their march directly without the least division. If they meet a peasant they persist in their course, and jump as high as his knees in defence of their progress. They are so fierce as to lay hold of a stick and suffer themselves to be swung about before they quit their hold. If struck they turn about and bite, and will make a noise like a dog. Foxes, lynxes, and ermines follow them in great numbers, and at length they perish, either through want of food or by destroying one another, or in some great water, or in the sea. They are the dread of the country, and in former times spiritual weapons were exerted against them; the priest exorcised them, and had a long form of prayer to arrest the evil. Happily it does not occur frequently — once or twice only in twenty years. It seems like a vast colony of emigrants from a nation overstocked, a discharge of animals from the northern hive which once poured forth its myriads of human beings upon southern Europe. They do not form any magazine for winter provision, by which improvidence, it seems, they are compelled to make their summer migration in certain years, urged by hunger. They are not poisonous, as 