Every boy ought to know that he has five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and tasting-that the year has four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter-that the earth turns round, and travels round the sun-that the world is composed of land and water, and divided into four parts, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America-that there are four cardinal' points, east, west, north, and south—that gold, silver, and other metals, and coal are dug out of the earth; diamonds are found on the land, and pearls found in the sea.

That boy must be ignorant indeed who does not know that bread is made of the flour of wheat; butter from cream, and cheese from milk-that when flour is mingled with yeast it makes leavened or light bread; and that when no yeast is used the bread is heavy or unleavened. The passover cakes of the Jews, the biscuits eaten by sailors, and the barley bread of Scotland, are all unleavened. A boy ought, at an early age, to be acquainted with such things as are in common use; but I frequently found it necessary to explain to young people that sugar is made from the juice of the sugar-cane which grows in the Indies-that tea is the dried leaves of a shrub which grows in China about the size of a currant bush-that coffee is the berry of a bush growing in Arabia and the West Indies; and that chocolate is manufactured from the seeds of the cacao, a plant of South America.

Many boys know very well that ale and beer are made with malt and hops, cider from apples, and perry from pears; who do not know that wine is the juice of the grape, that brandy is distilled from wine, and rum from the juice of the sugar-cane; but that the liquors sold as spirits, and especially what is called gin, are usually made with malt mixed with turpentine, and sometimes with other vile and dangerous ingredients. And they have been equally ignorant that oranges, citrons, and lemons, grow in Spain and the western islands; and spices in the East Indies and other parts-that pepper and cloves are fruits of shrubs-nutmegs the kernels of a fruit something like a peach—cinnamon the bark of a tree, and ginger and rhubarb the roots of plants.

A great deal of this kind of knowledge may be obtained in a little time by young people if they keep their eyes and their ears open, and now and then ask a question of those who are wiser than themselves. I know a father who is very anxious that his children should obtain useful knowledge, and I heard him explain to them the other day that salt is the settlement of salt water dried, or sometimes it is dug from the earth in lumps-glue, the sinews, feet, and skins of animals boiled down-cork, the

bark of a tree-flax, the fibres of the stalk of a plant-hemp, the fibres of another plant, resembling a nettle; and tow, the refuse of hemp. He told them, also, that paper is made principally from linen rags torn to pieces and formed into a pulp; and lastly, that glass is made of sand, flint, and alkaline salt.Boy's Week-day Book.'

1. Chief points, from the word cardo, a hinge, that being a principal part of a door. 2. Madeira, &c.

I CONSIDER a human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties, until the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine,' and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein, that runs through the body of it. Education, after the same manner, when it works upon a noble mind, draws out to view every latent virtue and perfection, which without such helps are never able to make their appearance.

If my reader will give me leave to change the allusion so soon upon him, I shall make use of the same instance to illustrate the force of education, which Aristotle has brought to explain his doctrine of substantial forms, when he tells us that a statue lies hid in a block of marble; and that the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone, sculpture only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint or the hero, the wise, the good, or the great man, very often lie2 hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred and have brought to light. I am, therefore, much delighted with reading the accounts of savage nations, and with contemplating those virtues which are wild and uncultivated; to see courage exerting itself in fierceness, resolution in obstinacy, wisdom in cunning, patience in sullenness and despair.

Men's passions operate variously, and appear in different kinds of actions, according as they are more or less rectified and swayed by reason. When one hears of negroes, who upon the death of their masters, or upon changing their service, hang themselves upon the next tree, as it frequently happens in our American plantations, who can forbear admiring their fidelity, though it expresses itself in so dreadful a manner? What might

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not that savage greatness of soul which appears in these poor wretches on many occasions be raised to were it rightly cultivated? And what colour of excuse can there be for the contempt with which we treat this part of our species? that we should not put them upon the common foot of humanity; that we should only set an insignificant fine upon the man who murders them; nay, that we should, as much as in us lies, cut them off from the prospect of happiness in another world as well as in this, and deny them that which we look upon as the proper means for attaining it ?5

It is an unspeakable blessing to be born in those parts of the world where wisdom and knowledge flourish; though it must be confessed, there are, even in these parts, several poor uninstructed persons, who are but little above the inhabitants of those nations of which I have been here speaking; as those who have had the advantage of a more liberal education rise above one another by several different degrees of perfection. For, to return to our statue in the block of marble, we see it sometimes only begun to be chipped, sometimes rough-hewn, and but just sketched into a human figure; sometimes we see the man appearing distinctly in all his limbs and features; sometimes we find the figure wrought up to a great elegancy, but seldom meet with any to which the hand of a Phidias or Praxiteles could not give several nice touches and finishings.-ADDISON.

1. What part of the verb is shine, and air of Christian philosophers, and who how?

2. Grammatical error.

3. Now the United States of America. 4. Footing would now be the word, not foot.

5. It is worth while to notice how far ahead of his time Addison was when he thus speaks of slaves and slavery. There are persons, in this year of grace 1852, who affect to give themselves the

yet defend the "peculiar institution" of America. We had a hand in founding the institution, and we are bound to do what we can to overthrow it. Gild it as men will, slavery is an accursed thing.

6. Phidias was a celebrated statuary of Athens who died B.C. 432. Praxiteles, a famous sculptor of Magna Graecia, flourished about 324 B.C.

It is not true that ignorant persons have no notion of the advantages of truth and knowledge. They see and confess those advantages in the conduct, the immunities, and the superior powers of the possessors. Were these attainable by pilgrimages the most toilsome, or penances the most painful, we should assuredly have as many pilgrims and as many self-tormentors in

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the service of true religion and virtue as now exist under the tyranny of Papal or Brahman superstition.

This inefficacy of legitimate reason, from the want of fit objects,-this its relative weakness, and how narrow at all times its immediate sphere of action must be,-is proved to us by the impostors of all professions. What, I pray, is their fortress, the rock which is both their quarry and their foundation, from which and on which they are built? The desire of arriving at the end, without the effort of thought and will, which are the appointed means. Let us look backward three or four centuries. Then, as now, the great mass of mankind were governed by the three main wishes,-the wish for vigour of body, including the absence of painful feelings; for wealth, or the power of procuring the external conditions of bodily enjoyment; these during life, and security from pain, and continuance of happiness after death.

Then, as now, men were desirous to attain them by some easier means than those of temperance, industry, and strict justice. They gladly, therefore, apply to the priest who would insure them happiness hereafter without the performance of their duties here; to the lawyer who could make money a substitute of a right cause; to the physician, whose medicines promised to take the sting out of the tail of their sensual indulgences, and let them fondle and play with vice, as with a charmed serpent; to the alchymist, whose gold-tincture would enrich them without toil or economy; and to the astrologer, from whom they could purchase foresight without knowledge or reflection. The established professions were, without exception, no other than licensed modes of witchcraft. The wizards, who would now find their due reward in Bridewell, and their appropriate honours in the pillory, sat then on episcopal thrones, candidates for saintship, and already canonized in the belief of their deluded contemporaries; while the one or two real teachers and discoverers of truth were exposed to the hazard of fire and faggot-a dungeon, the best shrine that was vouchsafed to a Roger Bacon and a Galileo.-COLERIDGE.

THERE are two opposite extremes into which men are apt to fall

in preparing themselves for the duties of active life. The one

arises from habits of abstraction and generalisation carried to an excess; the other from a minute, and exclusive, and an unenlightened attention to the objects and events which happen to fall under their actual experience. In a perfect system of education care should be taken to guard against both extremes, and to unite habits of abstraction with habits of business in such a manner as to enable men to consider things, either in general or in detail, as the occasion may require. Whichever of these habits may happen to gain an undue ascendant over the mind, it will necessarily produce a character limited in its power, and fitted only for particular exertions. Hence some of the apparent inconsistencies which we may frequently remark in the intellectual capacities of the same person.

One man, from an early indulgence in abstract speculation, possesses a knowledge of general principles, and a talent for general reasoning, united with fluency and eloquence in the use of general terms, which seem to the vulgar to announce abilities fitted for any given situation in life; while in the conduct of the simplest affairs he exhibits every mark of irresolution and incapacity. Another not only acts with propriety and skill in circumstances which require a minute attention to details, but possesses an acuteness of reasoning and a facility of expression on all subjects in which nothing but what is particular is involved; while on general topics he is perfectly unable either to reason or to judge. It is this last turn of mind which I think we have in most instances in view when we speak of good sense, or common sense, in opposition to science and philosophy.

Both philosophy and good sense imply the exercise of our reasoning powers; and they differ from each other only according as these powers are applied to particulars or to generals. It is on good sense (in the acceptation in which I have now explained the term) that the success of men in the inferior walks of life chiefly depends; but that it does not always indicate a capacity for abstract science, or for general speculation, or for able conduct in situations which require comprehensive views, is matter even of vulgar remark.

When theoretical knowledge and practical skill are happily combined in the same person, the intellectual power of man appears in its full perfection; and fits him equally to conduct with a masterly hand the details of ordinary business, and to contend successfully with the untried difficulties of new and hazardous situations. In conducting the former, mere experience may frequently be a sufficient guide, but experience and speculation must be combined together to prepare us for the latter. 'Expert men," says Lord Bacon, can execute and

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