name of Palmer, who, many of the people of the village said, had taken away a waggon-load of turnips. Farmer Brown, much exasperated by the loss of his turnips, determined to prosecute poor Palmer with all the severity of the law. With this intention he went to Molly Saunders, the washerwoman, who had been busy in spreading the report, to know the whole truth; but Molly denied ever having said anything about a waggon-load of turnips. It was but a cart-load that Palmer had taken, and Dame Hodson the huckster had told her so, over and over again. The farmer, hearing this, went to Dame Hodson, who said that Molly Saunders was always making things worse than they really were; that Palmer had taken only a wheelbarrow-full of turnips, and that she had her account from Jenkins the tailor. Away went the farmer to Jenkins the tailor, who stoutly denied the account altogether; he had only told Dame Hodson that Palmer had pulled up several turnips, but how many he could not tell, for that he did not see him himself, but was told it by Tom Slack, the ploughman. Wondering where this would end, Farmer Brown next questioned Tom Slack, who, in his turn, declared tha the never said a word about seeing Palmer pull up several turnips; he only said he had heard say that Palmer had pulled up a turnip, and that Barnes the barber was the person who had told him about it. The farmer, almost out of patience at this account, hurried off to Barnes the barber, who wondered much that people should find pleasure in spreading idle tales which had no truth in them! He assured the farmer, that all he had said about the matter, while he took off the beard of Tom Slack, was, that for all he knew, Palmer was as likely a man to pull up a turnip as his neighbours.

There are a thousand tales passing current among us to the prejudice of others, the truth of which, if inquired into, would dwindle away just like Farmer Brown's waggon-load of turnips.

We

Truth is a jewel that should be worn in every bosom. have, in the death of Ananias and Sapphira, an awful warning against lying. If the boy be inattentive to truth, when a man he will be addicted to falsehood. All the good qualities in the world will never make amends for the want of integrity; and where truth abides not, integrity is not to be found.—' Boy's Week-day Book.'

THE THREE BLACK CROWS.

Two honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand,
One took the other briskly by the hand;
"Hark ye," said he, " 'tis an odd story this
About the crows!"- "I don't know what it is,"
Replied his friend." No! I'm surprised at that-
Where I come from, it is the common chat;
But you shall hear an odd affair indeed!
And that it happened they are all agreed.
Not to detain you from a thing so strange,
A gentleman who lives not far from 'Change,
This week, in short, as all the Alley knows,
Taking a vomit, threw up Three Black Crows!"
"Impossible!"__“ Nay, but 'tis really true;
I had it from good hands, and so may you."-
"From whose, I pray ?"-So, having named the man,
Straight to inquire his curious comrade ran.
"Sir, did you tell "-relating the affair;
"Yes, Sir, I did; and, if 'tis worth your care,
"Twas Mr." Such-a-one-" who told it me;

But, by the bye, 'twas Two black crows, not Three."
Resolved to trace so wondrous an event,

Quick to the third, the virtuoso went.

"Sir," and so forth-" Why, yes; the thing is fact Though, in regard to number, not exact;

It was not Two black crows, 'twas only One;
The truth of that you may depend upon :
The gentleman himself told me the case.".

"Where may I find him ?"—" Why, in "--such a place Away he went: and, having found him out,

"Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt."

Then to his last informant he referred,

And begged to know if true what he had heard;

"Did you, Sir, throw up a black crow ?"--" Not I

"Bless me!-how people propagate a lie !-

Black crows have been thrown up, Three, Two, and One; And here I find all comes at last to none !

Did you say anything of a crow at all ?”

"Crow-crow-perhaps I might,-now I recal The matter over 99

-"And pray, Sir, what was 't ?"

Why, I was horrid sick, and at the last

I did throw up, and told my neighbour so,

Something that was-as black, Sir, as a crow."-BYROM.

neglect, what think you was the response? Those dignities of which you speak, I was told, are reserved for naval and military officers, for influential members of the House of Commons, and for members of the aristocracy. "It is not the custom," it was said, and I quote the very phrase, "to grant these honours to scientific and literary men, to artists or engineers !"

I well knew it was not the custom in the reign of Queen Anne, because Newton was never a peer of England. But after a century and a half of progress in science and philosophy; when all of us, within the short span of life, have seen monarchs banished, forsaken, proscribed, and replaced upon their thrones by mere soldiers of fortune, who have hewn out their renown by their swords, surely I might be permitted to hope that the time had passed when it would be attempted to divide men into exclusive classes; that, at all events, it would not be declared openly, and in the style of the inflexible code of the Pharaohs, whatever may be your services, your virtues, or your acquirements, not one of you shall ever rise above the level of your caste; in a word, that such a senseless custom (since custom it is) should no longer be permitted to disfigure the institutions of a great people.

Let us hope better things of the future. The time will come when the science of destruction shall decline before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, and dispenses comfort throughout immense masses of our population, shall occupy, in general esteem, the place which reason and sound sense have even now assigned to it. Watt will then appear before the grand jury of the population of the two hemispheres. They will see him, assisted by his steamengine, penetrating in a few weeks into the bowels of the earth, to depths which, before his time, could only have been reached after an age of the most difficult labour; he will there clear out spacious galleries, and free them, in a few minutes, from the vast volumes of water which daily overflow them; and thus will he procure from the virgin earth those inexhaustible mineral riches which nature has there deposited. Uniting delicacy to power, Watt will be seen twisting, with the same success, the huge folds of the colossal cable, by means of which the stately vessel rides secure amid raging seas, and the microscopic filaments of those laces and airy gauzes upon which fashion ever so much depends in the preparation of their light but fascinating adornments. A few strokes of the same machine will drain vast marshes, and give them up to husbandry; and districts already fertile, will by it be freed from the periodic influence of those deadly miasmata produced by the scorching heat of the summer

sun.

Those great mechanical powers, which are only to be found in mountainous regions, at the foot of rapid cascades, will now, thanks to the ingenuity of Watt, be reared at will, without difficulty and without incumbrance, in the centre of towns, and in every story of a building.

The intensity of these powers will be regulated by the mechanic's will, and will not depend, as heretofore, upon the most unsteady of natural causes-atmospheric influence. The different branches of each manufacture may be united in a common enclosure, and even under the same roof. The productions of industry, whilst they are thus improved in quality, will be diminished in price. Population, well fed, well clad, and comfortably lodged, will increase with rapidity; it will cover with elegant dwellings every region, even those districts which have been justly styled the Steppes of Europe, and which the barrenness of ages seems for ever to have condemned to remain the exclusive domain of the

feræ naturæ.1 In a few years, insignificant hamlets will become important cities; and, in a short while, such towns as Birmingham, where a few years since one could scarcely count thirty streets, will take their place among the largest, most beautiful, and richest towns of a powerful kingdom.

Transferred to our ships, the steam-engine will replace an hundredfold the efforts of the triple and quadruple banks of rowers, from whom our ancestors required an extent and kind of labour, ranked among the punishments of the greatest criminals. With the help of a few bushels of coals, man will overcome the elements, and will make light of calms, contrary winds, and even storms. Transport will become much more rapid, -the time of the arrival of the steam-vessel will be as regular as that of our public coaches; and we shall no longer have occasion to remain on the coast for weeks, or even months, the heart a prey to cruel anxiety, watching with anxious eye on the distant horizon, for the uncertain traces of the vessel which is to restore to us a father or a mother, a brother or a friend. In fine, the steamengine, conveying in its train thousands of travellers, will run upon railroads, more swiftly than the best racehorse, loaded only with its diminutive jockey.

This is a very abridged sketch of the benefits bequeathed tc the world by the machine of which Papin supplied the germ in his writings, and which, after so many ingenious exertions, Watt carried to such admirable perfection. Posterity will assuredly not degrade them to the level of other labours, which have been too much commended, and whose real influence, weighed by the tribunal of reason, will for ever remain circumscribed within the confined circle of a few individuals and a limited space of time.

We have long been in the habit of talking of the age of Augustus, and of the age of Louis XIV. Eminent individuals amongst us have likewise held that we might with propriety speak of the age of Voltaire, of Rousseau, and of Montesquieu. I do not hesitate to declare my conviction, that when the immense services already rendered by the steam-engine shall be added to all the marvels it holds out to promise, a grateful population will then familiarly talk of the ages of Papin and of Watt!-ARAGO's Life of Watt.'

In modern times, the question, as to the distinct effect of political institutions on learning, has become greatly complicated, in consequence of the large number of separate states into which the civilized world is divided, and the easy and rapid communication between them. The consequence is, that a powerful impulse, given to mind in one country, under the influence of causes favourable to its progress, may be felt, to some extent, in other countries where no such causes exist. Upon the whole, however, the history of modern literature bears but cold testimony to the genial influence of the governments under which it has grown up. Dante and Petrarch composed their beautiful works ir. exile; Boccaccio complains, in the most celebrated of his, that he was transfixed with the darts of envy and calumny; Machiavelli was pursued by the party of the Medici, for resisting their tyrannical designs; Guicciardini retired, in disgust, to compose his history in voluntary exile; Galileo confessed, in the prisons of the Inquisition, that the earth did not move; Ariosto lived in poverty; and Tasso, the victim of dejection and despair. Cervantes, after he had immortalized himself in his great work, was obliged to write on for bread. The whole French Academy was pensioned, to crush the great Corneille. Racine, after living to see his finest pieces derided as cold and worthless, died of a broken heart. The divine genius of Shakspeare owed but little to patronage, for it raised him to no other rank than that of a subaltern actor in his own and Ben Jonson's plays. The immortal Bacon made a disastrous wreck of his greatness in a court, and is said (falsely I trust) to have begged a cup of beer, in his old age, and begged it in vain.

The most valuable of the pieces of Selden were written in that famous resort of great minds, the tower of London. Milton,