genitors had little European significance; we mark the Norman, Dane, Saxon, Roman, and Celt contributing to produce the race at present predominant among the nations; and observe in the depths of ancient time a handful of barbarians merely, as the primitive tenants of the soil, whose migration to it no chronicle has recorded, and whose very existence was unknown to Greece while independent, and to Rome before the dying age of the republic.

MILNER, "History of England."

ON SOME PLEASURES IN RURAL LIFE.

I.

My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when we are just on the point of being turned out of it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, and the calmness of this latter season, make it a much more agreeable retreat than we ever find it in the summer; when the winds being generally brisk, we cannot cool it by admitting a sufficient quantity of air, without being at the same incommoded by it. But now I sit with all the windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower, in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We keep no bees; but if I lived in a hive, I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it, by a hum which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that Nature utters are delightful, at least in this country.

II.

Now the fields, the woods, the gardens have each their concert, and the ear of man is for ever regaled by creatures who seem only to please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel are continually enter

tained, though without knowing it, by sounds for which they are solely indebted to its author. There is, somewhere in infinite space, a world that does not roll within the precincts of mercy; and as it is reasonable, and even scriptural, to suppose that there is music in heaven, in those dismal regions perhaps the reverse of it is found; tones so dismal, as to make woe itself more insupportable, and to acuminate even despair. But my paper admonishes me in good time to draw the reins, and to check the descent of my fancy into deeps, with which she is but too familiar.

COWPER, "Letter to Mr. J. Newton."

FORMS OF EARLY ENGLISH.

The knowledge of Anglo-Saxon is important as a corrective of the philological errors into which we may be led by the study of Early English, and especially of popular ballad and other poetry, without such a guide. The introduction of Norman French, with a multitude of words inflected in the weak or augmentative manner, naturally confused what was sufficiently intricate and uncertain before, namely, the strong inflexion, or that by the letter change in the Anglo-Saxon. The range of letter-change in Anglo-Saxon grammar was indeed wide, but not endless or arbitrary. It however became so, at least in the poetic dialect, as soon as Norman influence had taught English bards independence of the laws of Saxon grammar. Many of the barbarous forms so freely used in popular verse are neither obsolete conjugations revived, nor dialectic peculiarities, but creations of the rhymesters who employed them-coin not uncurrent merely but counterfeit, and without either the stamp or the ring of the genuine metal.

G. P. MARSH, "Student's English Language."

THE CRUST OF THE EARTH.

By the "earth's crust," is meant that small portion of e exterior of our planet which is accessible to human

observation. It comprises not merely all of which the structure is laid open in mountain precipices, or in cliffs overhanging a river or the sea, or whatever the miner may reveal in artificial excavations; but the whole of that outer covering of the planet on which we are enabled to reason by observations made at or near the surface. These reasonings may extend to a depth of several miles, perhaps ten miles; and even then it may be said that such a thickness is no more than one-four-hundredth part of the distance from the surface to the centre. The remark is just; but although the dimensions of such a crust are, in truth, insignificant when compared to the entire globe, yet they are vast, and of magnificent extent in relation to man, and to the organic beings which people our globe. Referring to this standard of magnitude, the geologist may admire the ample limits of his domain, and admit, at the same time, that not only the exterior of the planet, but the entire earth, is but an atom in the midst of the countless worlds surveyed by the astronomer.

LYELL, "Student's Elements of Geology."

HISTORICAL AND GEOLOGICAL MONU

MENTS.

I.

The analogy, however, of the monuments consulted in geology, and those available in history, extends no further than to one class of historical monuments-those which may be said to be undesignedly commemorative of former events. The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat-bogs, afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of the reign of some Roman emperor; the ancient encampment indicates the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing military defences; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of the human race in ancient Egypt.

II.

This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it constitutes a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies, whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason we must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond the reach of history. But the testimony of geological monuments, if frequently imperfect, possesses at least the advantage of being free from all suspicion of misrepresentation. We may be deceived in the inferences which we draw, in the same manner as we often mistake the nature and import of phenomena observed in the daily course of nature, but our liability to err is cond to the interpretation, and, if this be correct, our information is certain.

Sir CHARLES LYELL, "Geology."

A FUNERAL DANCE.

Drums were beating, horns blowing, and people were seen all running in one direction; the cause was a funeral dance. I joined the crowd, and soon found myself in the midst of the entertainment. The dancers were most grotesquely got up. About a dozen huge ostrich feathers adorned their helmets; leopard or black and white monkey skins were suspended from their shoulders; and a leather tied round the waist covered a large iron_bell which was strapped upon the loins of each dancer; this they rang to the time of the dance. A large crowd got up in this style created an indescribable hubbub, heightened by the blowing of horns and the beating of seven nogaras of various notes. Every dancer wore an antelope's horn suspended round the neck, which he blew occasionally in the height of his excitement.

Sir S. BAKER, "The Albert Nyanza."

THE VOICE.

The modulation of the voice proceeds principally from the larynx, which produces and modifies it almost without limit, by expansion and contraction. First, then, we have the formation of the larynx, with muscles, cartilages, membranes, and tracery, which are to the emission of vocal sound what the involutions of the brain probably are, instrumentally, in the operation of thought. But, in the one case, as in the other, the connection of the organs with the effects produced, entirely escapes us; and although we are continually availing ourselves of the instrument, we do not perceive in any manner the how of its ministrations. It is only by use, and experiments often repeated, that we learn to employ them with greater ease and power, and our skill in this respect is wholly empirical. The researches of the subtlest anatomy have given us no discovery in the matter. All that we have ascertained is, that every voice has its natural bell-tone, which makes it a bass voice, a tenor, or a soprano, each with intermediate gradations.

M. BAUTAIN, "Extempore Speaking."

PAINSTAKING LABOUR.

Excellence in art, as in everything else, can only be achieved by dint of painstaking labour. There is nothing less accidental than the painting of a fine picture, or the chiselling of a noble statue. Every skilled touch of the artist's brush or chisel, though guided by genius, is the product of unremitting study.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was such a believer in the force of industry, that he held that artistic excellence, "however expressed by genius, taste, or the gift of heaven, may be acquired." Writing to Barry, he said, "Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or indeed any other art, must bring all his mind to bear upon that one object, from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed." And