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When the heart of the wool-spinner of Genoa was sickening with "hope deferred,” and his men, who had long been straining their eyes in vain to catch a glimpse of land, were about to burst into open mutiny, and were shouting fearfully to their leader to steer the vessel back again, Columbus pick

mense a flood." By the accidental mixing of a little nitre and potash, gunpowder was discovered. In ancient times, before the days of Pliny, some merchants, travelling across a sandy desert, could find no rock at hand on which to kindle a fire to prepare their food; as a substitute they took a block of alkali from among their heaps of mer-el up a piece of wood which he found floatchandise, and lit a fire thereon. The mer- ing upon the waters. The shore must be chants stared with surprise when they saw nigh, thought he, from whence this branch the huge block melting beneath the heat, was wafted, and the inference inspired and running down in a glistening stream as the fainting hearts of his desponding crew it mingled with the sand, and still more so, to persevere and gain the hoped-for land; when they discovered into what a hard and had it not been for this trifling occurshining substance it had been transformed. rence, Columbus would perhaps have returnFrom this, says Pliny, originated the making ed to Spain an unsuccessful adventurer. But such trifles have often. befriended genius.of glass. The sunbeams dazzling on a crystal prism, unfolded the whole theory of col- Accidentally observing a red-hot iron beors. A few rude types carved from a wood- come elongated by passing between iron en block have been the means of revolution-cylinders, suggested the improvement effectizing nations, overthrowing dynasties, and ed by Arkwright in the spinning machinery. rooting out the most ha dened despotisms-A piece of thread and a few small beads were means sufficient in the hands of Fer

of driving away a multitude of imps of superstition, which for ages had been the terguson to ascertain the situation of the stars ror of the learned, and of spreading the light in the heavens. The discovery of Galvani of truth and knowledge from the borders of was made by a trifling occurrence; a knife civilization to the coasts of darkness and bar-happened to be brought in contact with a bar sm. "We must destroy the Press," ex-dead frog which was lying upon the board claimed the furious Wolsey, "or the Press of the chemist's laboratory, the muscles of will destroy us." The battle was fought, the reptile were observed to be severely conthe Press was triumphant, and Popery ban-vulsed-experiments soon unfolded the ished from the shores of Britain. The swing-whole theory of Galvanism. The history of ing of a lamp suspended from the ceiling led the gas-light is curious, and illustrates our Galileo to search into the laws of oscillation subject. Dr. Clayton distilled some coal in of the pendulum; and by the fall of an ap-a retort, and confining the vapor in a bladder, ple the great Newton was led to unfold what bad hitherto been deemed one of the secrets of the Deity-a mystery over which God had thrown a veil, which it would be presumption for man to lift or dare to pry be neath. Had Newton disregarded little things, and failed to profit by gentle hints, we should perhaps have thought so still, and our minds would not have been so filled with the glory of Him who made the heavens; but with these great truths revealed to our understandings, we exclaim from our hearts, “Manifold, O God, are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all."

amused his friends by burning it as it issued from a pin-hole; little did the worthy doctor think to what purposes the principles of that experiment was capable of being applied. It was left for Murdoch to suggest its adoption as a means of illuminating our streets, and adding to the splendor of our shops. Had Claytou not made known his humble experiment, we probably should still be depending on the mercy of a jovial watchman for a light to guide us through the dark thoroughfares of the city, or to the dim glimmer of an oil lamp to display the -uxury of our merchandise.

These facts which we have gleaned from the fields of nature and the annals of science, may be useful to us all. If God has instilled the instinct of frugality into the ant, and told us in his written word, to go learn her ways and be wise, think you he will be displeased to observe the same habits of economy in us, or deny us the favor of his countenance, because we use with care the talents he has intrusted to our keeping, or the wealth he has placed within our reach? Let not instances of the abuse of this feeling, which spendthrifts, in derision, will be sure to point out to you, deter you from saving in times of plenty, a little for a time of need. Avarice is always despicable-the crime of the miser is greater than that of the spendthrift; both are extremes, both abuse the legitimate purposes of wealth. It is equally revolting to read of two avaricious souls, whose coffers could have disgorged ten times ten thousand guineas, growing angry over a penny, or fretting at the loss of a farthing rushlight; but it is a sight quite as sad and painful, to observe the spendthrift squandering in the mire the last shilling of an ample fortune, and reducing his wife and children to beggary for ever. Save then, a little, although the thoughtless and the gay may sneer. Throw nothing away, for there is nothing that is purely worthless; the refuse from your table is worth its price, and if you are not wanting it yourself, remember there are hundreds of your kind, your brethren by the laws of God, who are groaning under a poverty which it would help to mitigate, and pale with a hunger which it might help to satisfy. Where can you find your prescriptive right to squander that which would fill the belly of a hungry brother? A gentleman, some years ago, married the daughter of a public contractor, whose carts carried away the dust from our habitations; he was promised a portion with bis bride, and on his nuptial day was referred to a. arge heap of dust and offal as the promised dowry. He little thought, as he receive! it with some reluctance, that it would put some two thousand pounds in his pocket.

To achieve independence, then, you must practise an habitual frugality, and while enjoying the present, look forward to old age and think now and then of the possibility of a rainy day. Do not fancy, because you can only save an occasional penny now, that you will never become the possessor of pounds. Small things increase by union.— Recollect, too, the precepts and life of Franklin, and a thousand others who rose to wealth and honor by looking after little things: be resolute, persevere and prosper Do not wait for the assistance of others in your progress through life; you will grow hungry, depend upon it, if you look to the charity or kindness of friends for your daily bread. It is far more noble to gird up your loins, and meet the difficulties and troubles of human life with a dauntless courage. The wheel of fortune turns as swiftly as that of a mill, and the rich friend who has the pow er, you think, to help you to-day, may be come poor to-morrow-many such instances of the mutability of fortune must occur to every reader. If he be rich, let him take the inference to himself. If he has plenty, let him save a little, lest the wheel should turn against him; and if he be poor and penniless, let him draw from such cases consolation and hope.

You are desirous of promotion in your worldly position-you are ambitions of rising from indigence to affluence-resist, then, every temptation that may allure you to indolence or every fascination that may lead you to prodigality. Think not that the path to wealth or knowledge is all sunshine and honey; look for it only by long years of vigorous and well-directed activity; let no opportunity pass for self-improvement.— Keep your mind a total stranger to the ennui of the slothful. The dove, recollect, did not return to Noah with the olive-branch till the second time of her going forth; why, then, should you despond at the failure of a first attempt. Persevere, and, above all despise not little things; for, you see, they sometimes lead to great matters in the end.

To gain knowledge, Lotice little things

For the Monthly Miscellany. SICK-ROOM MUSINGS.

BY MRS. ELECTA M. SHELDON.

Oh Scarletina! thou, with thy hot breath
Did'st blow upon me, and the scorching fire
Drank up the gurgling health-stream; quiveringly,
As if fear-struck, th' unsteady pulses beat,
And all the "instrument of thousand strings"
Seemed but a useless wreck.

Thank Heaver! the Hand That formed the fragile harp, through which the

soul

May breathe out melody, hath given new tension To the unstrung chords and bid them thrill again, To hymns of spirit praise.

Yet slow comes back The wasted strength-the harp-strings feebly playAnd in the sick-room I am prisoned still, While all the outer world is glorious With joy and sunlight.

Glorious indeed,

Are these mid-winter days; a cloudless sky
And soft, bland zephyrs, as if Spring had stole
Old Winter's crown, and now proclaimed herself
The sole dispenser of all earthly good.
One can well bear to be shut up at home
When clouds and tempest shroud the outer world,
Or e'en when bustling life is all around,
In labor's six days' 'lotment; but when comes
The blessed day of rest, when chiming bells
Call to the house of God, and cheerful Sol
Looks smiling from his car, as if to lure
The laggart to obey the high behest
For which a seventh of time was consecrate;
When pass the throngs of worshippers, and now
And then an upward glance reveals some loved
Familiar face; and hymns of praise and prayer,
And holy teachings from a pastor's lips
Are beckoning-then comes the pattering
Of tiny footsteps, and the Sabbath class
Without a teacher, and the saddened look
Of each dear little face -ah! these things make
The sick-room thraldom seem a weariness,
And faith is needed now, and grateful love,
To make one prize returning health, and wait
With patient hope, until the Master says,
"To-day go forth again, and do the work
I have appointed thee."

If I but learn

To say "Thy will be done," to watch and wait,
How blessed will the hard learned lessons prove,
Of these long days, these weary Sabbath hours.

Thy withering touch, oh Scarletina,
Then will prove but a refiner's fire

To purify the dross of worldliness

From one of those for whom the Savior died. Detroit, Feb. 1852.

From the International. A NEW PORTRAIT OF CICERO.

In the third volume of his History of the Romans under the Empire, just published in London, Mr. Merrivale gives some elaborate pieces of character writing, one of which has for its subject Cicero. It is not good for a man to think harshly of Cicero, and however easy it may seem to be to condemn manifest faults in his character, it is by no means easy to be fair in the estimate we make. Mr. Merrivale sums up a character which has too often been roughly put down as that of a great writer and a little man, as follows:

Never

"Many writers, it has been remarked, have related the death of Cicero, but Plutarch alone has painted it. In the narrative here laid before him, the reader has the substance of this picturesque account, together with some touches introduced from collateral sources. In this, as in many other passages of his Lives, the Greek biographer has evidently aimed at creating an effect, and tho' he seems to have been mainly guided by the genuine narrative of Tiro, Cicero's beloved freedman, we may suspect him of having embellished it to furnish a striking termination to one of his favorite sketches. theless, the narrative is mainly confirmed by a fragment of Livy's history, which has fortunately been preserved. The Roman author vies with the Greek in throwing dignity and interest over the great statesman's end. But in reviewing the uneven tenor of his career, Livy concludes with the stern comment'He bore none of his calamities as a man should, except his death.' These are grave words. In the mouth of one who had cast his scrutinizing glance over the characters and exploits of all the heroes of the great republic, and had learnt by the training of his life-long studies to discriminate moral qualities and estimate desert, they constitute the most important judgment on the conduct of Cicero that antiquity has bequeathed to us. Few indeed among the Romans ever betrayed a want of resolution in the face of impending death. But it was

success.

neglected to enlist him in their design, were we not assured that he was not to be trusted as a confederate either for good or for evil.

in the endurance of calamity, rather than the defiance of danger, that the courage of Cicero was deficient. The orator, whose genius lay in the arts of peace and persuasion, ex- "Of all the characters of antiquity, Cicero hibited on more than one occasion a martial is undoubtedly that with which we are most spirit worthy of other habits and a ruder intimately acquainted; for he alone has left training. In the contest with Catilina, he to us the record of his thoughts and actions displayed all the moral confidence of a vet- for more than half his political career, in a eran general; in the struggle with Antonius, voluminous mass of familiar as well as polithe threw himself without reserve into a po-ical correspondence. sition where there was no alternative but to conquer or to perish. In the earlier conflict, he had still his fame to acquire, his proud ascendency to establish; and the love of praise and glory inspired him with the audacity which makes and justifies its own But in the later, he courted danger for the sake of retaining the fame he so dearly prized. He had once saved his country, and he could not endure that it should be said he had ever deserted it. He loved his country; but it was for his own honor, which he could preserve, rather than for his country's freedom, which he despaired of, that he returned to his post when escape was still possible. He might have remained silent, but he opened the floodgates of his eloquence. When indeed he had once launched himself on the torrent, he lost all self-command; he could neither retrace nor moderate his career; he saw the rocks before him, but he dashed himself headlong against them. But another grave authority has given us the judgment of antiquity, that Cicero's defect was the want of steadfastness.His courage had no dignity because it lacked consistency. All men and all parties agreed that he could not be relied upon to lead, to co-operate, or to follow. In all the great enterprises of his party, he was left behind, except that which the nobles undertook against Catilina, in which they rather thrust duty. Thus his proconsulate is perhaps the him before them than engaged with him on terms of mutual support. When we read the vehement claims which Cicero put forth to the honor of association, however tardy, with the glories and dangers of Cæsar's assassins, we should deem the conspirators guilty of a monstrous oversight in having

No public charactor probably could pass unscathed through the fiery ordeal to which he has thus subjected himself. Cicero, it must be avowed, is convicted from his own mouth of vanity, inconstancy, sordidness, jealousy, malice, selfishness, and timidity. But on the other hand, no character, public or private, could thus bare its workings to our view, without laying a stronger claim to our sympathy, and extorting from us more kindly consideration, than we can give to the mere shell of the human being with which ordinary history brings us in contact. Cicero gains more than he loses by the confessions he pours into our ear. We read in his letters what we should vainly search for in the meagre pages of Sallust and Appian, in the captious criticism of Dion, and ever in the pleasant anecdotes of his friendly biographer, Plutarch, his amiableness, bis refined urbanity, his admiration for excellence, his thirst for fame, his love of truth, equity, and reason.— Much indeed of the patriotism, the honesty, the moral courage he exhibited, was really no other than the refined ambition of attaining the respect of his contemporaries, and bequeathing a name to posterity. He might not act from a sense of duty, like Cato, but his motives, personal and selfish as they in some sense were, coincided with what a more enlightened conscience would have felt to be

purest and most honorable passage in his life. His strict and rare probity amidst the temptations of office, arrests our attention and extorts our praise; yet assuredly Cicero had no nice sense of honor, and was controlled by no delicacy of sentiment, where public opinion was silent, or a transaction

strictly private. His courting his ward Pub- tice towards the great men of his day, we

are bound also to specify the gross dishonesty with which he magnifies his own merits where they are trivial, and embellishes them where they are really important. The perpetual recurrence to the topic of his own political deserts must have wearied the most patient of friends, and more than balanced the display of sordidness and timeserving which Atticus doubtless reflected back in his share of the correspondence between them.

"But while Cicero stands justly charged with many grave infirmities of temper and defects of principle, while we remark with a sigh the vanity, the inconstancy, and the ingratitude he so often manifested, while we

lilia for her dower, his caressing Dolabella for the sake of getting his debt paid, his soliciting the historian Lucceius to color and exaggerate the merits of his consulship, display a grievous want of magnanimity, and of a predominant sense of right. Fortunately, his instinct taught him to see in the constitution of the republic, the fairest field for the display of his peculiar talents; the orator and the pleader could not fail to love the arena on which the greatest triumph of his genius had been, or were yet, as he hoped, to be acquired. And Cicero indeed was not less ambitious than Cæsar or Pompeius, Antonius or Octavius. To the pursuit of fame, he sacrificed many interests and friendships. He was not less jealous of a rival in his cho-lament his ignoble subserviencies and his fesen career, than any of the leaders of party rocious resentments, the high standard by and candidates for public favor. He could which we claim to judge him is in itself the not endure competition for the throne of el- fullest acknowledgment of his transcendent oquence and the sceptre of persuasion. It merits. For undoubtedly had he not placed was on this account perhaps that he sought himself on a higher moral level than the his associates among the young, from whose statesmen and sages of his day, we should rivalry he had nothing to fear, rather than pass over many of his weaknesses in silence, from his own contemporaries, the candidates and allow his pretensions to our esteem to for the same prize of public admiration pass almost unchallenged. But we demand which he aimed at securing for himself.- | a nearer approach to the perfection of human From his pages there flows an incessant wisdom and virtue, in one who sought to apstream of abuse of all the great masters of political power in his time-of Cæsar and Pompeius, or Crassus and Antonius, not to mention his coarse vituperation of Piso and Gabinius, and his uneasy sneers at the impracticable Cato. We may note the differ-with which we can more readily dispense; ent tone which his disparagement assumes and they too had less sympathy with many towards these men respectively. He speaks qualities which a purer religion and a wider of Cæsar with awe, of Pompeius, with mor- experience have taught us to love and adtification, with dislike of Crassus, with bit- mire. Nor were they capable, from their ter malice of Antonius. Cæsar, even when position, of estimating the slow and silent he most deeply reprobates him, he person-effects upon human happiness of the lessons ally loves; the cold distrust of Pompeius which Cicero enforced. After all the severe vexes his self-esteem; between him and Crassus there subsists a natural antipathy of temperament; but Antonius, the hate of his old age, becomes to him the incarnation of all the evil his long and bitter experience of mankind have discovered in the human heart. While we suspect Cicero of injus

prove himself the greatest of their teachers. Nor need we scruple to admit that the judgment of the ancients on Cicero was for the most part unfavorable. The moralists of antiquity required in their heroes virtues

judgments we are compelled to pass on his conduct, we must acknowledge that there remains a residue of what is amiable in his character and noble in his teaching beyond all ancient example. Cicero lived and died in faith. He has made converts to the belief in virtue, and had disciples in the wis

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