geous; our landscapes inexpressibly beau- [tions in a minute; and therefore 3840 in an tiful.

"Our wives are never weary, but they are 'tired to death;' never warm, but they are roasted; never chilly, but they are frozen.If they have a scratch on the finger, their hands are all raw. If they have a pain, it is deathly. If there is a spot on our linen, they tell us we are covered with ink, and a soiled dress is utterly ruined. When a friend goes home with us to try pot-luck, if the fire has been out once, it has been out forty times; if the beef is brown, it is burned to a cinder; if the soup is too savory, it is salt as brine.

"This extravagant waste of words bankrupts us, whenever really extraordinary circumstances demand description. We have no words to describe Niagara with, after we have written of a mildam. The superlatives due to the Mississippi, we have lavished on trout streams."

Now this extravagance is wholly unnecessary, as well as inconsistent. Our language is sufficiently copious to express all our ideas, and it even has a word for every

hour, 92,160 in a day. There are also three complete circulations of his blood in the short space of an hour. In respect to the comparative speed of animated beings, and of impelled bodies, it may be remarked that size and construction have but little influence, nor has comparative strength, though one body giving any quantity of motion to another is said to lose so much of its own.

The sloth is by no means a small animal, and yet it can travel only fifty paces in a day; a worm crawls only five inches in fifty seconds; but a lady-bird can fly twenty million times its own length in less than an hour. An elk can run a mile and a half in seven minutes; an antelope a mile in a minute; and the wild mule of Tartary has a speed even greater than that; an eagle can fly twenty leagues in an hour, and a Canary falcon can even reach 250 leagues in the short space of sixteen hours.

A violent wind travels sixty miles an hour; sound, 1142 English feet in a second.

separate shade of thought. If we would INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPEMENT.

express ourselves in strong or exalted language, we have words to convey strong or exalted ideas; but if we use all these up on common things, and common thoughts; if we call every thing splendid, every landscape magnificent, every water-fall sublime, we shall soon have no strong words for strong thoughts, nor exalted words for sublime language, for we shall have made them all weak. Oh, let none forget this important truth, and let every one use language accordingly.

MUSCULAR POWER.

MAN has the power of imitating almost every motion but that of flight. To effect these, he has, in maturity and health, sixty bones in his head, sixty in his thighs and legs, sixty-two in his arms and hands, and sixty-seven in his trunk. He has also 434 muscles. His heart makes sixty-four pulsa

BY MRS. B. G. RUSHNELL

MAN, who is the noblest work of Deity, was created to fulfil a high and holy destiny, to accomplish upon earth a glorious mis

sion.

Endowed with powers of mind capable of the greatest exertion, equal to the loftiest achievements in science and art, and capable of unfolding the hidden mysteries of the Universe, he stands forth free to improve the powers of mind committed to his trust, or to keep the germ enshrined in its casket, unimproved, unadorned, and perfectly useless.

But it is the privilege of man to know himself; to study into the deep and hidden mysteries of his being; to develope the powers of his mighty intellect, and aspire to all that God placed within his grasp ;— and if he neglects to seek that true developement of mind which alone elevates him

mission upon earth will never be truly accomplished.

to his true position, the great object of his vated mind has at its command. In every station of life, whether the sunlight of prosperity rest upon his brow, or the chilling blasts of adversity sweeps over him, he calmly looks over the mutations of time, and fixes his hopes on a more enduring basis, on those fields of light whose outlines "star-eyed science" has but dimly viewed and where the soul in its aspirings after truth will be as free, as unfettered, (I might say) as that of the Eternal.

Let him look into the deep mysteries of his own heart, and there learn what lofty God-like powers of mind he has committed to his charge for improvement, and then with steady nobleness of purpose gird himself for his high prerogative and office. The man with a well cultivated mind has within his grasp a source of enjoyment, pure and exhaustless, and in deep communings with his own spirit, he finds companionship and pleasure. Does he walk abroad? the book of nature lies open before him, and with delight he reads her beautiful and varied language. He listens enraptured to her thousand strains of melody, and in the stream lets murmur and the ocean's roar, in the sighing breeze and in the deep hoarse tones of the tempest, there is a voice and language to him alike intelligible If he surveys the majesty of the Universe, he sees not merely an azure curtain with tinsel o'er spangled to light him in his night wandering, but as he scans the boundless fields of space, with its unnumbered systems revolving in perfect harmony, his soul is filled with lofty emotions, and as he drinks in the music of the celestial spheres, he learns the sublime language in which Nature holds converse with Deity.

DAYS OF OLD.

"To our taste, the old mode of travelling -nay, the oldest-was infinitely superior to the present sickening system. You rose by times in the morning; took a substantial breakfast of beef and ale-none of your miserable slops-and mounted your horse between your saddle bags in time to hear the lark carolling on his earliest flight to heaven. Your way ran through dingle and thicket, along the banks of rivers, skirting magnificent parks, rich in the possession of prime

val oaks, under which the deer lay tran-
quilly still. You entered a village, stopped
at the door of a public-house, and cooled
your
brow in the foam of wholesome home-

brewed. You dined at mid-day in some

town where the execrable inventions of Arkwright and Watt were unknown, where But there are deeper treasures still for his you encountered only honest, healthy, rosyattainment; he unlocks the mighty volume cheek Christians, who went regularly once a of the past, and the vast panorama of six week to church-instead of meeting gangs thousand years is spread out before his deof hollow-eyed, lean mechanics talking lighted vision. He but wills, and the pro-radicalism, and discussing the fundamental found philosophy of the East is spread bepoints of the Charter. You moved through for him in all its immortal magnificence." Merrie England" as a man ought to do, He wanders over the classic land of Greece, who is both content with his own lot, and and listens to the song of Homer, the pro- can enjoy the happiness of others. As you found philosophy of Plato, and the burning saw the sun rising, so you saw him set. The eloquence of Demosthenes. He looks to the clouds reddened in the west-you heard the grove where Socrates breathed his lessons sweet carol of the thrush from his coppice, of wisdom and philosophy, and moves over and lingered to catch his melody. The the plains where once assembled the wis-shades of evening grew deeper. The glowdom of the world. worms lit their tiny lanthorns on the bank, Who can measure the vast, the inexhaus- the owl flitted past with noiseless wing, the tible source of enjoyment which the culti-village candles began to appear in the dis

not accompanying the fallen child, stepped | principles, to incalculate those doctrines, to up to the boy, who was only half conscious animate those sentiments which generations of what he had done, and gave him as sound yet unborn, and nations yet uncivilized, shall a box on the ear as ever wrathful mother be- learn to bless; to soften firmness into mercy, stowed on obstreperous son. Whack! came and chasten honor into refinement; to exalt her white hand on the side of his brown generosity into virtue; by soothing care to face. We knew it was a stinger by the lull the anguish of the body and the far sound, having received many such, thimble worse anguish of the mind; by her tenderand all, in old times. The boy, astonished ness to disarm passion; by her purity to triand fearful that more were to follow, took to umph over sense; to cheer up the scholar his heels with laughable suddenness and con- sinking under his toil; to console the statessternation. The lady went to the little girl, man for the ingratitude of a mistaken peoinquired if she was hurt, and assisted in re-ple; to be compensation for friends that are arranging her dress. The scene was over in perfidious, for happiness that has passed away. less time than a line of this description of it Such is her destiny; to visit the forsaken, to was written: but it made a lasting impres- attend the neglected when monarchs abansion on the outside of one head and the in-don, when counsellors betray, when justice side of another. It was curious that the un-prosecutes, when brethren and disciples flee, tutored youth should instinctively recognize to remain unshaken and unchanged; and exthe right of woman to homage, as the mothers of mankind. The lady was not his mother, nor the little girl's mother, but she belonged to the class of mothers, and as a mother, exercised authority, which he at once recognized. Doubtless, had a man dealt him the blow, he would have received it very differently. New York Penny Dispach.

WOMAN'S EARLY TASK.

One of the distinguishing glories by which our modern civilization is characterized, is the rank and influence assigned to woman. The highest progress of ancient times knew nothing of her position and destiny, and hence the most refined and polished society of Greece and Rome was dashed with barbarism. The grand instrument of modern improvement has been the gospel, which alone solves the problem of woman's destiny and defines her task. This is eloquently stated in a passage in Blackwood's Magazine: "Not to make laws, not to lead armies, not to govern empires, but form those by whom laws are made, armies led and empires governed; to guard against the slightest taint or bodily infirmity, the frail creature, whose moral, no less than physical being must be derived from her; to inspire those

hibit in the lower world a type of that love, pure, constant, and ineffable, which in another world we are taught to believe the test of virtues."

THE APPLE OF THE DEAD SEA.

We made a somewhat singular discovery when traveling among the mountains to the east of the Dead Sea, 'where the ruins of Annon and Jerash well repay the labor and fatigue to be encountered in visiting them.

It was a remarkably hot and sultry day; we were scrambling up the mountain thro' a thick jungle of bushes and low trees when I saw before me a fine plum tree, loaded with fresh blooming plums. I cried to my fellow-traveler

"Now, then, who will arrive first at the plum tree?" and as he caught a glimpse of so refreshing an object, we both pressed our horses into a gallop to see which would get the first plum from the branches. We both arrived at the same moment, and each snatching a fine plum, put it at once into our mouths; when, on biting it, instead of the cool, delicious, juicy fruit, which we expected, our mouths were filled with a dry, bitter dust, and we sat under the tree, upon our horses, sputtering and hemming, and