open. The village blacksmith-a good-natured, pious, brave-hearted man-sat near the door, talking pleasantly with some of his neighbours in the room. All at once a large dog came and stood right in the doorway. He was a great powerful beast, with fierce, frightful look. His head hung down, his eyes were bloodshot, his great red tongue hung half out of his mouth, and his tail was dropped between his legs. As soon as the keeper of the inn saw him, he turned pale, and exclaimed, “Back, back! The dog is mad!" Then the women screamed, and there was great confusion in the room. There was no way out but by the door in which the dog stood, and no one could pass him without being bitten. "Stand back, my friends," cried the brave smith, "till I seize the dog; then hurry out while I hold him. It is better that one should perish than all." As he said this, he seized the foaming beast with an iron grasp, and dashed him on the floor. Then a terrible struggle followed. The dog bit furiously on every side in a most frightful manner. His long teeth tore the arms and thighs of the heroic smith, but he would not let go his hold. Unmindful of the great pain it caused, and the horrible death which he knew must follow, with the grasp of a giant he held down the snapping, biting, howling brute, till all his friends had escaped in safety. Then he flung the halfstrangled beast from him against the wall, and dripping with blood and venomous foam, he left the room and locked the door. The dog was shot through the window, but what became of the brave but unfortunate smith? The friends whose lives he had saved at the expense of his own, stood round him weeping. "Be quiet, my friends," he said, "do not weep for me, I have only done my duty. When I am dead, think of me with love; and now pray for me that God will not let me suffer long, or too much. I know I shall become mad, but I will take care that no harm comes to you through me." He went to his shop, and took a strong chain, one end of which he rivetted with his own hands round his body, the other end he fastened round the anvil so strongly that no earthly power could loose it. He then looked round on his friends and said, "Now it's done." You are all safe. I can't hurt you. Bring me food while I am well, and keep out of my reach when I am mad! The rest I leave with God." Nothing could save the brave smith. Madness soon seized him, and he died after nine days of suffering. What a noble fellow! What a real hero that was! DR. NEWTON. THE ATMOSPHERE. A PHILOSOPHER of the East, with a richness of imagery truly Oriental, describes the atmosphere as "a spherical shell which surrounds our planet to a depth which is unknown to us, by reason of its growing tenuity, as it is released from the pressure of its own superincumbent mass. Its upper surface cannot be nearer to us than fifty, and can scarcely be more remote than five hundred miles. It surrounds us on all sides, yet we see it not; it presses on us with a load of fifteen pounds on every square inch of surface of our bodies, or from seventy to one hundred tons on us in all, yet we do not so much as feel its weight. Softer than the softest down, more impalpable than the finest gossamerit leaves the cobweb undisturbed, and scarcely stirs the lightest flower that feeds on the dew it supplies; yet it bears the fleets of nations on its wings around the world, and crushes the most refractory substances with its weight. When in motion, its force is sufficient to level the most stately forests and stable buildings with the earth-to raise the waters of the ocean into ridges like mountains, and dash the strongest ships to pieces like toys. It warms and cools by turns the earth and the living creatures that inhabit it. It draws up vapours from the sea and land, retains them dissolved in itself, or suspended in cisterns of clouds, and throws them down again as rain or dew when they are required. It bends the rays of the sun from their path, to give us the twilight of evening and of dawn; it disperses and refracts their various tints to beautify the approach and the retreat of the orb of day. But for the atmosphere, sunshine would burst on us and fail us at once, and at once remove us from midnight darkness to the blaze of noon. We should have no twilight to soften and beautify the landscape; no clouds to shade us from the scorching heat, but the bald earth, as it revolved on its axis, would turn its tanned and weakened front to the full and unmitigated rays of the lord of day. It affords the gas which vivifies and warms our frames, and receives into itself that which has been polluted by use, and is thrown off as noxious. It feeds the flame of life exactly as it does that of the fire-it is in both cases consumed, and affords the food of consumption; in both cases it becomes combined with charcoal, which requires it for combustion, and is removed by it when this is over." "It is only the girdling encircling air," says another philosopher, "that flows above and around all, that makes the whole world kin. The carbonic acid with which to-day our breathing fills the air, to-morrow seeks its way round the world. The date-trees that grow round the falls of the Nile will drink it in by their leaves; the cedars of Lebanon will take of it to add to their stature; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow rapidly upon it; and the palms and bananas of Japan will change it into flowers. The oxygen we are breathing was eliminated for us some short time ago by the magnolias of the Susquehanna, and the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon-the giant rhododendrons of the Himalayas contributed to it, and the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon tree of Ceylon, and the forest older than the flood, buried deep in the heart of Africa, far behind the mountains of the moon. The rain we see descending was thawed for us out of the icebergs which have watched the polar star for ages; and the lotus lilies have sucked up from the-Nile, and exhaled as vapour, snows that rested on the summit of the Alps." "The atmosphere," continues Maun, "which forms the outer surface of the habitable world, is a vast reservoir, into which the supply of food designed for living creatures is thrown; or, in one word, it is itself the food, in its simple form, of all living creatures. The animal grinds down the fibre and the tissue of the plant, or the nutritious store that has been laid up within its cells, and converts these into the substance of which its own organs are composed. The plant acquires the organs and nutritious store thus yielded up as food to the animal, from the invulnerable air surrounding it. "But animals are furnished with the means of locomotion and of seizure-they can approach their food, and lay hold of and swallow it; plants must wait till their food comes to them. No solid particles find access to their frames; the restless ambient air which rushes past them loaded with the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen, the water-everything they need in the shape of supplies-is constantly at hand to minister to their wants; not only to afford them food in due season, but in the shape and fashion in which alone it can avail them." There is no employment more ennobling to man and his intellect than to trace the evidences of design and purpose in the Creator, which are visible in many parts of the creation. Hence to the right-minded mariner, and to him who studies the physical relations of earth, sea, and air, the atmosphere is something more than a shoreless ocean, at the bottom of which he creeps along. It is an envelope or covering for the dispersion of light and heat over the surface of the earth; it is a sewer, into which, with every breath we draw, we cast vast quantities of dead animal matter; it is a laboratory for purification, in which that matter is recompounded, and wrought again into wholesome and healthful shapes; it is a machine for pumping up all the rivers from the sea, and conveying the waters from their fountains on the ocean to their sources in the mountains; it is an inexhaustible magazine, marvellously adapted for many benign and beneficent purposes. MAURY, SELECTIONS FROM SHAKSPEARE. [WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, the most illustrious dramatic poet of England, was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. His education was confined to a short course at the grammar school of his native place. Little is recorded of the early life of Shakspeare, but it appears that he was wild and irregular, and that his youthful imprudence drove him to London for shelter. There he became proprietor and manager of the Globe Theatre, and soon realized a handsome fortune, which enabled him to spend the close of his life in the vicinity of his native town, where he had bought a house and an estate, and where he died in 1616. Besides his immortal plays, he was the author of two poems"Venus and Adonis,” and “Lucrece." Of the lofty genius of Shakspeare, it has well been said, "We ne'er shall look upon his like again."] INDISCRETION. OUR indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. DANGER OF DELAY. THERE is a tide in the affairs of men, Is bound in shallows and in miseries. GOOD NAME. GOOD name in man and woman, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; "Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name, Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed. MEN's evil manners live in brass; their virtues We write in water. PROPER USE OF TALENTS. Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do, |