66

judgment? Is not every man of sound sense the very reverse of a trifler; is not he who excels in any kind of labour attentive to the minutest matter connected with that labour; and is not every architect of his own fortune found to be a careful man? We scarcely need to observe that trifles clearly betray a want of frugality. Many a fortune has been lost, and many persons have been prevented from making a fortune, by a disregard for trifles. That pence make pounds," and that "if we take care of our pence, our pounds will take care of themselves," are true sayings. There are some who have desired to save a portion annually from their incomes, but have delayed doing so from one year to another, in the expectation of being able at a future period to commence their savings with a larger sum. At last old age presents himself, and they discover themselves to be destitute of means for the hour of adversity, and that the annual payment of their formerly despised sum would now amount to a considerable fortune. There are many such in the world. Now no man will ever amass wealth who disregards the smallest item. If we had sufficient courage we would dare to address a few remarks upon this point to those young ladies who wear thin shoes in wet or cold weather, and bring on colds and consumption, who spoil a new dress once a month, and sacrifice twice the necessary materials in their needlework, etc., and call all this, with a toss of the head, "mere trifles."

We would press the foregoing remarks upon the attention of young persons especially. Youth is the period when the seed of our after life is sown. It then becomes important that no tares should be mixed with the wheat that no habits should be imbibed which will inflict us with future pain. One false step amid the precipices of life may destroy us; one good resolution, fervently embraced and rigidly adhered to, may rescue us from many difficulties. And we hope the few facts we have presented may corroborate what we say. In youth, also,

the field of our future labours is generally selected, but that selection, important as it always is, entwined as it is with our prospects in this world, and our destiny in the next, has not unfrequently been influenced by a trifle. We have all heard of Corneille, the Shakespere of French dramatists, the immortal author of "Cid," and "Melité," and, we may add, that it was an apparently insignificant incident in his youth which directed his genius to the drama. It was a mere exclamation of his grandfather which induced Molière, while a youth, to abandon his tapestry trade, and write the satire of "Tartuffe," and the humour of "L'Etourdi." Cowley said he became a poet by reading Spenser; and it is not unlikely that our great Shakespere would never have given us those glorious offsprings of his brain, had not his want of success compelled him to abandon the stage as an actor, and to appear upon it as an author. Flamstead, the astronomer, and Franklin, the philosopher, ascribed the cast of their genius to accident; and Byron tells us that his "Giaour,” "Corsair," and "Bride of Abydos," were inspired by a volume of Turkish history he had read in his youth.

It would be folly for us to promise, or any observer of trifles to expect, that such observance would make him a Byron, a Franklin, or a Corneille; but we may safely promise him a gift more valuable, though less externally attractive. An attention to trifles, as well as of what are considered more important duties, will be the surest means of giving success to the merchant, fame to the student, and skill to the mechanic; and what is more, that unalloyed satisfaction which every one must feel who is conscious that he has always striven to do his duty-a source of enjoyment without which the fame of Homer or of Shakespere would be bitterness and gall.

HOUSE PLANTS IN WINTER. "WHAT is the reason that my plants do not grow so well as Mrs. Jones's? I am sure I take a great deal more pains with them, and water, and nurse, and

air them, but all will not do; they are weak, slender, sickly, and some of my best plants have died-while Mrs. Jones seems to take very little care of hers, and yet they grow and bloom beautifully!"

This appeal is not the first complaint of ill-success. The truth is, some plants are actually nursed to death. Care and attention bestowed on plants, which they do not need, are worse than no care at all. It is knowing just what to do, and doing that, and no more, that gives some persons their success. Or, as a late writer remarked, there are two great points to be attended to-First, not to let your plants suffer by neglect; and, secondly, not to make them suffer by interference.

We would class the requisites for good treatment as follow:

1. Plenty of light.

2. A due supply of water. 3. Proper temperature. Fresh air, cleanliness, and good soil, are obviously of importance, but are less likely to be neglected than the three first-named wants, and we shall therefore add a few additional remarks under these heads.

as

1. Light.-Plants cannot by any possibility have too much of this. The stand should therefore face the window, and be placed as near to it as practicable, and the window should be broad,little obstructed in its light by outside trees as the nature of the case will admit. But rapidly-growing plants require most light; hence such should be placed more directly in front of the window.

2. Water. This must be given according to circumstances. A plant in nearly a dormant state needs very little those in a rapidly growing condition require considerable. Too much water will make the latter grow slender, but they will bear a greater supply if in a strong light. It must be remembered, as a standing rule, that dormant plants may remain comparatively in the dark, and with little water, and growing ones should have a good supply of water and a full supply of light. But it must not be forgotten that green-house plants generally are nearly dormant during

winter, and the soil must therefore be kept but moderately moist, as the plants in this condition do not pump any moisture from the soil, and little escapes directly by evaporation. Drainage, by filling one-fifth of each pot with charcoal, is of importance.

3. Temperature.-Many house plants are destroyed by too much heat, which increases the dryness, and both these causes together are more than they can endure. A cool room, never as low as freezing, is best. From 50 to 55 degrees is much better than 65 or 70, the ordinary temperature of living rooms.

Syringing the foliage with tepid water, to wash off whatever dust accumulates, is of use; and the admission of fresh air, when there is no danger of chillingor freezing the foliage should not be neglected.

WEEDS AND HABITS. AMONG the innumerable analogies that may be traced between the phenomena of the natural and of the moral world, there are few more perfect, or more instructive, than that which may be shown to exist between the weeds of the field and garden, and the bad habits, the weeds of the heart.

1. Both commence on a small scale. The Scotchman's little paper of thistle seeds was sufficient to overrun an island as large as England with the noxious weeds. So the little mischievous seed which a man sows in his heart will bear a crop of weeds out of all proportion to the original germ.

2. Again, both weeds and bad habits mature and multiply without cultivation. Whatever is valuable must be reared with more or less of care and labour; but these natural and moral pests ask only to be let alone. Neglect is the only care they require. Do nothing, and you do all that they ask.

3. They are both lusty and hardy. They are not apt to be nipped by early or late frosts, or scorched by fiery suns. They are the last things to be drowned out in a flood, or to dry up in a drought. Give them a foothold in the soil, and the smallest possible chance of life, and they will take care of themselves.

4. They are both amazingly prolific. It has been said that a single plant of the weed called "sow thistle" will proWe duce over eleven thousand seeds. will not venture to calculate how many mischievous seeds may spring from a single weed in the heart, but we know that such things are very prolific.

5. Both are costly and destructive, Though no toil is required to rear a crop of weeds, they eat up the goodness of the soil, and deprive those plants which are valuable of their proportion of nourishment.

6. Again, if suffered to remain long in the ground, they both become very difficult to extirpate. If you would eradicate a noxious plant you must take it in hand at an early stage. If you wait till its seeds are wafted to every corner of the field, and its roots have spread deep and wide, it will mock your efforts to exterminate it. You may cut it down, or pluck it up; you may burn it, or bury it; you may fight it manfully and patiently; but while you are subduing it one spot, it will spring up afresh in another, to mock your labours and vex your soul. So it is with a heart long overgrown with the weeds of bad habits. What a long, and stern, and sorrowful struggle will it require to reclaim that dreary waste, to make it again to blossom as a garden! True, terribly true, is the record which declares that it as difficult for those to do good that are accustomed to do evil, as for the Ethiopian to make white his dusky hue, or the leopard to change his spotted skin. Southey has pictured this struggle with confirmed bad habits with great vividness in the following lines, with which we close this sober, though not unseasonable, homily:

"For from his shoulders grew Two snakes of monstrous size, Which ever at his head Aimed their rapacious teeth, To satiate raving hunger with his brain. He, in the eternal conflict, oft would seize Their swelling necks, and in his giant grasp Bruise them, and rend their flesh with bloody nails,

And howl fer agony;

Feeling the pangs he gave; for of himself

Co-sentient and inseparable parts

The snaky tortures grew." (See the lines" Enquire Within," p, 223.)

MENTAL DISCIPLINE. It seems to be thought by many, that the design of education is the communication of knowledge to passive minds to be laid up for use in the storehouse of memory: But as well might all the products of agriculture and the mechanic arts be laid up for future use by the young agriculturist and mechanic. It is the acquisition of vigour and skill for a future productive industry, which constitutes a proper physical training; and it is vigour and dexterity of mind in the acquisition and application of knowledge, which constitute the object of mental training.

Elementary principles must be ascertained. No man can understand any science, or anything, who cannot lay his hand on the elementary principles, and by the light of these trace out the rela tions and dependencies of the whole. These are the keys of knowledge, to which all the sciences open their arcana, and without which they remain inexorably shut to all manner of demand and solicitation.

Without this knowledge of first principles, a man will behold truth always in isolated fragments, and besurrounded by a wilderness of light. Such knowledge is like a mass of disordered mechanism; confusion worse confounded, and utterly incapable of use; a maze, overwhelming and inextricable.

There must be a precision of thought. The mind cannot be thoroughly exercised without it; and nothing worthy of the name of knowledge can other wise be gained. There are many who go round a subject, and pass between its parts, and verily think they understand it, who, when called upon for an accurate descripton, can only hesitate and stammer amid the glimmering of their undefined moonbeams of knowledge:

Why is this? It is because they have acquired no definite knowledge of

the subjects they have studied. They understand all subjects in general, and none in particular; and for the purposes of exact knowledge adapted to use, might as well have been star gazing through a dim telescope in a foggy night.

Everything is what it is, exactly, and not merely almost; and for purposes of science or use. a hair's breadth discrepancy is as fatal as the discrepancy of a mile. Who could raise a building where every mortice and tenon only almost fitted? or construct a useful almanack when his calculations were almost, but not altogether exact?

It is this precision of knowledge which it is necessary to acquire; and without it, not only are the blessings of an education lost, but the multiplied evils of undisciplined minds-indefinite conceptions and fallacious reasonings, and the bewilderment of a declamatory flippancy of specious words are poured out upon society with an overflowing flood, sweeping away the landmarks of truth and principle, and covering the surface with brush, and leaves, and gravel.

No wonder that scepticism is rife, which proclaims knowledge to be unattainable, and all things doubtful. What other result could be expected from minds reared without first principles, and reasoning without precision of conception, in respect either to words, thoughts, or things?

The art of independent investigation is of primary importance. We should be accustomed to explore every subject, to analyze and take it apart, ascertain and define its elementary principles, and all its dependencies and relations, and label the whole with letters of fire, and put it together again; then we shall understand it, then we shall never forget it; and then, everywhere and instanter, it will be ready for use.

Now this can never be accomplished by lectures and oral instruction, from the simple consideration that the act of receiving knowledge, and the act of acquiring it by personal efforts, are entirely different in respect to mental exertion and thorough attainment.

In the one case the mind is passive, and records upon the tablets of memory only a few fragments of what is said, soon to be effaced, and recovered only by recurring to imperfect notes; while in the other, the mind's best energies are employed in unlocking and dissecting the subject, and the mind's own eyesight in inspecting it; and there results the mind's accurate and imperishable knowledge of it.

We do not mean that lectures are useless, or to be dispensed with; but they are to be only the important aids of original investigation. The young adventurer must have some stock in trade to begin with, some raw material for his mind to work upon; and on some plain subjects perhaps he has it. Let him experiment, then, first on the most familiar subject. Let him reconnoitre his own mind, and ascertain how much and what he knows, exactly, on the subject, and put it down in definite memoranda; and if they are the elementary points, it will be easy, by their light, to follow out their relations and dependencies, from centre to circumference; and if they are remote inferences and relations, it will be easy to follow them up till they disclose the elementary principle of which they are the satellites.

When this has been done, and all that his own ingenuity can disclose is found out, he may consult authors, and enlarge and connect his views by their aid. When called to investigate subjects which are beyond the sphere of his incipient knowledge, conversation and lectures may open the door of the temple, and put in the hand of the young adventurer the golden thread which may lead him out of darkness into open day.

Mind, which has opened the fountains of knowledge, will thirst and drink and thirst and drink for ever. It is discipline which doubles its capacity, its economy of time, its energy of appli cation, the amount of its acquisition, and the duration and amount of its active usefulness.

Few minds uninitiated to the habit of investigation pass, without faltering, the meridian of life, or move on after

it, but in the commonplace repetition of commonplace ideas: while to minds exercised by use to analyse and decompose and reconstruct the elementary order of things, the work is ever interesting, ever new, and the product ever fresh, original, and bright as the luminaries of heaven.

The results of such training will be eloquence in the pulpit, eloquence at the bar, and eloquence in the halls of legislation, such as none can sleep under nor resist, and whose victories, when achieved, will, like the battle of Trafalgar, leave the world in a blaze.

What produced the immortal eloquence of Demosthenes? A mind which Heaven created; the culture of it by his own efforts; the stimulus of it by a popular government, and the provocations of Philip of Macedon.

Instructions may correct faults, and reduce to order the excess of exuberant feeling; but one might as well teach artificial breathing as artificial eloquence. Teach men how to think, and how to feel, and, with good linguistic culture, we cannot prevent their being eloquent. We could as well stop thunder-storms and volcanoes as the electric outburstings of soul, with fervid, overflowing energy.

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. LIGHTNING is caused by the approach of two clouds to each other, one being overcharged and the other undercharged with electricity; the fluid rushes from the former and discharges itself into the latter, until each contains a like quantity. Lightning clouds vary in altitude, being often three or four miles from the earth, and sometimes they are so close that their edges actually touch it. If the cloud be a long distance off, the electrical fluid, meeting with a great resistance from the air, diverts it into eccentric courses, and causes what is known as fork-lightning. Sheet-lightning is occasioned either by the reflection of distant and imperceptible flashes or several being intermingled. When a man is struck dead by lightning, the electric fluid passes through him, and by producing a violent shock on the

nerves, instantaneously destroys all vitality. Thunder arises from the concussion of the air closing immediately after being separated by lightning; if the peal be a broken, irregular roar, it is a sure sign that the lightning cloud is a great distance off; as some of the vibrations of air, necessarily travelling much quicker than others, reach the ear first, and coming at different periods occasion a long continued rumble. Lightning is seen sooner than thunder can be heard, because the former travels a million times faster than sound.

Heat is communicatod from one body to another by five different causes, viz.: conduction, reflection, convection, absorption, and radiation. Conduction is heat communicated by actual contact of two bodies. The best conductors of heat are gold and silver; porous, light substances, such as wood, fur, charcoal, &c., are the worst. Wood is often used in conjunction with metal; for instance, a metal tea-pot generally has a wooden handle, on account of wood being such a bad conductor, that the heat of the boiling water is not conveyed to the hand with such rapidity as if it were metal. Such an excellent conductor is metal, that when touched, the heat from the hand passes rapidly into it, causing to the hand a sensation of extreme frigidity, which is generally considered to come from the metal. When the hot hand touches a pump-handle, the heat of the former passing quickly into the latter, causes the iron to appear cold, when, in reality, it is of the same temperature as the wood in the pump; only the sudden loss of its natural heat produces a feeling of extreme coldness to the hand. Marble is also such an excellent conductor that, when touched, the heat from the hand passes so suddenly into the marble, that a sensation of intense cold is felt, which is in reality caused by the heat leaving the hand, and not by the substance itself, as is generally supposed to be the case. Reflection is throwing back the rays of heat from the surface of a reflecting body towards the place from whence it came. Highly polished metals are the best reflectors; for instance, in a