speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object; this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.-D. WEBSTER.

LESSON LIX.

The Education of the Poor.

1. THE education of the poor sifts the talents of a country, and discovers the choicest gifts of nature in the depths of solitude, and in the darkness of poverty; for Providence often sets the grandest spirits in the lowest places, and gives to many a man a soul far better than his birth, compelling him to dig with a spade, who had better wielded a sceptre.

2. Education searches every where for talents; sifting among the gravel for the gold, holding up every pebble to the light, and seeing whether it be the refuse of nature, or whether the hand of art can give it brilliancy and price.

3. There are no bounds to the value of this sort of education. I come here to speak upon this occasion; when fourteen or fifteen youths, who have long participated of your bounty, come to return you their thanks.

4. How do we know that there may not be, among all these, one who shall enlarge the boundaries of knowledge; who shall increase the power of his country by his enterprise in commerce; watch over its safety in the most critical times by his vigilance as a magistrate; and consult its true happiness by his integrity and his ability as a senator?

5. On all other things there is a sign, or a mark; we know them immediately, or we can find them out; but man, we do not know; for one man differs from another man, as heaven differs from earth; and the excellence that is in him, education seeks for with vigilance, and preserves with care. We might make a brilliant list of our great English characters who have been born in cottages. May it ever increase; there can be no surer sign that we are a wise and a happy people.-SMITH.

LESSON LX.

The Love of Nature.

1. WHEN the mind becomes animated with a love of nature, nothing is seen that does not become an object for curiosity and inquiry. A person under the influence of this principle can converse with a picture, and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description; and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession.

2. It gives him, indeed, a kind of property in every thing he sees; and makes the most rude uncultivated parts of nature administer to his pleasure; so that he looks upon the world, as it were, in another light, and discovers in it a multitude of charms, that conceal themselves from the generality of mankind.

3. A river is traced to its fountain; a flower to its seed; and an oak to its acorn. If a marine fossil lies on the side of a mountain, the mind is employed in the endeavour to ascertain the cause of its position.

4. If a tree is buried in the depths of a morass, the history of the world is traced to the deluge; and he who grafts, inoculates, and prunes, as well as he who plants and transplants, will derive an innocent pleasure in noting the habits of trees and their modes of culture; the soils in which they delight; the shapes into which they mould themselves; and will enjoy as great a satisfaction from the symmetry of an oak, as from the symmetry of an animal.

5. Every tree that bends, and every flower that blushes, even a leafless copse, a barren plain, the cloudy firmament, and the rocky mountain, are objects for his attentive meditation. For

LESSON LXI.

Domestick Economy.

[Extract from an Address delivered by CYRUS BARTON, one of the editors of the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, before the Concord Mechanicks' Association, October 5, 1831.]

1. The love of distinction is undoubtedly one of the strongest passions of the human breast, to acquire this, the means resorted to are as various as the dispositions and habits of men are discordant, or as the customs of society in various countries and ages of the world are different.

2. In our own country, where the genius of our institutions reduces all men to a natural level; where the highest offices and the most dignified stations are legitimate objects for the pursuit of all who choose to compete for them; the barriers which circumscribe the field of ambition are removed, and a wider range is given for the exercise of the various talents and acquirements incident to a civilized, brave, and refined people.

3. But this very freedom which we enjoy; this natural equality which our constitutions and laws secure to all our citizens, although far from being an evil in itself, may be, and doubtless is, often converted into an evil, which bears heavily upon a great portion of our citizens.

4. Our institutions making us all equal, there is a strong propensity to preserve an appearance of equality as regards wealth, and the external trappings of fashion with our more fortunate neighbours, whatever may be our ability to sustain such appearance.

5. Hence the evil. Instead of being content to move on in the circumscribed limits to which our circumstances bind us, we often bring poverty, and ruin, and wretchedness upon ourselves and families, in a vain endeavour to ape the fashions of those who have the ability to incur such expenditures, without injury to themselves.

6. It is this cause which has led many people, and especially many mechanicks into useless extravagance and unnecessary expenditures, until bankruptcy and ruin have overtaken them.

7. It is, I believe, a very general errour into which people fall, to attach a consequence to external decorations which they are not entitled to, and to trust to them for respectability in society, while they overlook those essential qualities, integrity, industry, and intelligence; without which no mechanick can

ever hope to arrive at eminence in his profession, or to any good degree of respectability in society.

3. It is a mistaken notion altogether, to suppose that a fine house, fine furniture, and fine equipage are necessary to confer respectability, or that a man is esteemed more highly in consequence of them. To those who can afford them, such indulgences are rational and laudable.

9. But when we see a young mechanick with a small capital, all of which is necessary to carry on his business, going beyond his resources in this particular; setting up house-keeping in a style of extravagance proper only for the rich, he not only suffers in a pecuniary point of view, in consequence, but also in his reputation.

10. His credit suffers, and prudent men will utter predictions of his future fate, which are almost sure to be verified. No young mechanick was ever thought the worse of, or received with less consideration in society, for graduating his expenditures according to his means, and for living within his income, although his house may carry the most plain and unostentatious appearance, and his table indicate the most frugal and homely fare.

11. But, on the contrary, this very plainness and frugality, will procure for him the respect of the sensible and reflecting. He will secure a reputation for economy and good manage ment; his credit will rise in the neighbourhood; his business will increase, and, in the end, his habits of industry and economy, will enable him to indulge in all the innocent and rational luxuries attendant upon wealth, acquired by honest

means.

12. It is a desire to get forward in the world too soon, that has ruined many an intelligent and enterprising young me chanick. An impatience to assume a station in fashionable society, before he has acquired the means to sustain the character in which he is so desirous to figure, has brought down many a promising mechanick, who, but for this mistaken notion of what constitutes true respectability, might, in a few years, have enjoyed, in full fruition, the reality of all his rational hopes and desires.

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LESSON LXII.

Scene of Misery.

1. I saw at midnight's lone and silent hour,
A sorrowing mother with her sleeping babe,
Waiting in silence the return of him
Who was her husband. Pale and wan,
And worn away with grief, she sat

A picture of dejection, sorrow, and despair.

2. Her eyes were full of tears, and as she gazed
Upon her senseless infant as it slept,

Unconscious of its mother's tears, that flowed
In secret silence on its sleeping form;
She thought of other times, the happier times,
When in the sunshine of her father's smiles,
Her mother's tender and paternal care:

--

3. With friends and kindred relatives around,-
Brother's and sister's in affection joined,-
She past the happy years of youth away;
When he,-now levelled with the brutes,-
Was every thing that's good and virtuous,
And for whom she left a home

Of peace and happiness, o'er which no cloud
Scarce ever rose to darken what was joy.

4. 'Twas then the path of life looked plain,
And the deceitful dream that promised happiness,
And spread the path with visionary flowers,
She thought would bloom for ever bright,
And ne'er be withered by an adverse blast.

5. She mused too on the change, that fatal change,
Which blasted all her happiness, and made
The future wear an aspect dark and dismal;
She thought upon herself: what could she do?
When he, who, in the presence of the Eternal One,
And men, and angels, solemnly did vow,
That he would guide, protect, and comfort her,
Was now a poor, debased, and miserable being;
A slave to his own appetite, and fallen
On a level with the beasts.