tail, for fourpence; and if of good flavor, it is reckoned cheap and well worth the money; and so it is. It is drunk off in a minute or twoit is gone. On the same table on which this was served lies a newspaper, the mere white sheet of which cost one penny-farthing, and the duty thereon one penny, with no deductions for damaged, crooked, or overprinted copies, made ready for sale, and charged, too, with carriage from mills and stamp office at a distance; and it is covered with half a million of types, at a cost of thirty pounds for itself and other sheets printed at the same office the same day; and this sells for no more than the pint of ale, the juice of a little malt and hops! And yet after one person has enjoyed it, affording him news from all parts of the world, and useful thoughts on all that interests him ́as a man and a citizen, it remains to be enjoyed by scores of others in the same town or else where; and it promotes trade and finds employment, and markets for goods, and cautions against frauds and accidents, and subjects for conversation; and there are some who think this article dear, though the swiftly-gone barley-water is paid for cheerfully. How is this? is the body a better paymaster than the mind, and are things of the moment more prized than things of moment? Is the transient tickling of the stomach of more consequence than the improvement of the mind, and the information that is essential to rational beings? If things had their real value, would not the newspaper be worth many pints of the best ale?-Liverpool Mercury.

A venerable old man toiled through the burden and heat of the day, in cultivating his field with his own hand, and in strewing, with his own hand, the promising seeds into the fruitful lap of the yielding earth. Suddenly there stood before him, under the shade of a huge linden tree, a divine vision. The old man was struck with amazement. "I am Solomon," spoke the phantom in a friendly voice; "what are you doing here, old man?" "If you are Solomon," replied the old man, "how can you ask this? In my youth you sent me to the ant; I saw its occupation, and learned from that insect to be industrious, and to gather. What I then learned, I am following out to this hour." "You have only learned half your lesson," resumed the spirit. "Go again to the ant, and learn from that animal to rest in the winter of your life, and to enjoy what you have gathered up."-Jewish Chron

icle.

REWARDS OF LITERATURE.

Stowe, the famous historian, devoted his life and exhausted his patrimony in the study of English antiquities; he travelled on foot throughout the kingdom, inspecting all the monuments of antiquity, and rescuing what he could from the dispersed libraries of the monasteries. His stupendous collections, in his own hand-writing, still exist, to provoke the feeble industry of literary loiterers. He felt through life the enthusiasm of study, and seated in his monkish library, living with the dead more than with the living, he was still a student of taste; for Spenser, the poet, visited the library of Stowe, and the first good edition of Chaucer was made so chiefly by the labors of our author. Late in life, worn out by study and the cares of poverty, neglected by that proud metropolis of which he had been the historian, yet his good humor did not desert him; for being afflicted with sharp pains in his aged feet, he observed that "his affliction lay in that part which formerly he made so much of." Many a mile had he wandered, many a pound had he yielded, for those treasures of antiquities which had exhausted his fortune, and with which he had formed works of great public utility. It was in his eightieth year that Stowe at length received a public acknowledgment of his services, which will appear to us of a very extraordinary nature. He was so reduced in his circumstances, that he petitioned James I. for a license to collect alms for himself, "as a recompense for his labor and travel of forty-five years in setting forth the Chronicles of England, and eight years taken up in the survey of the cities of London and Westminister, towards his relief, now in his old age, having left his former means of living, and only employed himself for the service and good of his country." Letters patent under the great seal were granted. After a penurious commendation of Stowe's labors, he is permitted "to gather the benevolence of well disposed people within this realm of England; to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects." These letters patent were to be published by the clergy from their pulpits: they produced so little that they were renewed for another twelvemonth; one entire parish in the City contributed seven shillings and sixpence! Such, then, was the patronage received by Stowe, to be a licensed beggar throughout the kingdom for a twelvemonth! Such was the public remuneration of a man who had been useful to his nation, but not to himself!

Hogg's Weekly Instructor.

We understand that Prof. Pierce has arrived at a new phase of opposition. His first assault was Neptune is not Neptune; that is, the planet which bears that name does not perform the functions by which it was discovered. He has now got as far as-Neptune is Neptune, but ought not to have been Neptune; the discoverers had no business to find it out in the way they did. On this point we will tell a story which we know to be quite true. At a certain boy's school, thirty years ago, there was a lad whose power at marbles was extraordinary; he hit everything he aimed at. A party of his school-fellows were discussing his play. Says one of them: "I don't think plays better than any of us, much." "Not a bit of it," says another; 66 he has a knack of pimping 'em out-but he is not what I call a real good player." A Leverrier or an Adams of any size whatever is sure to find a Pierce or a Babinet of the same. If either of the latter will pimp out a planet, or anything else, to begin with, we shall listen with more respect when we hear them take success to task, for not being failure.

We have received a letter from Mrs. Borren, in which that lady reqests us to remind our readers that her claims to the discovery that Neptune is not Neptune, are prior to those of Prof. Pierce, and referring to her printed remarks on that subject. All this is perfectly correct; Mrs. Borren has from the commencement appeared in print against the

whole claims of Leverrier and Adams. If we have not noticed her in mentioning Prof. Pierce and M. Babinet, it is because her writings give us no reason to infer that she has the knowledge of mathematics necessary to any one who would be admitted among the disputants in a question that involves the use of the profoundest analysis.-Athenæum.

THE COPYING TELEGRAPH. Experimental trials have been recently made of the copying electric telegraph invented by Mr. Bakewell, by means of which it is intended to make facsimile copies of written communications, so that correspondents in distant towns may recognize each other's handwriting. The experiments were made between the Electric Telegraph Company's branch station in Seymour Street and Slough, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the same amount of electric power that works the needle telegraph, would be sufficient for the copying process. We understand that the result was most satisfactory; and that legible copies of messages written in London were received at Slough with double the rapidity that could be attained by the

needle telegraph. The instruments were much smaller than those that will be employed in regular work; and we hear that Mr. Bakewell expects to be able to transmit as many as four hundred letters of the alphabet, per minute, with a single wire. Independently of the great rapidity of which this means of communication is susceptible, the copying telegraph would give greater certainty to such information, not only because errors of transmission would be avoided, but the agent, on recognizing the handwriting of his correspondent, would act with more confidence than he can do on receiving instructions of the authenticity of which there is no proof.-Literary Gazette.

known and extensively practised in China, as Hatching eggs by artificial heat is well is also the hatching of fish. The sale of spawn for this purpose forms an important branch of trade in China. The fishermen collect with care, on the margin and surface of water, all the gelatinous matter that contains spawn of fish, which is then placed in an egg-shell small hole, which is then stopped, and the (which has been fresh emptied) through a shell is then placed under a sitting fowl. In a few days the Chinese break the shell in warm water, warmed by the sun. The young large enough to be placed in a pond. This fish are then kept in water until they are plan in some measure counteracts the great destruction of spawn by troll-nets, which have caused the extinction of many fisheries.-Medical Times.

The Derry Sentinel describes an instance of a phænomenon very rare in northern latitudes the apparition in the horizon which in Italy is called Fata Morgana, and which in the African and Asian deserts is known as "the mirage." Two fishermen were the spectators, out in a boat on Lough Foyle, off Quigley's Point. ley's Point." At about two in the afternoon the sky was of a more than ordinary dark and lurid aspect, so much so that the men were apprehensive that there would be a heavy fall of rain; when almost instantaneously the clouds to the westward parted, and an opening, as it were, of a reddish hue, became visible, to which their attention was directed. Then there appeared in the heavens a regiment of men in uniform; and so minute was the representation, that the dresses of the officers could be easily distinguished from those of the men. This passed away in a panoramic manner, and was quickly succeeded by the view of two large three-masted vessels of war under full sail, which traversed the same space as their

predecessors in the scene, and at length they faded from the sight. The mysterious vision was not, however, yet completed; for their wondering eyes now beheld the appearance of two human forms, male and female, standing with their faces towards each other, as if engaged in conversation; and so vivid was the outline of these figures, that they distinguished the male from the female, the former being apparently clothed in a frock-coat. This aërial personation of humanity occupied about the same space of time as the two first-mentioned. This most bewildering scene was closed by the forms of a swan and a pea-hen moving across and disappearing; after which the sky assumed the sombre hue which it wore previous to this strange allusion.

Mr. Murray announces a new edition of Pope, with notes by Mr. John Wilson Croker. There is certainly room for this. Warburton overlaid his text with unnecessary notes, and unceasing personalities; Warton emptied his two volumes of Essays, his own recollections, and such cullings from Spence as he was allowed to make, into the edition which bears his name; Mr. Bowles added very little to Warburton and Warton-and that little not very accurately; and very often, we are sorry to say, in the worst possible taste; while Pope's last editor, the late William Roscoe of Liverpool, only encumbered his author with unnecessary help adding tedious introductions, critical but undiscriminating,

to poems which required only a few plain words of introduction. Every allusion in Pope deserves to be understood; yet his editors have hitherto done little to explain his now obscure, but once well-known allusions. There is scarcely a line in his Satires without some covert reference to persons and circumstances. Why should their meaning be lost, if an editor is able and willing to help us in understanding them? Mr. Croker is well versed (few men more so) in the literature and polities of the age of Pope. Nor is he without other assistances in his new task. His edition will have the peculiar and important attraction of including one hundred and seventy-five unpublished letters of Pope to Harley, Earl of Oxford, the Lord Treasurer, and to his son, the second Earl of Oxford. This correspondence, from what we have seen of it, is of great value; throwing important light on that dark passage in the poet's life, the publication of his correspondence by the notorious Curll. While writing on this subject, we may mention that the edition will contain an unpublished series of couplets addressed to the Lord Treasurer Oxford, by Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Parnell, and Gay. They form an invitation, on one sheet of paper, asking the Lord Treasurer to throw his treasurer's staff aside for the night, and join the Scriblerus Club in Arbuthnot's rooms. All the couplets are characteristic, and each is in the handwriting of its author. Swift signs himself "The Dean," Arbuthnot, "The Doctor." What a night! What an autograph page!