that tends to provoke passion, or raise a fire in the blood. Let no sharp language, no noisy exclamation, no sarcasms or biting jests be heard among you; no perverse or invidious consequences be drawn from each other's opinions, and imputed to the person. All these things are enemies to friendship, and the ruin of free conversation. 9. The impartial search of truth requires all calmness and serenity, all temper and candor; mutual instruction can never be attained in the midst of passion, pride, and clamor, unless we suppose, in the midst of such a scene, there is a loud and penetrating lecture read by both sides, on the folly and shameful infirmities of human nature. QUESTIONS.-1. What sort of people must we seek to converse with in order to our own improvement? 2. How should we proceed in talking with a sailor, farmer, or person of any calling? 3. What is the writer's direction about listening to others? 4. Why should we not be afraid or ashamed to confess ignorance? 5. How should a young man in the presence of his elders behave? 6. What caution does the writer give about affecting to shine? 7. What things are we specially to avoid? What is the meaning of the prefix, circum, in the word circumstances, first paragraph? See Sanders' New Speller, p. 139. LESSON XXXIX. WORDS FOR SPELLING AND DEFINING. MAG' NI TUDE, size; bigness. IN' FI NITE, unlimited. Av E NUES, ways; passages. PAL I SADES', defences made by stakes. FOR TI FI CA' TION, defense. EX PA TIA TING, wandering about. CITA DEL, fortress; strong place. 'Di Lap i daʼ tIONS, ruins. DIS PAR AGE, underrate; vilify. building. IN HE RENT, native; inborn. 1. BA EL' ZE BUB, in the Hebrew, signifies the lord of flies. THE SPIDER AND THE BEE. DEAN SWIFT. The following fable is taken from "The Battle of the Books," and had reference to the great contest then going on between the advocates of ancient and modern learning. The Bee represents the ancients, the Spider the moderns. 1. Upon the highest corner of a large window, there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisades, all after the modern way of fortification. 2. After you had passed several courts, you came to the center, wherein you might behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows, fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon all occasions of prey or defense. 3. In this mansion, he had, for some time, dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from above, or to his palace by brooms from below, when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went; where, expatiating awhile, he, at last, happened to alight upon one of the outward walls of the spider's citadel; which, yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation. 4. Thrice he endeavored to force his passage, and thrice the center shook. The spider within, feeling the terrible convulsion, supposed, at first, that nature was approaching to her final dissolution; or else, that 'Beelzebub, with all his legions, was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects whom his enemy had slain and devoured. However, he at length, valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. 5. Meanwhile the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted secretly at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them from the rugged remnants of the cobweb. By this time, the spider ventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the ruins, and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wits' end; stormed and raved like a madman, and swelled until he was ready to burst. he 6. At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely gathering causes from events, (for they knew each other by sight,) "A plague on you," said he, "for a giddy puppy; is it you that have made this litter here? Could you not look before you? Do you think I have nothing else to do but to mend and repair after you?" 7. "Good words, friend," said the bee, (having now pruned himself, and being disposed to be droll,) "I'll give you my hand and word to come near your kennel no more; I was never in such a sad plight, since I was born." 8. "Sirrah," replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom in our family, never to stir abroad against an enemy, I should come and teach you better manners." 9. "I pray, have patience," said the bee, "or you'll spend your substance, and, for aught I see, you may stand in need of it all, toward the repair of your house." 10. " Rogue, rogue," replied the spider, "yet methinks you should have more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much your better." 11. "In truth," said the bee, "the comparison will amount to a very good jest; and you will do me a favor to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute?" 12. At this, the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of controversy, with resolution to be neartily scurrilous and angry; to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to the answers or objections of his opposer; and fully pre-determined, in his mind, against all convic tion. 13. "Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance; born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe? Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas, I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out cf own person." my 14. "I am glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant, at least, that I am come honestly by my wings and my voice; for, then, it seems, I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my music; and Providence would never have bestowed on me two such gifts, without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit, indeed, all the flowers and blossoms of the field and garden; but whatever I collect thence, enriches myself, without the least injury to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. 15. "Now, for you and your skill in architecture, I have little to say in that building of yours there might, for aught I know, have been labor and method enough; but, by woful experience for us both, it is too plain the materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, and consider duration and matter, as well as method and art. 16. "You boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good, plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; and, though I would, by no means, lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an increase of both, to a little foreign assistance. 17. "Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to this: whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but fly-bane and a cobweb, or that which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax ?" QUESTIONS.-1. How is the spider here represented? 2. How is his web or mansion described? 3. What attracted thither the bee? 4. What effect did the bee's weight have upon the web? 5. What effect did the bee's attempt to enter have upon the spider within? 6. What was the bee doing when the spider ventured out? 7. How did he behave when he saw the ruins of his fortress? 8. What dialogue took place? 9. How, in the last sentence, is the bee made to utter the moral of this piece? 10. What great contest is referred to in this Fable? LESSON XL. WORDS FOR SPELLING AND DEFINING. Po' tent ate, prince; sovereign. { DES' TI NIES, ultimate conditions. UN FATHOM A BLE, that can not CHRON I CLES, records; tells of. ONWARD, ONWARD. LINNEUS BANKS. 1 Onward! Onward is the language of creation! The stars whisper it in their courses; the seasons breathe it, as they succeed each other; the night wind whistles it; the water of the deep roars it out; the mountains lift heads, and tell it to the clouds; and Time, the hoary-headed potentate, proclaims it with an iron tongue! From clime to up their |