No tool had he that wrought, no knife to cut,
No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert,

No glue to join; his little beak was all-
And yet how neatly finished! What nice hand,
With every implement and means of art,
And twenty years' apprenticeship to boot,
Could make me such another? Vainly then
We boast of excellence, whose noblest skill
Instinctive genius foils.

Hurdis.

To be, or not to be?-That is the question.-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?-To die-to sleep-
No more: and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To die—to sleep-

To sleep? perchance to dream;-aye, there's the rub ;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns o' the time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his "quietus" make
With a bare bodkin?-Who would fardels* bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death
(That undiscovered country, from whose bourne
* A fardel; a bundle. a pack, or burden.

No traveller returns) puzzles the will;
And makes us rather bear the ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Shakspeare.

How still the morning of the hallowed day!
Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush'd.
The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song;
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded* grass, mingled with the fading flowers,
That yestermorn bloomed waving in the breeze;
Sounds the most faint attract the ear-the hum
Of early bee, the rustling of the leaves,
The distant bleating, midway up the hill.
To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,†
The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale,
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tuned song; the lulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-worn glen,
While from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke
O'er mounts the mist, is heard at intervals
The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.

Grahame.

LESSON LXXXVII.

MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION.

Every substance known to man may be divided into
Grass laid in rows. † Enclosed grounds.

three kingdoms, namely, the Mineral, the Vegetable, and the Animal. Lin-na'-us, the celebrated Swedish. botanist, thus distinguishes these kingdoms: "Stones grow;-vegetables grow and live ;-animals grow, live, and feel.

The existence of all vegetables may be regarded as mechanical, or as similar to that of an animal when asleep, during which time his functions proceed without consciousness. The mechanism† is, however, most wonderful, and bespeaks the contrivance of an all-wise, and all-powerful Creator.

A seed, which is thrown into the earth by the husbandman, is similar in its construction to the egg of an animal; the earth acts upon it by means as little understood, as that by which the sitting of a hen on an egg, converts it into a chicken.

In a few days, the two ends of the seed open, and from one of them issues a green plant, and from the other a number of fibrous threads, and whatever is the position of the seed, the green sprout struggles through the soil upward into the air, and the fibrous shoots strike downward into the ground, and there imbibe, or suck in, the nourishment the plant requires.

Nothing is more wonderful than the means nature uses for the preservation of seeds, and the contrivances by which they are distributed.

Some seeds are provided with downy wings, as the dandeli'on; others are swallowed by animals, and voided in distant places; others are blown about by the winds, and preserved by their coverings, till excited into germination, by the heat of the sun's rays, in the following spring.

Each plant has its peculiar habitation; and each adapts the nutriment derived from the same earth so † Mek-a-nism.

Me-kan'-i-cal.

differently, that, by a subtle agency, it produces all the degrees of flavour, odour, poison, and nutriment, which we find in various plants.

Plants that only continue one year, and are reproduced from their seed, are called annual; those which are produced one year, and flower the next, are termed biennial; those which last many years, are called perennial.

Plants with roots like those of onions, or tulips, are called bulbous; those with roots like turnips or parsnips, are termed tuberous; those with the roots like the different grasses, are called fibrous.

They are said to be deciduous, when their leaves fall in the autumn, and evergreen, when they are constantly renewed, as in most resinous trees; they are also said to be indigenous, when they are natural to the country, and exotic, when they have been introduced from a foreign climate.

*

The natural substances found in all vegetables, are sugar, in the sugar-cane, beet, carrots, and similar productions; gum, or mucilage, which oozes from various trees; jelly, procured from many fruits; turpentine and tar from the pine; bitters, from hops and quassia; and opium and other narcotics, from the milk of poppies and lettuces.

The vegetables of the greatest value to man, are those which produce gluten or starch, as wheat, barley, potatoes, and beans; oils are produced by pressing the seeds or kernels of vegetables, as, olives, almonds, linseed, and rapeseed; volatile oils are distilled from peppermint, lavender, and similar productions; and wax is collected from flowers by bees.

Resins exude like gum from firs and other trees, and are known as balsams, varnishes, turpentine, tar, and In-didg'-e-nus.

pitch; of this class, also, is India rubber, and gutta percha, both of which are guins that exude from certain large trees in South America and Asia.—Blair,

LESSON LXXXVIII.

FRANCE.-BELGIUM.-HOLLAND.

FRANCE is a compact and populous empire, and, perhaps, with the exception of England, the most powerful state in Europe; it measures nearly six hundred miles in length, and five hundred in breadth, and contains about thirty-four millions of inhabitants.

Paris, the capital, is the second city in Europe for extent, and probably the first, for the splendour of its public buildings; it is advantageously situated on the river Seine, and has a population of about a million.

The other most noted towns are Ly'ons, the second city in France; Marseillest and Bordeaux,‡ two large commercial ports; Rouen,§ famous for its manufactures; and Brest and Toulon, two strong naval ports.

France enjoys one of the finest climates in Europe; the northern part is favourable to the growth of the necessaries of life, and the southern to that of its luxuries.

It abounds in vineyards, which are supposed to cover five millions of acres, and its wines are much valued; in the south it produces olives, figs, oranges, prunes, and the other fruits common to warm climates.

The French are a brave, lively, and intelligent people, distinguished for their politeness, and attention to strangers; they are celebrated for quickness in invention, Sayne. † Mar-sailz'. Bur-do'. § Roo-awng!.

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