We wander 'mong the wild umbrageous woods, We launch our yacht and sail the sparkling lake; A ship, by gentle breezes onward led- All things are beautiful! Children at play, Where bees and butterflies companions seem, The moral of this book is excellent, and the author's aim deserves our warmest commendation. He would have all the world happy, and he has done his best to make them so. "TIS TWENTY YEARS SINCE! THERE ARE SOME quaint remarks in one of JAMES's novels, that please us vastly. There is so much truth in them! Whilst speaking about dates and distances, he says:— A frequent question with us is, "How long is it ago? The reply should be, in many cases, Oh, a long while; long enough for young men to grow old, and for old men to wither and rot. Some twenty years ago or more. Lack-a-day, how few twenties there are in life! Twenty and twenty are forty, and twenty are sixty; how few see the fourth twenty! Who sees the fifth? The first begins in the infant, with a passion for milk-all mouth and no wit-and ends in the spread-youth with a love for sweet ankles and for cherry lips; all hearts and no brains. The second starts on his course like a swallow catching insects, and ends like a slough-hound upon the track of a deer ambition flies before and distances him still. Then begins another twenty, with the hard brain, and the hard heart; your man of manifold experiences, who finds no pleasure in pippins, and is mailed against the dart of a dark eye. He must have solid goods, forsooth, and so chooses gold, which will not decay; but, good faith, it matters little whether it be the possession which decays, or the possessor,-whether the gilded coin rots, or the fingers that clutch it: the two part company often begun, and seldom ended; and we go all the same. Then comes the fourth twenty, creeping backward, as if we would fain run away * from the other end of life; toys please us, straws offend us we stumble at the same mole hills that tripped up our infancy. Time rubs off from the score of memory what experience had written; and when the sorrowful soft gums have eaten their second pap, death takes us sleepy up, and puts us quietly to bed. It was twenty years ago, good youth, aye, that it was, and twenty years is one of those strange jumps that are more wisely taken backwards than forwards. When we read the foregoing, and call to mind what we see passing around us day after day, we think gleefully of our early days, mournfully of our middle age, and thoughtfully of what lies before us. Life is a dream,-Death a reality. THE PAINTER'S REVELATION. "I CANNOT PAINT IT!" EXCLAIMED DUNCAN WEIR, the artist, as he threw down his pencil in despair. The portrait of a beautiful female rested on his easel. The head was turned as if to look into the painter's face, and an expres sion of delicious confidence and love was playing about the half-parted mouth. A mass of luxuriant hair, stirred by the position, threw its shadow upon a shoulder that, but for its transparency, you would have given to Itys; and the light from which the face turned away, fell on the polished throat with the rich mellowness of a moon-beam. She was a brunette-her hair of a glossy black, and the blood melting through the clear brown of her cheek, and sleeping in her lip, like color in the edge of a rose. The eye was unfinished. He could not paint it. Her low, expressive forehead, and the light pencil of her eyebrows, and the long, melancholy lashes were all perfect; but he had painted the eye a hundred times, and a hundred times he had destroyed it, till at the close of a long day, as his light failed him, he threw down his pencil in despair, and resting his head on his easel, gave himself up to the contemplation of the ideal picture of his fancy. We wish all our readers had painted a portrait, the portrait of the face they best love to look on-it would be such a chance to thrill them with a description of the painter's feelings! There is nothing but the first timid kiss that has half its delirium. Why-think of it a moment! To sit for hours, gazing into the eyes you dream of! To be set to steal away the tint of the lip, and the glory of the brow you worship! To have beauty come and sit down before you, till its spirit is breathed into your fancy, and you can turn away and paint it! To call up, like a rash enchanter, the smile that bewilders you, and have power over the expression of a face, that, meet you where it will, laps you in Ely. sium!-Make me a painter, Pythagoras! A lover's picture of his mistress, painted as she exists in his fancy, would never be recognised. He would make little of features and complexion. No, no-he has not been He has seen her as no an idolator for this. one else has seen her, with the illumination of love, which, once in her life, makes every woman under heaven an angel of light. He knows her heart, too-its gentleness, its fervor; and when she comes up in his imagination, it is not her visible form passing before his mind's eye, but the apparition of her invisible virtues, clothed in the tender recollections of their discovery and development. If he remembers her features at all, it is the changing color of her cheek, or the droop of her curved lashes, or the witchery of the smile that welcomed him. And even then he was intoxicated with her voice-always a sweet instrument when the heart plays upon it--and his eyes were good for nothing. No -it is no matter what she may be to others fect being, and he would as soon paint St. -she appears to him to be a bright and per Cecilia with a wart, as his mistress with an imperfect feature. He Duncan could not satisfy himself. painted with his heart on fire, and he threw by canvass after canvass till his room was like a gallery of angels. In perfect despair, at last, he sat down and made a deliberate copy of her features the exquisite picture of which we have spoken. Still the eye haunted him. He felt as if he would redeem all, if he could give it the expres sion with which it looked back some of his impassioned declarations. His skill however was, as yet, baffled; and it was at the close of the third day of unsuccesful effort, that he relinquished it in despair, and dropping his head upon his easel, abandoned himself to his imagination... Duncan entered the gallery with Helen leaning on his arm. It was thronged with visitors. Groups were collected before the favored pictures, and the low hum of criticism rose confusedly, varied now and then by the exclamation of some enthusiastic spectator. In a conspicuous part of the room hung, "The Mute Reply, by Duncan Weir." A crowd had gathered before it, and were gazing on it with evident pleasure. Expressions of surprise and admiration broke frequently from the group, and as they fell on the ear of Duncan, he felt an irresistible impulse to approach and look at his own picture. What is like the affection of a painter for the offspring of his genius! It seemed to him as if he had never before seen it. There it hung like a new picture, and he dwelt upon it with all the interest of a stranger. It was indeed beautiful! There was a bewitching loveliness floating over the features. The figure and air had a peculiar grace and freedom; but the eye showed the genius of the master. It was a large lustrous eye, moistened without weeping, and lifted up, as if to the face of a lover, with a look of indescribable tenderness. The deception was wonderful. It seemed every moment as if the moisture would gather into a tear, and roll down her cheek. There was a strange freshness in its impression upon Duncan. It seemed to have the very look that had sometimes beamed upon him in the twilight. He turned from it and looked at Helen. Her eyes met his with the same-the self same expression of the picture. A murmur of pleased recognition stole from the crowd whose attention was attracted. Duncan burst into tears-and awoke. He had been dreaming on his easel! "Do you believe in dreams, Helen?" said Duncan, as he led her into the studio the next day to look at the finished picture. The same register shows that the south-west wind blows more upon an average in each month of the year than any other, particularly in July and August; that the north-east prevails during January, March, April, May, and June, and is most unfrequent in February, July, September, and December; the north-west occurring more frequently from November to March, and less so in September and October than in any other months. In the fifth volume of the Statistical Account of Scotland, there is a table of seven years' close observation made by Dr. Meek, near Glasgow, the average of which is stated as fol lows: EDUCATION OF THE JUVENILE POOR. ENGLAND AND GERMANY. NO PERSON CAN BE IGNORANT of the frightful condition of the lower orders in England, with respect to education. Children are born of ignorant parents, and most of them die even more ignorant than those who gave them birth. Beyond smoking, drinking, lying, swearing, and thieving, they know positively nothing. Nor do they improve; they degenerate. One of the first things which strikes a foreigner on passing through the streets of the metropolis, and of the great manufacturing towns of England, is the quantities of children running wild in the poorer localities, ragged, dirty, untrained, uncontrolled, as if they were a species of vermin, rather than beings amenable to the laws, and living within the pale of a Christian community. This is so strange a sight, that, to a German who has not been in England, it is impossible to conceive the state of the juvenile poor of our towns. "If any one," says Mr. KAY, "will take his stand in the streets of a Swiss or German town, either before the schools open in a morning, or when the children are returning from the school play grounds in the middle of the day, or after the schools and their play-grounds are closed in the evening, he will see all the children of the town, rich and poor together, on their way to and from their homes, clean, neatly and comfortably dressed, happy, healthy, and orderly in appearance, and with their bags of books in their hands. If he will go into the same streets during school hours, he will find no children whatever, except it may be a little creature too young for school, or boys of fifteen or sixteen, who have finished their course, and are now engaged in their regular employment. If he will visit the schools, he will find dry, clean, well-built and well-ventilated buildings, situated in carefully selected sites, each divided into from four to twelve class rooms, surrounded by dry and roomy play-yards for exercise, and full of children of all classes, comfortably dressed, clean, healthy, and intelligent in appearance, and under the care of educated men, who have been very carefully trained for their profession." Under such a system, we shall not be surprised if we find a state of things which is utterly impossible at present in England. The schools and teachers are so excellent, "and the children of the poorer classes of these countries are so much more civilised than with us, that even in the capitals themselves I have often seen the children of the German nobles and gentry sitting at the same desks with the children of the poorest classes; and in the primary schools, in the country villages, it is by no means uncommon, either in Germany or Switzerland, for the children of some gentleman in the neighborhood to attend the village school, and sit at the same desks with the children of the villagers." If this were the testimony of a man who was pursuing a crotchet, we might lay it aside and think no more of it. But Mr. KAY is of a very different stamp. He has undertaken his task of examining into the state of education at home and abroad, in the spirit of a patriot and philanthropist; and he has executed it with the ability of a man of sound and enlarged understanding. We may therefore rely upon his statements, confirmed as they are by that floating information, which, in spite of our national prejudices-the result of insular position-forces its way to us. We see, then, that abroad, for the most part, instead of there being in every town crowds of children exposed to the corruption of the streets-to its dirt, its idleness, and bad example, disciplined in crime, and educated to a fate in after-life from which escape would be next to a miracle, all the children-except, as before said, those too young and those who have completed their course-are at school; and that by these means, and the good example they have received from educated parents, they are so civilised in manners that the children of merchants, professional men, and nobles, may be seen sitting in the same rooms, and at the same desks with children who are being educated and even clothed at the expense of the municipality-their parents being too poor to pay the small weekly school-fees required for every child. society, and the miserable victims of his neglect. Mr. KAY relates an incident which may not inappropriately be introduced here, and which, perhaps, will better exemplify the great difference betwixt the children of the English poor and those of foreigners, than any descriptive comparison. In the summer of 1847, he was travelling through the kingdom of Wirtemberg, from Ulm, to a town in the interior, by night. IIis companions in the diligence were an Oxford Fellow, a German, and a Frenchman. Conversation turned on the condition of the poor children in the German towns. The Englishman, with his insular prejudices, refused to credit the account which the German and his more travelled fellowcountryman had given him of the educational efforts of Germany, but laughed at them as useless and chimerical. "Well," said Mr. hAY at last, seeing argument was useless against prejudice, "if you are ever in the streets of a German town in the morning between eight and nine o'clock, or between twelve and one o'clock, observe what is going on, and remember what I told you.' "I Early the next day they stopped to change horses in a small town between Ulm and Stuttgard. The children of the town were on their way to the schools. begged the Oxford Fellow to get out of the diligence and observe what was going on around us at that time. The street in which we had pulled up was full of clean and respectable looking children; each of the girls holding a small bag of books in her hand, and each boy carrying a little goatskin knapsack full of books on his back. There were no rags, no bare feet, and no unseemly patched and darned clothes. The girls were all very neat, their hair was dressed, as is always the case in Germany, with a good deal of taste, and their general appearance was healthy and comfortable. A stranger would have imagined them all to be children belonging to the middle classes. Most of them, however, were the sons and daughters of poor artisans and laborers. In England, many would have been the squalid idlers of our gutters and back alleys. In this German town, no difference could be discerned between the appearance of the children of the poor laborer and those of the rich shopkeeper. They all looked equally clean, respectable, polite, and intelligent. I asked my companion if he was convinced; he turned to me and answered, 'Yes; this is indeed a very interesting and curious sight. I do not any longer doubt the accuracy of all you told me last night. It is certainly very And, be it observed, this happy result has been brought about in the face of the strongest religious differences, and is not to be traced to the character of any particular creed. The state of education and the condition of the children of the poor are the same in Protestant and Catholic states, in Bavaria as well as in Prussia. No poor man is prevented sending his children to school by inability to pay the school pence, for the town pays it for him as soon as the education committee is satisfied of his poverty. No poor parent is deterred by the wretchedness of his children's dress; on the contrary, he is induced to send them by the knowledge that by doing so they will be provided with comfortable clothing. No poor person is prevented by objection to the religion of the teacher; for if he objects to the teachers of one school, the committee will, at his request, transfer his children to any other school he may prefer; but, on the other hand, no parent has, in the face of these liberal provisions, any excuse for neglecting his children, or for leaving them to grow up in the streets, to become the pests of remarkable.' The reflection, continues Mr. KAY, to which this sight leads every beholder is, that if this is the condition of all the children of the German towns, it is no wonder that the poor are so much more prosperous, virtuous, and happy than our own. BEAUTY, MENTAL AND SUBSTANTIVE. So long as mind and matter shall exist, there will be a sympathy between mental and substantive beauty. Every form is perfected by the perfection of an idea. The daisy of the field, the moss on the mountain, the lily in the valley, the shell by the sea, the stars in the firmament—are all and each complete by the completeness of our perceptive qualities. If it were not so, these objects would appear the same to every individual. The poet would see in them no more superiority than the most worldly man observes. The intimacy of form and idea affects the course of our whole social and moral life. An ideal image of domestic peace governs the literal existence of domestic feeling. We will take two instances-Love and Pleasure. It is necessary to have a lofty conception of love, that the reality may not sink into mere conventional duty. How often do we wonder at the matrimonial happiness which exists, in spite of poverty? We contrast this state of things with the proverb :-"When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window;" and we find the proverb false. The cause of the falsity in the adage can only be traced to the agency of an idea. The happiness of the marriage state exists only when the anticipation of good has preceded, and is preserved through the existence of the evil. When the faith in happiness is weak, the growth of misery is rapid and strong. Can it be said that, in proportion as the age becomes intelligent, it anticipates the advent of social beauty? No. Look around, and see how love lies bleeding under the golden hoof of Mammon! Few, very few, have knelt before the sacred altar with bosoms untouched by the gangrene of selfishness. Alas! the traffic of human hearts is as common as the traffic of common merchandise! Hearts, in the freshness of innocency, are bleeding their life away at every pore. Affection has lost a portion of its sublime completeness, and is fast dwindling into a thing of shreds and patches. Many a man has married a house, who should have married a woman; and many a man has wedded a fidgetty uncle's will, or an asthma: tical grandfather's legacy, when the world has applauded him for a more magnanimous action. Can we then wonder when we see Her poor heart is broken! Alas, such is life! The soldier has been to the battle, and seen He's His comrades fall round him and die; heart, now going to part with the friend of his And a tear dims the brave soldier's eye "Be faithful," he cries, "all our fears will prove vain, I'll fight for my country-then meet, thee again." Resolved he no longer will roam. The fond mother creeps o'er the cold grave where sleeps Her darling-her only child; Her husband lies slain on the dark battle-plain, All she loved in this world-as a mother, a wife, With grief and despair she is wild. Is GONE-GONE FOR EVER! ALAS, SUCH is LIFE! TRUE LOVE. -"Trs made of every fine emotion, Of It looketh to the stars, and dreams of Heaven; generous impulses and noble thoughts:It nestles 'mid the flowers, and sweetens earth. Love is aspiring, yet 'tis humble too; It doth exalt another o'er itself, With sweet heart-homage which delights to raise its object |