medicines. Surely the age must be getting wiser. Laying together a number of signs, such as the magnetic pills, animal magnetism, phrenology, the prolongation of life by vegetable diet, the astonishing modes of teaching penmanship in six lessons, and French in twenty, and the ponderous volumes of speeches delivered at school conventions and the like, is it not fair to expect the day when the royal road to science, like the north-west passage, shall have been discovered, and when a complete organization of that thinking pulp which we call the brain, shall be produced by steam?

Such meditations as these are not uncommon, but they are often driven clean out of my mind when I hear uncle Benjamin discourse about the times when he was a boy. Perhaps it was because he had just been insulted in the street, by a couple of scape-graces, who, with the insubordinate spirit which marks our day, had scoffed at his lameness, that the old man appeared somewhat ruffled during our last interview. He had seated himself by an old-fashioned Franklin stove, for he cannot endure coal, and with his feet upon the fender, was enjoying the soothing odours of his pipe. The very sight of him brought before my mind's eye the period before the Revolution. Here was the remnant of a robust frame and a vigorous understanding. Here was one remaining link to bind us to the old colonial times. Like many of the aged, he loves to discourse; and who has a better right?

"Ah," said he, archly shaking a shrivelled finger at his grandsons, "if you had been schooled in my day, you would have had other jobs for your winter evenings than playing that idle game of backgammon which I see you at." "How so,

grandfather?" said Joseph, as he emptied his box and cried "6 · cinq-ace.” — “ I'll tell you, boys. Learning was something to be scrambled for in those days. The schoolmaster was second only to the minister, and used to wear his hair in a bag. He went the rounds among the farmer's houses, in a large circuit, and some of the boys used to trudge their four and five miles to school. As it was not every young collegian who could set up a school, the business of teaching was worth something. We did not, it is true, pay a great deal in hard money, but taking into the account firewood, clothing, board, and produce, we used to make the schoolmaster quite comfortable."

"I suppose, grandfather, they used to whip, in those days?"-" You may well say so, Joseph; you may well say so. The teacher was not ashamed to be named Master, and we were not ashamed to call him so. Master he was, and it took a sturdy fellow to handle a set of resolute young cubs, who sometimes turned upon him and shut him out of his castle. Hard blows used to fall thick; and they made men of us. If you want to become a young Lord Betty, or, as the Indians say, 'turn squaw,' enter yourself at one

of these schools where the discipline is so parental, that the lads are made to believe a buffet or a box on the ear would ruin them. No, no! We had our full share of correction; and though we used to vow that we would take ample reprisals when we should get big enough, yet we never fulfilled the obligation. But every thing is on a new plan. I do not see anybody that can write a fair, round, copy-hand, such as we used to practise, having our knuckles well rapped if there was a single pot-hook awry. The teachers can't do it themselves, and they therefore cry sour-grapes,' and set copies in three-cornered letters like a girl's verses in a Valentine. The good old cipheringbooks have gone out: they used to teach us figures, penmanship, and book-keeping, all at once. Then you seem to me to have some new-fangled school-book every month, and a new teacher almost every quarter. The cry is for cheap educationlow-priced teachers; and your children fare accordingly. You have more wit than to do so with other things. You do not look out so carefully for the lowest-priced horse or bullock."

Thus the old man ran on. With due allowance for the predilections of age, there was enough of truth and reason in his complaints to make me pause and consider. The stream of knowledge is daily more diffused: I wish I were as sure that it is deeper. Often, in talking with old men, I am impressed with this truth, that while they know less about many things than we of the pre

sent race, they know better what they had learned. If there was less compass in their knowledge, there was more weight. Confinement to a few books made them perfect in those few. You could not puzzle uncle Benjamin in the Spectator, or the Freeholder, or the poems of Pope; but he never heard of Shelley, or Bulwer, or Willis, and my friend Appletree tells me it is much the same in the learned languages. He contends, through thick and thin, that we have no scholars to match the old-school fellows of silver-buckles and hairpowder, and that since small-clothes went out, there has not been a teacher who could parse his boys in Latin. He even doubts whether our professors of language could all of them make a good off-hand Latin speech; and as to Latin verses, which used to be so common, they are as obsolete as horn-books and thumb-papers. He further avers, though I would not be held responsible for the assertion, that the men of '76 wrote purer, stronger, racier English than the men of this day; and that John Hancock, John Adams, Josiah Quincy, and George Washington, handled an easier, simpler, and manlier style, than Mr. Wise, Mr. John Quincy Adams, or Mr. Van Buren. But this, I dare say, was told me in confidence.

IX.

THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF EARLY READING.

"But she, who set on fire his infant heart,

And all his dreams and all his wanderings shared,

And bless'd, the Muse and her celestial art,
Still claim th' enthusiast's fond and first regard."
BEATTIE.

In the family of a working-man, where books cannot in all cases be very numerous, it is particularly desirable that those which fall in the way of the young people should be of the right sort; and this is to be managed not so much by rules and restrictions, as by a care in the filling of the shelves. If the latter have seductive books, they will be sought after by the children, even though you should open before their eyes the most sacred homilies, or preach yourself hoarse in decrying naughty novels and song-books. This becomes more important, when we call to mind that the whole course of a man's reading is often determined by the books which he happens to enjoy in his boyhood. Robinson Crusoe has made many a sailor; Spenser's Faery Queen made Pope a versifier; Xenophon's Memorabilia made Franklin a disputant; and if I might be allowed to play