great mental exertion, or from disease or accident, the most ready and safe means of relief is to make warm applications to the feet and hands, which will tend to draw the blood from the brain to the extremities.

12. Exercise is as natural to the mind as to the body; hence all healthy children delight in constant mental occupation; and if they can not obtain it in judicious mental culture and honest employment, they will be apt to seek it in the haunts of dissipation, and perhaps in those of crime. It is a physiological as well as a moral truth, that "Idleness is the parent of vice;" and it is no less the teaching of physiology than of experience, that, if we will not educate the ignorant, we may expect to support them as paupers or criminals.

LESSON XXI.-ADVICE TO A HARD STUDENT.
"Seek variety in recreation and study."

1. STILL vary thy incessant task,
Nor plod each weary day,

As if thy life were thing of earth-
A servant to its clay.

Alternate' with thy honest work

Some contemplations high':

Though toil be just', though gold' be good',

Look upward' to the sky'.

2. Take pleasure for thy limbs at morn';
At noontide wield the pen';

Converse to-night with moon and stars';
To-morrow' talk with men.'

Cull garlands in the fields and bowers,
Or toy with running brooks;
Then rifle in thy chamber lone
The honey of thy books.

3. If in the wrestlings of the mind

A gladiator strong',

Give scope and freedom to thy thought-
But strive not over long.

Climb to the mountain-top serene,

And let life's surges beat,

With all their whirl of striving men,

Far, far beneath thy feet.

4. But stay not ever on the height,
Mid intellectual snow;

Come down betimes to tread the grass,
And roam where waters flow;

Come down betimes to rub thy hands

At the domestic hearth';'

Come down to share the warmth of love',

And join the children's mirth'.

5. Let love of books', and love of fields',
And love of men combine

To feed in turns thy mental life,
And fan its flame divine';
Let outer frame, and inner soul',
Maintain a balance true',

Till every string on Being's lyre

Give forth its music due.-CHARLES MACKAY.

1 AL-TER'-NATE, or AL'-TER-NATE, to ex-3 HEÄRTH (härth). This is the approved change; perform by turns.

2 Ri'-FLE, seize and bear away.

pronunciation, although the writer, above, makes it rhyme with mirth.

LESSON XXII.-NEGLECT OF HEALTH.

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

1. THERE is among the fragments of the Greek poets a short hymn to Health, in which her power of exalting the happiness of life, of heightening the gifts of fortune, and adding enjoyment to possession, is inculcated with so much force and beauty that no one, who has ever languished under the discomforts and infirmities of a lingering disease, can read it without feeling the images dance in his heart, and adding, from his own experience, new vigor to the wish, and from his own imagination new colors to the picture. The particular occasion of this little composition is not known, but it is probable that the author had been sick, and in the first raptures of returning vigor addressed Health in the following manner:

2. "Health, most venerable of the powers of heaven! with thee may the remaining part of my life be passed, nor do thou refuse to bless me with thy residence. For whatever there is of beauty or of pleasure in wealth, in descendants, or in sovereign command, the highest summit of human enjoyment, or in those objects of human desire which we endeavor to chase into the toils of love; whatever delight, or whatever solace is granted by these celestials, to soften our fatigues, in thy presence, thou parent of happiness, all those joys spread out, and flourish; in thy presence blooms the spring of pleasure, and without thee no man is happy."

3. Such is the power of health, that without its co-operation every other comfort is torpid and lifeless, as the powers of vegetation without the sun. And yet this bliss is often thrown away in thoughtless negligence, or in foolish experiments on our own strength; we let it perish without remembering its value, or waste it to show how much we have to spare; it is sometimes given up to the management of levity and chance, and sometimes sold for the applause of jollity and debauchery.

4. Health is equally neglected, and with equal impropriety, by the votaries of business and the followers of pleasure. Some men ruin the fabric of their bodies by incessant revels, and others by intemperate studies; some batter it by excess, and others sap it by inactivity. Yet it requires no great ability to prove that he loses pleasure who loses health; and that health is certainly of more value than money, because it is by health that money is procured, and by health alone that money is enjoyed.

5.

6.

7.

Nor love, nor honor, wealth, nor power,
Can give the heart a cheerful hour
When health is lost. Be timely wise;
With health all taste of pleasure flies.-GAY.

Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven,
When drooping health and spirits go amiss?
How tasteless then whatever can be given!
Health is the vital principle of bliss,
And exercise of health. In proof of this,
Behold the wretch who slugs his life away,

Soon swallowed in disease's sad abyss,

While he whom toil has braced, or manly play,

Has light as air each limb, each thought as clear as day.

Oh, who can speak the vigorous joy of health-
Unclogged the body, unobscured the mind'?
The morning rises gay, with pleasing stealth,
The temperate evening falls serene and kind.
In health the wiser brutes true gladness find.
See! how the younglings frisk along the meads,
As May comes on and wakes the balmy wind;
Rampant with life, their joy all joy exceeds:

Yet what but high-strung health this dancing pleasure breeds.-THOMSON. 8. Health is indeed so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly; and he that for a short gratification brings weakness and diseases upon himself, and for the pleasure of a few years passed in the tumults of diversion and clamors of merriment condemns the maturer and more experienced part of his life to the chamber and couch, may be justly reproached, not only as a spendthrift of his own happiness, but as a robber of the public-as a wretch that has voluntarily disqualified himself for the business of his station, and refused that part which Providence assigns him in the general task of human

nature.

LESSON I. THE VILLAGE SCHOOL OF OLDEN TIME. [The reading of this inimitable piece of description, in which the most delicate satire is conveyed under the guise of profound admiration, requires, especially in the third verse, the ironical tone of mock laudation and respect.]

1. Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way
With blossom'd furze' unprofitably gay-
There', in his noisy mansion', skill'd to rule',
The village master taught his little school'.
2. A man severe he was', and stern to view';
I knew him well, and every truant knew:

Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face';
Full well they laugh'd, with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he':
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd':
Yet he was kind', or if severe in aught',
The love he bore to learning was in fault'.

3. The village all declared how much he knew;
"Twas certain' he could write', and cipher' too;
Lands he could measure', terms and tides presage';3
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge.
In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill,
For e'en though vanquished he could argue still';
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around-

And still they gazed', and still the wonder grew',
That one small head could carry all he knew.

GOLDSMITH.

1 FURZE, a beautiful evergreen shrub, with 3 PRE-SAGE', foreshow; predict.
brilliant yellow flowers, abundant on the
English commons.

2 TERMS, probably here referring to the terms
or times when the courts were to be held.

GAUGE (gā)), to measure the contents of a cask, barrel, or other vessel.

LESSON II.—THE RIGHTEOUS NEVER FORSAKEN.

1. Ir was Saturday night, and the widow of the Pine Cottage sat by her blazing fagots, with her five tattered children at her side, endeavoring, by listening to the artlessness of their prattle, to dissipate the heavy gloom that pressed upon her mind. For a year, her own feeble hands had provided for her helpless family, for she had no supporter, no friend to whom to apply, in all the wide, unfriendly world around. That mysterious Providence, the wisdom of whose ways is above human comprehension, had visited her with wasting sickness, and her little means had become exhausted. It was now, too, mid-winter, and the snow lay heavy and deep through all the surrounding forests, while storms still seemed gathering in the heavens, and the driving wind roared amid the bounding pines, and rocked her puny mansion.

2. The last herring smoked upon the coals before her; it was the only article of food she possessed, and no wonder her forlorn, desolate state brought up in her lone bosom all the anxieties of a mother, when she looked upon her children; and no wonder, forlorn as she was, if she suffered the heartswellings of despair to rise, even though she knew that He whose promise is to the widow and to the orphan can not for