appearance-for they lay pretty thickly on the shore-and found that there might be. In one of these there were what seemed to be the scales of fishes, and the impressions of a few minute bivalves, prettily striated; in the centre of another there was actually a piece of decayed wood. Of all nature's riddles these seemed to me to be at once the most interesting, and the most difficult to expound. I treasured them carefully up, and was told by one of the workmen to whom I showed them, that there was a part of the shore about two miles farther to the west, where curiously shaped stones, somewhat like the heads of boarding-pikes, were occasionally picked up; and that in his father's days the country people called them thunderbolts, and deemed them of sovereign efficacy in curing bewitched cattle. Our employer, on quitting the quarry for the building on which we were to be engaged, gave all the workmen a half-holiday. I employed it in visiting the place where the thunderbolts had fallen so thickly, and found it a richer scene of wonder than I could have fancied in even my dreams.

What first attracted my notice was a detached group of lowlying skerries, wholly different in form and colour from the sandstone cliffs above, or the primary rocks a little farther to the west. I found them composed of thin strata of limestone, alternating with thicker beds of a black slaty substance, which, as I ascertained in the course of the evening, burns with a powerful flame, and emits a strong bituminous odour. The layers into which the beds readily separate are hardly an eighth part of an inch in thickness, and yet on every layer there are the impressions of thousands and tens of thousands of the various fossils peculiar to the lias. We may turn over these wonderful leaves one after one, like the leaves of a herbarium, and find the pictorial records of a former creation in every page. Scallops, and gryphites, and ammonites, of almost every variety peculiar to the formation, and at least some eight or ten varieties of belemnite; twigs of wood, leaves of plants, cones of an extinct species of pine, bits of charcoal, and the scales of fishes; and, as if to render their pictorial appearance more striking, though the leaves of this interesting

volume are of a deep black, most of the impressions are of a chalky whiteness. I was lost in admiration and astonishment, and found my very imagination paralysed by an assemblage of wonders, that seemed to outrival, in the fantastic and the extravagant, even its wildest conceptions. I passed on from ledge to ledge, like. the traveller of the tale through the city of statues, and at length found one of the supposed aërolites I had come in quest of, firmly imbedded in a mass of shale. But I had skill enough to determine that it was other than what it had been deemed. A very near relative, who had been a sailor in his time, on almost every ocean, and had visited almost every quarter of the globe, had brought home one of these meteoric stones with him from the coast of Java. It was of a cylindrical shape and vitreous texture, and it seemed to have parted in the middle, when in a half molten state, and to have united again, somewhat awry, ere it had cooled enough to have lost the adhesive quality. But there was nothing organic in its structure, whereas the stone I had now found was organised very curiously indeed. It was of a conical form and filamentary texture, the filaments radiating in straight lines from the centre to the circumference. Finely marked veins like white threads ran transversely through these in its upper half to the point, while the space below was occupied by an internal cone, formed of plates that lay parallel to the base, and which, like watch-glasses, were concave on the under side, and convex on the upper. I learned in time to call this stone a belemnite, and became acquainted with enough of its history to know that it once formed part of a variety of cuttle-fish, long since extinct. My first year of labour came to a close, and I found that the amount of my happiness had not been less than in the last of my boyhood. My knowledge, too, had increased in more than the ratio of former seasons; and as I had acquired the skill of at least the common mechanic, I had fitted myself for independence. The additional experience of twenty years has not shown me that there is any necessary connexion between a life of toil and a life of wretchedness; and when I have found good men anticipating a better and a happier time than either the present or the past, the

conviction that in every period of the world's history the great bulk of mankind must pass their days in labour, has not in the least inclined me to scepticism.

[MR VERPLANCK is an American writer, who, like many of the most distinguished authors and scholars of the United States, has filled situations of political responsibility.]

It has been to me a source of pleasure, though a melancholy one, that in rendering this public tribute to the worth of our departed friend, the respectable members of two bodies, one of them the most devoted and efficient in its scientific inquiries, the other comprising so many names eminent for philanthropy and learning, have met to do honour to the memory of a school

master.

There are prouder themes for the eulogist than this. The praise of the statesman, the warrior, or the orator, furnish more splendid topics for ambitious eloquence; but no theme can be more rich in desert, or more fruitful in public advantage.

The enlightened liberality of many of our state governments (amongst which we may claim a proud distinction for our own) by extending the common school system over their whole population, has brought elementary education to the door of every family. In this State, it appears from the annual reports of the Secretary of the State, there are, besides the fifty incorporated academies and numerous private schools, about nine thousand school districts, in each of which instruction is regularly given. These contain at present half a million of children taught in the single State of New York. To these may be added nine or ten thousand more youth in the higher seminaries of learning, exclusive of the colleges.

Of what incalculable influence, then, for good or for evil, upon the dearest interests of society, must be the estimate entertained

for the character of this great body of teachers, and the consequent respectability of the individuals who compose it!

At the recent general election in this State, the votes of above three hundred thousand persons were taken. In thirty years the great majority of these will have passed away; their rights will be exercised, and their duties assumed, by those very children whose minds are now open to receive their earliest and most durable impressions from the ten thousand schoolmasters of this State.

What else is there in the whole of our social system of such extensive and powerful operation on the national character? There is one other influence more powerful, and but one. It is that of the MOTHER. The forms of a free government, the provisions of wise legislation, the schemes of the statesman, the sacrifices of the patriot, are as nothing compared with these. If the future citizens of our republic are to be worthy of their rich inheritance, they must be made so principally through the virtue and intelligence of their mothers. It is in the school of maternal tenderness that the kind affections must be first roused and made habitual-the early sentiment of piety awakened and rightly directed the sense of duty and moral responsibility unfolded and enlightened. But next in rank and in efficacy to that pure and holy source of moral influence is that of the schoolmaster. It is powerful already. What would it be if in every one of those school districts which we now count by annually increasing thousands, there were to be found one teacher well-informed without pedantry, religious without bigotry or fanaticism, proud and fond of his profession, and honoured in the discharge of his duties! How wide would be the intellectual, the moral influence of such a body of men! Many such we have already amongst us―men humbly wise and obscurely useful, whom poverty cannot depress, nor neglect degrade. But to raise up a body of such men, as numerous as the wants and the dignity of the country demand, their labours must be fitly remunerated, and themselves and their calling cherished and honoured.

The schoolmaster's occupation is laborious and ungrateful; its rewards are scanty and precarious. He may indeed be, and he

ought to be, animated by the consciousness of doing good, that best of all consolations, that noblest of all motives. But that, too, must be often clouded by doubt and uncertainty. Obscure and inglorious as his daily occupation may appear to learned pride or worldly ambition, yet to be truly successful and happy, he must be animated by the spirit of the same great principles which inspired the most illustrious benefactors of mankind. If he bring to his task high talent and rich acquirements, he must be content to look into distant years for the proof that his labours have not been wasted-that the good seed which he daily scatters abroad does not fall on stony ground and wither away, or among thorns, to be choked by the cares, the delusions, or the vices of the world. He must solace his toils with the same prophetic faith that enabled the greatest of modern philosophers, amidst the neglect or contempt of his own times, to regard himself as sowing the seeds of truth for posterity and the care of Heaven. He must arm himself against disappointment and mortification, with a portion of that same noble confidence which soothed the greatest of modern poets when weighed down by care and danger, by poverty, old age, and blindness-still

"In prophetic dream he saw

The youth unborn, with pious awe,

Imbibe each virtue from his sacred page."

He must know, and he must love to teach his pupils, not the meagre elements of knowledge, but the secret and the use of their own intellectual strength, exciting and enabling them hereafter to raise for themselves the veil which covers the majestic form of Truth. He must feel deeply the reverence due to the youthful mind fraught with mighty though undeveloped energies and affections, and mysterious and eternal destinies. Thence he must have learnt to reverence himself and his profession, and to look upon its otherwise ill-requited toils as their own exceeding great reward. If such are the difficulties and the discouragements--such the duties, the motives, and the consolations of teachers who are worthy of that name and trust, how imperious then the obligation