a great regard, he alluded to the popular tradition that the expresident was the son of Aaron Burr. He gave a decided denial to this scandal, and adduced convincing reasons for rejecting it.

The other two occasions upon which General Scott saw Aaron Burr were mere chance meetings in the street. The general remarked Burr's habit of glancing sideways at an approaching acquaintance to ascertain in time whether he meant to cut him; and if he did, Burr would prevent the slight by looking away.

General Scott's memory was full to overflowing of interesting recollections of the men and events of the past. If he could have written these recollections as well as he related them in conversation, his autobiography would have been one of the most interesting of books, instead of being one of the dullest ever published. In fact, I find that most persons, when they write, leave out the things that people most care to know.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

It is a question with English teachers, whether school-boys ought or ought not to be permitted to settle their quarrels by a fair fight with fists. In the great schools of Eton, Westminster, Harrow, and others, fighting is tacitly allowed; but in the smaller schools, especially those under the charge of dissenters, it is forbidden.

It is surprising that, in the course of this controversy, no one has brought forward the fact, that the greatness of Sir Isaac Newton dates from a fight which he had with one of his schoolfellows when he was thirteen years of age. At that time, according to his own confession, he was very idle at school, and stood last in the lowest class but one. One morning, as he was going to school, the boy who was first in the same class kicked him in the stomach with so much violence as to cause him severe pain during the day. When the school was dismissed, he challenged the boy to fight him. The challenge being accepted, a ring was formed in the church-yard, the usual place of combat, and the fight begun. Newton, a weakly boy from his birth, was inferior to his antagonist in size and strength; but, smarting under a sense of the indignity he had received, he fought with so much spirit and resolution as to compel his adversary to cry, Enough. The school-master's son, who had been clapping one of them on the back and winking at the other, to urge on the contest, and who acted as a kind of umpire, informed the victor that it was necessary to crown his triumph by rubbing the other boy's nose against the wall. Little Newton seized him by the ears, thrust his face against the rough side of the church, and walked home exulting in his victory.

The next morning, however, he had again the mortification

of seeing his enemy at the head of the class, while he occupied his usual place at the foot. He began to reflect. Could he regard himself in the light of a victor while his foe lorded it over nim in the school-room? The applauding shouts of his schoolfellows had been grateful to his ears, but his enemy enjoyed the approval of the teacher. The laurels of the play-ground seemed to fade in comparison with the nobler triumphs of the mind. The result of his reflections was, that he determined to conquer his adversary again by getting to the head of his class. From chat time he became as studious as he had before been idle, and soon attained the second place. A long and severe struggle ensued between him and his adversary for the first, in the course of which each triumphed in turn; but, at length, Isaac Newton remained permanently at the head. He never relapsed into idleness. He was a student thenceforth to the end of his life of nearly eighty-five years.

We do not offer this as an argument in favor of school-boy fighting. On the contrary, we think boys can arrange their little disputes in a better way than by pommelling one another with their fists, and rubbing one another's noses against a stone wall. We relate the incident merely because it started this great man in his career as a student; because it woke his dormant intellect, which never went to sleep again.

They still show, in a lovely vale of Lincolnshire, the small, stone, two-storied, peak-roofed manor house in which Sir Isaac Newton was born. A marble tablet has been affixed to the wall of one of the rooms, bearing this inscription:

"Sir Isaac Newton, son of John Newton, Lord of the Manor of Woolsthrope, was born in this room on the 25th of December, 1642."

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:

God said, 'Let Newton be,' and all was light."

The sun-dial made by him when he was a boy is still legible on the side of the house where he placed it two hundred years ago. The book-shelves made by him out of some packing-boxes are also preserved in the room in which he conned his lessons.

The school where the fight occurred, and the church against which he rubbed his antagonist's face, both exist, and the school is even more flourishing and important now than it was then. The English people have always had a way of making things, - not for a day, but for a very long time.

John Newton, the father of the philosopher, was a gentleman who possessed two small farms, the united revenue of which was about eighty pounds sterling per annum, — equal to four hundred dollars. But, at that day, eighty pounds would buy as much as four times that sum will at present. He died at the age of thirty-seven, a few months after his marriage, and a few months before the birth of his illustrious son. The infant, fatherless before its birth, and born prematurely, was of so diminutive a size, and so extremely feeble, that no one expected it to survive the first day of its life. So was it with Voltaire, Beecher, and many other distinguished persons who lived active lives and attained a great age.

Of the mother of Newton we have a curious anecdote, which shows, at least, that she was a woman of good repute in her parish. One Mr. Smith, a clergyman of the neighborhood, who had a good estate, having attained middle age, and being still a bachelor, one of his parishioners advised him to marry. He replied that he did not know where to get a good wife.

"The widow Newton," said his friend, "is an extraordinary good woman."

"But," said the clergyman, "how do I know she will have me? and I don't care to ask and be denied. But if you will go and ask her, I'll pay you for your day's work."

The gentleman having performed his errand, Mrs. Newton answered that she would be guided in the affair by the advice of her brother. Upon receiving this answer, the clergyman despatched him to the brother, with whom the marriage was arranged. Mrs. Newton, however, insisted upon one point, that one of her farms should be settled upon her son, then four years old; and this was done. Soon after the marriage, Isaac was consigned to the care of one of his aunts, with whom he resided until his fifteenth year, when the death of our wary clergyman united him once more to his mother, and they resided again in the manor-house.

From childhood Newton exhibited a remarkable talent for mechanics. His favorite playthings were little saws, hammers, chisels, and hatchets, with which he made many curious and ingenious machines. There was a windmill in course of erection near his home. He watched the workmen with the greatest interest, and constructed a small model of the mill, which, one of his friends said, was "as clean and curious a piece of workmanship as the original." He was dissatisfied, however, with his mill, because it would not work when there was no wind; and, therefore, he added to it a contrivance by which it could be kept in motion by a mouse. He made a water-clock, the motive power of which was the dropping of water upon a wheel. Every morning, on getting out of bed, the boy wound up his clock by supplying it with the water requisite to keep it running for twenty-four hours. The clock answered its purpose so well that the family habitually repaired to it to ascertain the time. The principal defect of it was that the small aperture through which the water dropped was liable to become clogged by the impurities of the fluid. He constructed also a fourwheeled carriage, propelled by the person sitting in it. To amuse his school-fellows, he made very ingenious kites, to the tails of which he attached lanterns of crimpled paper, which, being lighted by a candle and sent up in the evening, alarmed the rustics of the parish. Observing the shadows of the sun, he marked the hours and half-hours by driving in pegs on the side of the house, and, at length, perfected the sun-dial which is still shown. Without an instructor, he learned to draw so well as to adorn his room with portraits of his school-fellows and teachers, the frames of which were very elegantly made by his own hand. Besides these, he drew with charcoal, on the wall of his bedroom, many excellent pictures of ships, birds, beasts, and men, which were shown in good preservation when he was an old man. For the young ladies of his acquaintance he was never weary of making little tables, chairs, cupboards, dolls, and trinkets.

At fifteen, his mother, being again a widow, with three children by her second marriage to maintain, Isaac was taken from school to assist her in the management of her farm. But nature