quite a different thing, and very legitimate, to feel that we have such qualities as will save us from ever being despicable enemies, or from being easily defeated by others; but it is much better that we should not feel so confident, as to think that others must always be defeated by us.-ARNOLD'S 'Modern History.'

IN estimating the effect of a popular system of education upon the growth of science, it is necessary to bear in mind a circumstance, in which the present age and that which preceded it are strongly discriminated from former periods; and that is, the vastly greater extent to which science exists among men, who do not appear before the world as authors. Since the dawn of civilization on Egypt and Asia Minor, there never have been wanting individuals, sometimes many, flourishing at the same time, who have made the most distinguished attainments in knowledge. Such, however, has been the condition of the world, that they formed a class by themselves. Their know-ledge was transmitted in schools, often under strict injunctions of secrecy; or if recorded in books, for want of the press, and owing to the constitution of society, it made but little impression on the mass of the community and the business of life. As far as there is any striking exception to this remark, it is in the free states of antiquity, in which, through the medium of the popular organization of the governments, and the necessity of constant appeals to the people, the cultivated intellect was brought into close association with the understandings of the majority of men. This fact may perhaps go far to explain the astonishing energy and enduring power of the Grecian civilization, which remains, to this day, after all that has been said to explain it, one of the

most extraordinary facts in the history of the human mind. But, from the period of the downfall of the Roman republic, and, more especially, after the establishment of the feudal system, the division of the community into four classes, namely, the landed aristocracy, or nobles and gentry; the spiritual aristocracy, or priesthood; the inhabitants of the cities; and the peasantry; (a division which has, in modern Europe, been considerably modified, in some countries more and in some less, but in none wholly obliterated); the action and manifestation of knowledge were, till a comparatively recent period, almost monopolized by the two higher classes and in their hands it assumed, in a great degree, a literary, by which I mean a book, form. Such, of course, must ever, with reasonable qualifications, continue to be the case; and books will always be, in a great degree, the vehicle by which knowledge is to be communicated, preserved, and transmitted.

But it is impossible to overlook the fact,-it is one of the most characteristic features of the civilization of the age,-that this is far less exclusively the case than at any former period. The community is filled with an incalculable amount of unwritten knowledge of science which never will be committed to paper by the active men who possess it, and which has been acquired on the basis of a good education, by observation, experience, and the action of the mind itself. Á hundred and fifty years ago, it is doubtful whether, out of the observatories and universities, there were ten men in Europe who could ascertain the longitude by lunar observation. At the present day, scarce a vessel sails to foreign lands, in the public or mercantile service, in which the process is not understood. In like manner, in our manufacturing establishments, in the construction and direction of railroads and canals, on the improved farms throughout the country, there is possessed, embodied, and brought into action, a vast deal of useful knowledge, of which its possessors will never make a literary use, for the composition of a book, but which is daily employed to the signal advantage of the country. Much of it is directly derived from a study of the great book of Nature, whose pages are written by the hand of God; and which, in no part of the civilized world, has been more faithfully or profitably studied than in New England. The intelligent population of the country, furnished with the keys of knowledge at our institutions of education, have addressed themselves to the further acquisition of useful science, to its acquisition at once, and application, with a vigour, a diligence, a versatility, and a success, which are the admiration of the world. --EVERETT'S Education and Knowledge.'

IMPORTANCE OF MEANS OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION TO THE INDUSTRY AND MORALITY OF A PEOPLE.

It is not enough that a country may possess, in the fertility of its soil or the richness of its mines, the materials for the creation of industrial wealth, but also there must be the means of bringing these resources into play by land and water communication. By their aid the different substances necessary to manufactures are brought to the localities where the processes to which they are to be subjected can be carried on with most advantage, and the produce be conveyed to the situations where its sale may be effected with most profit to the owners. Direct and safe modes of communication are, therefore, indispensable to the development of industrial pursuits, as well for the procuring access to raw materials, as to secure markets for the manufactured goods. It is, however, not wonderful that, industry having received so little extension until a few years back, the means of communication should still remain in Ireland comparatively undeveloped.

The internal communications of a country demand attention, however, on grounds of far higher order than their merely facilitating mercantile transactions; they are connected with the highest moral aims of the legislator, by their influence on the habits and the conduct of the people. The isolation in which man is condemned to live, in a district destitute of roads, or where transport is difficult and expensive, is fatal to his progress in civilization and humanity. He grows up in ignorance of his fellow-men; his mind, limited to the circle of a few ideas elsewhere obsolete, looks upon all deviation from them as fraught with injury and ruin. The results of new methods in the management of land and labour, which within a few miles are actually producing the greatest benefits, remain utterly unknown to him. The stimulus of contact with persons above him, and yet not too far removed from his own sphere to prevent the ambition arising within him of exerting himself to attain the comfort and consideration which they enjoy, does not present itself to his mind. His isolation and his ignorance remove him equally from the instructor, and the instructor from him, and he resists with violence, by which, in the absence of reasoning, he can alone show his will, the intrusion of all novelties calculated to break through the miserable monotony in which his forefathers and himself have vegetated.—KANE'S ' Industrial Resources of Ireland.'

THE PASSION FOR IMPROVEMENT.

Constructive.
Converted.

Combinations.
Velocity.

Develops.
Applications.

Compels.
Annihilate.

THOUGH animal organization is beyond the constructive skill of man, he takes the elements existing in nature, and by new combinations gets new power. He keeps adding to the qualities of his noblest coursers, his fleetest dogs, and his goodliest beeves. He year by year develops the resources of the soil-reclaims the marsh from wild fowl, the heath from rabbits, and the flinty hill-side from briars and thistles. He goes on multiplying the blades of grass and grains of corn, and compels an equal area to yield a twofold increase. He discovers in his raw materials unsuspected properties, until soda and sand are converted into a crystal palace, and water, coal, and stony ore into a train which rushes with the might of an earthquake and the velocity of the wind. He devises fresh applications of machinery, and in the creations of his ingenuity finds a servant and a master. The broad result to England is quickly told. Fifty years have doubled the population, and employment and subsistence have been doubled likewise. An engine is contrived which economizes labour, and threatens starvation to the labourer; but the issue proves that the work it makes is more than it saves. Annihilate all the cranks and wheels constructed in the interval, and return our counties, with their present population, to the condition in which they were when the century began, and there would be nothing but famine in the land. A government wiser than man's has provided, in the constant exertion of talent, for the increase of our race, and maintains a proportion between our wants and our progress. Every round we rise in the ladder leads to a higher; but our step is limited, or we should outstrip our needs by too prodigious a stride, and encroach on the rights of a future age. Quarterly Review.

THIS United Kingdom, which boasts itself to be at the head of civilization, has been among the last of European nations to make any public provision for the instruction of the people. This neglect is all the more extraordinary, from the fact, that of

all civilized countries this is the one in which ignorance on the part of the people brings with it the greatest amount of danger. From their number, and the manner in which they are brought together in our large manufacturing and trading towns, the labouring classes have become a most important power for good or for evil, and exercise, without its being acknowledged, a very powerful influence over the deliberations of the Senate and the acts of the Government. Their situation is, besides, widely different from that of the labouring classes in every other country, where the great majority depend upon agricultural labour for their support, and are but little liable under any circumstances to be thrown out of employment.

In England, on the contrary, as already shown, the great and rapid increase in the population is all of it thrown, for the means of earning subsistence, upon pursuits other than agricultural. A change of fashion, or- what is to the full as likely to occur where the legislature takes upon itself to interfere on all occasions by "protections" and restrictions with the course of industry -a change of policy may in a moment, and without warning, throw tens of thousands out of employment; while, as we have sometimes witnessed, a succession of deficient harvests is sure to bring upon the whole class the severest privations.

How necessary then it is that these masses, so greatly, so increasingly influential, should not be suffered to remain in ignorance of their true interests! They are not idiots that they cannot be led to see wherein those true interests lie, nor to admit that they consist in upholding the laws, and respecting the institutions of their country. Neither are they knaves, who, to secure a passing advantage, would wantonly invade the rights of their richer fellow-citizens. But they are ignorant, and in this condition all manner of fallacies may be made to pass with them for truth. To what but to ignorance are we to ascribe the hostility of our operative manufacturers to machinery, and their lawless crusades against it? How, unless means for teaching them are adopted, can they be expected to see the ultimate consequences to them of a machine, the introduction of which into use has the present effect of throwing some among them out of their accustomed employment?

The great bulk of the people, they whose sole dependence for their daily bread must be upon their daily toil, are most of all interested in the maintenance of order, under which alone they can have any assurance of demand for their labour.

This truth, which they should be taught to recognise, does not lie upon the surface; and the unlearned may well be excused for not embracing it, when they see men who have had the advan