up street.' This evinced considerable observation for a child of three years: and, in fact, older people have seen something of the same sort.'

'A VERY little girl, young enough to sleep in a crib by the bed of her parents, awoke one night, when the full moon was shining into her bed-room, and calling to her father, she exclaimed:

"Father! Father! God has forgot to blow the moon out! Won't you open the window, and let me blow it out?'

'Another little girl, of nearly the same age, and living very near to her, was found one evening alone in her mother's bed-room, when she very quietly remarked to her mother:

"I have been having a season of prayer for the poor children at the Five-Points.' 'Will not such prayers go up higher than many others from older persons?'

'I HAVE a couple of little nieces-twins-so much alike, as to render a distinction impossible to any but their parents. I remember once teaching one of them a lesson in the catechism. I'commenced with the question: "Who made you?'

'She replied correctly: 'GOD.'

"Why did he make you?'

'A correct reply, again.

"In whose image and likeness did he make you?'

"Why,' says she, speaking very quick, 'He made me the very image and likeness of my sister Clara!"

Brief Notices of New Publications.

THERE are few readers who take an interest in the subject of Geology, but will welcome a volume from the house of PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY, Boston, by President HITCHCOCK, of Amherst College, (Mass.) entitled 'An Outline of the Geology of the Globe, and the United States in Particular.' The author is known, as an eminent geologist, in both hemispheres, by his work on 'Elementary Geology.' There are two geological maps, which teach more, by a few moments' inspection, than many pages of letter-press. Sketches are also given of characteristic American fossils.

'The Coin-Collector's Manual,' from BANGS, BROTHER AND COMPANY, will be a vade-mecum to the numismatic student in forming a cabinet of coins. It comprises an historical and critical account of the origin and progress of coinage, from the earliest period to the fall of the Roman Empire, together with an account of the coinages of modern Europe, and especially of Great Britain. It contains upward of one hundred and fifty illustrations, on wood and steel. The information embodied in the work is copious and accurate, and yet clear of technicalities and minutiæ. Its arrangement is strictly chronological. It begins with the first indications of positive coinage among the Greeks, gives the general state of the Greek coinage at the decline of the kingdoms of the Maccedonian empire, the Roman coinage, and after the fall of the 'mistress of the world,' that of modern Europe. And, what is a great merit, the matter is so arranged as to present itself in a reading form, instead of in dry catalogues. A series of indexes at the end, essential for reference, leave nothing to be desired in a work of this description.

MESSRS. LIPPINCOTT, Grambo, anD COMPANY, Philadelphia, have issued a new and complete edition of the 'Poetical Works of John Milton,' under the careful editorship of Professor CHARLES DEXTER CLEVELAND, of Philadelphia. The work embraces a life of the author, preliminary dissertations on each poem, notes critical and explanatory, an index to the subjects of 'Paradise Lost,' and a verbal index to all the poems. The whole is a most successful attempt to make the poems of MILTON more widely circulated, intelligently read, and wisely appreciated.

'SHOW that your pigs are fat, not what they are fed upon,' we believe is an old Greek adage. From it we infer that butchers in old times were not what they are now-a-days. The great skill and keen analytical powers of butchers of the present day render utterly futile all attempts to conceal what fat swine are fed upon; the dissecting-knife is remorselessly thrust into them, and all the secrets of their organization are at once laid bare. Other animals are by no means exempt from the same fate. Unusual fatness in any animal at once provokes a disposition to cut him up, and discover what sort of food he has been fed upon. Using fat hogs as a figure of speech for popular authors, (although there would be no figure of speech in comparing some of them to both fat and lean hogs-the great Caledonian boar, James Hogg, is one instance; the great English bore, Dr. Johnson, another,) they are particularly exposed to the butcher-knife of the critic. They are, in fact, in danger of being twice stuck- once by the publisher, and again by the critic. Human nature is such that we cannot brook superiority with patience, and, of course, in all ages of the world excellence of every kind has always been subjected to a severe ordeal of criticism. But critics, in the time of the ancient Greeks, had not attained that point of skill and acuteness to which they have since arrived.

A charge of plagiarism against an author is considered as pretty sure evidence of his superiority as a writer. It is an indirect confession of his fatness; and evinces a disposition on the part of the critic who makes the charge, to prove that it was dishonestly acquired. Charges of this kind most frequently come from young men of small reading and little experience. It is said, with a good deal of truth, that there is nothing old in this country except our young men. Of course it is not pretended that they have become infirm and bowed down by any ordinary weights which usually attach to their number of years; but it is the vast knowledge they have acquired, and the wasting and terrible experience they have been through, that have rendered them super

annuated. They have sounded all the depths and shallows of books and life. They have dived so deep into the pure waters of light literature and the turgid waters of metaphysics, that, in both instances, they have brought up mud from the bottom. Dr. Johnson used to say that by reading five hours a day a man could attain a very considerable fund of information at the age of sixty. Young men who have never devoted any thing like that number of hours a day to reading, complain bitterly of the dearth of originality in modern literature. It is difficult for them to find in a new book any thing but stale facts. With less than a quarter of a century's experience, they have become palled and ennuied with the monotony of life and the scarcity of new ideas. One of these precocious old gentlemen, leaning back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head and yawning, thus criticises, in a drawling tone, to his companion, a popular book of the season:

'I say, Andrew, my dear boy, I have been turning over the leaves of this book in the hopes of finding something new in it; but all the thoughts seem to wear a familiar aspect. They look like old acquaintances with mustaches and long hair added since I saw them last. It seems to be a book made up of old truths dressed in a new garb. How one longs for something fresh and original; something penetrating the mysteries of our nature, like the early works of Shelley and Coleridge, of George Sand and-Tupper! It is perfectly astonishing with what plain food the public taste is satisfied now-a-days, aw!'

The turning-point in life comes at a very early period with these precocious old gentlemen. If nature is strong enough in them to carry them safely through it, they grow young and less mature in feeling very rapidly as they advance in years, and they become less exacting for something new in every author.

6

'As for originality,' said Byron, in his journal, all pretensions to it are ridiculous; 'there is nothing new under the sun.'

Emerson says an author is original in proportion to the amount he steals from Plato; and to those who are not much acquainted with Plato, he thus divulges the secret of much of his claim to originality. We know of no one book so much calculated to convince a man that there is nothing new under the sun as Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. When a young man has become enamored of a new book that he thinks abounds in 'new light,' he had better read Burton carefully. By so doing, he will be pretty sure to have his admiration lowered a peg, at least. Montaigne (who, whatever his merit as an original writer may be, produced what Lord Halifax, the most fastidious critic of his time, pronounced the most readable book he ever met with,) compares his writings to a thread that binds the flowers of others, and that by incessantly pouring the waters of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper.

The principal difference between Lord Brougham and some unlearned wood-sawyers may be, that the mind of the former has been enriched and strengthened with the thoughts, experience, and observation of others; they have become incorporated with himself, and form a part of his identity; and the latter lack this advantage. In short, one has culture, and the others have not.

What is often termed originality, is more a manufactured article than a natural product. Moore, in dwelling upon the elaborate care with which all the performances of Sheridan were prepared, was led to exclaim, genius is patience.' An original thinker may be considered as one who has grown mentally fat upon the food great minds in all ages of the world have afforded him. Montaigne and Emerson, as we have seen, have confessed, with careless frankness, some of the sources of their originality.

Of course it is necessary that nature should have furnished a tolerably broad and capacious foundation for mental fatness to be laid upon. It is impossible to make a very fat hog of a Guinea pig. All men have not a disposition, and could not cultivate one, to grapple with the deep and subtle thoughts of profound minds. Books, books,' says Bulwer; 'magnets to which all iron minds insensibly move.' Minds of a softer metal, of a less investigating character, do not move in that direction. The mind grows by what it feeds upon, and no man can be an original thinker without a good deal of knowledge. All that was wanting, perhaps, to develope the powers of the village Hampden,' 'the mute, inglorious Milton,' and 'the guiltless Cromwell,' that the country churchyard contained, was knowledge. But knowledge is of no value unless it is well digested; and in this respect nature is an infallible guide. Minds, like stomachs, have little relish for food they cannot digest; and there is every variety of strength in the digestive powers of the mind as of the body.

New thoughts, in regard to human nature, at least, must be exceedingly rare, but new combinations of thoughts are of less frequent oc

currence.

The youthful genius works out into comeliness of shape, with great pain and labor, what he conceives to be a bright, original thought. As he advances in years, and as his knowledge becomes more extensive, he is led to believe that the thought was old in the time of Zoroaster and Confucius. Human nature was as well understood long before Solomon's time as it is now. It is only in scientific knowledge that so many new truths have been discovered, and such vast progress made. It is affirmed by the highest authority that nothing new or valuable in principles or practical wisdom has been added to what the works of Aristotle and Cicero contain on the subject of government and politics, notwithstanding the host of great jurists and statesmen that England alone has produced, from Bacon to Bentham.

Descartes foresaw as clearly as Franklin the supremacy man was destined to gain over matter. In his Discourse on Method, published in 1637, he says: In these new triumphs of knowledge, men may learn to enjoy the fruits of the earth without trouble: their health will be improved, and they will be able to exempt themselves from an infinitude of ills, as well of the body as of the mind, and even perhaps from the weakness of age.'

Dr. Franklin, about a century and a half later, wrote a letter to Dr. Priestley, from which the following is an extract. Speaking of the power which man might in time acquire over matter, he said: 'Agriculture may diminish its labor and double its produce: all diseases may, by sure

means, be prevented or cured, (not excepting even that of old age,) and our lives lengthened at pleasure, even beyond the antediluvian standard.' These remarks of Franklin's are sometimes quoted as evincing his claim to be considered a true prophet.

Our

There is much less originality of expression than many suppose. most common conversation is interlarded with expressions used by old and distinguished authors. We could hardly get through a day without employing some of Shakspeare's happy sayings. One advantage in poring so long over Latin and Greek authors, is that the beautiful thoughts and language they contain may be strongly impressed upon the mind. A circumstance, only worthy of mention from the singularity of the coïncidence, serves to illustrate this. The writer of this article was reading one of Brougham's essays, when the following fine metaphor arresting his attention, he read it aloud to his companion, who happened to be studying Horace at the time: 'He who is not bold enough to face the perils of the deep, may hug the shore too near and make shipwreck upon its inequalities."

Do you find that there?' was the astonished exclamation of this person. 'Why, I have just been studying the very same thing here.' He then read from Horace the lines which expressed the very same metaphor. (The reader may hunt them up at his leisure.)

'Language was given us to conceal our thoughts,' is one of the smart sayings credited to Talleyrand. It has been discovered that Goldsmith used it long before Talleyrand's time; and how many had used it before him, is not known. An expression used by Calhoun, 'masterly inactivity,' was considered a very fine original expression in him, until it was traced back, we don't know how many centuries. When Webster, on a certain occasion, spoke of the sea of up-turned faces' that greeted him, it was thought to be a fine expression, and something new under the sun. It was soon discovered that it occurred in one of Scott's novels. When some friend informed Fillmore that Scott was the candidate nominated for the Presidency, he told him that he must now attach himself to Scott, as 'more worshipped the rising than the setting sun.' This was considered a very wise reply in Mr. Fillmore, and it was also so considered when Pompey made it to Sylla.

The New-York Times, we believe, is to be credited with the following cluster of seeming plagiarisms:

'COWPER said: 'GOD made the country and man made the town.' The Latin poet, VARRO, expressed that very sentiment before him. POPE says: "The proper study of mankind is man;' but CHARRON, the Frenchman, said it first. BYRON, in Childe Harold, has the image of a broken mirror, to show how a broken heart multiplies images of sorrow. But the same simile is in BURTON. GIORDANO BRUNS said that the first people of the world should rather be called the youngsters than the ancients. LORD BACON (a large plagiarist) makes use of the very same idea. GRAY sings beautifully about 'full many a gem of purest ray serene,' and many a flower, concealed in the mine and in the sea. But Bishop HALL first wrote the whole sentiment in prose. ADDISON speaks of the stars for ever singing as they shine. Sir THOMAS BROWNE talks of 'the singing constellations'; though both have followed the idea expressed in the Scripture. SHELLEY speaks of Death and his brother Sleep. The expression was Sir THOMAS BROWNE'S. It is impossible for a reader to go through a variety of books without finding plagiarism, or, at least, coïncidences, on almost every page he pores on.'

Macaulay is unquestionably the most popular living writer; and we doubt if he is less original than Carlyle, Emerson, or some other 'great