Can you with frankness own a crime, Flat contradiction can you bear, But wait, or modestly explain, And tell your reasons, one by one, Can you in business, or in play, Does laughing at you, in a joke, Or when you find that you could do Put all these questions to your heart, And, when they've each been fairly tried, But if they all should be denied, Then you're too proud to own your pride! GREAT EFFECTS RESULT FROM LITTLE THE same connexion betwixt small things and great, runs through all the concerns of our world. The ignorance of a physician, or the carelessness of an apothecary, may spread death through a family or a town. How often has the sickness of one man become the sickness of thousands? How often has the error of one man become the error of thousands? A fly or an atom may set in motion a train of intermediate causes, which shall produce a revolution in a kingdom. Any one of a thousand incidents, might have cut off Alexander of Greece in his cradle. But if Alexander had died in infancy, or had lived a single day longer than he did, it might have put another face on all the following history of the world. A spectacle-maker's boy, amusing himself in his father's shop, by holding two glasses between his finger and his thumb, and varying their distance, perceived the weathercock of the church spire, opposite to him, much larger than ordinary, and apparently much nearer, and turned upside down. This excited the wonder of the father, and led him to additional experiments; and these resulted in that astonishing instrument, the Telescope, as invented by Galileo and perfected by Herschell. On the same optical principles was constructed the Microscope, by which we perceive that a drop of stagnant water is a world teeming with inhabitants. By one of these instruments, the experimental philosopher measures the ponderous globes, that the omnipotent hand has ranged in majestic order through the skies; by the other, he sees the same hand employed in rounding and polishing five thousand minute, transparent globes in the eye of a fly. Yet all these discoveries of modern science, exhibiting the intelligence, dominion, and agency of God, we owe to the transient amusement of a child. It is a fact, commonly known, that the laws of gravitation, which guide the thousands of rolling worlds in the planetary system, were suggested at first, to the mind of Newton, by the falling of an apple. The art of printing shows from what casual incidents the most magnificent events in the scheme of Providence may result. Time was, when princes were scarcely rich enough to purchase a copy of the Bible. Now every cottager in Christendom is rich enough to possess this treasure. "Who would have thought that the simple circumstance of a man amusing himself by cutting a few letters on the bark of a tree, and impressing them on paper, was intimately connected with the mental illumination of the world!" THE ORPHAN BOY. ALAS! I am an orphan boy, With nought on earth to cheer my heart; Nor kin nor kind to take my part. 1 My lodging is the cold, cold ground, And when the kiss of love goes round, Yet once I had a father dear, A mother, too, whom I could prize; But ah! there came a war, they say: I thought, nor could I thence foresee, A scarlet coat my father took, All in a shining cap had he. Then how my little heart did bound! Alas, I thought it fine to see; Nor dreamt, that when the kiss went round There soon would be no kiss for me. At length the bell again did ring, 'Twas what my father said he'd bring; My mother shrieked, her heart was woe; But once again, but once again, So now I am an orphan boy, With nought below my heart to cheer; And when the kiss of love goes round, THE SPIDER, CATERPILLAR, AND SILK-WORM. "WHAT sort of a weaver is your neighbour, the Silk-Worm?" said the Spider to a Caterpillar. "She is the slowest, dullest creature imaginable," replied the Caterpillar; "I can weave a web sixty times as quick as she can. But then she has got her name up in the world, while I am constantly the victim of envy and hatred. My productions are destroyed, sometimes rudely and boldly, sometimes with insidious cunning; but her labours are praised all the |