the thought always occurs to us, in these latter days, when reading the preamble to the Declaration of American Independence. Nearly one fourth of the volume is occupied by a sketch of the life and character of William H. Crawford, which is valuable for its facts, and more full in its details than any other memoir of that great statesman with which we are acquainted. The author's style, though not free from faults, is nervous and direct, and in the dearth of living works imbued with "Southern pride of mind" his book may fairly rank among the best of its class. Here in the East most of us have a very inadequate idea of the rapid growth and the present and prospective greatness of the "Great West." In nothing is this more manifest than in the establishment and endowment of literary institutions of a high grade. We have before us, in a pamphlet of fifty-six pages, printed in a style that would be deemed creditable to New York or Boston, The Eighth Annual Cutalogue of the Corporation, Faculty, and Students of Lawrence University, an institution of which many of our readers never heard before. It is in the State of Wisconsin, in the village, or city, we know not which it is, of Appleton. It has a strong faculty, among whom we recognize the names of several graduates from the Wesleyan University at Middletown, and numbers, including the primary department, three hundred and forty-four students. Here is another instance of what the "Great West" has done and is doing in the way of education. It is a catalogue of the officers and students of what "will be hereafter known as Cornell College." It is located at Mount Vernon, in the State of Iowa. Some sixty thou sand dollars have been secured toward the en dowment of the institution, and the number of students is two hundred and eighty-eight. Without anything sparkling, brilliant, or overpow ering, there was that wholeness, strength, and symmetry which everywhere commanded respect and esteem. No one could be long in his company, or on intimate terms with him, without loving the man as much as he revered the minister. His piety was deep living. It was not so much what he said, or what he and uniform, consistent and constant; every-day holy did, as the spirit and manner of saying and doing every thing. It was seen and felt, rather than heard. His appearance, manners, movements, seem to throw an atmosphere of purity and heaven around him. In the conference, in the council chamber, in the family circle, in public and in private, there were the same amiableness, dignity, gravity, and purity which sat as a halo of glory upon him. What Bishop Burnet said of Archbishop Leighton, I am persuaded could be said with as much truth of Bishop Wangh: "That in free and frequent conversation with him for above two and twenty years, I never knew him say an idle word, a word that had not a direct tendency to edifi cation; and I never saw him in any other temper but that I wished to be in in the last moments of my life." It will not be for want of books upon the subwith the Holy Land. Yet another has been ject if the present generation are not familiar added to the long catalogue. It is entitled from Beersheba to Sidon. By HORATIUS BONAR, The Land of Promise: Notes of a Spring Journey D.D., a writer well known on this side of the Atlantic, by previous volumes of a religious character, several of which have been noticed in our pages. These "Notes" are plain and Sermons, occasioned by the death of Bishop He had a well-ordered, well-balanced, well-directed mind. There was no faculty, power, or susceptibility disproportionately strong, out-growing, overtopping, and throwing other faculties into the shade. All was in beautiful harmony, as nicely adjusted as the wheels and springs of a time-piece that move the hands upon the dial, and tell truly the time of day. He had a true estimate of himself and of others, and never exacted more than he was willing to give. He never Inade himself little by trying to appear great. He was never the hero of his own story, or with design the fair compiler tells us, a book of hymns for Hymns of the Church Militant. This is simply, private use. She has made her selections from a great variety of sources, and has thrown her materials together without classification, or any order of arrangement. Her book contains some of the best hymus in the language, and quite a number that, in our judgment, were hardly worthy of a place in such good company. But on this subject, as on many others, great allowance is to be made for diversity of taste. Scarcely any two persons would perfectly agree in the selection of hymns for a volume, and it is quite as much as the compiler could expect if she has fully satisfied herself. We note that several hymns, heretofore found only in our own collection, are insertWe have that beautiful hymn of Ford's: monopolized the conversation and attention of the Vain are all terrestrial pleasures; those stanzas of Charles Wesley as altered for our book, All praise to the Lamb, etc., and Dr. T. E. Bond's two stanzas, beginning Father of spirits, hear our prayer, which were taken from a long poem published originally by the author in a Baltimore periodical. The volume is a well printed duodecimo of six hundred and forty pages, from the press of Carter & Brothers. Valuable additions recently made to Harper's Classical Library, in their usual style of neatness of type and binding, are the Works of Tacitus, in two volumes. The text is that known as the Oxford translation, which has been revised, and is accompanied by copious notes, and an ample index. One of the most unobtrusive charitable institutions, and one that is effecting a vast amount of good, is The Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-minded Children, of which we have the Fifth Annual Report from the Board of Directors. Its object is sufficiently explained by its designation; and the results, as detailed in the report, are not only creditable to the managers but highly gratifying to the philanthropist. It is satisfactorily shown that the attempt to redeem idiocy is not always vain, and that the imbecile in body and mind may, by suitable training, be elevated to the rank of rational beings. Surely no object can commend itself more forcibly to the benevolent, and no charit able institution is more worthy of countenance and support. We make room for one "case" as given in the report. Case-An orphan boy of fourteen years was brought to us in 1856. His father died from intemperance, and his mother from consumption. He was left in poverty at a very early age, with none but a sister's feeble hand to sustain him. He was an imbecile in body and mind. Thrown among the jeering street boys of a village, his moral tastes were easily perverted; he could not speak with distinctness, walk erect, or think aright. He became obstinate, untruthful, profane, and generally depraved. He was shut out from common schools, and needed domestic care. He is now a bright boy; stammering in speech, and somewhat tottering in gait, it is true; but after one year's residence with us, he was sent home alone, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, by railway and stage; stopped all night at a hotel, paid his own fare, made a visit to his friends, and is now with us, an industrious, useful, trusty boy. He was nearing the lowest grade of idiocy; he is now being adorned with honesty and virtue, the highest gifts of manhood. From the Fifth Annual Report of the New York Ophthalmic Hospital, we learn that during the year 1857 the number of patients in the institution was one thousand and forty-three, of whom by far the larger portion are reported to have been cured or relieved, while the number pronounced incurable is only seventy. After alluding to the results of the past year, the surgeons of the institution give it as their opinion, "that neither the Legislature of the State nor the Common Council of the city need call in question the meritorious character or worthiness of this increasing charity, but cheerfully give it their united support." The Farm and the COLOR OF RURAL BUILDINGS. — Mr. Vaux, in his "Country Houses," noticed at the time of publication in the pages of THE NATIONAL, remarks that The question of color is a most interesting one in any design for a country house, and seems at present but little understood in America, by far the greater number of houses being simply painted white, with bright green blinds. By this means each residence is distinctly protruded from the surrounding scenery, and instead of grouping and harmonizing with it, asserts a right to carry on a separate business on its own account; and this lack of sympathy between the building and its surrounding is very disagreeable to an artistic eye. Even a harsh vulgar outline may often pass without particular notice, in view of rural scenery, if the mass is quiet and harmonious in color, while a very tolerable composition may injure materially the views near it, if it is painted white, the human eye being so constituted that it will be constantly held in bondage by this striking blot of crude light, and compelled to give it unwilling attention. In country houses the design has to be adapted to the location, and not the location to the design; for it is undesirable, and generally impracticable, to make the natural landscape subservient to the architectural composition. Woods, fields, mountains, and rivers, will be more important than the houses that are built among them; and every attempt to force individual buildings into prominent notice is an evidence either of a vulgar desire for notoriety at any sacrifice, or of an ill-educated eye and taste. The colors of rural buildings should be carefully varied. They should be often cheerful and light, sometimes neutral, seldom dark, and never black or white; and there is, fortunately, no end to the combination of tints that may be used in painting a house. The constant recurrence Flower-Garden. of about the same requirements will, of course, lead to much similarity in plan, particularly in small buildings; but the monotony that this would occasion may be agreeably relieved by variety in color, both in the interior and exterior. Different patterns of paper will make two rooms of the same proportion no longer alike; and the same result will be observed on the exterior, by adopting different tints for the walls and the woodwork. Another important point to be considered is, that it is entirely insufficient to use only one or two shades of color for each house. Every rural building requires four tints to make it a pleasant object in the way of color; and this variety costs but little more than monotonous repetition, while it adds much to the completeness of the effect. The main wall should be of some agreeable shade of color, the roof trimmings, verandas, and other woodwork, being either of a different color, or of a different shade of the same color, so that a contrast, but not a hard one, may be established. The third color, not widely dif ferent from the woodwork, should be applied to the solid part of the Venetian blinds, and the movable slats should be painted of the fourth tint. This last should be by far the darkest used on the premises, for the effect of a glass window or opening in a wall is always dark when seen from a distance; and if this natural fact is not remembered, and the shutters are painted the same color as the rest of the house, a blank, uninteresting effect will be produced, for when the blinds are closed, which is generally the case, the house, except to a person very near it, will appear to be without any windows at all. This error is often fallen into, and requires to be most carefully guarded against. as to the exposure of fresh manure on the surface of the ground, relates the following striking experiment, made by a scientific man, for the purpose of testing expressly the several methods of using manure: There being a difference of opinion among scientific men regarding the advantage of spreading dung upon the surface, and leaving it exposed some time before covering it in, Professor Legnitz, of Eldena, had recourse to an experiment for the solving of the question. For this purpose he selected two and a half roods, which he divided into four equal parts. To No. 1 no manure was given. No. 2 received about two tons of farm yard dung, which was spread immediately and covered in by means of the plow. No. 8 was treated in the same manner, with this difference, that the hoe was used instead of the plow. The same quantity of dung was carried to No. 4, and allowed to remain spread three weeks on the soil before being covered in by the hoe. On the tenth of October the four lots subjected to experiment were sown with about ninety-five pints of rye seed each. The following are the total results of the crop of each lot, grain and straw included: No. 1 produced 583 pounds; No. 2, 770 do.; No. 8, 818 do.; No. 4, 930 do. The writer very justly remarks that a single experiment should not be considered conclusive, but that it is sufficiently striking to warrant a repetition of it on a larger scale. tank, placing them in the basin; turn over the entire heap with shovels two or three times, till the whole is well mixed, and the preparation will then be perfectly fit to be handled, or at least spread with shovels from a cart on the soil. This process may be attended with a little trouble at first, but once or twice done, the difficulty is past, and no one giving his attention to the matter will afterward regret his perseverance. Another method, requiring patience and attention, but which is good when immediate application is not desired, is to use a watertight hogshead or cask, put in a layer of Lones at the bottom four inches thick, a like layer of good dry unleached wood ashes, alternating in this manner until the cask is full. Keep this compost wet constantly with water from nine to twelve months, occasionally adding a small quantity of sulphuric acid to the water used, to fix the ammonia, and you will find the bones decomposed and available as a manure, We know no better method available to the farmer, and practical on a small scale. Another time we shall say more of the value of super THE VALUE OF INDIAN CORN.-Indian Meal phosphates, and of their application. Let us contains more than four times as much oleaginous matter as wheat flour; more starch, and consequently capable of producing more sugar. The value of the annual crop of Indian corn in the United States is immense. It is cultivated in all sections, and thrives in almost every latitude. In it there is a natural coalescence of elementary principles which constitute the basis of organic life, that exists in no other vegetable production. In ultimate composition, in nutritious properties, in digestibility, and in its adaptation to the various necessities of animal life in the different climates of the earth, corn meal is capable of supplying more of the absolute wants of the adult human system than any other single substance in nature. premise, however, that none of our readers need shudder at the idea of becoming too scientific in consequence. Our aim shall be to make our articles the medium of practical information, such as every farmer may comprehend and practice. WALL ROSES.-The secret of growing roses against the wall might be packed in a lady's thimble. A two feet deep border of strong loam, four or five feet wide, to be as rich as rotten dungs can make it; the border to be thoroughly soaked with soft pond-water twice a week in dry weather, and when the roses are in bloom, to keep them thin in the branches, as if they were peach-trees, and to play the water-engine against them as for a house on fire,, from the first appearance of insects till no more come. There is a reason for everything under the sun, and the reason for insects attacking roses in general, and those on walls more particularly, is from too much dryness at the roots, causing the juices to be more palatable through the action of the leaves. BONES FOR MANURE.-HOW PREPARED.-Get a joiner to put together a rough box, something like a cooler for steamed food, but lighter at the sides, say eight feet long by three or two feet six inches high, and three feet wide, dovetailed and joined with white lead. The box prepared, put in the water of the preparation first, then the sulphuric acid, allowing one half more bulk of water than acid, and one half less weight of acid than bones; that is, to a gallon of acid allow a gallon and a half of water, and to one hundred pounds of bones allow fifty pounds of acid. To the water and acid the bones must now be added, (finely broken up into half-inch fragments, or less,) mixing the whole intimately and equally. This done, cover up the box or tank with straw or old sacks, laid on pieces of wood, or have a rough wooden lid to the box, and then allow the whole to stand untouched forty-eight hours. The process of manufacture will then be complete. In anticipation of its necessity I would recommend the careful accumulation of house ashes, during the year, kept in some dry place. When the operation above detailed is completed, put the ashes in a heap in a convenient position for the tank; make there a basin at the top of the heap, and lift the dissolved bones out of the soil; they produce their fruit from spurs on the PRUNING AND MANAGEMENT OF THE BLACK CURRANT.-Black currants require quite a different system of pruning from the other varieties; the great point to aim at is to get as much young wood as possible every year from the lower part of the tree. This is increased by thinning out the old wood from the bottom, and the finest fruit is obtained from the young wood. In striking the black currant you should select young shoots about ten or twelve inches long, insert them in the ground, with the buds on, about six inches. The buds of the other sorts are rubbed off except about four, which are left on the portion out of ground. I have had black kinds struck on the same system, but they never lasted long; they die off limb by limb about the time they ought to make good trees. They like a moisture-holding soil; if planted on dry ground they suffer much in hot summers. Red and white sorts like a lighter old wood. In pruning, cut a portion of the young wood back every year, and thin according to the growth of the tree. GRAPES IN KANSAS.-A Kansas paper states that it is the intention of a gentleman in Virginia to carry to Topeka, early in the coming spring, two hundred thousand grape roots, embracing the most productive and hardy varieties cultivated in this country. THE WORLD AT LARGE. A map of busy life, Ita fluctuations and its vast concerns.-COWPER. The past month has been one of more than usual excitement in Congress, growing out of that stupendous fraud, the Lecompton Constitutution. In the Senate most powerful speeches were made against it by Messrs. Seward, Crittenden, Bell, Foote, Wilson, Fessenden, and Douglas. It, however, finally passed on the 23rd of March, by a vote of thirty-four to twenty-four. The amendment merging the Minnesota with the Kansas bill was withdrawn. An amendment was adopted declaring that nothing in the act shall be construed to abridge or infringe the right of the people of Kansas to alter or abolish their form of government at any time or in any manner they may deem proper. In the House, on the 1st of April, Lecompton was thrown out by a majority of one hundred and twenty to one hundred and twelve. . . . The bill of General Quitman for an increase of the army passed the House by an overwhelming vote. But seventythree votes were recorded against it. The substitute reported by Mr. Faulkner-the administration measure was defeated by a vote almost without parallel, although it had been asserted on the best authority, and still remains uncontradicted, that the president would not call out or use the volunteer force, if placed at his disposal. It passed the Senate on the 1st of April. According to the plan laid down by the War Department for the service in Utah, there will be by July next five thousand five hundred troops in that territory, amply supplied for an active campaign. Should it be necessary this force will consist of about one third cavalry, sixteen guns of artillery, and the rest infantry. Three fifths of this force has yet to be sent. Russel, the contractor for transportation of this army, will employ three thousand five hundred teamsters to drive wagons carrying the supplies. This will give some idea of the magnitude and cost of the undertaking.. The War Department has received dispatches, dated January 23, from Lieutenant Beale, who is the superintendent of the wagon road across the continent by the way of the Mohave and Colorado Rivers. He reports that the camels employed in his expedition had stood the cold weather and snow of the Sierra Nevada admirably, and indeed had fattened in that climate. He expects to arrive home in March, when he will be able to show whether the route will be practicable for travel at all times of the year.. The Court of Appeals, of this State, have made an important decision in the suit of the Harpers against one of the insurance companies, which refused to pay the amount of insurance upon their burned building, on the ground that camphene, a dangerous article, was used, and was the cause of the fire. The Court decided that when a company take a risk upon a workshop they do so upon all articles commonly used in it; that camphene is one of the articles legitimately used in their business, and that the insurance is not, therefore, invalidated by the origin of the fire. Mohammed Pasha, Rear-Admiral of the Turkish Army, arrived in this city on the 5th of March, and remained one week previous to his departure for Washington, during which time he was lionized by a committee of the Common Council. In Washington he was well received in all circles. He returns to this city in order to have built a first-class flag-ship for the Turkish navy, after which he intends starting on a hunting excursion, accompanied by Vice-President Breckenridge, and several other distinguished personages, to Red River.... The Constitutional Convention of Kansas on the 30th of March ordered a remonstrance to be immediately sent into Congress protesting against the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution. The Convention have decided to submit the new constitution to a vote of the people on the third Tuesday in May, and also that an election for State and county officers shall take place at the same time; all laws not repugnant to the constitution to remain in force until they expire by their own limitation. . . . The bark Adriatic, so long under libel in a French seaport for running down the Lyonnaise, and which has twice made her escape through the indomitable energy of Captain Dunham, has arrived safely at Savannah... Judge Slidell, of Louisiana, has become insane from the effect of a blow struck upon his head by a ruffian, during the last election in New Orleans. Nathan Jackson, Esq., of this city, celebrated his seventy-eighth birthday, a few weeks ago, by a donation of fourteen thousand dollars in cash, and nine acres of land, worth ten thousand dollars, to Williams College, Massachusetts. The result of the Court Martial upon Colonel Sumner at Carlisle Barracks is an honorable acquittal from both the charges preferred against him by General Harney. The result seems to give general satisfaction. . . . On the 1st of April the Collins Steamships were sold by auction for the sum of fifty thousand dollars over their liabilities. The Supreme Court of Georgia, in the important Savage will case, have decided that a man has a right to make a will devising property to his widow during her widowhood, and cutting her off entirely in the event of her marriage. It had been ably contended by General Mugan on the other side, that such wills were in restraint of marriage, impolitic, and illegal. . . . A Negro woman, at Montgomery, Alabama, was recently put up at a raffle; eighty chances, at ten dollars a chance. She was at the nice marketable age of thirty years. The Ohio House of Representatives passed bills repealing the acts of last winter, for the prevention of kidnapping from that State, and refusing the use of the jails of the State for the holding of fugitive slaves. Another kidnapping case came to light in this city last month. John R. Finally and his wife were brought before Mayor Tiemann, charged by Sarah Taylor, a colored girl, with having induced her to enter their employ, taken her to Washington under the allegation of going to Newark, New Jersey, and attempted to sell her there for six hundred dollars. Finally and his wife were arrested in Maryland and brought to this city. They are to be tried for the offense this month. The Young Men's Christian Association of Pittsburgh has distributed twenty-two thousand bushels of coal to the poor of that city since the commencement of the hard season. Some five thousand persons have been relieved during the winter. . . Commander Hurtstein has had the gold medal struck in his honor by order of the Legislature of this state, forwarded to him by Governor King, and handsomely acknowledged it. our last, is the defeat of Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons on the French Refugee question. The ministry had resigned in consequence. The resignations were at once accepted, though much sensation was caused by the announcement, and the Earl of Derby, at her majesty's solicitation, undertook the task of forming a new ministry, in which he succeeded. Lord Derby had delivered his inaugural address, giving an insight into his intended policy, which was generally regarded as a successful steering be tween the danger of offending the pride of the English people, and the fear of injuring the Anglo-French alliance. The conflicting interests have been reconciled at least for the time, and the Derby ministry may hold power longer than was at first supposed. The members of Parliament in the Derby ministry had all been re-elected without opposition. A London committee to organize the opposition to a conspiracy bill had been formed... The young Prince Albert is pursuing naval studies, with a view, it is said, of passing his examination forthwith and entering the service as a naval cadet.... Dr. Lie ingstone and his companions in the African Exploring Expedition have sailed in the steamer Pearl from Liverpool for Africa. ... The effect of the ministerial defeat in France was very decided, as there was evidently no expectation of so untoward a result, and for some time threatened to be the cause of a serious misunderstanding between the two countries. However, all angry feelings have been got over, at least for the present. The tone of the government papers is much lowered in the knowledge of the event. The trial of the conspirators against the life of Louis Napoleon, had terminated in the convietion of Orsini, Pierri, and Rudio, who have been sentenced to death, and of Gomez, who is condemned to penal servitude for life. All admitted their complicity except Gomez. Orsini and Pierri were executed on the 10th of March. Rudio was imprisoned for life. Persons alleged to be parties to a vast conspiracy in France had been arrested in the departments. The emperor had abolished the butchers' monopoly in Paris, which act was giving him much popularity among the people. Generals Changarnier and Bedeau had been officially notified by the Moniteur that they might return to France.... The official opposition to the payment of the Stade Dues tolls was being organized in Hamburg by the United States Consul and others. . . . Advices from Constantinople say that the city of Corinth had been destroyed by an earthquake: but only thirty persons were killed. A very disastrous fire had occurred in Constantinople and another at Adrianople.... The Prince of Prus sia had offered to grant a political amnesty on the occasion of his son's marriage, but been refused permission by the Cabinet, who think that he has no power as Regent to perform an act of that character. The prince has appealed to the law officers of the crown. The Prussian Regency question has not been definitively settled. The Danish ministers had withdrawn their resig nations... The news from the East is of more than usual importance, especially from China. Canton was taken full possession of on the 30th of December, and the Cantonese evacu A fearful massacre is said, by advices from New Orleans, to have taken place at the Ruatan Islands, one hundred and fifty of the inhabitants having been murdered by the Indians. . . Late accounts from California state that much time had been consumed in the Legislature on bills for the suppression of mobs and insurrections, which was manifestly aimed at the Vigilance Committee, and of which the fate had not yet been ascertained. The Legislature had sent a memorial to Congress asking that the mail contract be divided between the two competing lines of steamships.... The Supreme Court of California has rendered a singular decision in the Stovall fugitive slave case. The court says that though by the law the negro is unquestionably free when brought by his master upon California soil, yet, as Mr. Stovall is in bad health he must in this case have his slave. They take particular pains to say that this must not form a precedent, however!... A negro named Bracy struck a citizen of Auburn named Nunphy, with his pick, on the 19th of February, so that the brain oozed from the wound, and he would certainly die. The citizens took the negro, held and overawed the sheriff and his posse, who attempted to take him in charge, and hung the murderer the same day to a tree.... A man named Jose Anastasia, who was to have been hung at Monterey recently, was reprieved by the governor, but the under-sheriff in charge did not choose to understand the order, and hung him up. Henry Bates, the alleged defaulting state treasurer, had been tried for the third time, and succeeded in obtaining a verdict of acquit tal. . . . From Central America we learn that General Lamar, our minister to Nicaragua, was formally received by the Martinez government, and addressed the president in a speech which gave very great satisfaction. The Yrisarri Treaty was under consideration in the Legislative Assembly, and the general feeling was that it would not be approved of, except with such modifications as would render a reopening of negotiations at Washington necessary. Carey Jones had taken official leave of the government, and departed for home. General Jerez was appointed Minister of War and Hacienda for Nicaragua.... Don Miguel de Castillo had been inaugurated as President of San Salvador. In this republic the people were agitated by reports of a contemplated fillibuster invasion from the United States and revolutionary conspiracies. The New Granadian Congress met at Bogota on the 2d of February. The President, in his message, stated that Mr. Buchanan had determined not to preserve the hostile attitude toward New Granada which had been assumed by Pierce's administration, and that the convention lately negotiated between the two republics would end all differences and disappoint an "interested" American press. The Foreign Secretary alluded to the convention in his report, and hopes that Congress would consider it fully with a view to approving the clauses which are beyond the jurisdiction of the executive. An official decree increases, by one and a half per cent., the taxes now paid by commercial establishments on the Isthmus of Panama. . . The news from the South Pacific is interesting. General Vivanco's forces shelled the town of Arica, from the frigated the city on the same day. Commissioner ate Apurimac, on the 21st of March, and took possession of the place after a severe battle. General Vivanco had withdrawn his troops from Iquique. An attempt at revolution had been made at Lima, but was put down. In Bolivia the garrison of Cobija robbed the treasury at that place and deserted for Peru. They were overtaken, and twenty-one of the mutineers shot. The most important news from England since Yeh, Governor of Canton, and the commander of the Tartar troops had been taken prison ers. Yeh has been sent to Calcutta as a prisoner. From India we learn that Lucknow had not been taken. The cannonade was to have taken place on the 22d of February. Nena Sahib, with a few followers, was reported to be wandering about the country. The king of Oude had been tried, found guilty, and banished for life. |