sun.

Those great mechanical powers, which are only to be found in mountainous regions, at the foot of rapid cascades, will now, thanks to the ingenuity of Watt, be reared at will, without difficulty and without incumbrance, in the centre of towns, and in every story of a building.

The intensity of these powers will be regulated by the mechanic's will, and will not depend, as heretofore, upon the most unsteady of natural causes-atmospheric influence. The different branches of each manufacture may be united in a common enclosure, and even under the same roof. The productions of industry, whilst they are thus improved in quality, will be diminished in price. Population, well fed, well clad, and comfortably lodged, will increase with rapidity; it will cover with elegant dwellings every region, even those districts which have been justly styled the Steppes of Europe, and which the barrenness of ages seems for ever to have condemned to remain the exclusive domain of the

feræ naturæ.1 In a few years, insignificant hamlets will become important cities; and, in a short while, such towns as Birmingham, where a few years since one could scarcely count thirty streets, will take their place among the largest, most beautiful, and richest towns of a powerful kingdom.

Transferred to our ships, the steam-engine will replace an hundredfold the efforts of the triple and quadruple banks of rowers, from whom our ancestors required an extent and kind of labour, ranked among the punishments of the greatest criminals. With the help of a few bushels of coals, man will overcome the elements, and will make light of calms, contrary winds, and even storms. Transport will become much more rapid,-the time of the arrival of the steam-vessel will be as regular as that of our public coaches; and we shall no longer have occasion to remain on the coast for weeks, or even months, the heart a prey to cruel anxiety, watching with anxious eye on the distant horizon, for the uncertain traces of the vessel which is to restore to us a father or a mother, a brother or a friend. In fine, the steamengine, conveying in its train thousands of travellers, will run upon railroads, more swiftly than the best racehorse, loaded only with its diminutive jockey.

This is a very abridged sketch of the benefits bequeathed tc the world by the machine of which Papin supplied the germ in his writings, and which, after so many ingenious exertions, Watt carried to such admirable perfection. Posterity will assuredly not degrade them to the level of other labours, which have been too much commended, and whose real influence, weighed by the tribunal of reason, will for ever remain circumscribed within the confined circle of a few individuals and a limited space of time.

We have long been in the habit of talking of the age of Augustus, and of the age of Louis XIV. Eminent individuals amongst us have likewise held that we might with propriety speak of the age of Voltaire, of Rousseau, and of Montesquieu. I do not hesitate to declare my conviction, that when the immense services already rendered by the steam-engine shall be added to all the marvels it holds out to promise, a grateful population will then familiarly talk of the ages of Papin and of Watt!— ARAGO's Life of Watt.'

In modern times, the question, as to the distinct effect of political institutions on learning, has become greatly complicated, in consequence of the large number of separate states into which the civilized world is divided, and the easy and rapid communication between them. The consequence is, that a powerful impulse, given to mind in one country, under the influence of causes favourable to its progress, may be felt, to some extent, in other countries where no such causes exist. Upon the whole, however, the history of modern literature bears but cold testimony to the genial influence of the governments under which it has grown up. Dante and Petrarch composed their beautiful works ir exile; Boccaccio complains, in the most celebrated of his, that he was transfixed with the darts of envy and calumny; Machiavelli was pursued by the party of the Medici, for resisting their tyrannical designs; Guicciardini retired, in disgust, to compose his history in voluntary exile; Galileo confessed, in the prisons of the Inquisition, that the earth did not move; Ariosto lived in poverty; and Tasso, the victim of dejection and despair. Cervantes, after he had immortalized himself in his great work, was obliged to write on for bread. The whole French Academy was pensioned, to crush the great Corneille. Racine, after living to see his finest pieces derided as cold and worthless, died of a broken heart. The divine genius of Shakspeare owed but little to patronage, for it raised him to no other rank than that of a subaltern actor in his own and Ben Jonson's plays. The immortal Bacon made a disastrous wreck of his greatness in a court, and is said (falsely I trust) to have begged a cup of beer, in his old age, and begged it in vain.

The most valuable of the pieces of Selden were written in that famous resort of great minds, the tower of London. Milton,

surprised by want, in his infirm old age, sold one of the first productions of the human mind for five pounds.' The great boast of English philosophy was expelled from his place in Oxford, and kept in banishment, "the King having been given to understand," to use the words of Lord Sunderland, who ordered the expulsion, "that one Locke has, upon several occasions, behaved himself very factiously against the government." Dryden was compelled to sacrifice his genius to the spur of immediate want. Otway was choked with a morsel of bread, too ravenously swallowed, after a long fast. Johnson was taken to prison for a debt of five shillings; and Burke petitioned for a professorship at Glasgow, and was denied. When we consider these facts, and the innumerable others of which these are a specimen, we may probably be led to the conclusion, that the appearance of eminent geniuses, under the forms of government subsisting in Europe, furnishes no decisive proof that they are the most friendly to intellectual progress.—EVERETT's' Education and Knowledge.'

AMONG the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted to distinguish the memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers, whose imaginary date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. When the Emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern in the side of an adjacent mountain, where they were doomed to die by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of huge stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones, to supply materials for some rustic edifice; the light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the seven sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber as they thought of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger; and resolved

that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions.

The youth (if we may still employ that appellation) could no longer recognise the once familiar aspect of his native country; and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress, and obsolete language, confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant. The Bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, the magistrates, the people, and as it is said, the emperor Theodosius himself, hastened to visit the cavern of the seven sleepers; who bestowed their benediction, related their story, and at the same instant peaceably expired. The origin of this marvellous fable cannot be ascribed to the pious fraud and credulity of the modern Greeks, since the authentic tradition may be traced within half a century of the supposed miracle. James of Sarug, a Syrian Bishop, who was born only two years after the death of the younger Theodosius, has devoted one of his two hundred and thirty homilies to the praise of the young men of Ephesus. Their legend, before the end of the sixth century, was translated from the Syriac into the Latin language, by the care of Gregory

of Tours.

The hostile communions of the East preserve their memory with equal reverence; and their names are honourably inscribed in the Roman, the Abyssinian, and the Russian calendar. Nor has their reputation been confined to the Christian world. This popular tale, which Mahomet might have learned when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria, is introduced, as a divine revelation, into the Koran. The story of the seven sleepers has been adopted and adorned by the nations from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion; and some vestiges of a similar tradition have been discovered in the remote extremities of Scandinavia. This easy and universal belief, so expressive of the sense of mankind, may be ascribed to the genuine merit of the fable itself. We imperceptibly advance from youth to age, without observing the gradual but incessant change of human affairs; and even in our larger experience of history, the imagination is accustomed, by a perpetual series of causes and effects, to unite the most distant revolutions. But if the interval between two memorable eras could be instantly annihilated; if it were possible, after a momentary slumber of two hundred years,

to display the new world to the eyes of a spectator, who still retained a lively and recent impression of the old, his surprise and his reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of a philosophical romance. The scene could not be more advantageously placed than in the two centuries which elapsed between the reigns of Decius and of Theodosius the younger.

During this period, the seat of government had been transported from Rome to a new city' on the banks of the Thracian Bosphorus; and the abuse of a military spirit had been suppressed by an artificial system of tame and ceremonious servitude. The throne of the persecuting Decius was filled by a succession of Christian and orthodox princes, who had extirpated the fabulous gods of antiquity; and the public devotion of the age was impatient to exalt the saints and martyrs of the Catholic church, on the altars of Diana and Hercules. The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the north, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.-GIBBON'S Roman Empire.'

1. What new city?

IT is now impossible to unravel the truth of many strange things which are told us of former days; for, before the art of printing was known, few persons could read or write; so that what was really true, in passing from one to another, soon became mingled with much falsehood, owing to the general disposition among men to make wonderful things appear still more wonderful. This disposition to alter truth is very wrong; but it is as now observable as it ever has been. The accounts given us of Robin Hood, of Guy Earl of Warwick, and of Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, have not been magnified more than many occurrences of a later date. Boys should endeavour to adhere strictly to truth in giving an account of the simplest event, as well as of the most remarkable.' Thousands of persons hardly ever give a report of a common conversation, without either adding to, or taking away a part of the truth. A farmer once was told that his turnip field had been robbed, and that the robbery had been committed by a poor inoffensive man, of the