wattled, and sometimes neatly plastered with mud, especially those in Manyema. Here, too, the thin-bodied and long-limbed goat to which we had been accustomed gave place to the short-legged, large-bodied and capaciousuddered variety of Manyema. The gray parrots with crimson tails here also first began to abound, and the hoarse growl of the fierce and shy "soko" (gorilla?) was first heard.

From the day we cross the watershed that divides the affluents of the Tanganika from the head-waters of the Luama there is observed a gradual increase in the splendor of Nature. By slow degrees she exhibits to us as we journey westward her rarest beauties, her wealth and all the profligacy of her vegetation. In the forests of Miketo and on the western slopes of the Goma mountains she scatters with liberal hand her luxuries of fruits, and along the banks of streams we see revealed the wild profusion of her bounties. As we increase the distance from the Tanganika we find the land disposed in graceful lines and curves; ridges heave up, separating valley from valley: hills lift their heads in the midst of the basins; and mountain-ranges, at greater distances apart, bound wide prospects wherein the lesser hill-chains, albeit of dignified proportions, appear but as agreeable diversities of scenery. Over the whole Nature has flung a robe of verdure of the most fervid tints. She has bidden the mountains loose their streamlets, has commanded the hills and ridges to bloom, filled. the valleys with vegetation breathing perfume; for the rocks she has woven garlands

of creepers, and the stems of trees she has draped with moss; and sterility she has banished from her domain.

Yet Nature has not produced a soft, velvety, smiling England in the midst of Africa. Far from it. She is here too robust and prolific. Her grasses are coarse, and wound like knives and needles; her reeds are tough and tall as bamboos; her creepers and convolvuli are of cable thickness and length; her thorns are hooks of steel; her trees shoot up to a height of a hundred feet. We find no pleasure in straying in search of wild flowers, and game is left undisturbed because of the difficulty of moving about, for, once the main path is left, we find ourselves over head amongst thick, tough, unyielding, lacerating grass.

At Manyema the beauty of Nature becomes terrible, and in the expression of her powers she is awful. The language of Swahili has words to paint her in every mood. English, rich as it is, is found insufficient. In the former we have the word pori for a forest, an ordinary thickly-wooded tract, but for the forests of Manyema it has four special words, mohuro, mwitu, mtambani and msitu. For mohuro we might employ the words "jungle forest;" for mwitu, "dense woods;" but for msitu and mtambani we have no single equivalent, nor could we express their full meaning without a series of epithets ending with "tangled jungle" or "impervious underwood in the midst of a dense forest,' for such is, in reality, the nature of a Manyema msitu.

HENRY M. STANLEY.

HUMILITY.

HUMILITY is a virtue all preach, none practise, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine

If a man does not take notice of that excellency and perfection that is in himself, how can he be thankful to God, who is the Author of all excellency and perfection? Nay, if a man hath too mean an opinion of himself, it will render him unserviceable both to God and man. Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up his dignity. In gluttons there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; it is not the eating nor it is not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the exSo in pride.

cess.

JOHN SELDEN.

of twopence, out of which he was obliged to eat. While doing this the little grandson. a child of about four years old, began to drag about pieces of wood and to collect them together.

What are you doing there, my child?" inquired his father.

"I am going to make a little trough," answered the child, "that father and mother may eat out of when I am a man."

The parents looked at each other for a moment, and then began to weep, at the same time replacing the old grandfather at the table; and from this time they showed all possible kindness to him, and were indulgent toward those infirmities which were the effect of age and weakness.

Translation of MATILDA LOUISA DAVIS.

THOUGHTS FOR THE STUDENT.

FROM THE GERMAN OF JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. THE NATURE OF THE SCHOLAR.

sometimes even he was not able to swallow what he had carried to his mouth. This disgusted his son and his wife, and they obliged him to sit in a corner behind the stove, giving him his food in an earthenware dish, and not always enough of it, which made him look wistfully toward the table with tears in his eyes.

One day, his trembling hands not being able to support the dish, it fell to the ground and was broken, which annoyed his daughterin-law very much, and she expressed her displeasure at the poor old man. He, however, made no reply, only sighed deeply, and they

which weakens spiritual power.

I

shall instance idleness; to mention drunkenness or sensuality would be below the dignity of our subject. To live without occupation of any sort, to cast a dull, unmeaning gaze around us, will soon make our minds dull and unmeaning. This propensity to non-existence, to spiritual torpor, becomes a habit, a second nature; it surprises us in our studies or while listening to our teacher, creates a chasm in what would otherwise be a strictly connected whole, interposes itself here and there between ideas which we should have bound together, so that we

cannot comprehend even those which are most easy and intelligible. How this propensity should seize upon youth may well remain unaccountable even to men of the deepest penetration and judgment, and in most cases it would be no delusion to seek its cause in some secret infirmity or vice. Youth is the age of newly-developed power; everywhere there are still impulses and principles destined to burst forth into new creations. The peculiar character of youth is restless and interrupted activity; left to itself, it can never be without occupation. To see it slothful is the sight of winter in the time of spring, the blight and withering of a newly-opened flower. Were it naturally possible that this idleness should attempt to gain dominion over the true-minded and virtuous student, he would never for a moment endure it. In the eternal thought of God his spiritual power has its source; it is thus his most precious treasure, and he will not suffer it to fall into impotent rigidity before it has fulfilled its task. He watches unceasingly over himself, and never allows himself to rest in slothful inaction. It is only for a short period that this exertion of the will is needed; afterward its result continues of itself, for it is happily as easy-or even more easy, because it is more natural for man to accustom himself to industry than to idleness, and after a time passed in sustained activity it becomes impossible for him to live without employment.

Lastly, everything is vulgar and ignoble which robs man of respect for himself, of faith in himself, and of the power of reckoning with confidence upon himself and his purposes. Nothing is more destructive of character than for man to

lose all faith in his own resolutions because he has so often determined, and again determined, to do that which nevertheless he has never done. Then he feels it necessary to flee from himself; he can no longer turn inward to his own thoughts lest he be covered with shame before them; he shuns no society so much as his own, and deliberately gives himself up to dissipation and self-forgetfulNot so the upright student: he keeps his purpose; and whatever he has resolved to do, that he does, were it only because he has resolved to do it. For the same reason

ness.

that he must be guided by his own purpose and his own insight—he will not become a slave to the opinion of others, or even to the general opinion. It is, doubtless, of all things most ignoble when man-out of too great complacency, which at bottom is cowardice and want of spirit, or out of indolence, which prevents him from thinking for himself and drawing the principles of his conduct from his own mind-gives himself up to others and relies upon them rather than upon himself. Such a one has, indeed, no self within him, and believes in no self within him, but goes as a suppliant to others, and entreats of them, one after another, to lend him their personality. How can such a one regard himself as honorable and holy, when he neither knows nor acknowledges his own being?

The true-minded student will not make himself a slave to common opinion; nevertheless, he will accommodate himself to establish customs where these are in themselves indifferent simply because he honors himself. The educated youth grows up amid these customs; were he to cast them off, he must of necessity deliberately resolve

to do so, and attract notice and attention to himself by his singularities and his offences against decorum. How should he whose time is occupied with weightier matters find leisure to ponder such a subject? Is the matter so important, and is there no other way in which he can distinguish himself, that he must take refuge in a petty peculiarity? "No!" answers the noble-minded student; "I am here to comprehend weightier things than outward manners, and I will not have it appear that I am too awkward to understand these. I will not by such littleness cause myself and my class to be despised and hated by the uncharitable or good-naturedly laughed at by those of better disposition; my fellow-citizens of other classes or of my own, my teachers, shall have it in their power to honor or respect me as a man in every relation of human life.”

And thus in all his relations does the life of the studious youth who respects himself flow on blameless and lovely.

THE PROGRESSIVE SCHOLAR.

Now, for the first time, when we have to accompany the student from the academy into life, we must call to mind that the studies and character of the progressive scholar are not necessarily completed with his residence at the university; nay, we will even perceive a ground upon which we say that, properly speaking, his studies have only their true beginning after his academic course has closed. This much, however, remains true as the sure result of what has been already said that the youth who during his residence at the university is not at least inspired with respect for the holiness of knowledge, and does not at least learn to

honor his own person to such an extent as not to render it unworthy of his high vocation, will never afterward attain to any true sense of the dignity of knowledge; and, whatever part he may perform in life, he will perform it as a piece of common handicraft, and with the sentiment of a hireling who has no other motive to his labor than the pay which he is to receive for it. To say anything more of such a one lies beyond the boundaries of our present subject.

But the student who is penetrated with the conviction that the essential purpose of his studies will be frustrated unless the idea acquire an intrinsic form and independent life within him, and that in the highest perfection-he will by no means lay aside his studies and scientific labors when he leaves the university. Even if he be compelled by outward necessity to enter upon a secular employment, he will devote to knowledge all the time and ability which he can spare from that employment, and will neglect no opportunity which presents itself of attaining a higher culture, assured that the continual exercise of his faculties in the pursuit of learning will be very profitable to him even in the transaction of his ordinary business. Amid the brilliant distinctions of office, and even in mature age, he will restlessly strive and labor to master the idea, never resigning the hope of becoming greater than he now is, so long as strength permits him to indulge it. Without this untiring effort much true. genius would be wholly lost, for scientific talent usually unfolds itself more slowly the higher and purer its essential nature, and its clear development waits for mature years and manly strength.

Translation of WILLIAM SMITH.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

IR ISAAC NEWTON, the most eminent natural philosopher of ancient or modern times, was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, on Christmas day, 1642. At twelve years of age he was placed at Grantham grammar-school, with the view of becoming prepared to superintend, as a country gentleman, the small estate which his father had left him; but, manifesting an ardent desire for learning, he was entered in 1660 into Trinity College, Cambridge, where he soon distinguished himself in mechanics and mathematics. In 1664, before he had taken his bachelor's degree, he discovered a new method of infinite series and fluxions, and, his thoughts being next turned to the phenomena of colors, he ascertained by experiment that light was not homogeneous, but a heterogeneous mixture of refrangible rays. While reflecting on this important discovery, and before he had reduced his observations to any systematic theory, he was compelled by the plague of 1665 to leave Cambridge and retire into the country. Though thus separated from his laboratory and his books, his wonderful mind was not unemployed, and, accordingly, while he was sitting alone in his garden, the falling of an apple from a tree near him led his thoughts to the subject of

gravity; and, reflecting that this power is not sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth, even at the top of the highest mountains, he concluded that it must extend much farther. Perhaps, thought he, it may extend to the moon, and even embrace the whole planetary system. The magnitude of the bare conception overwhelmed his mighty mind, and he therefore deferred the farther investigation of the subject till after his return to Cambridge.

Having been chosen in 1667 fellow of his college and taken his master's degree, Newton in 1669 succeeded Dr. Barrow as Lucasian professor of mathematics in the university. He now devoted all his energies to those vast subjects to which we have already alluded, and to his unrivalled genius and sagacity the world is indebted for a variety of stupendous discoveries in natural philosophy and mathematics; among which, his exposition of the laws which regulate the movement of the solar system may be regarded as the most brilliant. The law of gravitation, which he discovered, he clearly demonstrated affected the vast orbs that revolve around the sun not less than the smallest objects on our own globe. The work in which he explained this system was written in Latin, and appeared in 1687 under the title of Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton's discoveries in optics also were such as to change so entirely the aspect of that science that he may justly be considered its founder. His