the foe!

Conscript Fathers! there is another theme. My family-forgive the thought! Το you, and to Rome, I confide them. I leave them no legacy but my name, no testament but my example.

Ambassadors of Carthage! I have spoken, though not as you expected. I am your captive. Lead me back to whatever fate may await me. Doubt not that you shall find, to Roman hearts country is dearer than life, and integrity more precious than freedom! EPES SARGENT.

BREVITIES.

A POOR widow was asked how she became so much attached to a certain neighbor, and replied, that she was bound to him by several cords of wood, which he had sent to her during a hard winter.

Spare minutes are the gold-dust of time; and Young was writing a true as well as a striking line, when he taught that "sands make the mountain, moments make the year." Of all the portions of our life, the spare minutes are the most fruitful in good or evil. They are the gaps through which temptations find the easiest access to the garden of the soul.

One of the most celebrated members of the Paris bar was consulted, the other day, by a young practitioner, upon an obscure point of law. "I can not give you a positive answer, young man," replied the advocate; "I have once pleaded one way, and once the other, and I gained my suit each time."

Live a great deal in a short time. Many a man has died old at thirty. Thousands do not die old, though they live to sixty.

A gentleman was once riding in Scotland by a bleaching-ground, where a poor woman was at work watering her webs of linen cloth. He asked her where she went to church, what she had heard on the preceding day, and how much she remembered. She could not even tell the text of the sermon. "And what good can the preaching do you," said he, "if you forget it all?"— "Ah, sir," replied the poor woman," if you look at this web on the grass, you will see that as fast as ever I put water on it, the sun dries it up; and yet, sir, I see it gets whiter and whiter."

VENTILATION. It is an ascertained fact, that, in the process of respiration, each individual gives off from the lungs a large quantity of air, loaded with carbonic acid; and also that every gas-light or candle causes a similar deterioration, so that a poisonous atmosphere is thus produced, in which, in fact, if any animal were closely confined, it would instantly perish. These circumstances, although well known to scientific persons, are either imperfectly understood or entirely discredited by those who are uninformed upon the subject; and it is, therefore, desirable to state that, so rapidly do the effects just described take place, that in a work-room thirty-two feet long, thirteen feet wide, and ten feet high, containing five gas-lights, and in which twenty young persons are at work, oneeighth of the whole air of the room will, if not prevented by some kind of ventilation, be changed into poison in an hour. To guard against such deterioration as this, by which the air becomes unfit for respiration and for health, it is estimated that there should be a change per minute of at least three cubic feet of fresh air for each person, and of fifteen feet for each ordinary gas-light, when burning, amounting, for the room above mentioned, to one hundred and thirty-five cubic feet per minute.

tomed to undress before so many spectators, nor to be served by such valets. With calm but undaunted fortitude, she laid her neck on the block; and, while one executioner held her hands, the other, at the second stroke, cut off her head, which, falling out of its attire, discovered her hair, already grown quite gray with cares and sorrows. The executioner held it up still streaming with blood, and the dean crying out, "So perish all Queen Elizabeth's enemies," the Earl of Kent alone answered Amen. The rest of the spectators continued silent and drowned in tears, being incapable at that moment of any other sentiments but those of pity or admiration.

Such was the tragical death of Mary, Queen of Scots, after a life of forty-four years and two months, almost nineteen years of which she passed in captivity. None of her women were suffered to come near her dead body, which was carried into a room adjoining to the place of execution, where it lay for some days, covered with a coarse cloth torn from a billiard-table. The block, the scaffold, the aprons of the executioners, and every thing stained with her blood, were reduced to ashes.

Not long after, Elizabeth appointed her body to be buried in the cathedral of Peterborough with royal magnificence. But this vulgar artifice was employed in vain. The pageantry of a pompous funeral did not efface the memory of those injuries which laid Mary in her grave. James, soon after his accession to the English throne, ordered her body to be removed to Westminster Abbey, and to be deposited among the mortal remains of the monarchs of England. ROBERTSON.

THE OUTSIDE PASSENGER.

SOME years ago, a young lady who was going into a northern country took a seat in a stage-coach. For many miles she rode alone; but there was enough to amuse her in the scenery through which she passed, and in the pleasing anticipations that occu

At length the coach stopped at the gate leading to the castle to which the young lady was going; but there was not such prompt attention as she expexted. All eyes seemed directed to the outside passenger, who was preparing to dismount. She beckoned, and was answered, "As soon as we have attended to his lordship, we will come to you." A few words of explananation ensued; and, to her dismay, she found that the outside passenger, with whom she had thought it beneath her to dine, was not only a nobleman, but that very nobleman in whose family she hoped to be an inmate. What could she do? How could she bear the interview? She felt really ill; and the apology she sent for non-appearing that evening was more than pretense.

The venerable peer was a considerate man, and one who knew the way in which the Scripture often speaks of the going down of the sun. "We must not allow the night to pass thus," said he to the countess; " you must send for her before bedtime." He reasoned with the foolish girl respecting her conduct, insisted on the impropriety of the state of mind that it evinced, assured her that nothing could induce him to allow his children to be taught such notions, refused to accept an apology that did not go to the length of acknowledging that her conduct was wrong; and, when the right impression appeared to be produced, gave her his hand.

LEAVES AT THE YEAR'S CLOSE.

THE year is rapidly verging toward its close, reminding us of the flight of time, of the transitory condition of all earthly things, of all our joys and sorrows, and of the termination of our existence in the flesh. These and similar reflections, trite, no doubt, but trite because natural, passed through our mind, as we one morning strayed pensively about our garden; yet did they not so entirely absorb us as to prevent our noticing some of the phenomena passing around, and leading to other trains of thought, ending in the praise of the Almighty Power who "rules the varied year." Let us look around. The garden, even in November, is not without interest. The sere and yellow leaves are falling in showers from the trees, and, drifted by the wind, strew the graveled paths, or are thrown into heaps in corners, cover flower-beds, and collect around the roots of shrubs and bushes. The flowers have faded, yet some there are which still "glint" bravely forth, as if struggling to the last against fate. Here and there a pale blossom of the monthly rose hangs upon its slender stem. The asters, the chrysanthemums, and the noble dahlia, yet hold out, though traces of decay are too visible on every flower. The barberry-bush hangs out its pendent streamers of wax-like, coral-red berries. Still green is the privet, and its bunches of berries are glossy black. The fruit of the vine has been gathered, and the few leaves which remain on the trained branches are stained with yellow and golden russet. The leaves are falling! But these leaves have yet to serve an important purpose; they will cover the ground below as with a garment, and thus afford protection from the cold to the buried bulbs, and to the roots of other plants which need warmth during the winter. But this is not all; they serve another purpose: as the spring returns, with its mild showers and warm sun, they fall into decomposition, and afford a rich manure to the roots which they had protected during the severer season. They form a fine vegetable mould, a top-dressing

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to the subjacent soil, and add greatly to its fertility.

Well does the gardener know the value of decomposed vegetable matter as manure; and one reason why many of our rarer wild-flowers, as the orchis, seldom flourish when introduced into a garden, is the deficiency in the soil of pure vegetable mould; for gardens are usually cleared, from time to time, of their leafy "litter," while in our woods and copses, our hedgerows and rough spots under trees or bushes, the decaying foliage remains where it fell, and year after year adds a supply of fresh nutriment. Thus it is that nature, so to speak, carries forward a mighty work. is thus that a thin coating of vegetable mould is spread over the surface of the rock, and added unto, year by year, till plants of a higher order succeed to the lichens which first began to creep over its once naked surface; while these again, in their turn, add to the increase of the fertile layer.

It

The leaves are falling! But here let us pause and ask, What is a leaf? Few, perhaps, have considered the subject. Every leaf is in itself a distinct individual; moreover, the blossoms themselves are but leaves modified and destined for a special purpose. A tree, like a compound zoöphyte, is a colony of individuals bound into a community or body corporate by means of the living bark, inclosing and producing a wooden skeleton. The leaves, like the pol'y-pes of the beautiful red coral, or the sea-fan, are distinct from each other, yet united by means of a living tissue of communication, which commenced its development in the seed, in the pip, in the acorn, or the beechmast.

Again, as in the pol'y-pes of the coral, some are destined for nutrition, others for reproduction, so, in the tree or shrub, some of the leaves are destined as organs of respiration, and for the digestion of the fluids conveyed to them through the inner bark; these they convert into bitters or sweets, nutriment or poison, to man and animals. Other leaves are modified, and become what we term flowers, exhaling delicious odors or