that sat on the stool when I was there was a master, and wore a great, frizzed wig, and the students said his learning was even greater and frizzier than his wig, and that privately he was as great a freethinker as ever a one in England or France. He could demonstrate as quickly as lightning. When he undertook a subject he just began, and before you could look round it was demonstrated, for example, that a student is a student, and not a rhinoceros. For he would say, a student is either a student or a rhinoceros; but a student can't be a rhinoceros, or else a rhinoceros must be a student; but the rhinoceros is no student, therefore a student is a student. You may think that was intelligible of itself; but one of us knew better; for he said that "a student is not a rhinoceros but a student" is a first principle of philosophy. Then he came upon learning and the learned, whereupon he let himself loose against the unlearned. Whether God is, and what He is, philosophy alone teaches, he said; and without philosophy you can have no thoughts of God. Now, no one can say with any truth that I'm a philosopher; but I never go through a wood that I don't fall to thinking who made the trees grow. Then he spoke of hills and valleys, and sun and moon, as if he had helped to make them. I used to think of the hyssop on the wall, but, to tell the truth, it never came into my head that our master was as wise as Solomon. It strikes me that he who knows what is right, must, must if I only saw such an one I would know him, and I could sketch him, with his clear, bright, quiet eye and his calm, large consciousness. Such an one must not give himself airs, least of all despise and scold others. Oh, self-conceit is a poisonous thing; grass and flowers cannot grow in its neighborhood.

IMMUTABILITY OF NATURE.

SOME famous learned men have sought out a new plan of nature. Species, they say, are only resting-points and steps where Nature rests and collects herself, in order to go on farther, and always from the lower to the higher and more developed, so that an oyster ends in a crocodile, and a gnat in a serpent, and from the most developed of the lower animals come at last men and angels. This is put forward cleverly enough; only that the first and chief argument is it is not true. So little does Nature advance from one species to another that she never alters the

same species or makes it more perfect. The autumn spider spun its web among the Romans in the same wonderful mathematical form, with peripheries, radii, and centre, and already Elian remarks that it does its work without Euclid. He relates, moreover, that it sits in ambush in the centre of its web, as we see it sit after more than a thousand years.

CHRISTIANA.

A STAR rose in the sky,

And flung mild radiance down,
And softly shone, and high-
Softly and sweetly down.

I knew the very spot

Of sky that held its light;
Each sundown had I sought,
And found it every night.

The star is sunk and gone;

I search the sky in vain:
The other stars come, one by one,
But it comes never again.

RHINE WINE.

WITH laurel wreathe the glass's vintage mellow,
And drink it gayly dry!

Through farthest Europe, know, my worthy fellow,
For such in vain ye 'll try.

Nor Hungary nor Poland e'er could boast it;

And as for Gallia's vine,

Saint Veit the Ritter, if he choose, may toast it, —
We Germans love the Rhine.

Our fatherland we thank for such a blessing,
And many more beside;

And many more, though little show possessing,
Well worth our love and pride.

Not everywhere the vine bedecks our border,
As well the mountains show,

That harbor in their bosoms foul disorder;
Not worth their room below.

Thuringia's hills, for instance, are aspiring
To rear a juice like wine;

But that is all; nor mirth nor song inspiring,
It breathes not of the vine.

And other hills, with buried treasures glowing,
For wine are far too cold;

Though iron ores and cobalt there are growing,
And 'chance some paltry gold.

The Rhine, the Rhine, there grow the gay plantations!
Oh, hallowed be the Rhine!

Upon his banks are brewed the rich potations
Of this consoling wine.

Drink to the Rhine! and every coming morrow
Be mirth and music thine!

And when we meet a child of care and sorrow,
We'll send him to the Rhine.

WINTER.

A SONG TO BE SUNG BEHIND THE STOVE.

OLD Winter is the man for me

Stout-hearted, sound, and steady;

Steel nerves and bones of brass hath he:
Come snow, come blow, he's ready!

If ever man was well, 't is he;

He keeps no fire in his chamber,
And yet from cold and cough is free
In bitterest December.

He dresses him out-doors at morn,
Nor needs he first to warm him;
Toothache and rheumatis' he'll scorn,
And colic don't alarm him.

In summer, when the woodland rings,

He asks, "What mean these noises?"

Warm sounds he hates, and all warm things
Most heartily despises.

But when the fox's bark is loud;

When the bright hearth is snapping;

When children round the chimney crowd,

All shivering and clapping:

When stone and bone with frost do break,
And pond and lake are cracking,
Then you may see his old sides shake,
Such glee his frame is racking.

Near the North Pole, upon the strand,
He has an icy tower;
Likewise in lovely Switzerland

He keeps a summer bower.

A FAMOUS hen 's my story's theme,
Which ne'er was known to tire
Of laying eggs, but then she'd scream
So loud o'er every egg, 't would seem
The house must be on fire.

A turkey-cock, who ruled the walk,
A wiser bird and older,

Could bear 't no more, so off did stalk
Right to the hen and told her:
"Madam, that scream, I apprehend,
Adds nothing to the matter;
It surely helps the egg no whit;
Then lay your egg and done with it!
I pray you, madam, as a friend,

Cease that superfluous clatter!

You know not how 't goes through my head."

"Humph! very likely !" madam said,

Then proudly putting forth a leg:

"Uneducated barnyard fowl!

You know no more than any owl,

The noble privilege and praise
Of authorship in modern days.
I'll tell you why I do it;
First, you perceive, I lay the egg,
And then - review it."

2754

HENRY CLAY.

CLAY, HENRY, an American orator and statesman; born in Hanover County, Va., April 12, 1777; died at Washington, D. C., June 29, 1852. He was the son of a Baptist preacher of limited means, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and at the age of twenty removed to Kentucky, where he commenced the practice of his profession with brilliant success. In 1804 he was elected to the State Legislature; in 1806 he was appointed United States Senator, to In 1811 he fill a vacancy, and was chosen Senator for a full term. was elected a member of Congress, and was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives, although one of the youngest members of that body. He was an earnest advocate of the impending war with Great Britain; and in 1814 was sent to Europe as one of the Commissioners to negotiate a treaty of peace. Upon his return to the United States he was three times re-elected to Congress, and was each term chosen as Speaker. He was one of the most earnest advocates of the "Missouri Compromise" of 1821, in consequence of which the Territory of Missouri was admitted into the Union as a State, with a proviso that slavery in the Territories should be prohibited north of latitude 36° 40′. When Mr. Adams was chosen President he appointed Mr. Clay Secretary of State. In 1831, and several times subsequently, Mr. Clay was elected United States Senator, and in 1832 was the candidate for the Presidency of what was popularly known as the "Anti-Jackson" party; but he received only sixty-nine electoral votes, the remaining two hundred and nineteen being cast for Jackson. Mr. Clay was the author and chief promoter of the "Compromise Tariff" of 1832-33. In 1836, though the recognized leader of the "Whig " party, he declined to be a candidate for the Presidency; and in 1840 he gave his support to Mr. Harrison, who was elected. In 1844 he was nominated by the Whig party, but received only one hundred and five electoral votes, Mr. Polk, the Democratic candidate, receiving one hundred and seventy. In 1848 he was again elected to the United States Senate, and took a prominent part in the debates which grew out of the anti-slavery agitation of the time. He was mainly instrumental in procuring the passage of the "Compromise Bill" of 1850, the effect of which was to postpone for some years the armed struggle between the North and the South. Henry Clay published no book, and his literary reputation rests wholly upon his speeches.