A country bumpkin the great offer heard ;
Poor Hodge! who suffered by a thick black beard,
That seemed a shoebrush stuck beneath his nose;
With cheerfulness the eighteen-pence he paid,
And proudly to himself, in whispers, said,
"This rascal stole the razors, I suppose !

"No matter if the fellow be a knave,
Provided that the razors shave:

It sartinly will be a monstrous prize."

So, home the clown, with his good fortune, went,
Smiling, in heart and soul content,

And quickly soaped himself to ears and eyes.

Being well lathered from a dish or tub,
Hodge now began with grinning pain to grub,
Just like a hedger cutting furze :

Twas a vile razor !—then the rest he tried-
All were impostors-"Ah!" Hodge sighed,
"I wish my eighteen-pence were in my purse."

In vain to chase his beard, and bring the

graces,

He cut, and dug, and winced, and stamped, and swore, Brought blood, and danced, reviled, and made wry faces; And cursed each razor's body o'er and o'er !

His muzzle, formed of opposition stuff,
Firm as a Foxite, would not lose its ruff;

So kept it-laughing at the steel and suds:
Hodge, in a passion, stretched his angry jaws,
Vowing the direst vengeance, with clenched claws,
On the vile cheat that sold the goods.

"Razors ! a base, confounded dog, Not fit to scrape a hog!"

Hodge sought the fellow-found him and begun—-
"Perhaps, Master Razor-rogue, to you 'tis fun,

That people flay themselves out of their lives;
You rascal! for an hour have I been grubbing,
Giving my whiskers here a scrubbing,
With razors just like oyster-knives.

Sirrah, I tell you, you're a knave,
To cry up razors that can't shave.”

"Friend," quoth the razor-man, "I'm no knave;
As for the razors you have bought,
Upon my word, I never thought

That they would shave."

"Not think they'd shave!" quoth Hodge with wondering eyes,

And voice not much unlike an Indian yell;

"What were they made for then, you dog ?" he cries. "Made!" quoth the fellow, with a smile-" to sell."

NOTE.-Dr. JOHN WOLCOT, who is better known under his-assumed name of "Peter Pindar," was born in Devonshire, 1738. He was trained first to the medical profession, then for the Church. He became for a time popular as a humorous and satirical writer. Though very fat, he was neither a great nor a good man; well-nigh all the leading men of his time, including the king (George III.), fell under his coarse and heavy lash. Wolcot died in 1819.

EXERCISES.-I. Tell the incident upon which the "Razorseller" is founded in simple prose. 2. Paraphrase the first two stanzas. 3. Parse fully the first three lines.

GEORGE STEPHENSON.

Manufacturing, making.
Navigable, allowing vessels to
sail.

Adhesion, holding power.
Locomotive, self-moving.
Tubular, made up of pipes.
Asylum, a place of refuge.
Resources, means of obtaining aid.
Transit, removal from place to
place.

Transferring, taking to another
place.

Economy, making the most of.
Pioneer, one that leads the way.
Insurmountable, not to be mas-
tered.

Promoter, one who helps for-
ward.

Gigantic, of very large size.

We have already seen that owing to the improvements wrought out by James Watt in the steam-engine, so rapid were the advances made in the manufacturing power of our country, that difficulty was soon felt in finding ready transit for the greatly increased products of industry. New roads were made, canals were cut, rivers made more navigable; still, our carrying power fell greatly behind our increasing power of production.

The principal worker in the carrying of goods was the horse. But the number of horses is limited, while the production of the food necessary for them involves the employment of land which otherwise might be used in raising human food. It was seen therefore by a few thinkers, that either the rate of increase in our manufacturing power could not be maintained, or we must devise some cheaper and more ready means of transferring both men and material from place to place. The heading of our lesson suggests the solution of this difficulty, -George Stephenson and railways care to the

rescue.

And first, a slight sketch of the man himself. He was born, in 1781, at Wylam, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, where

his father was fireman of the colliery pumping-engine. In his early life he had no school education whatever, being employed first as cowherd, then as ploughboy, until at fourteen he was taken to assist his father. At the age of eighteen, having discovered the disadvantages arising from his want of book knowledge, he set to work at learning to read, write, and cypher; and having once tasted the sweets of only a very little learning, he soon began to take deeper draughts; and well was he repaid for the labour.

In 1802, Stephenson was appointed to the care of the winding machine on the Wellington Quay, near Newcastle; and ten years later he became head engineer to the Killingworth Colliery, near Newcastle. All this time the young man was carefully reading and observing. He made himself acquainted with the steam-engine as improved by Watt and others. Efforts had already been made to work locomotive engines on tramways by means of rack-work, but with little success. In 1813 it was discovered that the adhesion between ordinary wheels and rails was of itself quite sufficient to prevent slipping; and thereupon George Stephenson was ordered to construct a locomotive engine upon this principle for the colliery. The engine was made, and tried on the 25th July, 1814. It answered so far as to prove that smooth wheels would run upon edge rails; but the expense of fuel was so great that little or no saving was effected as over horse-power. The problem then became, how to make less fuel do more work.

After much careful study and many experiments, our young engineer contrived and constructed an engine, in which, by the introduction of a blast pipe, he made the consumption of fuel adjust itself to the work done, and

thus he secured an advantage for his machine over horsepower on the ground of economy. The next point was to make steam beat the horse in speed. To do this it was

necessary to obtain a greater volume of steam without a corresponding increase in the size of the boiler. This was most successfully accomplished by the introduction of the tubular boiler, which appears to have been suggested by Booth in England, and Seguin in France, at about the same time.

In 1823, aided by capital supplied by Messrs. Pease & Richardson, Stephenson established a factory at Newcastle for the manufacture of locomotive engines; and when, six years later, the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway offered a prize for the best engine, it was gained by "THE ROCKET," constructed by George Stephenson and his son Robert, who was following in the course of his father, but with all the advantages to be derived from the best education his father could procure. Up to that time a speed of ten or twelve miles an hour had been considered the probable limit of the travelling rate, even on railways. It may therefore be conceived with what amazement the world learned through the press, that "The Rocket" had more than doubled that velocity; in fact had performed four miles in four and a half minutes! The writer well remembers the effect upon people generally, and the advice seriously given to him by a kind-hearted motherly lady on the eve of his taking his first journey on one of these pioneer railways. Said she, "Now, my dear, do be careful not to put your head out of the window, for the rush of air is so great as you whisk along, that if you do, it will certainly take your head off." You need not be told that the young traveller contrived to save his head;