The situation of Auxerre is extremely favourable for commerce; its position on the Yonne, which joins the Seine, enables it to enjoy all the advantages of an easy water-communication with Paris. Nevertheless, the inhabitants do not appear to have availed themselves of the facilities which are at their command; except in the article of wine there is little trade. "The wine-merchants," says Mr. J. M. Cobbett, "are of two sorts; the one buys the wine of the presser just as it is squeezed out of the grape, pays for it, and sends it to Paris; the other comes riding through the country amongst the owners of vineyards, getting them to send their wine to Paris, there to be sold for them on commission, and between the two sorts of merchants, the poor needy vinegrower doubtless suffers. I was greatly amused in hearing the conversations between the vine-growers and the merchants; the latter, a crafty set of men, taking advantage of every circumstance within their knowledge to persuade the poor grower out of his own, and the latter pleading excessive poverty, and ignorance greater probably than was his, to entice the notice of both sorts of merchants, and drive the best bargain he could between them.

"The wine of Auxerre is very famous; its general name is petit vin d'Auxerre (small wine of Auxerre); but there are two or three spots of the country near here, that are famous above the rest of the country for their produce. The white wine, called Chablis, is grown at a small village, (Chablis,) at about two leagues from Auxerre; and there are, close to the town the two Côtes, la Chenette and la Migrène, which are both of them famous for their red wine. I observed that all the vineyards between Fontainebleau and Paris were on the southern sides of hills; and here I find, that frequently spots of excellently well-adapted land for the plant, are not planted with vines, because they are not high enough. And whenever you hear of a good wine, it grows on a côte, or side of a hill. These côtes are particularly attended to, I see, by the wine-merchants, who go and place themselves on the spot, see the crop, see it gathered and put into the tubs by the road-side see it pressed, and then immediately send it off to Paris; and this, they say, is the only way to be sure of getting pure wine, because the moment it gets into the hands of the country wine-merchants they begin to mix it with their old stock, or with the strong wine of the south, in order to make more Burgundy." This explains how it is that wines, of very scanty growth in France, are rendered so very plentiful in the cellars of the innkeepers; the Côte de la Migrène yields scarcely more than 400 dozen bottles of its peculiar wine, and yet few inns in France would confess to being without a very good supply of it."

THAT knowledge is advanced by an intercourse of sentiments, and an exchange of observations, and that the bosom is disburdened, by a communication of its cares, is too well known for proof or illustration. In solitude, perplexity swells into distraction, and grief settles into melancholy; even the satisfactions and pleasures that may by chance be found, are imperfectly enjoyed, when they are enjoyed without participation.-DR. JOHNSON.

DISCRETION. -There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none more useful than discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in his errors, and active to his own prejudice.--ADDISON.

THE SEA.

On the surface of this globe, there is no where to be found so inhospitable a desert as the 'wide blue sea.' At any distance from land there is nothing in it for man to eat; nothing in it that he can drink. His tiny foot no sooner rests upon it, than he sinks into his grave; it grows neither, flowers nor fruits; it offers monotony to the mind, restless motion to the body; and when, besides all this, one reflects that it is to the most fickle of the elements, the wind, that vessels of all sizes are to supplicate for assistance in sailing in every direction to their various destinations, it would almost seem that the ocean was divested of charms, and armed with storms, to prevent our being persuaded to enter its dominions.

But though the situation of a vessel in a heavy gale of wind appears indescribably terrific, yet, practically speaking, its security is so great, that it is truly said ships seldom or ever founder in deep water, except from accident or inattention. How ships manage to get across that still region, that ideal line, which separates the opposite trade-winds of each hemisphere; how a small box of men manage unlabelled to be buffeted for months up one side of a wave and down that of another; how they ever get out of the abysses into which they sink; and how, after such pitching and tossing, they reach in safety the very harbour in their native country from which they originally departed, can and ought only to be accounted for, by acknowledging how truly it has been written, "that the Spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters."

It is not, therefore, from the ocean itself that man has so much to fear; the earth and the water each afford to man a life of considerable security, yet there exists between these two elements an everlasting war, into which no passing vessel can enter with impunity; for of all the terrors of this world, there is surely no one greater than that of being on a leeshore in a gale of wind, and in shallow water. On this account, it is natural enough that the fear of land is as strong in the sailor's heart as is his attachment to it; and when, homeward bound, he day after day approaches his own latitude, his love and his fear of his native shores increase as the distance between them diminishes. Two fates, the most opposite in their extremes, are shortly to await him. The sailor-boy fancifully pictures to himself that in a few short hours he will be once again nestling in his mother's arms. The able seaman better knows that it may be decreed for him, as it has been decreed for thousands, that in gaining his point he shall lose its object-that England, with all its virtue, may fade before his eyes, and,

While he sinks without an arm to save,
His country blooms, a garden and a grave!
[QUARTERLY REVIEW.]

THE world has nothing solid, nothing durable; it is only a fashion, and a fashion which passeth away. The tenderest friendships end. Honours are specious titles, which time effaces. Pleasures are amusements, which leave only a lasting and painful repentance. Riches are torn from us by the violence of men, or escape us by their own insta bility. Grandeurs moulder away of themselves. Glory and reputation at length lose themselves in the abysses of an eternal oblivion. So rolls the torrent of this world, whatever pains are taken to stop it. Everything is carried away by a rapid train of passing moments; and by continual revolutions we arrive, frequently without thinking of it, at that fatal point, where time finishes, and eternity begins. ARCHBISHOP FLECHIER.

THE USEFUL ARTS.

II.

GATHERING AND PRESERVATION OF CROPS.-CAUSES OF FERTILITY IN THE EARTH.-VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. GRASS, barley, oats, rye, peas, &c., are generally cut down by a scythe, the operation being termed mowing. This is regarded as the hardest of all agricultural labour; the weight of the scythe, acting on a long lever, the stooping position, and the motion backwards and forwards from right to left, calling nearly all the muscles of the body and limbs into strong action. This, too, has generally to be performed under a cloudless sky, and in the hottest months of the year.

MOWING.

Wheat, beans, &c., are reaped by means of sickles, which are of two kinds; one has its edge cut into fine teeth like a saw, and is called the sickle-hook. In using this tool, the labourer takes a handful of the corn in his left hand, and cuts through the stalks or straw by a peculiar motion of the instrument in his right hand. The other kind of tool has a smooth edge like the scythe, and is called the cutting-hook. In some places another hook is used in the left hand, to collect the stalks together, ready to be cut with the sickle.

REAPING.

There are machines made for both reaping and mowing, but they are far from being generally employed. When the scythe is used to cut any kind of corn, a cradle of wicker-work is often fixed at the end, which receives the plant as it falls, and prevents the grain from being scattered on the ground.

The crops are stored in various ways; hay and clover, after the plants are dried thoroughly by exposure on the earth to the sun, are made up into large stacks. It is the turning over of these grasses, so as to expose them as much as possible to the air, that constitutes hay-making. This operation is indispensable; for if the hay were put up while damp, or with too much sap in it, fermentation would ensue, by which so much heat is produced as to spoil the crop, and often set the stack on fire.

Corn is either stored in barns or granaries, or else made up into stacks, called ricks; but, in order to preserve these from the depredations of rats, mice, and other vermin, it is necessary that the ricks should be raised above the

ground, on a platform of beams, supported by stone posts, made with a cap at the top, projecting all round, to prevent the animals from climbing up them. Both hay and corn stacks are generally thatched to keep off the rain.

Potatoes are stored in pits dug in the ground, kept dry and cool by proper draining; but there is so much variety in the modes of storing crops which are to be speedily used, that it would be useless to go into the details of them.

THE fertility of the earth is somewhat diminished by every crop that grows upon it. Formerly it was thought necessary to leave portions of the land, in succession, uncultivated for one year, to allow it to recruit its exhausted properties by a season of rest; this was called suffering it to lie fallow. Modern science has, however, shown that, besides the loss of produce occasioned by this practice, it is not only unnecessary, but often injurious; and that the object in view is better attained by judicious MANURING, and by that greatest of all improvements in agriculture, the proper succession, or Rotation of Crops.

Every genus of plants requires, for its perfect growth and fruitfulness, some particular chemical principle to be derived from the soil; hence, the land, when it has supplied to a crop raised upon it all that it possessed of that necessary principle, is no longer capable of nourishing the same plant, but, as far as regards that particular genus, becomes barren. With the aid of tillage, however, it is perfectly capable of nourishing some other kind of crop, which requires a different food from the soil.

The laws of vegetable physiology are, as yet, too little known to allow us to explain exactly, what the earth does towards nourishing vegetation, but the above fact being established by observation, experience alone could inform us what plants might succeed each other, and flourish on the same spot of ground. Of the various series thus found to answer, these are selected and employed which are also consistent with the more immediate objects of agriculture, and these series are again limited, by reference to the practical mode in which the farming-operations are to be carried on.

Although the earth, by a succession of crops, can be constantly active in their production, yet, as has been mentioned, it is necessary to restore to the soil, by the application of manure, certain principles which are required by all vegetation. One of the most essential components of manure is animal matter, and the cheapest and best form in which this can be applied is dung; to collect this in sufficient quantities, and in an easy mode, cattle must be fed in yards and stables, and to do this requires a store of fodder. Hence we see the necessity for raising extensive crops for the express purpose of feeding cattle, and these crops are so arranged as to constitute one of the series above alluded to.

Besides the turnip-crop already mentioned, as being devoted to this purpose grasses, lucerne, clover, saint foin, beans, &c., are raised for cattle. This variety, with the addition of other crops required for the use of man, as well as for the food of animals, and for certain uses in the arts, admits of different rotations, adapted to every variety of soil, locality, climate, and to every other circumstance influencing the agriculture of a country.

When a crop is raised for its seed, the earth is far more exhausted than by one, the leaves or roots of which only are wanted, and which is, therefore, gathered before the fruit begins to ripen: hence all grain-crops, peas, beans, &c., &c., require a greater supply of manure to recruit the soil, than turnips, or the artificial grasses, as clover, lucerne, &c

PLANTS AND THEIR PRODUCTS CONSTITUTING A PRIN

CIPAL PORTION OF OUR FOOD.

1. WHEAT.

MAN derives by far the greatest portion of his vegetable food from one natural family, or order, of plants; namely, the GRASSES,-an order equally well defined by its obvious as by its botanical characters. It is the seed only of the plant which is used, and of the different species cultivated for food, that called WHEAT is most generally diffused in all the northern temperate climates of the globe. The culture of these plants is so ancient, that its history constitutes a legend of the earliest mythology of the nation first civilized in Europe,-Greece it may, indeed,

rapidly, and excite a current of air, strong enough to carry off the dust or bran rubbed off in the sieve. This operation is, in fact, a second winnowing. The corn, when thus completely cleaned by these three processes, is let into the hopper.

to bread.

The meal, in the state in which it comes from the millstones, consists of the true flour, or farina, of the seed, mingled with the broken husk, or bran, which is the fruit of the wheat, a thin double skin closely adhering to the seed, and only separable from it by grinding. These skins are rough and harsh, and would impart a disagreeable flavour The process of boulting, or of separating the bran from the flour, is performed by putting the meal into another kind of sieve, which is either a light wooden frame, over which canvass, or coarse muslin, is strained, and made to revolve rapidly, so as to sift the fine impalpable flour, and retain the bran, or, as is done in the more improved mills, a cylindrical hair-brush, like a bottle-brush, is made to revolve rapidly in a wire-gauze cylinder, the surface of which the wire just touches. The meal in the cylinder is driven out through the meshes, by the motion of the brush, and the bran, together with the coarsely-ground particles of flour, are retained. This coarse meal is re-ground, and again boulted, yielding a second quality of flour, and what remains after this second process is ground a third time, affording a third inferior kind of flour, in which there is much of the skin above mentioned. What remains in the boulting-cylinder after this third process is BRAN. This is used for various purposes, such as stuffing cushions, cleaning various kinds of metal articles, &c.

WHEN a distinguished English nobleman, who has lately succeeded to the title and large estates possessed by his father, was a boy, he generally spent the whole of the pocket-money allowed him as rapidly as most boys do. One day he asked a confidential servant of the family to lend him some money. The man, thinking it improper to advance the money without the knowledge of the earl, his father, evaded, by some excuse, immediate compliance with the youth's request, and acquainted his lordship with the circumstance. The earl questioned the servant respecting the manner in which his son spent the very liberal sum that was allowed him; and though he was not able to obtain satisfactory information on the subject, he authorized him to lend his son the money required, if he would tell him (the lender) what he wanted it for. When the young lord heard the terms on which the servant offered to lend him the money, he was very unwilling to agree to them; and no sooner was it in his possession than he hastened to a mercer's, and laid out the whole sum in blankets and flannels, which were distributed among a number of poor women, whom his lordship said he had observed scantily clothed abroad, and without covering at home, during the severest season of the year. It was then ascertained by the servant that this had been the way in which the benevolent youth had been in the habit of spending his allowance; but, when his father heard of it, his son's means of doing good to his fellow-creatures were no longer limited to the compass of a boy's pocket-money.

66

COWPER, the poet, in his memoirs of his early life, gives an affecting instance of the benefit frequently derived from the recollection of some consolatory text of Scripture. It occurred while he was at a public school. My chief affliction," he says "consisted in my being singled out from all the other boys by a lad about fifteen years of age as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his temper. One day, as I was sitting alone upon a bench in the school, melancholy, and almost ready to weep at the recollection of what I had already suffered, and expecting at the same time my tormentor every moment, these words of the Psalmist came into my mind; "I will not be afraid of what man can do unto me." I applied this to my own case, with a degree of trust and confidence in God that would have been no disgrace to a much more experienced Christian. Instantly I perceived in myself a briskness of spirit and a cheerfulness, which I had never before experienced, and took several paces up and down the room with joyful alacrity-His gift in whom I trusted. Happy would it have been for me, if this early effort towards the blessed God had been frequently repeated by

me!"

CONVERSION OF EDWIN, THE PAGAN KING OF NORTHUMBRIA, TO CHRISTIANITY.

A

Edwin

I

EDWIN, having succeeded to the Northumbrian throne when hardly out of his cradle, was quickly set aside, and then stealthily conveyed away. Ethelfrid, who had usurped his crown, sent emissaries after him into every corner of the island where he took temporary shelter. At length he found protection at the court of Redwald, King of East Anglia. This prince, being assiduously plied by Ethelfrid with promises and menaces, began to waver. friend of Edwin was informed of this, and advised instant flight. The royal youth had just retired to rest, but he hastily left his chamber, and withdrew beyond the dwelling, distracted by anxious apprehension. He had already wandered over most of England, in quest of safety, and he was now utterly at a loss to see any further hope. As night wore away, he probably sank into an agitated slumber. A majestic personage now roused attention, whose countenance and dress were wholly new. strained his eyes in agony. "Wherefore," said his unknown visiter, "sit you mourning here, while other mortals quietly repose?" He was answered, "It can be no concern of yours, whether I spend the night abroad, or on my couch." The figure said: "Do not think me unaware of your distress. know it all. What will you give me, then, to set your heart at ease, and make Redwald spurn every overture of your enemy?" Edwin eagerly promised any thing that ever might be in his power. "Again, what would you give," the stranger added, "if I should enable you, not only to trample on your foes, but also to outstrip the power of every neighbouring king?" Edwin pledged himself, if possible, more largely than before. He was then asked: "Should he who cheers you thus with unexpected hopes, be found quite equal to crown them with success, would you take hereafter his advice, if he should recommend family, yet far more excellent?" This, also, met with a course of life different from any followed in your a hearty affirmative reply. a hearty affirmative reply. "When this signal shall be repeated, remember, then, your pledge." As these words were spoken, the figure pressed his right hand solemnly on Edwin's head, and immediately disappeared. After a short interval, the young Northumbrian saw that kind friend approach, whose warning had aroused him from his bed. Now he was, however, told that Redwald, influenced by the queen, had not only given up every thought of betraying him to Ethelfrid, but was even ready to furnish him with troops, for driving that usurper from his throne. He did aid him thus, and Edwin regained his patrimonial sovereignty.

After his triumphant return from taking vengeance upon Quichelm, king of the West Saxons, Paulinus * desired an interview. In this, he slowly raised his right hand, and pressed it earnestly upon the royal head. Edwin started, and trembled violently. "You know this signal," the Italian said; "you know it to have been originally given by one whose words have most exactly been fulfilled. Remember, then, your pledge." Edwin fell at the missionary's feet, and earnestly inquired his meaning. "By God's mercy," Paulinus added, "when even hope had fled, your life was saved. By the same mercy you have wonderfully prevailed over all your enemies, and regained your paternal throne. A third, and a greater instance of his mercy, yet awaits acceptance. Redeem your pledge, and the God, who has led you through so many dangers, to gain and to secure an earthly throne, will

An Italian, resident at the court of the queen, and who had come to England as a Christian missionary.