at a time, or it will weary the pupils, and fail will descend, and shed his benediction through of accomplishing the desired end. The great the room. Impressions will be made which will never fade. Seed will be sown which shall

Book of Nature

"Earth with her thousand voices praising God."-never die. In coming years the memory of

will furnish a prolific source from which to draw
such lessons. It is true that some eyes never
drink in the ravishing beauties which surround
them, and some souls never thrill beneath their
power.

"The rill is tuneless to his ear, who feels
No harmony within; the south wind steals
As silent as unseen among the leaves :
Who has no inward beauty, none perceives,
Though all around is beautiful."

these hallowed morning hours may return to some heart, perchance wandering in paths of darkness, and lead it back to God.

The daily deportment of a teacher will be either a powerful aid or a great hindrance in the work of imparting religious instruction. If he is careless, impatient and fretful, his teachings will fall almost powerless. But if his bearing is patient and gentle, his words kind and earnest, and his religion an apparent living reality, even his very presence itself will be a poBut let this inward sense of beauty first be de- tent lesson,- and from it will daily go forth a veloped, and then it will be easy to point up- hundred unconscious but blessed influences. ward to the Great Author of so much loveliIt is not expected, nor would it be proper, This sense of instruction is so boundless, that much time should be taken up by special that a teacher may draw from it lessons appro-religious instruction in our common schools. priate to all its peculiar surroundings. When Long, sermon-like remarks would only have a God smiles in the flowers and blesses with the tendency to make the whole subject an unpleas genial sunshine and refreshing breeze, we may ant and gloomy one to pupils. Neither should talk pleasantly of his goodness; when He frowns sectarian views be tolerated for a moment. The in the tempest and thunders in the storm, we skillful teacher, who is possessed of the blessed may speak of His wondrous power; yea, from spirit of his Master, will seek to throw in a every form in His vast gallery of wonders, Na-word here, and a thought there; to gather from ture, we may find a pleasant pathway up to its the trivial incidents of the day some useful les

ness.

Maker.

son; to seize on some passing event to illustrate a needed truth. He will strive to win and lead,

In the devotional exercises of the schoolroom, if rightly conducted, there is much re- rather than terrify and drive, his pupils into the ligious instruction. They should not be long, path of peace. In short, his religious lessons cold and formal, as though it were a disagreea- will not be kept tied up in a napkin, to be only ble duty which must be performed, but short, occasionally undone in some very prosy remarks; fervent and overflowing with warmth. Sup- but they will gush up warm and earnest from pose it is a cold winter's morning, and a snow-his soul, and fall, drop by drop, upon the tenstorm rages without, let these beautiful passa- der places of the child's heart. Certainly in this delicate, yet important work, we need to be

ges from the 147th Psalm be read:

"He giveth his snow like wool: he scattereth" wise as serpents and harmless as doves." his hoar-frost like ashes.

"He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can

stand before his cold.

66

He sendeth out his word, and melteth them:

he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow,"

For the Schoolmaster.
In Manassas.

WE tried it once: 'twas 'neath a July sun and then let a few earnest words be spoken, We marched with glistening eyes and willing feet As onward through the stifling summer-heat and the school led to the throne of grace in a That dim and weary were ere day was done. simple, soul-felt prayer of praise for mercies re

ceived, and pleadings for needed strength and Ah, many a proud eye sank in darkness then, blessings. A studied formality of expression And many a foot its last step took that day, is not required, but instead the words should As roar of cannon in that dreadful fray come welling up from the heart, as though the Swept to eternity our gallant men.

exercise were a part of your very being. Then Now, at the earliest dawn of blushing spring. 'a spirit of reverence will be awakened in the We tread again the path we trod before. pupils, and they, with you, will feel the pres- The whistling bullet greets our ears no more: ence of the Invisible One. The angel of peace O'er comrades' graves the flowers are blossoming.

And we have gained it, then; without a fight?
Ah, yes! In truth, it chills the blood to see
Our brothers falling, dying hopelessly,
E'en though the cause be Freedom and the Right;

But yet, 'twould seem a fitting thing, could we
Have struck the rebel lion in his den,
And, o'er the tombstones of our fallen men
Strewed thick with traitors, shouted Victory!

The path is open. Loving feet may come
To place affection's wreaths above the dead,
Or bear them from their lowly, honored bed
To sleep in peace beneath the trees of home.

Smithfield, March 17th, 1862.

From the Illinois Teacher.

Sunshine in a Bottle.

H. G. A.

white potato-sprout of the cellar is familiar to every body who knows the green vigor of the same when supplied with light and heat. The great tree of the forest reaches high after sunlight and heat, while the plants that are outtopped are rendered feebler or altogether exterminated. The warmth of the sun is eagerly absorbed by the growing plant and transformed into fibre and tissue. Those regions of the earth that are deprived of the direct benefit of the sun's light and heat are at the extreme, mere wastes of ice and snow; and we pass through the development of vegetation as we pass through the increasing stages of light and heat, till vegetable giants and mammoths are reached in equatorial regions. Our corn is a greedy absorber of sunshine. It changes it inAMONG the extravagances of expression to be to the material from which chemical analysis heard, one hears occasionally of the impossibili-will bring oil, or which the farmer's live chemity of bottling sunshine. It is not an impossi-cal workers will change into lard and tallow. bility, however. The lamps which give us light Nature has a longer process, which is not less at night would lose their brilliancy, or rather sure, only less speedy, than the transformation would have none to lose, except for the bottled of sunshine through the corn and ox and cansunshine. This paper would hardly have been dle to the artificial light. Whence comes keroprepared except for the aid of the same bottled sene? Whence comes the heat for our machine sunshine. Within a few years practical chem- shops and manufactories? Long ages ago the istry has brought many facts to the comprehen- sun poured his rays freely upon a world grown sion of the multitude which before were only over with a rank vegetation, upon which aniknown to the adept in his laboratory. Among mals had made little inroad. Huge masses of these is the fact that our artificial lights, with vegetable matter were by some means- great which we imitate the sun, are really dependent convulsions and upheavals, doubtless — buried on the same for their power, and are but faint together. By heat from the earth, which rather reflections of the bright beams that dazzle our lessened than increased the amount of heating eyes at noonday. So far as the surface of the material in these masses, and by pressure, these earth is concerned, although the internal fires great vegetable graves became our coal-beds, to modify the temperature, we may consider all which a resurrection is coming in these latter heat and light as proceeding from the sun, and days. The vegetable origin of coal is plainly all life directly dependent on it. Thus we shall written on nearly every load that comes to our find the great kingdoms possessing vitality, viz., doors. The impressions of leaves, or the grain the animal and vegetable, directly dependent on of wood, which has changed its appearance but the favor of the sun. Animals depend on vege- retained its heating properties, can plainly be tables. Some, to be sure, eat flesh, but the flesh seen. We put this coal into our stoves and rethey eat is ultimately supplied from vegetable produce in some sort the heat and light which sources. The animal needs to enjoy sunshine the plants of former ages absorbed, and which to be healthy, or even to live any length of time. has been stored away for us, no man knows how Some try to live in the dark, or to endure the long. Or we place this coal in a chemist's hand. semi-darkness of polar winters; but debility He produces a gas to light the cities, coal-tar to and the dissolving scurvy give warning shortly use in roofing, and still has heat left in the coke. of approaching dissolution. Even could ani- Or he takes another process, and coal-oil is freemals live wholly in the dark, as some may be ly produced. This from some varieties, and afsupposed to do, they are not independent of the ter certain refining processes, is the pure, unsun. The great vegetable kingdom needs heat adulterated kerosene - bottled sunshine. for germination, and light and heat for developing growth. No careful girl puts her beautiful A very curious matter is the preservation of flower-bed close by the north side of a build- the brilliancy of sunlight in this very same black ing; she could not if she would. The weak coal and its oil. All are familiar with the bright

colored ribbons, different shades of which have

But to return to the mother and her child. been fashionable for two or three years, under Let a neighbor call in with her little boy jauntithe names of Solferino and Magenta. The color ly decked out, and to which of the callers will of which those different shades are produced is the child give the most of its attention? You called marcre, and is extracted from coal, and is may think the lady the more striking object, the very costly. A very small quantity of mar cre more conspicuous figure, but the child's eyes serves to give the required tinge to large quan- are riveted on the little boy, and elmost before tities of material designed for coloring. The the parents have exchanged salutations, the terrible battles of Solferino and Magenta, which children have commenced an acquaintance. At cost so many tens of thousands their lives, have first, there is a little shyness, a long gaze, then their memorial of blood and carnage in the color a timid advance, and already they are engaged which the " dirty coal," so called, has yielded in some play. Is it not strange how quickly up to add to the charms of woman within three the little ones can tell which is the right playyears. What a history should we get from a mate for them? But you see the same principle lump of coal, if it could talk so that we could of selection at work in those groups passing in understand it,about its own changes from the day the street. Business may make the banker speak it was in growing plants till we take it from our to the cartman, the professor to the countryman ; stoves! Every lump of tallow, every pound of a boy in the first class may, at times, be seen lard, every ounce of turpentine and resinous walking with one in the fifth, a young lady of gum, every pint of linseed oil or whale-oil or coal-oil is but a form of condensed sunshine, easily bottled.

For the Schoolmaster.

sixteen with a girl of six; but love of society most naturally draws together those who are equals, or those who forget the minor differences of fortune and of culture in the attractions of a common humanity. The two babes, equal

The Love of Society and Some Topics Con- and yet different, give us the key to all harmo

nected Therewith.

nious society, the less being ever an image of A young child is playing with its mother, the greater; the chief mysteries of the mighty what delight it experiences. Note its quick, oak can be seen in the seedling; the ocean can eager motions in its play, its sparkling eyes, be studied in a quart of salt water, and the phythe color of its cheeks; hear its laughter and its sics of a globe within the walls of a garden. screams of joy. Or, again, the mother is at All besides is but play upon greater and less. work in the sitting-room; her child is busy with Peers then alone are naturally drawn together its playthings; now and then it runs to her for by the love of society. help, or stops in its play for a smile or a look. Something now calls her from the room. You would hardly say that the child had been karm

ed or injured in any respect; had been deprived

of anything; yet its joyousness is gone; it looks grieved, misses its mother and sobs for her return.

What differences among these equals are most conducive to lasting friendship is a tempting topic, but somewhat foreign to our purpose. Dispositions and tastes that are the complements of

each other, rather than identical, by providing variety and relaxation for each other, seem to mutually charm, provided that they possess a and acquirements as in occupation and lot in common basis of virtue. For, in disposition life, we are apt to admire what we have not rather than what we have.

Outside there its older brothers are coasting with their mates; all is rapid motion; the boys are as happy as can be. Aside from swift locomotion, it would be hard to say what pleases them so much, except the presence, the society. of their young friends. There go some girls Se natural to man is the state of society, that like those of air and sunshine, we well apprehome from school, not singly, but in little companies; and here come some manly boys, in sets ciate its blessings only when deprived of them. of three or four, while yonder the men To the ice-bound voyager in northern seas the standing in groups at the corners of the streets long deprivation of light is dreadful, its return or in front of the shops, and the ladies are mak-most welcome and cheering. Captives and shiping calls, or, if busy, have met at a knitting-bee wrecked mariners can best prize the blessings of or a sewing-society. In city and in country, society, for they have endured the agonies of people of all ages, all classes, all sorts and kinds continued solitude. are to be seen, drawn together by the love of society,

are

That the deprivation of society is painful, exceedingly so, in the estimation of mankind, can

be seen in its being assigned as the punishment more touching, is even painful, when we disof the worst of criminals. cover that the sharp censorship of Austrian ty

I once visited the Eastern Penitentiary, in ranny had erased from it every exclamation, Philadelphia, the chief punishment of whose however slight, against the inhumanity of his inmates is solitary confinement. There is a yard persecutors, that had escaped the patient sufferabout the buildings enclosed by a high stone er. Nothing can be more touching than the wall. The rooms within for the inmates are sudden oscillations of feeling in this Italian palarge and spacious, well arranged and ventilat-triot, from deepest despondency to exuberant ed. I went into one of the rooms; it had been joy, as he caught at times the voices of imoccupied by the same person for many years. prisoned friends, or the revulsion, as, in the It was large enough for comfort, had a neat bed dreary days that succeeded, he heard them no with a white bed-spread upon it, a wash-stand, more. Pellico's story, with its subdued tints, bureau, books from the library and many little toned down, till the glow of human passion articles of comfort. The occupant had employ-seems alien to it, and with its dark back ground ed some of his leisure hours in ornamenting of privation and mental agony, is left us, an with fanciful arabesque figures the walls and uncomplaining yet most eloquent witness against ceiling of his room, which gave to the whole the odious house of Hapsburg. apartment a semi-artistic air. Through a door,

Writers of fiction have taken advantage of

at the farther end of the room, he could enter a our sympathy with the sufferings of enforced little yard, for air, exercise and recreation.

solitude, to interest us in the heroes of their Having examined the rooms and the main stories, and here is one source of the universal building sufficiently, we visited the spacious admiration for Picciola and for Robinson Crusoe. laundry and the capacious kitchen. The clothes Man is then, by nature, endowed with a love were well washed and ironed, and there was a for society, the gratification of which is a source plentiful supply of food, seemingly of very good of pleasure to him, its denial a source of pain. quality. I suppose there must have been some He is, moreover, at birth, ushered into a scene, servants to carry to the boarders their food, and the home, name synonymous with English civiwait upon them somewhat. What are these men lization, where its first faint dawnings are watchhere for? They are convicts; they have com-ed and welcomed. The implanted principle and mitted the most dreadful crimes. But where is the scene of our introduction into the world, the punishment? I see no physical pain, no show plainly that, whether we live as hermits torn muscles, no racked and quivering limbs; or as citizens, nature formed us for society. on the contrary, freedom from pain, nay, from This society is at first confined to the home; it that care and anxiety common to men. What then enlarges, embracing successively, relations more has heart to wish than these robbers and and friends, the town, the State, our country, murderers find here? Would you not like to and, it may be, the world. I have said that have good food, good clothing and shelter in- peers, and next those who may consider themsured to you for the next ten years, so that you selves as such, are most naturally drawn togethneed feel no care concerning them? How trou- er, by the love of society. In a large family, ble and anxiety would roll off from us; what there is a great variety in age, attainments, caluscious, joyous days would we pass. But this pacity and disposition, yet what union and cononly on condition that we speak to no one for cord, for all are alike important. But let one ten years; that we leave not that room; we are member be supposed to have rights, privileges, to be deprived of society only. Shall we wel-which the others have not, or to which, in time, come life, in here, on such conditions? There by diligence, age or experience, they may not was not probably a man in all that large Peni- attain, their union is at once broken, their hartentiary who would not have jumped at the mony fled; suspicions and rivalries, if not fierce chance to live the life of the poorest beggar in contentions follow. So it will be in any other the streets of Philadelphia. society. How troublesome to the teacher and

In Silvio Pellico's "My Imprisonment," are disastrous to the school are cliques among the detailed the sufferings of a delicate yet sublime scholars, founded on social differences, inferiorspirit, while bearing up, uncheered by a single ity or superiority. The rivalries between childray of sympathy from without, against the ag- ren from different parts of the same district, or gregated misfortunes of imprisonment, sickness in different districts, the feuds between clans in and solitude. The whole narrative becomes the Scotland and Ireland, arise in part from some

direct or indirect denial of this claim to equality. instincts productive of utility draw the animals The Civil War of olden time in Italy; the French together, as in the case of ants and bees. Revolution; the wars between the Cavaliers and Can any one tell me what keeps these flocks the Roundheads, and the present civil war in of snow-birds together, that are hopping, twitour own country, arise in part from this, that tering and fluttering over the bleak fields? Or communities whose members do not consider why pigeons congregate in such vast numbers, themselves as peers, who cannot be drawn to-whereby the chances of their own destruction gether by the love of society, and who natural- are largely increased? Why do these ducks ly soon suppose that their interests are hostile, feed together in the open bay, or those wild are living within the same geographical limits. geese return to the colder north in flocks? It Wars are soon caused by the conflicting ideas; hardly seems mere fancy to suppose that even and it is always ideas that sharpen and thrust clustering pines and birches, the golden cowslip the coarse materials of swords and bayonets. and the blue hepatica partake of the rich charm

It becomes, therefore, an important question, of society and thrive the more luxuriantly thereto be considered by the founder of a religion or for. of a state, a religion or a state designed to make When an animal is deprived of the society of a world or a nation live in perfect and lasting its kind, like man, it often consoles itself with concord; what principle, by its operation, will the society of another species. Thus, in New allow the love of society to permeate all por- England, a petted sheep, called a cosset, and tions of a community, a state or a world, bindbrought up with the cows, seems to forget its ing all its members together in one concordant natural instincts of society, and, in preference, whole? The principle is, that amid the endless herds with the cattle. variety of individual character perfect equality in rights and privileges should reign. Rightly, Society is pleasing to man, its absence painthen, has the rule, enunciated by the founder of ful, and, we may add, demoralizing also. A desire for long-continued solitude, or an averChristianity, "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise,” been stylsion to society, is unnatural, morbid; it is eied, by preachers and theologians, the "Gold-ther a result or a cause, a token of existing or a en Rule," for it presupposes and promotes equal-sign of future evil, in the individual or in socieity; and those of our fathers, who in their DeIn the earlier centuries of our era, the prevaclaration, asserted that "All men are created equal," gave utterance to a truth of far more lence of long-continued and bloody wars inducimportance for a community to learn by heart, ed many, who had no sympathy with the comto love and live up to, than all the constitu- motions of their times, to seek a refuge from tions that have been, or ever will be framed violence and leisure for a life of meditation and by men. It is the trunk, filled with vital sap, which, through the ages, shall produce and shed, as though leaves, constitutions for free and independent states; they shall fade with the years, it never.

ty.

prayer, in the deserts of Egypt and Syria. What the pioneers in this movement did from pious motives, others did from force of example and custom, but the fervid spirit of the earlier anachorets had died out, and there was not enough But when man is so situated that the society religious principle left with the others to strive of his kind is denied him, he makes for himself successfully against the inevitable evils of solicompanions of animals, the birds, mice, rats, tude. Deprived of human sympathy and the respiders, or even of inanimate nature, the plants straining influences of society, there soon followand flowers. In their real or fancied joys he ed filth and squalor, want and suffering, distorted participates; sympathy seems given and receiv-views of their relations to their fellow-men, and ed. of the life that is pleasing to God. How could it be otherwise? Half the natural desires and

This interest in each others' society can be affections were killed out; they withered and seen among animals also. A horse is jogging shrivelled through lack of nourishment. How, slowly along the road, scarcely heeding the in continuous solitude, can stirring emulation, voice or the whip of the driver. Let him catch the love of power, the desire of knowledge or of sight of another horse and chaise far ahead of society be developed? How can the heart's him, and he quickens his pace, and on catching warm affections be kept alive among men who up with his fellow-traveller, goes now swiftly had abandoned home, society and country? now slowly, to keep pace with him. Here no What had they to toil for, perhaps to fight for,