Scraps.

NATURE PLAYING AT MUD-PIES.-In 1828, Dr. Duncan observed in certain sandstones

the footprints of tortoises, and following up the clue thus furnished to a suggestive mind, the Dumfriesshire discovery has expanded into a separate science called Ichnology. It amounts to this. Myriads or millions of years ago, the tide was out, and the beach was smooth and soft and flat, and there fell a shower of rain and pitted the surface in a

particular way; or it was hail, which made its own particular mark. Then came a little

salt-water lizard, or a crab, sidling along, or a frog the size of a well-fed pig, leaping and waddling by turns; and on the micaceous mud each inscribed the whole history of that day's proceedings — a little autobiography or Pilgrim's Progress in the genuine reptilian or batrachian handwriting; and there it remained till the tide gently rose and with fine sand or clay filled up the impressions. And now that the whole is converted into rock, there comes some exploring Miller or Mantel, and turns over the stony leaves and reads the record as plain as if it had been printed yesterday.-Good Words.

REMARKABLE LONGEVITY.-The records of a family in the Shaker settlement at Niskayuna, N. Y., exhibit the following remark able facts: Thomas Wells died in 1819, aged 80 years; Abigail Wells, his wife, died in 1826, aged 85. They were married in 1766, and of that marriage were born eleven children: Seth Y. Wells, who died in 1847, aged 80; Thomas, who died in 1843, aged 74; Benjamin, who died in 1851, aged 81; Calim, who died in 1853, aged 81; Luther, who died two months ago, aged nearly 90; Stephen, who is still in good health, at 88; Hannah, who died in 1862, aged 86; Jesse, who is living and in good health, at 85; Abigail, who died in 1830, aged 49; Anna, who died in infancy; Freegift, still living in good health, aged 78.

GOD A LOVER OF BEAUTY.-We doubt not that God is a lover of beauty. We speak reverently. He fashioned the worlds in beauty, when there was no eye to behold them but His own. All along the wild forest he has carved the forms of beauty. Every cliff, and stem, and flower, is a form

of beauty. Every hill, and dale, and landscape, is a picture of beauty. Every cloud, and mist-wreath, and vapor veil, is a shadand rivulet, river and ocean, owy reflection of beauty. Every spring a glossy mirror of beauty. Every diamond, and rock, and pebbly beach, is a mine of beauty. Every sea, and planet, and star, is a blazing face of beauty. All along the aisles of earth, all over the arches of heaven, all through the expanse of the universe, are scattered, in rich and infinite profusion, the

life-gems of beauty. All natural motion is beauty in action. From the mote that plays

its little frolic in the sunbeam to the world that blazes along the sapphire spaces of the firmament, are visible the ever-varying features of the enrapturing spirit of beauty. All this great realm of dazzling and bewildering beauty was made of God.

A NEW KIND OF ALLOY.-A gentleman of France has discovered a new alloy, which may be very useful for small coin, and for many industrial purposes. It is composed of one third silver, twenty-five to thirty per cent of nickel, and thirty-seven to fifty-two per cent of copper. Its inventors call it Tiers-argeut, or Tri-silver. The three metals, when melted together, form a compound, which is not homogeneous, and it is only by a process, yet a secret, that a malleable metal is produced. In color it resembles platinum. It is susceptible of a very high polish, and is extremely hard and tenacious. It is not affected by exposure to the atmosphere, or by any but the most powerful reagents, and is without odor. It can be supplied at forty per cent less than silver, and its greater hardness will give it a marked superiority. It may serve as a substitute for plated articles, but will be most valuable for small coin, from the difficulty of counterfeiting, arising from the skill required in its preparation and coining.

'GRATEFUL FLORENCE' has placed a marble slab in the wall of the house in which Mrs. Barrett Browning lived for so many years. The slab bears an inscription in Italian, of which the following is a translation: Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who, in her woman's heart, united the wisdom of a sage and the spirit of a poet, and who made of her verse a golden link between Italy and England.'

VOL. LXIII.

No. 6.

Ir was said of a well-known people, in the first century of our era, that they were like children in the marketplace, complaining of each other, and perhaps calling each other hard names, because they could not agree about the sports they were to engage in, nor the manner of performing them; and we are not sure that the same might not be very truly said about the present generation of our own country. It, too, is prone to call hard names, very hard, and to quarrel with those who do not agree with it, and to take many other vicious ways of showing how wicked it is for any one not to be convinced that its views and measures are wise and right; and yet there is no certainty that they are so.

And we do not radically nor adequate ly distinguish the cases of the boys and the men by objecting that, in the one case, it is play, and in the other it is serious, social affairs that are the subject of contention; for the sports of children are their proper work, in which they engage with all their might, and upon their success in which depend their early glory and happiness, and much of the progress of their future life; for them their plays, as we call them, are their serious and all-engrossing social affairs, and contribute most important elements of the training which is to fit them for taking part in a more developed society. The apparent, and even the real, import

ance of affairs to us depends on the progress we have made in mental growth. For a child, a well-selected plaything, called a toy, is really of more value than a kingdom, because it is more adapted to his capacity of appreciation, and more fitted to a regular development of his faculties.

We are all, more or less, children in this disposition to censure and denounce all who do not fully sympathize with us in present purposes and in the modes of executing them, especially if very earnest in them; and yet 'wisdom is justified of her children,' and with wisdom in ourselves we may know how to make allowance for such differences, and divine wisdom is proved even by the fact and by the result of those differences that occur in the process of human growth. No good wine is produced without some previous warmth and fermentation; and our social quarrels seem to be necessary for our growth in sociality. In this way children work out this result quite unconsciously; and they alone can do it consciously and wisely, who see clearly that such differences can be cured, not by hard names, hard speeches, and hard knocks, but only by some higher social principle, turning all minds in a new direction-charity, that vaunteth not itself, thinketh no evil and beareth all things.

But children cannot look at things in

this way. They see only the outer act and its opposition to their plans, and they suppose the intention to be as hostile to them as the act is to their wishes, and hence their frequent misunderstandings and squabbles and unmeasured denunciations in the midst of their sports. All this is very natural, and some grow better and some worse by it. Such trials are valuable to those who early learn to make a proper improvement or them.

In many things we are all mere children, however indisposed to admit the special intellectual deficiency or deficiencies which justify the charge. None of us like to confess our weaknesses or ignorance, although a very candid person will admit it rather than mislead, or run the risk of misleading, any one who may unduly rely on him. But most men do not know their ignorance; and very many will risk the consequences of error rather than confess it. A very thoughtful philosopher has said that 'the last attainment of the understand ing is a knowledge of our ignorance;' and, of course, without this attainment, we must act as though we think ourselves wise.

Our confidence is as often measured by our ignorance as by our knowledge; and perhaps much more so. It is not our actual so much as our fancied knowledge that makes us really confident. And this kind of confidence is very imposing on other men of honest minds, because it is itself honest, so far as opinions can properly be called honest, which are formed without careful investigation. And we do not mean, by this qualification, to question the general honesty of mere traditional opinions; for all of us would have but few opinions left; should we abandon all that we have not studied out ourselves. But when we find our opinions widely doubted or disputed, and that the interests of multitudes may depend upon our acts, then a very conscientious honesty would seem to demand of us to study well our opinions before we act on them. We act as mere

children when we refuse to do so. From the beginning the world has been blundering out its history through countless errors, and our conceit must be quite extravagant if we suppose that we can be making no mistakes.

It seems to us so common for men to hide their ignorance, that we assume this to be quite natural, and find no fault with it. Indeed, it would be childish to find fault with nature; for it alone, taking it both materially and spiritually, can furnish the foundations for all our constructions, and the seeds and germs of principles which, by proper culture, are to grow up to the dignity of manly systems. Many of these foundations remain untouched by us, and often unknown to us; and many of these principles continue as undeveloped germs during our whole lifetime, and hence, as to them, we always continue as mere children.

But to hide our ignorance, implies that we are conscious of it, and thus we shall do a right honest act by limiting our zeal in acting and speaking by the measure of our knowledge, and making our zeal in learning proportional to our ignorance, if we find that we have any active duty in the matter imposed on us. We do not, however, or ought not, to condemn people for acting ignorantly, or even for being unduly zealous in their ignorance; for this, too, is very natural. We cannot wait to learn before we act, for, in most matters, we are to learn by acting. We learn that fire burns by the feeling of the fact, and we have no other way of learning that a spark of social controversy, ignorantly managed, may grow into a general conflagration. Children are always growing in this way, even at the expense of rent clothes, and broken windows and dishes, and spoiled books, and sad defeats, and other worse catastrophes, to the great and proper grief of parents; and grown men, and even States, must submit to this mode of learning, and to its greater cost.

No doubt it were well to be sure we

are right before we venture; but a caution to be so has very little influence, for, before we act, we are almost always sure we are right. And yet we are very often mistaken, and it is only thus we learn what caution means, and how we are to apply it. Caution may itself be a most pernicious vice by being run into excess. Perhaps as many minds are wrecked by timidity as by recklessness, and no one can define the caution that is to balance the conflict between them. In the order of nature, neither of them can be known without the other; and they have an elective affinity for each other, which, under proper circumstances, may generate wisdom.

Children do not at first hide their ignorance, for they are unconscious of it, not having yet learned how much there is to learn. But after a while the jeers and scoffs of their more experienced companions teach them that a candid ignorance is less esteemed than pretentious ignorance or pretended knowledge, and then they are in danger of casting off their natural garb of modest simplicity, and disguising themselves in the trappings of disingenuous impudence. Doubtless, many will say that the man comes from the boy, and exaggerates his vices, and therefore men imitate children in this sort of disingenuousness; but we do not wish to say so now, because we have not much faith in doing good by finding fault; while we have great faith in the attractive power of all that is good and timely, if we can succeed in so presenting it that its goodness can be seen, and in bringing it so near as to make it seem attainable.

In saying that we are all children, we do it in no censorious mood, for we think it well that we are so. We are all children, in relation to all sorts of business and affairs in which we have little or no experience, skill, or knowledge, unless in those subjects on which our minds have taken such a set, as to be unwilling or otherwise unfitted to make any further progress. All men are apt to take such a set, some in relation to one

class of subjects, and some to another; and thus, in such subjects, all improvement is hopeless; their minds take a dwarfed and stunted form, and we may let them alone. No sane mind is in so hopeless a condition as to have taken such a set on all subjects; for no mind can have sufficiently thought on all subjects to have fallen into such a state. It requires persistent effort to become hopelessly in error.

On some subjects, therefore, we are all children, and thus far in a hopeful state, especially if we can allow ourselves to be so frank as to admit the fact. We ought to know that we are so on all subjects that we have not thoroughly studied out for ourselves, and on which we find great differences of opinion among men who have the reputation of having studied them. If we have not ourselves so studied such subjects, we have no moral right to be confident of the opinions we have received, and censorious of opposite ones, unless it be the right of children who have no opinions but those that they have received from others, or which come spontaneously; and who, in the excitement of their sports and other efforts, must approve or condemn according to these opinions. Such excitements and such judgments are natural and indispensable elements of their growth, and if ever men's judgments become perfect, they will cease to be excited and to grow, and will no longer be children in any thing.

The differences of children are continually resulting in angry words, separations, and open quarrels, and are very often settled by spontaneous concessions to each other, and hardly ever well done by the arbitrary force of the stronger party, though this is very apt to be tried. Peace may be commanded by authority or enforced by the intervention of a superior power, and thus they may learn the value of authority and the force of superior will, but not how to deal with each other, so as to maintain peace themselves; and without such means of order they are apt to forget that their own

wishes are not the sole measure of social right. And in an earlier age of the world we find the same phenomenon taking place among neighboring clans and tribes. Their wars were frequent, and were never considered settled by any number of victories of the stronger party; whilst their common king, or some more powerful neighbor, might compel and maintain peace by authority or force, until old feuds were forgotten and harmony restored.

If

In all great social movements great friction is to be expected, and it will generate great heat unless constantly lubricated with the oil of charity. this be forgotten, and the heat becomes intense, a good engineer would stop the engine or cast off the gearing of the heated part until it gets time to cool. And so, when parties become heated, they ought to drop the subject of controversy and take time to cool, or submit the management of it to the umpirage of cooler minds. Among themselves they will find none to prescribe any thing else than the most energetic treatment by purgatives and blood-letting; for all their doctors have the common disease upon them, with so high a fever, that they spread it wherever they go, and are incompetent to study its diagnosis. Usually, we seek impartial men for judges, and not one of the parties nor any of his kindred; and this means that, in all matters, none are fit to decide who have become excited in the cause.

If the parties must decide their own cause, then they must have reason enough to come to some common standard by which their differences are to be tried, and moderation enough to follow moderate leaders. Many of the leaders we now have, and who have brought us into these difficulties, are thoughtless and excited herdsmen, not casting pearls to swine and sacred things to dogs, but treating all their followers as swine and dogs, and giving them little else than swill and garbage. We cast off such leaders when we appeal to a common standard, with a mind ready to submit

to it, even if it should find against us. We are as apt to be in error now as all nations and all the world have been in all past ages, and we are no more competent than they were to decide our own cause rightly. If we sincerely appeal to common standards, we thereby submit our passions and our judgment to their decision, and thus make a large advance in moderation and reason, whether that standard be a common constitution, the common sense of quiet times, or the law of nations. It is absurd to suppose that we ever can attain social harmony so long as we, or any party of us, continue to test our social conduct by our own opinions of social duty. People 'measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.' Even children often settle their disputes by appealing to the rules of the game. Perhaps our standards might be improved; but until they are, we can have nothing better to go by, and they will surely answer the purpose if we admit their light, unrefracted by the ruffled surface of an excited mind, into a 'single eye' that collects the rays into a common focus.

Relying on standards for our social course, we fortify the mind against the shifting gusts of popular and selfish excitements. In the steady course of the trade-winds we set our sails with confidence, and feel sure of our voyage. Appeals to standards call us to reflect on the correctness of our principles and of our application of them to others, and therefore to moderation and modesty. We know how hard it is for men to make this appeal sincerely. It is usually made to obtain a voucher for their conduct; they alloy the standard metal with the mettle of their minds before making the comparison; they suborn the witness before bringing him into court.

Men are mere children when their dislike or opposition to any class or party is roused into excitement, and they are therefore inclined to resort to any meas