his master-mind, and in these cartoons he embodied ideas which would not rise upon the world generally, for generations yet to come. The grandeur and repose that breathe over these majestic efforts seem to us entirely due to the informing and chastening influence of the subjects they portray-the Death of Ananias, the judicial blindness of Elymas, the ascent of Peter and John to the temple, the miraculous draught of fishes, Paul and Barnabas at Lystra, the scene on Mars' hill, and our Saviour's Charge to Peter.

They were painted about the year 1520, but they belong as fully to the nineteenth century. There is nothing of littleness about them, there are no ludicrous accessories, no startling anomalies, no childish accidents All is simple and sublime. Though only painted on sheets of paper, they are in wonderful preservation, their purchase having been entrusted by Charles I to Rubens, who knew their value. An artist is copying one of them. It represents Peter and John at the beautiful gate; but the quiet tone of the original is not transferable. The picture is one of those commanding things that would be hid, but cannot.

But we must be turning homewards. An evening walk with such remembrances to sweeten it, will be delicious. The shadows are growing long, and the tree-tops glow warmly in the retiring sun. We pass Kingston bridge with its patient anglers fishing in mid-stream, and think of Izaac Walton. Through the long street, down dale and up hills, grassy and clouded with gorse! On the very summit is a bench, with a homely couple and their child, watching the glorious sunset. Twilight and the autumn moon, glistening on the windows of the villas skirting our suburban commons-the huge telescope at Wandsworth, Clapham and its gentility; and "so home."

THE PLANT'S MISSION.

THE whole process of vegetation is a chemical operation, for sugar, honey, gums, resins, acids, oils, &c., being found in plants, but not in the earth or air by which they are supported, they of necessity must be vegetable products formed by the action of the plant on the constituent elements of these

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bodies, which occur in the soil or the atmosphere. find in plants a variety of bodies which do not exist in the food by which they are supported, but are combined by some process going on within the plant. Oxalic acid, for example, which is found in sorrel, is composed of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon-the two first being the constituent parts of water, while carbon occurs plentifully in the soil-the plant possesses therefore the property of proportioning and combining these bodies. So in the animal kingdom, milk is not found in the grass on which the cow feeds, but its constituents are there; and it is by the lacteal glands of that animal that the fluid is elaborated and prepared.

As the food of vegetables is taken up by the root it must be very finely divided, or in a state of actual solution, in order to enter the fine capillary vessels. Hence the necessity of ploughing and watering the earth, that the carbonaceous matter may become exposed to the action of moisture and oxygen by which it is converted into carbonic acid, which readily combines with water, and in this state enters the vessels of the root. This food ascends into the plant up the albernum or circle of wood immediately under the bark, by which it is conveyed through the various branches to the fine anastomosing vessels of the leaves: it is there prepared for the support or increase of the fruit and new wood; for if the leaves are removed there will be very imperfect fruit. From the leaf, the sap descends between the albernum and bark; and if a circle of bark be removed from the branch, there will be no farther increase of wood below such removal. This operation is called "girdling," and has been resorted to for the purpose of throwing an unbearing tree into bearing, the theory of which is that as the descending sap cannot return below this removed part, that portion is reclaimed which would otherwise have gone to the formation of new wood below the part.

Light performs several very important parts in the physiology of plants, for most plants not only turn the upper surface of their leaves to receive its influence, but their branches also bend in the same direction. It is the cause too of color, for if a plant be secluded from light, it grows pale

as may be observed in the interior of lettuces, cabbages, and endive. Not only does it affect the color of vegetables, but the taste, as in celery, the secluded part of which is much sweeter than that which is exposed.

THE ART OF DESCRIBING.

THE power of Description is intimately connected with the faculty of Observation, and affords a very fair criterion of its character. For our incompetency to describe, if properly canvassed, will generally be found to originate in imperfect perception. The artist who makes what is professionally called "a study" of any object, owes the excellency which he attains, to the attention he has bestowed upon it; for it is a fact that many of our students in design, who can copy every lineament or shade in a piece of statuary actually before them, will imitate nature most abominably when the eye has no such type to guide it.

To a certain extent, therefore, it would seem to follow that Observation is the soul of imitation, and it matters little whether our representations are given in real colors upon canvass, or obtained by that form of transfusion which has been well designated Verbal Painting.

The choice of powerful and appropriate epithets, indeed, seems to be less the result of study and book-lore than may be generally imagined. It is surprising how forcibly children will express their ideas, simply from a carelessness of diction, and an unsophisticated desire to describe the impression of the mament. Instances might be produced almost ad infinitum to shew that this graphic power is prejudiced rather than improved by art. We frequently meet with phrases in the writings of the uneducated, which strike home, by their truth and expressiveness; and even in the extempore declamations of the illiterate, there may be found a sprinkling of terms which we should do well to transplant into our vocabularies. No one understood this art better than William Cobbett, whose pictures in this way, with all their racy rudeness of touch, are not to be surpassed.

One reason of this will be found in the more frequent use of

our proper mother-tongue: the Saxon words telling usually with much more force from their being better or more easily understood than those derived from the Greek or Latin. The great work of Bunyan has been much and very justly admired as a specimen of pure English, and there are many passages in Byron's "Childe Harold," so utterly unlike it in every other respect, equally remarkable for the same excellency.

The best mode of testing this thoroughly English character, is by reading aloud to children, or to such adults as have not had the benefit of a liberal education. Open the "Pilgrim's Progress" where you please, and you will never light upon a page that will not be readily understood, so far as the meaning of the words alone is concerned. Take for example the approach of Christian and his fellow soldier to their heavenly inheritance.

"There came out also at this time to meet them, several of the King's trumpeters, clothed in white and shining raiment, who with melodious voices and loud, made even the heavens to echo with their sound. These trumpeters saluted Christian and his fellow with ten thousand welcomes from the world; and this they did with shouting and sound of trumpet.

"This done, they compassed them round on every side; some went before, some behind, and some on the right hand, some on the left (as were to guard them through the upper regions) continually sounding as they went, with melodious noise in notes on high, so that the very sight was to them that could behold it, as if heaven itself was come down to meet them. Thus, therefore, they walked on together; and as they walked, ever and anon these trumpeters, even with joyful sound, would by mixing their music with looks and gestures still signify to Christian and his brother how welcome they were unto their company, and with what gladness they came to meet them. And now were these two men as it were in heaven before they came at it, being swallowed up with the sight of angels, and with hearing of their melodious notes. Here also they had the city itself in view, and thought they heard all the bells therein to ring to welcome them thereto. But above all, the warm and joyful thoughts that they had about their own dwelling there with such company, and that for ever and ever. Oh! by what tongue or pen can their glorious joy be expressed."

The home-telling beauty of this passage will be more conspicuous when contrasted with the wordy glitter of many of our modern writers, with all their distingué elegance, and their recherché epithets, and even when the terms employed are confined to those of classic origin.

In recording our ideas, it should always be borne in mind that the generality of readers will never search for the sense: if it lie not on the surface, the benefit to them will be little or nothing-they will see "men as trees walking," and the mental image will be correspondingly foggy and indistinct. Cowper was well aware of this, and declined some otherwise-judicious emendations of his verses upon this ground alone.

There are two classes of writers who appear to demand special notice. The one is too apt to soften down and polish expressions till all their piquancy is gone. They seem to dread nothing so much as stepping out of the accustomed track, and will say things as they have been said a thousand times before, for this only reason, that the words seem to dovetail with each other, and to frame "unimpeachable phrases." Such writers very commonly allow quotations to run off with them, going farther than they want to go, simply because they get on so easily; and either lose their way altogether, or get back as they best can. This faulty system obtains peculiarly amongst those who affect a religious phraseology. "Their cats are not cats; nor their dogs, dogs." "We believe, feel, see, know; and therefore speak," should be the motto of every writer. If the sense do not carry us, by attempting to run off with it, we shall make ourselves as ridiculous as the miller in the fable who shouldered his donkey. Say nothing, if you have nothing to say; and if you have, let your own mind speak, and not the minds of others.

There is nothing so fatal to the full development of mental stature as imitation, either in matter or in manner. An original thinker, the late Rev. Andrew Fuller, has entered his caveat against the practice in the following well-told narrative. My father," says he, "was a farmer; and in my younger days, it was a great boast among the ploughmen that they could plough a straight line across the furrows or ridges of the field. I thought I could do this as well as any of them. One day I