Holland and Switzerland acquire stronger habits of cleanliness, neatness and industry at the primary schools, than the children of the small shopkeeping classes of England do at the private schools of England; and they leave the primary schools of these countries much better instructed than those who leave our middle class private schools.  After having learnt reading, writing, arithmetic, singing, geography, history and the Scriptures, the children leave the schools, carrying with them into life habits of cleanliness, neatness, order and industry, and awakened intellect, capable of collecting truths and reasoning upon them.”

* * * * *

[FROM THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.]

SUMMER PASTIME.

  Do you ask how I’d amuse me
    When the long bright summer comes,
  And welcome leisure woos me
    To shun life’s crowded homes;
  To shun the sultry city,
    Whose dense, oppressive air
  Might make one weep with pity
    For those who must be there.

  I’ll tell you then—­I would not
    To foreign countries roam,
  As though my fancy could not
    Find occupance at home;
  Nor to home-haunts of fashion
    Would I, least of all, repair,
  For guilt, and pride, and passion,
    Have summer-quarters there.

  Far, far from watering-places
    Of note and name I’d keep,
  For there would vapid faces
    Still throng me in my sleep;
  Then contact with the foolish,
    The arrogant, the vain,
  The meaningless—­the mulish,
    Would sicken heart and brain.

  No—­I’d seek some shore of ocean
    Where nothing comes to mar
  The ever-fresh commotion
    Of sea and land at war;
  Save the gentle evening only
    As it steals along the deep,
  So spirit-like and lonely,
    To still the waves to sleep.

  There long hours I’d spend in viewing
    The elemental strife,
  My soul the while subduing
    With the littleness of life;
  Of life, with all its paltry plans,
    Its conflicts and its cares—­
  The feebleness of all that’s man’s—­
    The might that’s God’s and theirs!

  And when eve came I’d listen
    To the stilling of that war,
  Till o’er my head should glisten
    The first pure silver star;
  Then, wandering homeward slowly,
    I’d learn my heart the tune
  Which the dreaming billows lowly,
    Were murmuring to the moon!

R.C.

* * * * *

True genius is perpetual youth, health, serenity, and strength.  The eye is bright with a fine fire that is undimmed by time, and the mind, not sharing the body’s decline from the prime of middle age, continues on with illimitable accession of spiritual power.

Our convictions should be based on conceptions got from insight of principles, and not upon opinions spawned of authority and expediency.  Every man shall influence me, no man can decide for me.