THE SCIENCE OF CANDLE BURNING.-Before you put your candle out, look at it. It has been burning some time unsnuffed, and gives little or no light: the wick is long, and is topped by a heavy black clot,-a lump of unconsumed carbon. Take the candlestick in your hand, and move it gently from side to side: the superfluous wick burns away, and the candle is again bright. When you ask yourself why this is, you learn that flame is hollow, and as it admits no oxygen, which is necessary for combustion, the wick which it surrounds remains unconsumed and diminishes the light. When the flame, by motion, leaves the wick exposed at intervals to the oxygen of the atmosphere it speedily burns away. Note the valuable deduction from this fact-the formation of a wick which constantly turns outwards and reaches the exterior air, and so gives us a candle requiring no snuffing. There is much philosophy in the burning of a candle. The wick you may think is intended to burn and give light; but this is not exactly the fact. The wick is simply to bring the melted tallow, or oil, if in a lamp, into that finely divided state in which it is best fitted for combustion. The heat applied to "light" the candle decomposes into its constituents the small quantity of tallow next the wick; heat and light are produced in the operation, and the heat so produced carries on the decomposition.

A PROPHECY.-There is no doubt but that Egypt must become the possession of a civilized European power; it must sooner or later become the connecting link between England and the East Indies. European dominion naturally supports science and literature, together with the rights of humanity, and to prevent the destruction of a barbarous power would be an act of high treason against intellectual culture and humanity. When that shall have been accomplished, new treasures will be brought to light, and Egyptian antiquity will be laid open before our eyes: we stand at the very threshold of a new era in the history of antiquity. In Nineveh, Babylonia, and Persia, centuries long past will come to light again, and the ancient times will present themselves clearly and distinctly in all their detail. It is true that all those nations are deficient in individuality, and in that which constitutes the idea of humanity, and which we find among the Greeks, Romans, and moderns; but their conditions and changes become clear. In all its details, the ancient world will acquire a fresh reality—and fifty years hence,

essays will appear on the history of those nations, compared with which, our present knowledge is like the chemistry such as it was a hundred years before the time of Berzelius.

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.-The Bible is beyond all controversy the best book of education in the world. It is the best book for the formation of children's minds; the best book for their acquisition and preservation of a pure idiomatic style in their native language; the best book to promote and secure the purposes of family government; the best book to make our children enlightened and good citizens of the Republic; the best book, in fine, to preserve them from all evil, and train them up in all good. A powerful volume might be written on its excellence as a school-book, and on the importance of still keeping it, where our forefathers laid it, as the cornerstone of our invaluable system of public education. If you take it away, the system not only becomes worthless, but absolutely pernicious. Imbue a single rising generation with the various knowledges of our day, and leave out the knowledge and the fear of God in His Word, and you have already made broad provision for your country's ruin. You have gathered fuel of ambition and irreligion, which any bold mind may set fire to. If Lord Bacon could talk of knowledge alone, without the mingling of God's truth and love in it, as being a pernicious and dangerous aliment to older minds, much more is it dangerous and hurtful to the minds of children.

HÁBIT." I trust everything, under God," says Lord Brougham, "to habit, upon which in all ages, the law-giver, as well as the school-master, has mainly placed his reliance: habit, which makes everything easy and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from the wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful and hard; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to the nature of the child grown or adult, as the most atrocious crimes are to any of your lordships. Give a child the habit of secretly regarding the truth-of carefully respecting the property of others of scru pulously abstaining from all acts of improvidence which can involve him in distress, and he will just as likely think of rushing into the element in which he cannot breathe, as of lying, or cheating, or stealing.”

THE depths of misery are never beyond the depths of mercy.

LONDON HOSPITALS.-Modern London contains for its nearly three millions of inhabitants, thirteen general hospitals, all of them well appointed with every appliance for the relief of suffering humanity. In this list we include St. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's, Guy's, the Westminster, St. George's, the London, the Middlesex, University College, Charing-cross, King's College, the Royal Free, and St. Mary's. The thirteen hospitals possess a collective staff of from 140 to 150 physicians and surgeons, all of whom we must suppose to be fitted for the highest duties of the profession. Besides the accredited medical staff of each hospital, at least an equal number of qualified medical practioners are attached to them as resident medical officers, pathologists, registrars, and assistants of various kinds. The poor persons and others—for all hospital patients are not poor-seeking relief from our hospital system, amount to no less than the astounding number of 300,000 annually. We have extracted this amount, without any wish to exaggerate, from the best returns, as furnished by the hospitals themselves. The figures will be accredited when we state, that the largest of our nosocomial establishments, the Royal Hospital of St. Bartholomew, succours nearly 5,500 in-patients annually, and that its in and out-patients nearly reach 80,000 in the year. Yet this vast system of relief, and the immense amount of medical and surgical skill consumed in its bestowal, are nearly-we had almost said entirely, gratuitous. Was ever such a spectacle of gratuitous toil exhibited as that which is involved in these figures?

PAUPERISM AND ITS COST IN MANCHESTER. At the present time, while there is a weekly average of 3,418 persons less in receipt of relief than in January last, there is a reduction in the cost equivalent to a saving of more than 10,000 per year. This enormous reduction is not, however, wholly attributable to the reduction in the number of paupers, great and satisfactory as that has been; for while, at the former period, the average weekly cost of out-door paupers was 2s. 5d. per head, it is now only 2s. 2d. per head. The present period of the year generally shows a low average of pauperism; but the reduction is undoubtedly due mainly to the abundance of labour, the good wages, and the cheapness of food, which have resulted from free trade measures; and the result is one not at all likely to afford corroboration to the delusions of some of the Derbyite Ministers, who are continually insisting that Free Trade has ruined

the trade of the country, and as a conse. quence, beggared the working classes, and fearfully swelled the ranks of pauperism. The reduction in the cost of maintenance, of 34d. per head, is also due to a combined influence-the cheapness of food, and the extension of the system, in this township, of giving relief in kind instead of in money.

GRAIN INTO IRELAND.-It appears, from a return to Parliament printed on Wednesday, that there has been an annual increase in the quantities of meal and flour imported into Ireland from Great Britain in the last three years. In 1849, of meal and flour, the quantity was 338,650 cwt.; in 1850, 347,233 cwt.; and in 1851, 466,451 cwt. In corn and grain in the period there was a decrease. In 1849, of corn and grain there were 616,157 quarters; in 1850, 508,859 quarters; and in 1851, 421, 894 quarters,

DECREASE IN THE IMPORTATION OF WINE. From returns just issued it appears that in the month ended the 5th June there were only 594,187 gallons of wine imported. In the like period of the preceding year the quantity was 1,182,801 gallons.

PILOTAGE.-The annual accounts of the Pilots' Fund of the Corporation of the Trinity-house have been printed. The receipts including £1,619 from dividends on £55, 993 stock, and £2470 from the poundage on pilots' earnings, was £5,577 for the year 1851, and the expenditure £5,480, leaving a surplus of £96 for the year, which, with the surplus of the year before, makes the total up to the 31st of December last, £795.

IMPORTATIONS OF SUGAR.-The total quantity of sugar imported into the United Kingdom in 1851, was 448,541 cwt. viz. 31,490 of British possessions, and 417,051 cwt. foreign. The quantity retained for home consumption in the same year, was 331,070 cwt., and 53,237 cwt. were re-exported.

CORN, &C.-A Parliamentary return which has been printed, states that 11,672, 533 quarters of corn or meal of all sorts were imported from abroad into this country in 1847; 7,528,483, in 1848; 10,669, 661, in 1849; 9,019,579, in 1850; and 9, 618,086, in 1851. From Ireland 969,537 quarters were imported in 1847; 1,952,784, in 1848; 1,436,706, in 1849; 1,328,839, in 1850; and 1,324,688, in 1851.

THE Regalia are exhibited in the Tower. The value of the stones in the royal crown, exclusive of the metal, is estimated at £111,900.

THE total expense of collecting the stamp duty on newspapers, is about £6,169.

THE MINISTERIAL WHITE-BAIT DINNER -The custom grew up in this manner:Towards the end of the last century and at the beginning of the present, the Commissioners of Dagenham Reach included the First Lord of the Treasury, with several other high functionaries, and some Elder Brothers of the Trinity-house-amongst others, Sir Robert Preston, who had a house near the Reach, and was intimately acquainted with Pitt. During Pitt's Premiership, the Commissioners made an annual expedition down the river to survey the Dagenham Reach embankments; and they afterwards dined on or near the scene of their not very laborious duties, Sir Robt. Preston supplying the fruit for the dessert. When this prescriptive excursion was discontinued, some of the most distinguished Tories resolved to have an annual dinner of their own, and formed themselves into a club for that purpose. Candidates were at first admitted by ballot, as in the case of other analogous institutions; and the Ministerial character attached to the re-union arose from the accidental circumstance of the club being mainly composed of persons whose tenure of power had lasted so long, and seemed so little liable to more than temporary interruption, as to justify them, in their own opinion, in assuming official existence as the basis of their convivial intercourse. The Secretary of the Treasury for the time being was always charged with the arrangement of the party, the payment of the bill, &c.; and eventually the belief got abroad, that any Tory, entitled to wear the blue and gold uniform, was an injured individual unless he received his annual summons to eat white bait in Right Honorable company. When, in the fulness of health and hope, Sir Robert Peel presided at the Fish dinner, he was confessedly the most amusing of the party, and the readiest and most apt in the required allusions. "May we keep their places without their flounders" was, on one occasion, his good-humoured allusion to the discomfited Whigs. When the present Premier once acted as Chairman, he was fortunately aided by an excellent whipperin, who, by way of preparation, had carefully analysed the division-lists of the session just concluded. From these it appeared that a Right Honorable Baronet had been the most assiduous attendant in the House of Commons, and the late Sir William Follett the most remiss. As soon

as the cloth was removed, they were required to appear before the chair; and a comic reproof was administered to the distinguished lawyer-who, by the way, only half relished the joke-whilst the Right Honourable Baronet was solemnly presented with a penny mug, labelled, "A reward to Jemmy for being a good boy."

NANKIN.-Most, if not all the nankin bought in our markets is of American fabric. It is manufactured from Nankin cotton, grown in Georgia, and is spun and woven at the Lonsdale mills, in Rhode Island. The culture of Nankin cotton was introduced to this country by the late John Forsyth, formerly minister to Spain, afterwards Secretary of State, under the administrations of General Jackson and Martin Van Buren. It is now grown in large quantities by many of the planters of Georgia, and commands a ready sale at high prices. Mr. Forsyth procured the seed from the American Consul at Canton, and at the outset, the project of growing it in this country was wild and chimerical. It is of a darker hue than the China article, and not as handsome.-Scientific American. SOMETHING WORTH KNOWING. - The yard is derived from the Saxton word gyrd or girth, being originally the circumference of the body, until Henry I. decreed that it should be the length of his arm.—Inch from uncia, or twelfth.-In 1066, when William the Conquerer began to reign, the penny, or sterling, was cast with a deep cross, so that it might be broken in half as a half-penny, or in quarters for fourthings, or farthings.-Kelly.

ROSE. The rose has been the emblem of England since the war of the roses in 1845, when those who espoused the cause of Lancaster wore a red rose, and those of York a white one. The war of the roses originated with the descendants of Edward III. and continued till the reign of Henry VII., who to unite the contending houses, married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV.

SHAMROCK.-Various opinions exist why the shamrock is the emblem of Ireland. It is supposed that when St. Patrick their patron saint endeavoured to explain the mystery of the Trinity, and being unable to contend against the superstition of the age, he had recourse to a visible image; he therefore made the shamrock the emblem of the divisibility of the divinity into three distinct parts, united into one stem.