You will recollect that in our last number, we made a PROMISE. And what was it? Why, that in the next numbers of this Magazine we would say something of the method of using the work in schools and families. So, in compliance with our promise, we will begin. In the family, if not in the school, it will be very useful sometimes to study the pictures. Here is a picture inserted for this very purpose. What is its meaning? The artist who designed it, doubtless meant something by it. How pleasant it is to stand or sit in a semi-circular row, like a class, with an older brother or sister for a monitor or teacher, and endeavor to study it out. Every picture has a foreground and background. In the foreground above, are a boy, a girl, and a dog; and the boy is holding up something which looks like a little bird. Is it not so?-Now, what is going on? Does the dog wish to get the bird, and is the boy holding it away from him with one arm, while he holds the dog with the other? If you do not like this account of it, will you propose some other? Is not the bird dead?-Does the dog merely wish to play with it without hurting it? Let every one of you explain for himself, and give his reasons why he thinks it means so or so; and why he thinks it does not mean something elsc, which his classmate mentions. What else is there in the foreground of the engraving, besides what we have mentioned? What is in the background? What is there, still farther in the background, quite beyond the large tree? Is it right to play with a bird, and keep it in a fright, to please a dog and amuse ourselves? Should we like to be treated in a similar manner? 42 of the hills. To the west, the flat country extends to the sea. This Campagna is a curious country. It is not a dead flat, as some have represented it, but gently uneven, with a profusion of bushy thickets and a few solitary trees scattered over it. Throughout this wild waste, however, no rural dwelling, or hamlet, or field, or garden, was to be seen. All was ruin. A few fallen monuments or deserted [More about the proper method of using modern huts alone met the eye. the Magazine, in another number.] VISIT TO ROME. No. II. From the beginning of the midsummer heats till the October rains, this region sends up a bad air, called the malaria, which, to those who remain on it, generally produces slow consuming disease, and finally death. Distant view of Rome and its vicinity-The Campagna. The rest of the year it is healthy. River Tiber-Gate of Rome-Adventures there.. Though we seemed to have finished our journey, we were yet sixteen miles from Rome. Beyond this far-famed city to the south, rose the beautiful woody height of Mount Cavo, formerly Mont Albanus, on whose utmost summit once stood a celebrated temple of Jupiter. Next it, on the left, Frescati, the ancient Tusculum, caught our eye, reminding us of Cicero, who used to retire for study beneath its shades. To the east was a range of grassy hills, called the Sabine Hills; and beyond these, as far as we could see, the white peaks of the Appenines. We could fancy we saw on the Sabine hills, Cincinnatus at his plough, Horace enjoying the rural pleasures of his farm, and the Sabines mourning the abuse of their wives and daughters. On the green sides of these hills we beheld the white walls of the ancient Tibur. Far as the eye can reach, the dreary solitude of the Campagna stretches about twenty miles in every direction, to the base About five miles from Rome, close by the road, on the right, is the remains of a broken tomb, commonly called the tomb of Nero. But this is a great mistake, for it has on it the name of a private Roman citizen. At length we beheld the river Tiber, glistening in the sun, as it flowed silently through its deserted banks, which are flat, bare, and uncultivated. It is deep and muddy; and neither large nor beautiful. Yes, after two thousand years have passed away, it is still the Tiber,-the yellow Tiber. Immediately on crossing the bridge, we entered what was anciently called the Campus Martius; and at the extremity of a straight line of road, about a mile and a half in length, bordered by high walls we saw the Porta del Popolo, one of the gates of Rome. On arriving, we drove under it, and beheld in the centre of a stately piazza, an Egyptian obelisk of granite, that seemed to pierce the skies. Leaving undescribed many interesting objects at the gate, I must tell you some of of our adventures. We had neglected to 43 ORIGIN OF PAPER. 43 provide ourselves with a necessary pass, to the sun. The films nearest the heart of the be left at the gate; so we were taken into plant made the finest paper. custody by two men, and conveyed to the custom-house to be searched, as if we were smugglers. After this search was over, we drove about two hours to find a place at which to stop, for the hotels were all full. We succeeded at length in getting a good one. We felt much cheered to find ourselves in a comfortable house, instead of a large black ball; and to find good wholesome food and clean beds. ORIGIN OF PAPER. When first invented-Of what made-How manufac tured-Parchments-Paper of rags. [The following article is extracted from MALCOM'S BIBLE DICTIONARY, to the publishers of which we are indebted for the use of the engaving. The history of an article so extensively used as paper now is, cannot fail to be instructive.] Paper was invented in very early times. 2 John 12. It derives its name from the papyrus, or paper-reed, a species of bulrush, growing on the banks of the Nile. Isa. xix. 7. The stalk is triangular, rising to the height of eight or nine feet, besides several feet under the water, and terminating at the top in a crown of small filaments resembling the thistle. Of these the Egyptians made baskets, shoes, cloths, and small boats. Ex. ii. 3. Isa. xviii. 2. To make paper they peeled off the different skins or films of the plant, which sucreed each other like those of an onion. These they laid on a table, like the shingles of a roof, to the intended length and breadth of the paper, and laid over them a thin paste; above which they spread a cross layer of other films or leaves, and then dried it in Paper Plant. 44 THE YOUNG CHEMIST. How the writer used to do-Little experiments to Illustrate the subject, and show what Chemistry is. It was usual for the young chemist in his early days to lecture his brothers and sisters seated at the breakfast or dinner table -to show them that table-salt was not the vulgar thing they had all their lives supposed, but a muriate of soda, or a mixture of muriatic acid and the common alkali soda. He demonstrated to them, too, that sugar was not a simple substance, and, under all its changes, characterised as the sweetener of tea or coffee, but that it could be separated into three distinct parts-carbon, or a substance exactly the same as burnt wood, and two airs, hydrogen and oxygen, which were as transparent and invisible as the air around us that we breathe. He showed that what we term cold, was a mere name; that bodies were cold because they did not possess the principle of heat; that when we touched the cold marble slab, it was not the cold coming to our fingers which we felt, but the heat running from our body by the fingers, and passing into the slab. In short, whether the family circle ate or drank, were cold or warm, wet or dry, the young chemist would give them a philosophical reason for all. It is true, mamma and the elder sister of the group were sometimes terribly alarmed at strange bursts of 44 flame, suffocating smells, and repeated loud explosions that not unfrequently issued from the room of the chemist; and the stained clothes and disfigured linen were circumstances, not unfrequently, of regret and vexation. Yet, on the whole, they used to declare that they would much rather have a dozen young chemists than half that number of idle, mischievous, and stupid or unintelligent boys. We believe the young chemist was, on the whole, a source of secret pride, and esteemed a source of infinite amusement, and the vehicle of no small rational instruction to his happy family group. But we have not yet exactly told what chemisty is. All substances on the face of the earth have certain properties. They are either sweet, or sour, or bitter, or they have no taste at all. They are hard and solid as a piece of metal or stone, or they are fluid like water, or they are light and transparent like air. Many substances, too, when you put them together, mix instantly and form one; but many, on the contrary, will not so mix. Thus, if you drop a lump of sugar into a glass of water, it immediately dissolves, and you have a thin sweet liquid; but if you drop a pebble into this water, you have, still, tasteless water, and an undissolved pebble at the bottom. Again, if you take a glass of lemon juice, and about a teaspoonful of common soda in powder, and mix them together, you have a violent bubbling up, or effervescence while the whole of the soda is dissolved in the lemon juice; but if you examine and taste this liquid now, you will find that it has neither the sour taste of the lemon, nor the peculiar taste of the soda, but a distinct sharp taste, different from either: these two substances have combined and formed a 45 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EAST. 45 third, a salt, having peculiar properties of seen that it is a wide and interesting field, its own. In this way you may go through every substance in nature; and this has been called the science of chemistry. It will thus be embracing an acquaintance with every thing around us, whether of earth or water, or air, or the solid and fluid parts of vegetable and animal bodies. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EAST. The river Jordan, as well as the Nile, in Egypt, overflowed its banks every year, and the mud which was left by the flood, made the soil exceedingly fertile. You know this is the case with the rivers Connecticut and Mississippi. When the floods had subsided, seed was sown on the wet ground, and trampled in by the feet of cattle. This method is still in use, not only in Western Asia and Egypt, but in India. In many parts of Judea and the adjoining countries, rain falls but seldom, and in some parts of Egypt, never. This makes it necessary to farmers to water the land a great deal. For this purpose the water is raised, by various machines and contrivances, from the streams to cisterns in the higher parts of the gardens or fields. When the rows of plants require watering, some of the water is let out of the cistern, and it runs in streams; while the gardener stands ready, and from time to time stops these rills by turning earth against them with his foot, and opening a new channel with his spade. At first, men probably dug the earth, and had few or no tools to assist them. Ploughs are first mentioned by Moses. Perhaps Noah contrived them, for he was a farmer; but of this we can only guess. Samson, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, and Micah, and the Saviour, afterwards speak of ploughs or ploughing. Elisha ploughed. Job and others speak of harrows. Their ploughs were probably small and light, and had a share and coulter. This makes the expres sion about swords being beaten into plough |