Many stories are in circulation, illustrating this tendency among our race. Persons have been suddenly informed, that their newspaper might prove more interesting if they would turn it right side up instead of studying its pages inverted. Others, no adepts in foreign languages, have been detected in the act of being intensely excited in the perusal of a Spanish Bible. An instance in point occurred in our native town some few years since, if we may believe the witty auctioneer who made the statement. It seems that a speculating Yankee had bought up a large quantity of unsold and unsaleable pamphlets from one of our booksellers. He had the impertinence also to cross the street and contract with a book-binder for the binding of the trashy sheets into volumes; each volume to contain twelve pamphlets, all of the same kind. Hardly a fortnight had elapsed, before "books at auction" were advertised, and the collection consisted mainly of " bound pamphlets." A large number were sold at moderate prices, to those who buy books only to fill up shelves. Encouraged by this, our Yankee determined to try another auction for the sale of the residue. It came off, and was attended by some of the dupes of the former "transaction." As the auctioneer began to sell, a by-stander shouted out the question: "Haven't you got there a dozen pamphlets just alike bound together?" "I don't know how that is,” replied the man with the ivory hammer, "but an old lady, who bought a volume at the former sale, called yesterday to tell me that she had read eleven of the twelve pamphlets and thought that she observed considerable of a sameness."

NATURE AS A MECHANIC.

The perfection of the handicraft of Nature is made very clear by a comparison with the works of art. If the former is taken as a pattern for the latter, it becomes instantly obvious that a design and ingenuity, infinitely beyond those of man, have been exercised by the Architect of the Universe. Nature cannot be rivalled, even in her simplest contrivances. It seems as if lenses might be so combined and shaped as to be entirely achromatic : that is, to operate without any loss of light, and represent an ob

ject with perfect distinctness. But the truth is, that, although we have the human eye for a model, and although its structure seems simple and imitable, yet no lenses have yet been made, which do not, when combined, delude the eye by the effects of color. Objects are not faithfully represented, on account of aberrations which are due to the imperfection of shape in the lenses. eye, on the contrary, is perfectly achromatic. Every object, as discerned through its perfect lens, is exactly represented, without distortion or dimness.

The

The tyrant Dionysius, it is known, had a prison built underground, on the principle of a whispering gallery, in order that he might hear the menaces and repinings of his incarcerated victims, and then torture them for their harmless and helpless contumacy. It was called the "Ear of Dionysius," and is said to have been constructed after the pattern of a human ear. The narrative may not be true; it is certainly not incredible. But how infinitely inferior must have been its vibrating apparatus to the tympanum of the ear, which thrills and responds to the finest tick of a watch or the most delicate note of an insect's song.

Many attempts have been made to shape a mechanism which should imitate and represent the motions of the human arm. A single member of a machine rarely has more than two or four different movements, but a French mechanic at last succeeded in making an inanimate limb susceptible of twelve different motions. But those of the human arm may properly,-nay, must properly -be said to be innumerable.

Years were spent in finding out the the curve which would encounter the least resistance or friction in moving through air or water. The propellers, which are now used in some of the best steam freight-boats afloat on our rivers, are the result of these experiments. They are so constructed as to be retarded to the smallest possible extent in moving forward through the water, and to encounter as much resistance as possible in the backward movement, by which they propel the craft to which they are attached. This curve, after all the experiments, was found to be exactly the same as that of a bird's wing. This is one of the most appreciable and beautiful illustrations of the precision and simplicity of nature's mechanism, with which we are acquainted.

QUOTATIONS.

It is vain to deny the force and beauty of a well-introduced quotation. After long endeavors to enter fully into the manner, meaning and mind of an author,-losing our sense of beauty in the monotony of his style, or wearied with the uniform flow of his thoughts-it is refreshing to come in contact with some favorite expression, or snatch of poetry, or eloquent period, familiar to the ear and thoroughly appreciated by the understanding. It is like encountering, after a long journey through strange scenes, a place that reminds us of home,-a cottage, a garden wall, or a green slope, that resembles the

We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot."

It is wonderful, with how much more telling force a quotation can be applied, than the same thought, expressed in less familiar phrase. The scriptural clause, introduced in the pulpit, to close up a magnificent train of thought, is reckoned by the hearers the most eloquent passage in the discourse. The political orator introduces some party by-word, some familiar sentiment of a distinguished partisan statesman, and his voice is drowned in thunders of applause. It is because the whole idea of the speaker is taken instantly, entirely, and vividly. And this should always be the object of the introduction of a quotation: to give force, pungency and perspicuity to a course of thought: not with a desire for a vapid display of learning, or from an indolent disposition to use borrowed ornaments, but because it is the best vehicle of the idea which one designs to convey, and will add to the graces of aptitude, clearness and power, the charm of familiarity. There is a sort of slang writing, which seems to be an attempt to disguise one's own dullness under quotation marks; to make others responsible for one's own poverty of thought, by interspersing a page of original matter with irregular fragments of familiar phraseology between inverted commas. In short, wherever quotations are particularly liberal, unusual weakness may be pected. These borrowed plumes should be used carefully and frugally, and only when the train of thought seems to make it impossible to leave them out,-in fact, when to leave them out

ex

would be a serious blemish in the paragraph. There is room for the exercise of great art in the felicitous introduction of a citation. Robert Hall, Fielding, Macaulay, Addison, Washington Irving, and Channing, are among those who have been more successful than other writers in this art. We are sorry that we have no room for specimens.

We have often been intensely amused at the mode, in which quotations are introduced into style. Sometimes it can be imagined long before the thing appears, that it must be coming. Every successive sentence is a new fling after the precious quotation. Sometimes the writer seems to be thrown back, to halt, and even to go beyond it, but he is sure of his game ultimately, and is not to be baffled.

We remember once listening to a lecture on Clouds and Atmospheric Phenomena from a distinguished meteorologist. As he rambled along in his discussion of the various species of cloudsthe nimbus, cirrus, cumulus, and so on-he introduced a couplet from Milton's Il Penseroso, by remarking that great writers were usually correct delineators of nature. "You remember," said he, "Milton's lines respecting the "wandering moon," in which she seems-according to the poet

-" as if her head she bowed stooping through a fleecy cloud."

"This cloud," continued the learned lecturer, " was manifestly of the cirro-cumulus order."

Another distinguished gentleman, the father of some religious neology, was one day addressing his theological students on the "beauty of holiness." Being often carried away on his own train of ideas beyond the path of his written notes, he was always sure to come back to the point from which he had started on his tangent, in order that none of his precious thoughts might be lost. On the occasion alluded to, he was unusually digressive, and might be called guilty of a genuine episode. Catching up his manuscript, his eye fell on the place from which he had unmoored his thoughts. "Oh," he exclaimed, "here's some poetry.” 'Abashed the Devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is! and saw
Virtue in her own shape how lovely-saw
And pined his loss.'"

The consummate art and appropriateness with which this memo

rable quotation was introduced, excited restrained, but unequivocal, merriment in the grave auditory.

We once had the luck to live in a small city, where the impetuous "Town-Committee" of one of the political parties of that day were wont to summon their troops to caucuses, by a glowing postbill, introduced with the following motto, in flaming letters:

"Come, as the winds come, when forests are rended!

Come, as the waves come, when navies are stranded."

The habit was only broken up, by the appearance of a paragraph in an opposition print, complimenting the "Committee" on the aptness of their motto. " For," remarked the editor drily, "if our adversaries carry out their principles, they will come,' very much, if we mistake not, like 'the ill wind, that blows nobody good;' and as for the waves,' we should judge that they had come' already, from the amount of political 'flood-wood' that has been found by the selectmen in our back-streets lately.”

We don't think opera-airs sound very well in church, even when played only as symphonies. But these would hardly shock us more than did a certain mincing young divine, who one day shaking perfumes from his white handkerchief, introduced into his sermon a quotation from the first canto of Don Juan :

"Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark
Our coming, and look brighter when we come."

Any thing but Don Juan in a surplice and bands, thought we: and were reminded of Addison's description of the masquerade, in which a heathen god makes an assignation with a nun.

Much amusement has been derived by a little coterie we wot of, by suggesting certain trite quotations to the circle, and inquiring the name of the original author. It is wonderful, how "doctors" will "disagree" on this simple question of fact. One is sure the line sounds like Thomson: another has certainly read it in Cowper's Task, and a third gruffly insists that it is from the pen of Shakspeare. We recollect on one occasion seeing nearly the whole company at variance with respect to the common citation :

"The feast of the reason and the flow of soul."

At first a majority declared in favor of Pope, but being unable to suggest the locus in quo, they all gradually come to the conclusion that they had been deceived by the cadence, and that it was less likely to be Pope's than any one's else. Perhaps Cowper at last had