and motto for his own. It was three ostrich feathers, with the words "Ich dien" (I serve) written under them. This has ever since been the crest of the Prince of Wales.

ON GUARD.

1. At midnight, on my lonely beat,
When shadow wraps the wood and lea,
A vision seems my view to greet
Of one at home that prays for me.

2. No roses bloom upon her cheek—
Her form is not a lover's dream-
But on her face, so fair and meek,

A host of holier beauties gleam.

3. For softly shines her silver hair,
A patient smile is on her face,
And the mild, lustrous light of prayer
Around her sheds a moon-like grace.

4. She prays for one that's far away,
The soldier in his holy fight-
And begs that Heaven in mercy may
Protect her boy and bless the Right!

5. Till, though the leagues lie far between, This silent incense of her heart

Steals o'er my soul with breath serene,
And we no longer are apart.

6. So guarding thus my lonely beat,
By shadowy wood and haunted lea,
That vision seems my view to greet,
Of her at home who prays for me.

A TALK WITH SCHOOL-CHILDREN.

pe-dant, a person who makes a

show of his learning. te-di-ous, slow.

na-tur-al his-tory, the study of animals and plants.

pee-wit, a bird, so called from
the cry it makes.

pros-pect, sight.
ra-tion-al, reasonable,
sible.

pur-suit, employment.

sen

1. The first thing for a boy or girl to learn, after obedience and morality, is a habit of observation. A habit of using your eyes. It matters little what you use them on, providing it is good and you do use them.

2. They say "knowledge is power," and so it is; but only the knowledge which you get by observation. Many a man is very learned in books, and has read for years and years, and yet he is useless. He knows about all sorts of things, but he can't do them. When you set him to do work, he makes a mess of it. He is what is called a pedant; because he has not used his eyes and ears.

3. He has lived in books. He knows nothing of the world about him, or of men and their ways, and therefore he is left behind in the race of life by many a shrewd fellow who is not half so book-learned as he, but who is a

shrewd fellow-who keeps his eyes open-who is always picking up new facts, and turning them to some particular use.

4. Now, I don't mean to undervalue booklearning. No man less. All ought to have some of it, and the time you spend at school is not a whit too long; but the great use of a school-education is, not so much to teach you things, as to teach you how to learn. To give you the noble art of learning, which you can use for yourselves in after-life on any matter to which you choose to turn your mind.

5. And what does the art of learning consist in? First and foremost, in the art of observing. That is, the boy who uses his eyes best on his book, and observes the words and letters of his lesson most accurately and carefully, that is the boy who learns his lesson best.

6. You know, as well as I, how one fellow will sit staring at his book for an hour without knowing a word about it, while another will learn the thing in a quarter of an hour, and why? Because one has actually not seen the words. He has been thinking of something else, looking out of the window, repeating the words to himself like a parrot. The other fellow has simply, as we say, "looked sharp." He has looked at the lesson with his whole mind, seen it, and seen into it, and therefore knows all about it.

7. Therefore, I say, that everything which helps a boy's powers of observation helps his power of learning; and I know from experience that nothing helps that so much as the study of the world about you, and especially of natural history. To be accustomed to watch for curious objects, to know in a moment when you have come upon anything new-which is observation. To be quick at seeing when things are like, and when unlike-which is classification.

8. All that must, and I well know does, help to make a boy shrewd, earnest, accurate, ready for whatever may happen. When we were little and good, a long time ago, we used to have a jolly old book, called "Evenings at Home," in which was a great story called Eyes and No Eyes," and that story was of more use to me than any dozen other stories I ever read.

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9. A regular old-fashioned story it is, but a right good one, and thus it begins :

Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon?" said Mr. Andrews to one of his pupils, at the close of a holiday. Oh, Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round to Campmount, and home through the meadows. But it was very dull, he hardly saw a single person. He had rather by half have gone by the turnpike road.

10. "But where is William?"

Oh, William started with him, but he was

so tedious, always stopping to look at this thing and that, that he would rather walk alone, and so went on.

11. Presently, in comes Master William, dressed no doubt as we wretched boys used to be forty years ago, frill collar, and tight skeleton monkey jacket, and tight trousers buttoned over it, a pair of low shoes-which always came off if stepped into heavy groundand terribly dirty and wet he is, but he never had had such a pleasant walk in his life, and has brought home a handkerchief full of curiosities.

12. He has got a piece of mistletoe, and wants to know what it is, and seen a woodpecker and a wheat-ear, and got strange flowers off the heath, and hunted a peewit because he thought its wing was broken, till of course it led him into a bog, and wet he got; but he did not mind, for in the bog he fell in with an old man cutting turf, and then he went up a hill, and saw a grand prospect, and because the place was called Campmount, he looked for a Roman camp and found one; and then he went to the ruin, and saw twenty things more, and so on, and so on, till he had brought home curiosities enough and thoughts enough to last him a week.

13. Whereon Mr. Andrews, who seems a sensible old gentleman, tells him all about his curiosities; and then it turns out that Master William has been over exactly the