5. And once again, Hear me, ye walls, that echoed to the tread LESSON 147. A BACK-LOG STUDY. T must be confessed that a wood fire needs as much IT tending as a pair of twins. To say nothing of fiery projectiles sent into the room, even by the best wood, from the explosion of gases confined in its cells, the brands are continually dropping down, and coals are being scattered over the hearth. However much a careful housewife, who thinks more of neatness than enjoy. ment, may dislike this, it is one of the chief delights of a wood fire. I would as soon have an Englishman without side-whiskers as a fire without a big back-log; and I would rather have no fire than one that required no tending one of dead wood that could not sing again the imprisoned songs of the forest, or give out in brilliant scintillations the sunshine it absorbed in its growth. 2. Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the spice of danger in it gives zest to the care of the hearth-fire. Nothing is so beautiful as springing, changing flame—it was the last freak of the Gothic architecture men to represent the fronts of elaborate edifices of stone as on fire, by the kindling flamboyant devices. A fireplace is, besides, a private laboratory, where one can witness the most brilliant chemical experiments, minor conflagrations only wanting the grandeur of cities on fire. 3. It is a vulgar notion that a fire is only for heat. A chief value of it is, however, to look at. It is a picture framed between the jambs. You have nothing on your walls, by the best masters (the poor masters are not, however, represented), that is really so fascinating, so spiritual. Speaking like an upholsterer, it furnishes the room. And it is never twice the same. In this respect it is like the landscape view through a window, always seen in a new light, color, or condition. The fireplace is a window into the most charming world I ever had a glimpse of. 4. Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation. I am not scientific enough to despise it, and have no taste for a winter residence on Mt. Washington, where the thermometer cannot be kept comfortable even by boiling. They say that they say in Boston that there is a satisfaction in being well dressed which religion cannot give. There is certainly a satisfaction in the direct radiance of a hickory fire which is not to be found in the fieriest blasts of a furnace. The hot air of a furnace is a sirocco; the heat of a wood fire is only intense sunshine, like that bottled in Lacrimæ Christi. Besides this, the eye is delighted, the sense of smell is regaled by the fragrant decomposition, and the ear is pleased with the hissing, crackling, and singing-a liberation of so many out-door noises. 5. Some people like the sound of bubbling in a boiling pot, or the fizzing of a flying spider. But there is nothing gross in the animated crackling of sticks of wood blazing on the hearth; not even if chestnuts are roasting in the ashes. All the senses are ministered to, and the imagination is left as free as the leaping tongues of flame. 6. The attention which a wood fire demands is one of its best recommendations. We value little that which costs us no trouble to maintain. If we had to keep the sun kindled up and going by private corporate action or act of Congress, and to be taxed for the support of cus toms officers of solar heat, we should prize it more than we do. Not that I should like to look upon the sun as a job, and have the proper regulation of its temperature get into politics, where we already have so much combustible stuff; but we take it quite too much as a matter of course, and, having it free, do not reckon it among the reasons for gratitude. 7. Many people shut it out of their houses as if it were an enemy, watch its descent upon the carpet as if it were only a thief of color, and plant trees to shut it away from the mouldering house. All the animals know better than this, as well as the more simple races of men; the old women of the southern Italian coasts sit all day in the sun and ply the distaff, as grateful as the sociable hens on the south side of a New England barn; the slow tortoise likes to take the sun upon his sloping back, soaking in color that shall make him immortal when the imperishable part of him is cut up into shell ornaments. 8. The capacity of a cat to absorb sunshine is only equaled by that of an Arab or an Ethiopian. They are not afraid of injuring their complexions. White must be the color of civilization; it has so many natural disadvantages. But this is politics. I was about to say that, however it may be with sunshine, one is always grateful for his wood fire, because he does not maintain it without some cost. 9. Yet I cannot but confess to a difference between sunlight and the light of a wood fire. The sunshine is entirely untamed. Where it ragest most freely it tends to evoke the brilliancy rather than the harmonious satisfactions of nature. The monstrous growths and the. flaming colors of the tropics contrast with our more subdued loveliness of foliage in bloom. 10. The birds of the middle region dazzle with their contrasts of plumage, and their voices are for screaming rather than singing. I presume the new experiments in sound would project a macaw's voice in very tangled and inharmonious lines of light. I suspect that the fiercest sunlight puts people, as well as animals and vegetables, on extremes in all ways. A wood fire on the hearth is a kindler of the domestic virtues. It brings in cheerfulness and a family centre, and, besides, it is artistic. I should like to know if an artist could ever represent on canvas a happy family gathered round a hole in the floor called a register. 11. Given a fireplace, and a tolerable artist could almost create a pleasant family around it. But what could ho conjure out of a register? If there was any virtue among our ancestors and they labored under a great many disadvantages, and had few of the aids which we have to excellence of life — I am convinced they drew it mostly from the fireside. If it was difficult to read the eleven commandments by the light of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to get the sweet spirit of them from the countenance of the serene mother knitting in the chimney-corner.-C. D. Warner. LESSON 148. ADVANTAGES OF A WELL-CULTIVATED MIND. OW much soever a person may be engaged in pleas How ures, or encumbered with business, he will certainly have some moments to spare for thought and reflection. No one, who has observed how heavily the vacuities of time hang upon minds unfurnished with images, and unaccustomed to think, will be at a loss to make a just estimate of the advantages of possessing a copious stock of ideas, of which the combination may take a multiplicity of forms, and be varied to infinity. 2. Mental occupations are a pleasing relief from bodily exertions, and from that perpetual hurry and wearisome attention, which, in most of the employments of life, must be given to objects which are no otherwise interesting than as they are necessary. The mind, in an hour of leisure, obtaining a short vacation from the perplexing cares of this world, finds, in its own contemplations, a source of amusement, of .solace, and of pleasure. The tiresome attention that must be given to an infinite number of things, (which, singly and separately taken, are of little moment, but, collectively considered, form an important aggregate,) requires to be sometimes relaxed by thoughts and reflections of a more general and extensive nature, and directed to objects, of which the examination may open a more spacious field of exercise to the mind, give scope to its exertions, expand its ideas, present new combinations, and exhibit to the intellectual eye, images, new, various, sublime, or beautiful. 3. The time of action will not always continue. The young ought always to have this consideration present to their mind, that they must grow old, unless prematurely cut off by sickness or accident. They ought to contemplate the certain approach of age and decrepitude, and consider that all temporal happiness is of uncertain acquisition, mixed with a variety of alloy, and in whatever degree attained, only of short and precarious duration. Every day brings some disappointment, some diminution of pleasure, or some prostration of hope; and every moment brings us nearer to that period when the present scenes shall recede from view and future prospects cannot be formed. 4. This consideration displays, in a very interesting point of view, the beneficial effects of furnishing the mind with a stock of ideas that may amuse it in leisure, accompany it in solitude, dispel the gloom of melancholy, lighten the pressure of misfortune, dissipate the vexation. arising from baffled projects, of disappointed hopes, and |