=Employment.=
It is dangerous for a man of superior ability to find himself thrown
upon the world without some regular employment. The restlessness
inherent in genius, being thus undirected by any permanent influence,
frames for itself occupations out of accidents. Moral integrity
sometimes falls a prey to the want of a fixed pursuit, and the man who
receives his direction in active life from the fortuitous impulse of
circumstances, will be very apt to receive his principles likewise
from chance. Genius, under such guidance, attains no noble ends, but
resembles rather a copious spring conveyed in a falling aqueduct,
where the waters continually escape through the frequent crevices, and
waste themselves ineffectually on their passage. The law of nature is
here, as elsewhere, binding, and no powerful results ever ensue from
the trivial exercise of high endowments. The finest mind, when thus
destitute of a fixed purpose, passes away without leaving permanent
traces of its existence; losing its energy by turning aside from its
course, it becomes as harmless and inefficient as the lightning,
which, of itself irresistible, may yet be rendered powerless by a
slight conductor.
=The Editor.=
Write--keep writing--is the motto of an editor. If he has no ideas, he
must dig for them; if he has but little time to arrange them, no
matter, the work must be done. Sickness may come upon him; want may
stare him in the face, but he must cogitate something for the dear
public. Perhaps in his darkest moments, he indites a paragraph that
cheers thousands. When almost desponding, his words may put courage
into the hearts of millions. Who would be an editor? Yet he has much
to encourage him. If he can call no time his own, he is not rusting
out, or in unprofitable society. A faithful contributor of the public
press, is a man of great influence. No person has more power than
himself. He instructs tens of thousands, and leads them to virtue, to
honor, to happiness. No man will have more to answer for than the
conductor of a corrupt and vacillating press.
=A Mountain in Labor.=
The workmen, says a Paris paper, are still busily engaged in
excavating Montmarte in quest of holy vases and other riches said to
have been deposited there in the early days of the French revolution
by the orders of the Lady Superior of the Abbey of Montmarte.--Two
workmen, who were at the time charged with transporting the wealth to
the place designated, were never after seen, and it is supposed that
they were sacrificed to the necessity of the secret. The Superior, at
her death, bequeathed the secret to a lady friend, who, in turn, on
her death bed, divulged it to her daughter, then thirteen years of
age. The child, now a sexagenary, disclosed it to the municipality.
Her statements have thus far been found scrupulously correct. The
_cesarian_ operation is actively going on, an excavation of 50 feet
having been made, and the mountain's speedy deliverance of a mine of
wealth is anticipated. May it not prove a mouse!
=That Editorial Committee.=
We are informed that the Editorial Committee of the National
Association of Inventors have by _their own request_ been discharged
from the supervision of the new periodical which has recently appeared
under the title of 'The Eureka.'
=News by Telegraph.=
The news by the Great Western which arrived on Wednesday week, was
published within four hours in Boston, New Haven, Springfield, Albany,
Utica, Rochester, Buffalo, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
The following beautiful extract we find in a recent number of the New
York Sun. It is from the pen of Mr. C. D. Stuart, the able
correspondent of that paper, now in London.
"On remarking to an Englishman, that I did not see
here in London as at home, the artizan, the drayman,
the laborer of every kind, with a newspaper in his
pocket, which at intervals in his toil he could glance
at and be as learned in the condition of his country
and the world as the man of fortune, he replied--"No,
they have something better to do, they attend to their
work." Here lies the rub, and it may be a fear of the
sedition of thought that has put these close hampers
upon the English press. It would seem by such an
argument that the differences of condition are not
induced by unholy oppressions, by the trampling for
ages of one class upon another until servitude became
almost a birth-right--and the law of strength that
proved itself in barbarous times the "Supremacy" had
at last from concession so long made, become the law
of human justice and divine right. The steer may work
under his yoke an appointed time, the slave bow mutely
through his whole life, but the freeman--has he so
fallen, that while the lord revels in his "club-room"
and reads not only papers, but gilt edged and velvet
bound books, he forsooth being a common "poor devil"
not able to enjoy a tithe of his unearned luxury--has
something better than reading to do. Let him dig
then! There are those in the young republic whose
spirit begins to animate the world, who, though they
toil, remember, that it was said in the beginning to
all men, "thou shalt earn thy bread by the sweat of
thy brow," and will read freely as they drink in the
common air, and enjoy the common light. There are
classes in England intelligent no doubt beyond any
other people in the world--classes that enjoy the
means of making themselves so, but as a mass they will
in no-wise compare with their progeny, the
Anglo-Saxons. All that they have here in the main we
have got, and our wits have not been blunted by a
contact with the wilderness, and the difficulties of
founding an empire "in the Woods." I see now more
clearly than ever where our faults lie; contrast
exposes them; but they are all twigs upon the rising
trunk, which the keen knife of national experience,
age, and the calm that must succeed the rush and
tumult of our giant and boisterous infancy will cut
off.--With greater pride than ever, however much I may
like the Old World, and especially England, I look
over the Ocean to America for an exemplification of
what the world has not known, an _Earthly_ paradise
for humanity.--It is but three quarters of a century,
remember, since we were nationally born: give as the
fourteen hundred years that have nursed and cultivated
this Island, and where is the limit of our perfection
and strength? On either side of that Mississippi
back-bone of ours to the Oceans, and as far north and
south as freedom and knowledge can pierce, America
must be a garden and a goal, filled with every
excellence and beauty, beyond which there can be no
advance. We shall not live to see it, but it will
come, only let us pull careful and steady. We have
been Dickens'd and Trollop'd, and it should do us
good. Nothing but the grandeur that lies germinating
in our heart provokes this idle spleen from our
neighbors, and the moment we cool down and think and
curb ourselves the rest is secure."
=New Glass Factory.=
Erastus Corning & Co. are about establishing a factory near the ferry
at Troy, for the manufacture of all kinds of glass ware. The work is
fast progressing, and in about four weeks they will commence blowing.
It will afford employment to a large number of men, and will, no
doubt, meet with that success which it certainly merits.
=Result of Observation.=
The editor of the New Haven Herald sets it down as a fact in natural
history, proved by his experience for years, that when a traveller
rides up to a toll gate, the keeper--if a man, invariably brings out a
box, or a handful of change; but if a woman, she comes out and takes
the traveller's coin, and then goes back for the change.
* * * * *
Snags and other obstructions in the Western rivers, are now
denominated _Polk stalks_.
=The Science of Astronomy.=