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LARGEST CITY in the World.—If the following account is true, London is no longer the metropolis of our planet. That distinction belongs to the Japanese city of Jeddo, which a correspondent of the Boston Traveller thus describes :

"But what shall I say of this greatest and most singular of all cities? A volume is needed to describe it without attempting to give its history. I have read of old Ninevah and Babylon below the ground, and seen and handled the works of art which have been disinterred, and created so much admiration on both sides of the Atlantic; but one living Jeddo above the ground is worth a hundred old fogy cities ~below it. I cannot give you an idea of it, it is so unique, so unlike everything except itself, and so impossible, as you will think.

"I have seen several places of interest, and maintained a cool head, but I was bewildered and confounded when I saw this. It is situated on the western shore of this charming gulf, twenty miles wide by twenty-four long, to which the Lake Tiberias is nothing, except in the sacred feet which once trod its shores. lt stretches for twenty miles or more along a beach of a semi-circular form, with its horns turned outward, and along which a street extends, crowded with blocks of stores and houses, and teeming with moving crowds, while shop-keepers, artisans, women and children seem equally numerous within doors and at the doors. Indeed, a dozen or fifteen miles might be added to the city in this direction, since there is nothing but an unbroken succession of towns and villages for this distance, which are as popu. lous and well-built as the city itself.

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In crossing the city from the shore to the western outskirts I have walked two miles and a half, and then proceeded on horseback for ten miles further, making twelve miles and a half, while in other places it may be wider. According to the lowest estimate, the city covers an area equal to seven of the New England farming towns, which are usually six miles square. And all is traversed by streets, usually wide, well constructed, perfectly neat, and cross each other at right angles; streets lined with houses and stores as compactly as they can be built, and crowded with moving and stationary masses, as thick as in Washington street, or New York Broadway, at least for considerable distances. The population is estimated generally at three millions, which Mr. Harris, our minister, thinks is no exaggeration. For my part, judging from what I have seen when I have gone into the heart of the city, and crossed the city from side to side, I should be willing to add as many millions more; for the living, moving masses, seen from sunrise to sunset, and everywhere the same, fairly seemed beyond computation."

POPULATION OF NORTH PROVIDENCE.-By an examination of the census of the Colony of Rhode Island, in the year 1774, nine years after the incorporation of our town, I find that the population of North Providence consisted of 138 families. Of this population there were of whites, 792; of Indians, 7; of blacks, 31 ; making a total of 830. Of the heads of families, 132 were males, and 6 females.

It may not be uninteresting to note here that the population of our town by the late census, taken five years ago, was 11,820 souls. In 86 years, therefore, it has increased more than fourteen fold.-Centennial Address.

RATES of Tuition per scholar in 1864: In Boston, $15.77; Chicago, $13.55; Cincinnati, $12.15; San Francisco, $21; Providence,

PERSONAL.

MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, one of the best known of American poets, died at Hartford, Conn., on Saturday, June 10th, aged 84 years. Her poems, by their religious and evangelical spirit, won a high place in the affections of the common people, and some of them, doubtless, will long be cherished in American literature as among the best productions of the class of writers to which she belonged.

MISS MARIA MITCHELL, widely known in the scientific world as the discoverer of a comet, bearing her name, and for which she received a gold medal from the King of Denmark, together with the still more honorable approbation of the savans of Europe, is to be Professor of Astronomy in the Vassar Female College, at Poughkeepsie N. Y.

THE town of Exeter, N. H., has received information that William Robinson, Esq., a native of that place, who died in Augusta, Ga., in 1864, left property amounting to about $150,000 for the purpose of founding a female school for the use of Exeter.

MR. J. C. PELTON, Principal of the Rincon Grammar School has been elected Superintendent of Public Schools of San Francisco.

DIED, in South Coventry, Conn., August 16th, M. AUSTANIA BABCOCK, aged 31 years. Teacher in Bridgham School, Providence.

SALARIES of Teachers in San Francisco: Principal High School, $2,500; Teacher of Mathematics, $2,400; Teacher of Classics, $2,400. Grammar Masters, each, $2,100; Sub-Masters, each, $1,500; Assistants, (female), each, $960. One Principal Primary Schools, (male), $1,500; five Principals Primary Schools, (female), $1,020; Assistants, $810 to $870.

THE Emperor Napoleon III. recently had a quiet evening with a few friends. In the course of conversation he remarked that it was very hard to define savant. “I don't think so," retorted M. Drouyn de Lhuys; "I propose this definition: A savant is a man who knows all that the world doesn't know, and who is ignorant of what all the world knows."

CIPHERING.-A youngster, while perusing a chapter of Genesis, turning to his mother inquired whether the people in those days "used to do the sums on the ground.' He accounted for his question by reading the passage, "And the sons of men multiplied upon the face of the earth."

THE Chinese do not approve of any change in school books, for in China, every school boy begins his studies with the "First Three Books," which have been in the schools already three thousand years.

HARVARD COLLEGE is at last separated from the State. The law passed by the Massachusetts Legislature provides that the overseers shall be elected annually, and that the alumni, regular and honorary, shall have the right to vote for them, except that no alumnus can vote until five years after his graduation. No member of the faculty or the corporation can be chosen overseer. The Governor and other State officers are no longer ex-officio members of the board.

MR. DOUGLAS, in his great debate with Mr. Lincoln, accused him of tending bar, alluding to his keeping a grocery store. "True," said Mr. Lincoln, "the judge and I have both tended bar-I on the inside, he on the outside."

OUR BOOK TABLE.

[Received from George H. Whitney.]

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1865. 23 pp., paper cover. 10 cents.

SONGS FOR ALL SEASONS, by Alfred Tennyson.
Boston, 1865. 84 pp., paper. 50 cents.

Ticknor & Fields, publishers.

We are pleased with these ltttle books. Not too large for the pocket, readable and attractive, were worthy of due respect by reason of authorship and origin, they fairly claim to be purchased and enjoyed even by men of means as slender as a schoolmaster's in town or country. The enjoyment of them is a pleasant and healthy occupa

tion for a spare hour.

We have received the Superintendent's Report and the Regulations of Public Schools of San Francisco. Whole number of pupils enrolled in the schools, 10,983. Percentage of attendance, 92. The condition of most of the schools is reported as excellent. The Superintendent makes wise suggestions as to changes in the school system in several important points, which we have not room to note. He discusses the question of separate and mixed schools for girls and boys, but leaves it unsettled as to the best plan to be adopted. He recommends the daily reading of the Scriptures in all of the schools, from which they have been hitherto discarded on account of the character and prejudices of the first settlers of California.

MIRAMICHI; A Story of the Miramichi Valley, New Brunswick. Loring, publisher, Boston.

This story is intended for those who desire pleasing yet not unprofitable reading, when hurrying through the dust and heat at this season in a railroad car. Miramichi was a rough country forty years ago, and its inhabitants were rude, but it had some diamonds though rough the setting. Mr. Norton, is worthy of imitation. up the interest of the book to the end.

The character of the good missionary, The Lansdownes, Duboises and Micah, keep

THE

RHODE ISLAND SCHOOLMASTER.

OCTOBER, 1865.

VOLUME ELEVEN.

NUMBER TEN.

[Continued from page 185, September Number.]

BRIEF DISCUSSIONS OF WORDS, PHRASES, AND USAGES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

BY REV. S. A. CRANE, D. D.

WRITTEN LANGUAGE.

In the illustrations already given, we have seen how words have their roots in the past; and how their import is made larger and richer and clearer to us, when once we come to have a knowledge of their origin and history. It is, however, only through the permanent forms of written language that we derive this benefit. So many and sudden are the changes in mere spoken language, that it seems very questionable whether any extensive and stable acquisitions could be made in art, science, and social improvement, without some aid from writing. This fixes and preserves the words and forms of speech, and through them the thoughts, the methods and results of reasoning, the creations of art, the industrial inventions and social improvements of one period, to be the common inheritance of all coming time; and enables us to trace words and forms of speech back through centuries and nations and races of men, and to gather from them rich and varied treasures of wisdom.

Hence the importance of guarding our written language, as much as may be, from all those alterations in spelling, in verbal forms, and in syntactical usages, which ignorant and self-confident innovators

and rash reformers are always striving to force upon it. Most of these attempts are direct assaults upon the historic life of our language, and ought to be resisted as a man would resist an attack upon his family estate; for our language is a part, and a most valuable part, of our ancestral inheritance. These changes cut off words from their roots, and forms of speech from their historic origin; and leave them the wither and die as surely as a branch, when it has been torn from to stem where it grew.

ORTHOGRAPHY..

The importance of keeping the orthography of our words true to their origin and history may be seen in the word Europe. This name was assigned to this quarter of the globe by the Asiatic Greeks to denote the broad surface of beautiful land which stretched out to their view along the northern shores of the Mediterranean. This source of the name is preserved to us in its orthography, the three first letters of which reveal to us the Greek "Eurus," "broad," and the three last the Greek" Ops," "face." Now the phonetic method of spelling, which reduces this word to four letters, "urus," obliterates every trace of its origin; and of necessity takes out of it all the instruction and interesting story which it now tells. Crushed and maimed by this engine of torture, it is no longer an historic word, fresh with fruit and beauty, but only a dry and barren name.

So, too, in the common words, Geography, Orthography, Magnify, their meaning is disclosed by the form of the termination, that of the first two suggesting the idea of writing, and that of the last one, the idea of making. Now, change the final syllable, phy, into fy, and you have not only destroyed the etymological and historic life of the words, but you have given them a misleading form, suggesting a wrong sense, that of making instead of that of writing.

These instances quite sufficiently evince that it is not a new whim of scholars, or a desire to magnify the importance of classical learning, which induces them to contend so earnestly for the true etymological spelling of our words; for in this we have the best safeguard for the proper and settled meaning of those words, and the stability of our language.

PHRASES AND SYNTAX.

In the construction of sentences, too, there is the same need of adhering to established usage. In every language there are many

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