di as the English. For this reason the extent tentively our Irving's works without noting the and voluminousness of our literature is une- great and beneficial influence of his study of the qualled, and much is undoubtedly sad stuff; de- English authors. Every page of Lamb and of spite all the chaff, however, we get the grain. many others reveals the depth of their love for We confess to a great liking for old books, the them, and bears living witness of the fruit of mellowing and softening influence of age make that loving admiration. We hope that many of the idea of construction foreign to the phrase. our teachers will give their thoughts to this matEvery sentence comes into our minds, not in se- ter and when tempted to read the last weekly parate words, but blended in one whole. Some- or ephemeral novel of the day, will turn to our times the style is a little quaint and obsolete; English Classics and drink from the fountain but that in itself has a charm which pert viva- heads, English pure and undefiled.

city and novel whimsicalities can never possess. How many budding thoughts and flowers of fancy are pressed and laid away in the dusty folios and antique tomes, only a lover of the genuine old English can tell.

For the Schoolmaster.
Editorial Correspondence.

ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK,
August, 1861.

In point of thought, our English writers have MY DEAR SCHOOLMASTER:

certainly the highest claim to be named and stu- In this city I first saw the sun after long imdied as classics. As to style, though our Eng- mersion in the gloom of a sea-fog. From Portlish writings have not the Attic elegance or the land hither, but one glimpse of land, at Eastharmony of the Latin, yet there is manly Saxon port, but many imaginations of it which strove music in their flow, which, in the hands of our in vain to become actual sight. Seguin, Penobmaster poets, becomes melody indeed. In the scot Bay, Mt. Desert, Grand Menan, Campo hands of Addison and Milton, prose is not Bello, as the night deepened and the day waxed without its cadences, and the stately periods and waned, were left behind in mystery, heightgrow and swell in a harmony of structure which ened by the rare sound of fog-bells on the shore, bears comparison. In particular departments, which, whatever they revealed to cunning pilots, as the literature of science, the English is pecu- only increased the perplexity of amateur watchliarly rich. In the marvellousness of its facts, ers of the misty sea. Strait, bay, open ocean and the astounding deductions drawn from were all alike, Her Majesty's fog no thicker them, in vivid description and startling theory, than the fog of the Republic; the sea a blank,

it stands a new department, and rich in great which, however, is natural and good, and, if names. Hugh Miller and his compeers are its you will cease straining your eyes and fretting creators. The literature of what Tennyson fine- at the damp, may-be will open to you better ly calls the " supreme Caucasian mind" cul- things than the wind and sun could reveal. minates in ours. We need not call up Shak- At last we suddenly see something. A huge speare and other great names, of which we all wall of timber rises before us, the outlines of feel a just pride and join in the universal praise. one or two ships loom through the mist, and a And yet how many read them? On how crowd of loyal British subjects eagerly welcome many tables do they lie unread throughout the us with their "Have a hack" to the civilizayear? We put the question to you, our cour- tion of the province. From a spell of bewilderteous reader, how many of our standard writers ment I become conscious of St. John. It is have you read this year, or in your whole life? low tide, and we therefore lie at the enormous And further, how many have you ever studied wharf some twenty-five feet lower than we or re-read? At college and university men should six hours ago. The city, from this posispend years of their most valuable days in the tion, is invisible. But up and down the wharves study of the ancient classics. lie many fine ships, most of them loading lumThe benefits derived from them are very mark- ber through great port-holes in their bows. For ed and no one who pretends to be well educated convenience of getting ashore, a long "float" has omitted this study. But the number of is so constructed as to rise and fall with the those who are not able. from a diversity of rea- water, making, at this stage of the tide, a steep sons, to study the ancient languages is very inclined plane, up which we are to walk. On great. All can study our English Classics with- this I now first trod British soil, gravely and out difficulty, and space fails to enumerate the with excursive thoughts, without special thrill advantages to be derived. No one can read at- or impulse, but with an almost instantaneous

feeling that the place was foreign. This im- mind that I am east of the St. Croix, was the pression is made by the first spoken word that result of my search for schools. Having sought you hear. In five minutes you learn a pro- in vain, during my explorations of the town, vincial idiom. All the circumstances have a for buildings possible to be imagined schooltouch of strangeness, generally too subtle to be houses, I at last asked, Where are your grasped, forming an atmosphere in which a schools? "There are none," was the reply; New Englander feels himself a foreigner. which was afterwards modified, but not denied

--

The city of St. John is situated on the Bay of by any. There is the dame's school, kept here Fundy, on both sides of the mouth of St. John and there in a room or two; and sometimes a river. The soil of New Brunswick, more than master's school, kept by brethren of our craft, that of Maine, is rocky and broken, so that with whom I do not succeed in becoming acagriculture can be profitably pursued only in a quainted. I inquire with all becoming inquisicomparatively few favored tracts of meadow. tiveness about schools, but do not get invited The great business-staple of the city is lumber. thither as I do to the saw-mill and ship-yard. The noble river, winding hundreds of miles up I have given up the schools. Perhaps it is a into the region near the St. Lawrence, brings tender point which it would not be polite to down the rafts, not only of the Provincial lum- urge. This is New England no longer. Yet I ber-men, but also of those of a large portion of must acknowledge that there is a school-system Maine. These rough logs bring wealth to the in New Brunswick, for I have seen a report of "Blue-noses" of St. John. The spruce are the officers, printed in a thick pamphlet, censawed into deals, the pine into boards or timber. suring some districts and praising others. Only This is the precious metal of the North, which a small portion of the teacher's compensation the gold of Nova Scotia cannot rival. You see comes from the public treasury. What other it piled in immense masses about the saw-mills. interesting items the statute-book may contain The air is redolent with the woody perfume. I know not. Not a few high wharves have been made by Perhaps the comparatively small influence of laying together in heaps the waste spruce strips the public schools may serve to explain the want from the edges of the deal. One or two streets of enlightenment prevailing in New Brunswick seem paved with saw-dust. The constant puff-concerning our present national difficulty. A ing of the steam mills and the sound of the mallet thinking community will reason above its infrom the ship-yards announce that commerce terests on such a crisis in a foreign country, but still pursues its course here, notwithstanding the sentiments of the St. John people are on a the troubles in the States. For lumber is al- level with their pockets. Although the princiways in demand in the mother country, and pal branch of their commerce is not affected they who sail under the Union Jack are always by the depression of business in the States, treated with distinguished consideration on the yet many good markets for lumber and ships high seas by the Confederate pirates. have been closed by the war. The war is

A Yankee finds St. John behind the times. therefore an aggressive, unjust one. The topic Wealth has but recently begun to express itself is common in the street and at the hotel. Burin beautiful public buildings and streets. It is ly, well-fed men, stopping to talk, agree that it a city without notions. A few of the people is orthodox to regard Lincoln as one president, have learned to apologize to visitors for some and Davis as another. The civil war interests glaring deficiencies in works of public conve- them very much as a fight between two cocks. nience and beauty. But they have to be told Of course my Yankee blood is frequently up to what is lacking. Very many good people of boiling point. Just think of a Rhode Islander abundant means have never travelled beyond being told in the cool, dogmatic way of one the limits of the Province. They do not readi- who is sure he knows all about it, that "the ly take the idea that a man should travel for Northern troops are fighting for pay and forleisurely observation. He must have some ul- age." Bull Run is a theme for their fun :— terior business views. A line of steamers, con-"if that army had only been Englishmen ! necting the city directly with Boston, has been Of constitutional freedom and of slavery, as the means, within a few years, of introducing issues of the struggle, I hear next to nothing. some ideas of enterprise. The dingy streets How is it going to affect business interests? It begin, here and there, to look modern. cannot be denied that the existence of two reThat which impressed most strongly on my publics would give to the commercial enterprise

of the Provinces a fairer opportunity for com- level, green-turfed, willow-fringed town, where petition than they now enjoy. The principle of my attention was principally struck by the barfree trade has been adopted by the British gov- racks, and the groups of soldiers lounging about ernment to a greater extent than by the United the streets. Many of these wear the Queen's States. Provincial ship owners are excluded badge of honor for meritorious conduct at Bafrom important lucrative departments of com- laclava, for they are genuine Crimean heroes, merce in the States; while those of the States put here, apparently, to cultivate their laurels themselves are free to compete for nearly all in quiet. The Government Building is a low branches of trade and transportation in the wooden one, which the people are not fond of Provinces. This seems wrong; I hope it will asking you to visit. There is a college, not very not always be so; but the fathers of the Repub-flourishing, and involved in ecclesiastical troulic know best. To the provincial merchant this bles. Southward from St. John, across the Bay is a great grievance. He chafes under it, and of Fundy, you can see the distant coast of the wants to see the Union go to ruin, if it must, sister Province of Nova Scotia. A four-hours' if only the exclusive monopoly may be broken sail brought me thither, to the mouth of the up. Perhaps the political feeling of the people Annapolis Gut. The steamer here disturbed of New Brunswick is more thoroughly royalist the occupation of a considerable number of Inthan that of the Canadians. Many tories re-dians, who, in their birch canoes, were slily moved hither during the Revolution in quest of trying to get shots at the porpoises. After landsafety. Their descendants say reproachfully :— ing at Digby, just within the Gut, we turned "Your thirteen Colonies seceded; why do you toward the northeast and sailed up the Annaponot let your cotton States secede now?" They lis River in a direction parallel with the coast, have no ears for the answer:- You tried as and at a distance from it of only two or three hard as you could to prevent the thirteen Colo- miles. I was now in Acadia. Along each bank nies from seceding; why shall we not try as of the river extends a narrow strip of fertile hard as we can to prevent the cotton States meadow, behind which rise high, rocky hills. from seceding? England called us rebels for These meadows, a century ago, were the homes eight years, and then acknowledged us indepen- of the French Acadians. The present inhabident, not as a favor, but through dire necessity. We call our seceders rebels, and shall do so, till the event be decided by eight years, if it must be, and even more, of disasters as disheartening as that at Bull Run. And we shall fight our battles without the aid of Hessian, or other mercenaries.

tants still preserve the traditions of the time when their ancestors were driven aboard British ships, and carried to remote colonies, or were hunted through the rough hill-country by dogs and shot down like the animals of the forest. My stay in Nova Scotia was hardly long enough for me to do more than think of these dark events. Crossing the river daily by the ferry, I can The talk of the people now is of gold. look upon the strange phenomenon, If all that is claimed for the productiveness of sion ship. On Sundays, when the harbor is the newly discovered gold regions be true, we decked with flags, this ship displays the palmet- shall have a California to which we can resort to rag. They say she is going to try to run the blockade. The stars and stripes decidedly predominate now, in number, over all other flags.

--a seces

as a profitable pastime in a summer vacation, and after taking a turn at mining, come back to school with a nugget or two for consolation.

Altogether, my impressions of the New BrunsFrom St. John I have radiated in three direcwick people are less pleasant than my imprestions. New Brunswick has just completed its sions of the country. The features of the latter first railway, a well laid road, extending northare large and irregular, abounding in the ateasterly across the Province, 110 miles, to Shetractions of sea-coast, hill, and forest. Lookdiac, on the eastern shore. Over this I rode ing upon the land, not with an economic, but through some green meadows, bounded by hills with an aesthetic eye, one will be delighted with beyond, and then through vast forests of larch. the variety of beauty and sublimity presented From Shediac I looked upon the waters of Norby a river quite comparable with the Hudson, thumberland Strait, and bethought myself of flowing through varied scenery at which one the mythical "jumping-off-place" of the far gazes for hours without weariness, and by the "down-east," - actually reached at last. A contrast of rare meadow-spots, and the accomsail of eight hours up the St. John brought us panying stream of water, with the more sombre to Fredericton, the capitol of the Province, a green of the wooded hills.

Al! civilized people naturally endeavor to latter is the more convenient method. For this render the visit of the stranger agreeable. This purpose, we have ten characters which the Arabs the New Brunswickers did for me, and with are said to have brought into Europe, and which success. Therefore I say they are a generous are therefore called Arabic, from them. With and hospitable people. I could not resist the these ten characters we spell all numbers, as constant impression that in intellectual advance- with twenty-six letters we spell all words in ment and refinement of manners they fall short our language. Nine of these characters repreof New England. They are contented to fancy sent the first nine numbers, the tenth, by itself, themselves great in dependence on their great represents no number, and is called " "naught' mother country. Both in the accumulation and or "zero." Let us now see how we can exthe diffusion of knowledge they must make great press higher numbers by these same characters progress to come up with the age. Their im- or figures as we call them. proved means of communication will, however, I have here what is called a numerical frame, soon produce among them an intellectual im- having a number of horizontal wires and ten provement. I could hardly pardon their low balls on each wire. If I slip one ball on the views of American politics. May they soon upper wire over to the other side, what number adopt the system of Free Schools, and so teach do I represent? Ans. One. If I put another the coming generation to be wiser than the with it what number have we? Ans. Two. If present. we pass them all to the other side what number have we? Ans. Ten. Now you see we cannot do anything more with this wire. Suppose we let each ball on the second wire be equal in value to the whole ten on the first wire. How

From the Massachusetts Teacher.
Notation and Numeration.

S. T.

I shall define Notation as the art of expressing numbers by visible signs. Let us, then, shall I express eleven? Ans. By passing over first determine what a number is. What is this one on the second wire and one on the first. which I hold in my hand? Ans. A book. How How shall we express fifty-three? Ans. By many books? Ans. One book. What is this moving five on the second and three on the first. which I hold in the other hand? Ans. One If we suppose that one ball on the third wire book. If now I put one book and one book has a value equal to all the ten on the second, together, what have I? Ans. Two books. Is how many balls on the first wire will it repreone book a number? Ans. Yes. Is two books sent? Ans. One hundred. We will call a ball a number? Ans. Yes. Well, now, we must on the first wire a unit of the first order, one learn a little Latin to furnish us with terms. on the second a unit of the second order, and The Latin word for one is unus, and so we call so on. If, then, we have four units of the one thing a unit. If, then, "one book" is a third order, three of the second, and two of the number and "two books" is a number, we first, what number will be represented? Ans. may define a number to be "a unit or a collec- Four hundred, thirty-two.

tion of units." Some of our authors tell us

Now I will make a number of perpendicular

that a number is "an expression," but may not marks on the black-board to represent these a number exist without being expressed? Now wires, calling the one on the right-hand the can you think of "one" without thinking of first. This will then be the order of units, the "book," that is, separate the idea of unity from next to the left will be the order of tens, and that of a particular thing? Ans. Yes. Then the third will be the order of hundreds. Short you have abstracted or drawn away "one" from marks drawn across these will represent so ma"book," and obtained an abstract number. ny units of that order, on which they are drawn. "One book" or "two books" is a denominate If I wish to use figures instead, I will place number, because you denominate or name the them under these perpendicular lines. If I kind of thing to which "one" or "two" be- wish to write five hundreds, where must I place longs. In notation, as we shall now treat of the figure five? Ans. Under the third line. it, we represent only abstract numbers.

Then, in order to show that it is in the third You have already learned to count, that is to place, if I dispense with the lines, I will place name numbers in order, beginning with the least, two zeros at the right-hand of the five. This and now you are to learn how to write numbers. will mean five hundreds, no tens, no units. You This you may do either by writing the names of will remember, then, that as we go towards the numbers or by signs which represent them. The left the unit of each place is ten times larger

than that of the place next on the right. The the Latin for twelve is duodecimo, you will know unit of the fourth place is called ten hundred that this period is duodecillions. Is this period or one thousand; of the fifth, ten thousand; of full? Ans. It has but two places. Then, since the sixth, hundred thousand, and so on. If I every figure represents a definite number of write the figures three with five zeros at the units, the nine must be read nine tens, or ninety right-hand of it, what is meant ? Ans. That duodecillions. With the 8 it reads ninety-eight the 3 is in the sixth place, and means three hun- duodecillions. Then name the orders and peridred thousand. ods at the right in succession, and the number

Let us next learn to read rapidly and accu- is read. Read the seventh period in the forerately any number of figures which may be writ- going number? Ans. Seven hundred thirtyten before us. You observe that in naming two quintillions. The second period? Ans. places towards the left, after thousands we have No thousands. tens, then hundreds of thousands, then millions Now suppose you wish to write twenty-five and tens and hundreds of millions, and thus decillions. What is the number of the highest tens and hundreds are regularly repeated. So period, omitting two? Ans. The tenth. How we place a comma between hundreds and thou- many periods will there be in all? Ans. Twelve. sands, and call the first group of three figures If all were full, how many figures or places? a period. The next group of three figures in Ans. Thirty-six. How many are there at preswhich tens and hundreds are repeated is called ent? Ans. Thirty-five, because there are no

the second period or period of thousands, also hundreds of decillions. How many zeros must separated by a comma. The third period is be placed at the right of the 25? Ans. Thirtythat of millions, the fourth of billions. Now three, because there are eleven entire periods to we begin to perceive a regular order in naming be represented.

We have, then, this rule for writing a number containing more than two periods:

the periods. These names are of Latin derivation. Bis means twice. Tres means three, hence trillions. Quatuor means four, hence quarter and quadrillions. Quinque means five, hence Add two, the number indicated by the name quintillions. You can remember that sex means of the highest period, which will give the whole six very easily. Then you may associate septil number of periods. If the highest period is lions with September, which was formerly the full, there must be three times that number of seventh month of the year, March being the first. places. Write the highest period first, and the In the same way, as October was the eighth others in succession, from left to right, naming month leaving off the first two, octillions is each order and period as you write. the eighth period, leaving off two. You can as- To read any number expressed by more than sociate nonillions with November, and decillions two periods of figures: with december. Now, how many places or fig. Subtract two from the whole number of periures make a period? Ans. Three. If I write ods, and the remainder will indicate the name twenty-four figures on the board, into how ma- of the highest period. Read the highest period ny periods shall I point them? Ans. Eight. first and the others in succession, from left to What, then, is the number of the last period at right. naming each order and period which is the left? Ans. The eighth. What is it, leav-represented by zeros as well as those filled with ing off two? Ans. The sixth. What is the significant figures.

Latin for six? Ans. Sex. What shall we call this highest period? Ans. Sextillions. Is this period full ? Ans. It is. What, then, is the name of the first place at the left? Ans. Hundred sextillions. If the figure in that place is 9, what number does it represent ? Ans. Nine hundred sextillions. I will next write the following number on the board :—

98,750,003,452,178,900,124,732,569,800,000,000,000,342.

J. K. I.

ENGLAND.-Mr. Norris, Inspector of Schools, mentions in his report this year, that in the course of his recent inspection, when he found a school much above par in reading, he tested the first class, by giving the children a newspaper and asking them to read aloud some suitable paragraph, which he pointed out; but he has, unfortunately, to state, that in no more

I first point off the periods and then count them. than twenty-nine out of the one hundred and There are fourteen periods. What is the num- sixty-four schools which he visited last year, ber of the one at the left, omitting two. Ans. did he find a first class able to read a newspaper The twelfth. Then after you have learned that at sight.-Mass. Teacher.