KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



239 



ludicrous manner. He soon, however, fell in with 

 fellow-students from his own country, whom he 

 joined at more eligible quarter^. 



Let us hope, Mr. Editor, seeing that such 

 immense improvements have taken place 

 between 1752 and 1852, that amongst them 

 an improved race of landladies may have 

 sprung up in the " modern Athens ! " 



Manchester, Sep. 25. W. Smith. 



TIME. 



Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical 

 of things. The past is gone, the future not come, 

 and the present becomes the past, even while we 

 attempt to define it ; like a flash of lightning, it 

 at once exists and expires. Time is the measurer 

 of all things, but is itself immeasurable. It is 

 the grand discloser of all things, but is itself un- 

 disclosed. Like space, it is incomprehensible, 

 because it has no limit; and it would be still 

 more so if it had. It is more obscure in its 

 source than the Nile, and in its termination than 

 the Niger. It advances like the slowest tide, but 

 retreats like the swiftest torrent. It gives wings 

 of lightning to pleasure, but feet of lead to pain. 

 It lends expectation a curb, but enjoyment a 

 spur. It robs beauty of her charms, to bestow 

 them on her picture; and builds a monument to 

 merit, but denies it a house. It is the transient 

 and deceitful flatterer of falsehood; but the tried 

 and final friend of truth. Time is the most sub- 

 tle yet the most insatiable of depredators, and by 

 appearing to take nothing, is permitted to take 

 all. Nor can it be satisfied, until it has stolen the 

 world from us, and us from the world. It con- 

 stantly flies, yet overcomes all things by flight; 

 and although it is the present ally, it will be the 

 future conqueror of death. Time, the cradle of 

 hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern 

 corrector of fools, but the salutary counsellor 

 of the wise — bringing all they dread to the one, 

 and all they desire to the other. Yet like Cas- 

 sandra, it warns us with a voice that even the 

 sagest discredit too long, and the silliest believe 

 too late. Wisdom walks before it, opportunity 

 with it, and repentance behind it. He that has 

 made it his friend, will have little to fear from his 

 enemies; but he that has made it his enemy, will 

 have little to hope from his friends. — "VV. S. 



SALT. 



Like all that is necessary for our preservation, 

 comfort, and enjoyment, salt has been bestowed 

 by an unsparing Hand, that scatters its blessings 

 far and wide — blessings that ought to be more 

 gratefully acknowledged from their profusion, 

 but which are, alas! from that very circumstance, 

 taken as matters of course. 



Culinary salf, or, as it is termed in chemistry, 

 chloride of sodium, in a natural state, both in a 

 solid form and dissolved in water, is in astonish- 

 ing abundance. It is in solution, not only 

 throughout the vast ocean, but in various lakes, 

 rivers, and springs; and in a solid form, under 

 the nam'is of rock salt and fossil salt, it is found 

 over a great extent of the globe. In Calabria, 



Hungary, Muscovy, and Poland, it is in enor- 

 mous quantities. 



A bed of salt was discovered between Dienze 

 and Marsal, 150 feet from the surface, and others 

 lying below, to the depth of 300 feet, and of vast 

 thickness. On the road from Paris to Stras- 

 burgh, by Metz, there is a stratum of salt, which 

 was ascertained to extend over a rectangular 

 space of twelve or fourteen square miles. In the 

 province of Valencia, in Spain, there is a moun- 

 tain of salt, called Cardoma, 500 feet high, and 

 nearly three miles in circumference. 



The salt mines which have been worked ever 

 since the middle of the thirteenth century, near 

 Cracow, in Poland, are calculated still to contain 

 a sufficient supply of salt for the world for many 

 thousand years. In these vast fmines, chapels, 

 crucifixes, and the images of saints, have been 

 hewn out of the solid rock salt; lights are con- 

 stantly burning before them, and the crystals 

 reflect back the rays which illuminate the subter- 

 raneous passages and spacious galleries with the 

 most brilliant lustre. Some hundreds of men are 

 employed in working out these mines, and abide 

 in them with their families, forming a community 

 apart from other men, subject to laws and regula- 

 tions of their own framing. Many among them 

 have never emerged from the obscurity in which 

 they were born, and can form no idea of the 

 aspect of nature, beyond the aisles through 

 which they wander. 



THE INTELLECTS OF CHILDREN. 



" Grown persons," says the Hon. Mrs. Nor- 

 ton, " are apt to put a lower estimate than is just 

 on the understandings of children." She is right. 

 It is so. They very foolishly rate them by what 

 they know ; and children know very little; but 

 their capacity of comprehension is great. Hence 

 the continual wonder of those who are unaccus- 

 tomed to them, at the old-fashioned ways of some 

 lone little one, who has no playfellows — and at 

 the odd mixture of folly and wisdom in its say- 

 ings. A continual battle goes on in a child's 

 mind, between what it knows and what it com- 

 prehends. Its answers are foolish from partial 

 ignorance, and wise from extreme quickness of 

 apprehension. The great art of education is so 

 to train this last faculty, as neither to depress 

 nor over-exert it The matured mediocrity of 

 many an infant prodigy, proves both the degree 

 of expansion to which it is possible to force a 

 child's intellect, and the boundary which nature 

 has set to the success of such false culture. Most 

 precocious children die early, or, if they grow up 

 to maturity, they become little better than idiots. 

 Gentleness will do much; coercion will make a 

 child obstinate and dull. The world is full of 

 examples of both. 



ADVICE IN THE CHOICE OF A WIFE. 



In choice of wife, prefer the modest, chaste ; 



Lilies are fair in show, but not in smell; 

 The sweetest looks by age are soon defaced, 



Then choose thy wife by wit and living well; 

 "Who brings thee wealth and many faults withal, 

 Presents thee honey mixed with bitter gall. 



Sir John of Bourjdeaux. 



