C. The wanton courser thus with reins unbound
Breaks from his stall and beats the trembling ground;
Pamper'd and proud, he seeks the wonted tides,
And laves, in height of blood, his shining sides;
His head, now freed, he tosses to the skies;
His mane dishevell'd o'er his shoulders flies;
He snuffs the females in the distant plain,

And springs, exulting, to his fields again.-Pope's Homer.

F. You have said very well; but this is not a Definition, it is a Description.

C. What is the difference?

F. A description is intended to give you a lively picture of an object, as if you saw it; it ought to be very full. A definition gives no picture to those who have not seen it, it rather tells you what its subject is not, than what it is, by giving you such clear specific marks, that it shall not be possible to confound it with anything else: and hence it is of the greatest use in throwing things into classes. We have a great many beautiful descriptions from ancient authors so loosely worded that we cannot certainly tell what animals are meant by them; whereas, if they had given us definitions, three lines would have ascertained their meaning.

C. I like description best, papa.

F. Perhaps so; I believe I should have done the same at your age Remember, however, that nothing is more useful than to learn to form ideas with precision, and to express them with accuracy; I have not given you a definition to teach you what a horse is, but to teach you to think.

THE PHENIX AND DOVE.

A PHENIX, who had long inhabited the solitary deserts of Arabia, once flew so near the habitations of men as to meet with a tame dove, who was sitting on her nest with wings expanded, and fondly brooding over her young ones, while she expected her mate, who was foraging abroad to procure them food. The phenix, with a kind of insulting compassion, said to her, "Poor bird, how much I pity thee! confined to a single spot, and sunk in domestic cares, thou art continually employed either in laying eggs or providing for thy brood; and thou exhaustest thy life and strength in perpetuating a feeble and defenceless race. As to myself, I live exempt from toil, care, and misfortune. I feed upon nothing less precious than rich gums and spices: I fly through the track

less regions of the air, and when I am seen by men, am gazed at with curiosity and astonishment; I have no one to control my range, no one to provide for; and when I have fulfilled my five centuries of life, and seen the revolution of ages, I rather vanish than die, and a successor, without my care, springs up from my ashes. I am an image of the great sun whom I adore; and glory in being, like him, single and alone, and having no likeness."

The dove replied "Oh, phenix, I pity thee much more than thou affectest to pity me! What pleasure canst thou enjoy, who livest forlorn and solitary in a trackless and unpeopled desert? who hast no mate to caress thee, no young ones to excite thy tenderness and reward thy cares, no kindred, no society amongst thy fellows? Not long life only, but immortality itself would be a curse, if it were to be bestowed on such uncomfortable terms. For my part, I know that my life will be short, and therefore I employ it in raising a numerous posterity, and in opening my heart to all the sweets of domestic happiness. I am beloved by my partner; I am dear to man; and shall leave marks behind me that I have lived. As to the sun, to whom thou hast presuined to compare thyself, that glorious being is so totally different from, and so infinitely superior to, all the creatures upon earth, that it does not become us to liken ourselves to him, or to determine upon the manner of his existence. One obvious difference, however, thou mayest remark; that the sun, though alone, by his prolific heat produces all things, and though he shines so high above our heads, gives us reason every moment to bless his beams; whereas thou, swelling with imaginary greatness, dreamest away a long period of existence, equally void of comfort and usefulness."

THE MANUFACTURE OF PAPER.

F. I WILL now, as I promised, give you an account of the elegant and useful manufacture of paper, the basis of which is itself a manufacture. This delicate and beautiful substance is made from the meanest and most disgusting materials, from old rags, which have passed from one poor person to another, and have perhaps at length dropped in tatters from the child of the beggar. These are carefully picked up from dunghills, or bought from servants by Jews, who make it their business to go about and collect them. They sell them

to the rag-merchant, who gives them from twopence to fourpence a pound, according to their quality; and he, when he has got a sufficient quantity, disposes of them to the owner of the paper-mill. He gives them first to women to sort and pick, agreeably to their different degrees of fineness: they also with a knife cut out carefully all the seams, which they throw into a basket for other purposes; they then put them into the dusting-engine, a large circular wire sieve, where they receive some degree of cleansing. The rags are then conveyed to the mill. Here they were formerly beat to pieces with vast hammers, which rose and fell continually with a most tremendous noise that was heard from a great distance. But now they put the rags into a large trough or cistern, into which a pipe of clear spring water is constantly flowing. In this cistern is placed a cylinder, about two feet long, set thick round with rows of iron spikes, standing as near as they can to one another without touching. At the bottom of the trough there are corresponding rows of spikes. The cylinder is made to whirl round with inconceivable rapidity, and with these iron teeth rends and tears the cloth in every possible direction; till by the assistance of the water, which continually flows through the cistern, it is thoroughly masticated, and reduced to a fine pulp; and by the same process all its impurities are cleansed away, and it is restored to its original whiteness. This process takes about six hours. To improve the colour they then put in a little smalt, which gives it a bluish cast, which all paper has more or less: the French paper has less of it than ours. This fine pulp is next put into a copper of warm water. It is the substance of paper, but the form must now be given it: for this purpose they use a mould. It is made of wire, strong one way, and crossed with finer. This mould they just dip horizontally into the copper, and take it out again. It has a little wooden frame on the edge, by means of which it retains as much of the pulp as is wanted for the thickness of the sheet, and the superfluity runs off through the interstices of the wires. Another man instantly receives it, opens the frame, and turns out the thin sheet, which has now shape, but not consistence, upon soft felt, which is placed on the ground to receive it. On that is placed another piece of felt, and then another sheet of paper, and so on till they have made a pile of forty or fifty. They are then pressed with a large screw-press, moved by a long lever, which forcibly squeezes the water

There

out of them, and gives them immediate consistence. is still however, a great deal to be done. The felts are taken off, and thrown on one side, and the paper on the other, whence it is dexterously taken up with an instrument in the form of a T, three sheets at a time, and hung on lines to dry. There it hangs for a week or ten days, which likewise further whitens it; and any knots and roughnesses it may have, are picked off carefully by the women. It is then sized. Size is a kind of glue; and without this preparation the paper would not bear ink; it would run and blot as you see it does on gray paper. The sheets are just dipped into the size and taken out again. The exact degree of sizing is a matter of nicety, which can only be known by experience. They are then hung up again to dry, and when dry taken to the finishing-room, where they are examined anew, pressed in the dry presses, which gives them their last gloss and smoothness; counted up into quires, made up in reams, and sent to the stationer's, from whom we have it, after he has folded it again and cut the edges; some, too, he makes to shine like satin, by glossing it with hot plates. The whole process of paper-making takes about three weeks.

H. It is a very curious process indeed. I shall almost scruple for the future to blacken a sheet of paper with a careless scrawl, now I know how much pains it costs to make it so white and beautiful.

F. It is true that there is hardly anything we use with so much waste and profusion as this manufacture; we should think ourselves confined in the use of it, if we might not tear, disperse, and destroy it in a thousand ways; so that it is really astonishing whence linen enough can be procured to answer so vast a demand. As to the coarse brown papers, of which an astonishing quantity is used by every shopkeeper in packages, &c., these are made chiefly of oakum, that is, old hempen ropes. A fine paper is made in China of silk.

H. I have heard lately of woven paper; pray what is that? they cannot weave paper, surely!

F. Your question is very natural. In order to answer it, I must desire you to take a sheet of common paper, and hold it up against the light. Do not you see marks in it?

H. I see a great many white lines running along lengthways, like ribs, and smaller that cross them. I see, too, letters and the figure of a crown.

F. These are all the marks of the wires; the thickness of

the wire prevents so much of the pulp lying upon the sheet in those places, consequently wherever the wires are, the paper is thinner, and you see the light through more readily, which gives that appearance of white lines. The letters, too, are worked in the wire, and are the maker's name. Now, to prevent these lines, which take off from the beauty of the paper, particularly of drawing paper, there have been lately used moulds of brass wire, exceeding fine, of equal thickness, and woven or latticed one within another, the marks, therefore, of these are easily pressed out, so as to be hardly visible; if you look at this sheet you will see it is quite smooth.

H. It is so.

F. I should mention to you, that there is a discovery very lately made, by which they can make paper equal to any in whiteness, of the coarsest brown rags, and even of dyed cottons; which they have till now been obliged to throw by for inferior purposes. This is by means of manganese, a sort of mineral, and oil of vitriol; a mixture of which they just pass through the pulp, while it is in water, for otherwise it would burn it, and in an instant it discharges the colours of the dyed cloths, and bleaches the brown to a beautiful whiteness.

H. That is like what you told me before of bleaching cloth in a few hours.

F. It is, indeed, founded upon the same discovery. The paper made of these brown rags is likewise more valuable, from being very tough and strong, almost like parchment. H. When was the making of paper found out?

F. It is a disputed point, but probably in the fourteenth century. The invention has been of almost equal consequence to literature, with that of printing itself; and shews how the arts and sciences, like children of the same family, mutually assist and bring forward each other.

THE TWO ROBBERS.

Scene-Alexander the Great in his tent. Guards. A man with a fierce countenance, chained and fettered, brought before him.

Alex. WHAT, art thou the Thracian robber, of whose exploits I have heard so much?

Rob. I am a Thracian and a soldier.

A. A soldier!-a thief, a plunderer, an assassin! the pest