The circumstances which have most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition of communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to humanity—­these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions.  Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased to call important events.  They are not achieved by armies, or enacted by senates.  They are sanctioned by no treaties, and recorded in no archives.  They are carried on in every school, in every church, behind 10,000 counters, at 10,000 fire-sides.  The upper current of society presents no certain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows.—­Edinburgh Review.

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BATTLE OF THE HEADS.

Phrenologists—­Anti-Phrenologists.

Phrenologists.  The bantling which but a few years since we ushered into the world, is now become a giant; and as well might you attempt to smother him as to entangle a lion in the gossamer, or drown him in the morning dew.

Anti-Phrenologists.  Your giant is a butterfly; to-day he roams on gilded wings, to-morrow he will show his hideousness and be forgotten.

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Apf, a Norwegian prince, is stated to have had sixty guards, each of whom, previous to being enrolled, was obliged to lift a stone which lay in the royal courtyard, and required the united strength of ten men to raise.  They were forbidden to seek shelter during the most tremendous storms, nor were they allowed to dress their wounds before the conclusion of a combat.  What would some of our “Guards” say to such an ordeal?

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PORTRAIT PAINTING.

No picture is exactly like the original; nor is a picture good in proportion as it is like the original.  When Sir Thomas Lawrence paints a handsome peeress, he does not contemplate her through a powerful microscope, and transfer to the canvass the pores of the skin, the bloodvessels of the eye, and all the other beauties which Gulliver discovered in the Brobdignagian maids of honour.  If he were to do this, the effect would not merely be unpleasant, but unless the scale of the picture were proportionably enlarged, would be absolutely false.  And, after all, a microscope of greater power than that which he had employed, would convict him of innumerable omissions.

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It is calculated that Rome has derived from Spain, for matrimonial briefs, and other machinery of the Papal court, since the year 1500—­no less than 76,800,000_l_. or about three millions and a half per Pope!  This is preachee and payee too!

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.