their full extent by any nation, till education, and the diffusion also of a certain kind of knowledge, had become so general, that newspapers should be accessible to every body, and the very lowest of the people should have opportunity to read them, or to hear them read.  The maxim that it is politic to keep the people in ignorance, will not be maintained in any country where the rulers are conscious of upright intentions, and confident likewise in the intrinsic worth of the institutions which it is their duty to uphold, knowing those institutions to be founded on the rock of righteous principles.  They know, also, that the best means of preserving them from danger is so to promote the increase of general information, as to make the people perceive how intimately their own well-being depends upon the stability of the state, thus making them wise to obedience.

* * * * *

The heart and mind can as little lie barren as the earth whereon we move and have our being, and which, if it produce not herbs and fruit meet for the use of man, will be overrun with weeds and thorns.  Muley Ismael, a personage of tyrannical celebrity in his day, always employed his troops in some active and useful work, when they were not engaged in war, “to keep them,” he said, “from being devoured by the worm of indolence.”  In the same spirit one of our Elizabethan poets delivered his wholesome advice:—­

  “Eschew the idle vein
    Flee, flee from doing nought! 
  For never was there idle brain
    But bred an idle thought.”

* * * * *

FLOGGING.

Little did king Solomon apprehend, when his unfortunate saying concerning the rod fell from his lips, that it would occasion more havoc among birch-trees than was made among the cedars for the building of his temple, and his house of the forest of Lebanon!  Many is the phlebotomist who, with this text in his mouth, has taken the rod in hand, when he himself, for ill teaching, or ill temper, or both, has deserved it far more than the poor boy who, whether slow of comprehension, or stupified by terror, has stood untrussed and trembling before him.

* * * * *

THE SKETCH BOOK.

* * * * *

THE VISION OF VALDEMARO.

Translated from the Spanish.

It was night; and by degrees, that sweet forgetfulness which suspends our faculties insensibly began to steal over me, and I fell asleep.  In an instant my soul was transported to an unknown region.  I found myself in the centre of a spacious plain, surrounded by groves of mournful cypresses.  The whole enclosure was full of superb mausoleums, some assuming the shape of pyramids, whose lofty summits almost touched the clouds; and others the forms of altars, whose magnificence presented the most imposing spectacle.  On all were engraved the epitaphs and sculptured insignia of the heroes who had been interred there.  In various places I discovered coffins lying on the ground covered with sable palls, and bodies extended on the bare earth, meanly enveloped in miserable garbs.