says, ’that just 90 degrees west of the auriferous range in Australia, we find an auriferous band in the Urals; and just 90 degrees west of the Urals, occur the auriferous mountains of California.’  A speculation for cosmogonists.  In our own country, we are finding metalliferous deposits:  vast accumulations of lead-ore have come to light in Wales, which are said to contain six ounces of silver, and fifteen hundredweight of lead to the ton; and in Northamptonshire, an abundant and timely supply of iron-ore has just been met with.  We might perhaps turn our metallic treasures to still better account, if some one would only set to work and win the prize offered by Louis Napoleon; namely, ’a reward of 50,000 francs to such person as shall render the voltaic pile applicable, with economy, to manufactures, as a source of heat, or to lighting, or chemistry, or mechanics, or practical medicine.’  The offer is to be kept open for five years, to allow full time for experiment, and people of all nations have leave to compete.  One of the electric telegraph companies intends to ask parliament to abolish the present monopoly as regards the despatch of messages; in another quarter, an under-sea telegraph to Ostend is talked about, with a view to communicate with Belgium independently of France; and there is no reason why it should not be laid down, for the Dover and Calais line is paying satisfactorily.  And, finally, another ship-load of ‘marbles’ and sculptures has just arrived from Nineveh; and the appointment of Mr Layard as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (though now but temporary) is regarded as a praiseworthy recognition of his merits and services; and now that we have a government which combines a few litterateurs among its members, it is thought that literature will be relieved of some of its trammels.

CHILDREN’S JOYS AND SORROWS.

I can endure a melancholy man, but not a melancholy child; the former, in whatever slough he may sink, can raise his eyes either to the kingdom of reason or of hope; but the little child is entirely absorbed and weighed down by one black poison-drop of the present.  Think of a child led to the scaffold, think of Cupid in a Dutch coffin; or watch a butterfly, after its four wings have been torn off, creeping like a worm, and you will feel what I mean.  But wherefore?  The first has been already given; the child, like the beast, only knows purest, though shortest sorrow; one which has no past and no future; one such as the sick man receives from without, the dreamer from himself into his asthenic brain; finally, one with the consciousness not of guilt, but of innocence.  Certainly, all the sorrows of children are but shortest nights, as their joys are but hottest days; and indeed both so much so, that in the latter, often clouded and starless time of life, the matured man only longingly remembers his old childhood’s pleasures, while he seems altogether to have forgotten his childhood’s