to do so, and attract notice and attention to himself by his singularities and his offences against decorum. How should he whose time is occupied with weightier matters find leisure to ponder such a subject? Is the matter so important, and is there no other way in which he can distinguish himself, that he must take refuge in a petty peculiarity? "No!" answers the noble-minded student; "I am here to comprehend weightier things than outward manners, and I will not have it appear that I am too awkward to understand these. I will not by such littleness cause myself and my class to be despised and hated by the uncharitable or good-naturedly laughed at by those of better disposition; my fellow-citizens of other classes or of my own, my teachers, shall have it in their power to honor or respect me as a man in every relation of human life."

And thus in all his relations does the life of the studious youth who respects himself flow on blameless and lovely.

THE PROGRESSIVE SCHOLAR.

Now, for the first time, when we have to accompany the student from the academy into life, we must call to mind that the studies and character of the progressive scholar are not necessarily completed with his residence at the university; nay, we will even perceive a ground upon which we say that, properly speaking, his studies have only their true beginning after his academic course has closed. This much, however, remains true as the sure result of what has been already said that the youth who said—that during his residence at the university is not at least inspired with respect for the holiness of knowledge, and does not at least learn to

honor his own person to such an extent as not to render it unworthy of his high vocation, will never afterward attain to any true sense of the dignity of knowledge; and, whatever part he may perform in life, he will perform it as a piece of common handicraft, and with the sentiment of a hireling who has no other motive to his labor than the pay which he is to receive for it. Te say anything more of such a one lies beyond the boundaries of our present subject.

But the student who is penetrated with the conviction that the essential purpose of his studies will be frustrated unless the idea acquire an intrinsic form and independent life within him, and that in the highest perfection-he will by no means lay aside his studies and scientific labors when he leaves the university. Even if he be compelled by outward necessity to enter upon a secular employment, he will devote to knowledge all the time and ability which he can spare from that employment, and will neglect no opportunity which presents itself of attaining a higher culture, assured that the continual exercise of his faculties in the pursuit of learning will be very profitable to him even in the transaction of his ordinary business. Amid the brilliant distinctions of office, and even in mature age, he will restlessly strive and labor to master the idea, never resigning the hope of becoming greater than he now is, so long as strength permits him to indulge. it. Without this untiring effort much true genius would be wholly lost, for scientific talent usually unfolds itself more slowly the higher and purer its essential nature, and its clear development waits for mature years and manly strength.

Translation of WILLIAM SMITH.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON. IR ISAAC NEWTON, the most eminent natural philosopher of ancient or modern times, was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, on Christmas day, 1642. At twelve years of age he was placed at Grantham grammar-school, with the view of becoming prepared to superintend, as as a country gentleman, the small estate which his father had left him; but, manifesting an ardent desire for learning, he was entered in 1660 into Trinity College, Cambridge, where he soon distinguished himself in mechanics and mathematics. In 1664, before he had taken his bachelor's degree, he discovered a new method of infinite series and fluxions, and, his thoughts being next turned to the phenomena of colors, he ascertained by experiment that light was not homogeneous, but a heterogeneous mixture of refrangible rays. While reflecting on this important discovery, and before he had reduced his observations to any systematic theory, he was compelled by the plague of 1665 to leave Cambridge and retire into the country. Though thus separated from his laboratory and his books, his wonderful mind was not unemployed, and, accordingly, while he was sitting alone in his garden, the falling of an apple from a tree near him led his thoughts to the subject of

gravity; and, reflecting that this power is not sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth, even at the top of the highest mountains, he concluded that it must extend much farther. Perhaps, thought he, it may extend to the moon, and even embrace the whole planetary system. The magnitude of the bare conception overwhelmed his mighty mind, and he therefore deferred the farther investigation of the subject till after his return to Cambridge.

Having been chosen in 1667 fellow of his college and taken his master's degree, Newton in 1669 succeeded Dr. Barrow as Lucasian professor of mathematics in the university. He now devoted all his energies to those vast subjects to which we have already alluded, and to his unrivalled genius and sagacity the world is indebted for a variety of stupendous discoveries in natural philosophy and mathematics; among which, his exposition of the laws which regulate the movement of the solar system may be regarded as the most brilliant. The law of gravitation, which he discovered, he clearly demonstrated affected the vast orbs that revolve around the sun not less than the smallest objects on our own globe. The work in which he explained this system was written in Latin, and appeared in 1687 under the title of Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton's discoveries in optics also were such as to change so entirely the aspect of that science that he may justly be considered its founder. His