tasks; and exercises, which were considered as amusements, in dancing, reading, and music, were all that I ever allowed to pass of the nature of school business in the latter part of the day. Tasks, and whatever depends on memory, are learned with the best effect before breakfast and the business of the day, but even these were lessened when the weather permitted a ramble in the lanes and fields at that refreshing hour, and when the birds invited us to be listeners to their morning songs.

In regard to eating and drinking, I never made any fixed allowance, but found that there was actual economy in imposing no restraint, and in never making or permitting any observations; for both hunger and thirst are stimulated by restraint and deficiency. I speak from experiments often made, when I state, that perfect freedom is accompanied by a saving of one-tenth in the consumption of a family of young persons, unless their allowance is severe and insufficient.

LETTER XLVI.

Import ance of Biography.

MY ESTEEMED Children,

In regard to certain subjects of popular knowledge, I can scarcely tell which to place in the first order-I mean biography, history, or geography. The three are equally instructive and necessary in the formation of your minds.

BIOGRAPHY may be called the science of life and human nature, and requires, perhaps, the least preparation. I hazard my reputation on the fact, that the Biographical Class Book is the most instructive volume ever printed for the use of young persons of

both sexes. No other volume presents such a variety of knowledge, and equally expands the mind. It places before you, all that has been great and interesting in the history of our species, from Homer to our own time. It is not a little book, but it could not be less and effect its purpose. The style is easy and elegant, and the questions upon it enable you to become perfect mistresses of its contents.

You will thus acquire a familiar knowledge of the eminent in every line of human pursuit. The greatest poets, philosophers, authors, statesmen, lawyers, divines, patriots, and warriors, are all brought in review before you; and their lives enable you to slide as it were, into some knowledge of all their various pursuits. I know of no other volume so much to your purpose; for though there are elegant lives of poets, yet you are not educating to write verses, and you rather want that general knowledge which this volume affords of active life in all its diversities.

Before the appearance of this instructive volume, we used to read the British Plutarch, and even the ancient Plutarch; but both are too long and even too expensive, while the ancient Plutarch is so embodied in ancient superstitions, and indecorous anecdotes, as to be unfit for the perusal of Christians, especially those of the juvenile age. Mavor's Nepos is better than the British Plutarch, but it is essentially inferior to the Biographical Class Book, which I pronounce one of the most instructive volumes that ever appeared in the school-room,

As Scripture Biography is not treated of in the Biographical Class Book, it becomes a separate study, and the volume by Watkins, recommends itself from the elegance of its style, and the correctness of its sentiments and inferences.

Female Biography may be pursued in your after lives, but the biography of women who have been conspicuous, and too often notorious, is ill adapted to vour studies;. I once tried it, but was obliged to

lay it aside. I even attempted a M. S. selection, but Goldsmith's volume commanded my preference.

The study of this volume will qualify you to read books of anecdotes, when they are properly selected, but I know of few which I could recommend without qualification. The Anecdote Library as it is called, serves very well for after hours, and I have generally seen it in requisition. Biography is also a key to the reading of history with advantage, and each subject illustrates the other; but the histories of individuals, especially to young ladies, are more important than the history of nations, while they are far more amusing.

I earnestly therefore recommend to you, and to all young ladies, the perusal of lives, and so much of the exact study of biography as arises from the answering of the questions to this Class Book. It is one of those improvements in your studies which I was enabled to make within these four years, and I have perceived that, as a pleasurable study, it enjoys a parallel estimation among you to music, dancing, and drawing, which is no small recommendation.

Geography and its Terms.

MY ESTEEMED CHILDREN.

Geography, or the knowledge of the surface of the Planet on which you live; and Cosmography, or the knowledge of the phenomena of the earth in relation to the heavens, and its own motions, are subjects of which no one should be ignorant, and of which, in our days, none are ignorant but those who are too dull to be aroused, or too stupid to acquire knowledge of any kind.

The simple fact, that the earth is round like an orange, ought to supercede a volume of discussion, if you turn your attention to it with the same good sense that you display on other subjects. That it is round we see by looking at a sheet of clouds, which accommodate themselves in their concavity to the convexity of the surface below. You may also witness it, by looking through telescopes at distant ships on the sea, whose lower parts are hidden by the intervening convexity, after the upper parts appear. Again, if any one set out westward, to follow the setting sun, he will in due time return to the same place from the eastward with the rising sun; and to astronomers, even a more palpable proof is the circular shadow of the earth on the moon, during an eclipse.

I know you are puzzled when we talk on these subjects by such words as the poles, the equator, the tropics, latitude, longitude, and other terms; but we must call things by some names, and the chief point is to understand what is meant by these names. If you take a large apple in your hand, and consider it in relation to this subject, the place of the stalk and the opposite point are the poles, one north and the other south is this a difficulty? If you conceive a line to pass round the middle, at equal distances from the poles, this is the equator-is that a difficulty? If then we measure distances from the equator, either way towards the poles, this is latitudeought that to be a difficulty? If you suppose the distance from the equator to both poles, to be divided into 90 equal parts, those are degrees of latitude, north or south-is that a difficulty? If you suppose two lines to pass round the globe, each 234 of those degrees from the equator, on the north and south sides, those are the tropics-is this any diffr culty? If you suppose a line to pass from the stalk round to the opposite end of the apple, this line is a meridian-is that a difficulty? If you suppose a me

ridian to pass over some speck on the apple, or city on the globe, and you count degrees right and left, or east and west, from any part of this line, this is a first meridian, as the meridian of London for example-and ought there to be any difficulty in this?Yet these are all the terms used in geography, and the understanding of these trifles includes the whole of the science, for all the rest is the mere application of this knowledge.

The Sun always illumes half the earth, just as he does an apple if you place an apple in the sun shine -so that if it shine directly over the equator, it would shine as far as each pole, or 90 degrees every way. But the sun varies its perpendicular position every day in the year, from tropic to tropic, and hence, as he shines 90 degrees every way, so the summer and winter, or long and short days depend on the side of the equator or distance from the equator over which he is vertical. This the inclination of your apple in the sun shine will enable you to wit

ness.

I scarcely need to tell you that day and night arise from the turning of the earth on its axis, and that planets in this respect are like a joint of meat roasting before the fire, a fly on which would be whirled about just as we are. The approach would be the rising of the fiery luminary, and the receding would be its setting. In truth, we are always whirling from the west towards the east, hence all the distant heavenly bodies rise or come into sight in the east, and go out of sight in the west, while as the earth is above 24,000 miles round, so we are thus moved above 1000 miles an hour.

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