FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY. Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry. Facts. Kansas is almost exactly in the centre of the United States. The lighthouses of the world are estimated at 2,814. Iceland ponies average two hands higher than the Shetlanders. Artesian wells have been successfully constructed in the Sahara Desert. The roasted wings of the ostrich, it is said, taste like the wings of the turkey. The Bank of England will celebrate its hundred and eighty-fifth birthday on the 27th of next July. The common nettle is being utilized in Prussia. It is treated the same as hemp, and the fibre is as soft as silk and as strong as linen. The whole Bible is now translated into the Turkish language, which gives it into the hands of 150,000,000 of people. Hungary produces more horses than any country of its size-2,158,000 for a population of 15,000,000. The government has four breeding stables. Japan has 5,000 miles of telegraph, and 1,000 more under construction. It There are many shining qualities in the mind of man, but there are none so useful as discretion.-Addison. Often the grand meaning of faces, as well as written words, may be chiefly in the impressions of those who look on them.-George Eliot. I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, ""Tis all barren!" And so it is, and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruit it offers.--Sterne. The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve any one; it must husband its resources to live. But health, or fullness, answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over and inundates the neighbourhoods and creeks of other men's necessities.-Emerson. Gems. Be rigid to yourself, and gentle to others.-Confucius. Strong passions work wonders, when there is a great strength of reason to curb them.-Tucker. Upright simplicity is the deepest wisdom, and perverse craft the merest has also 125 telegraph stations. The shallowness.-Barron. insulators made in the village of Imari | It is one satisfaction, failing to find are of such excellent quality that preferment, to feel that we are at least orders for them have been sent from Europe. Hints. A picture is a power without words. -Horace. No man may be both accuser and judge.-Plutarch. Genius finds its own road, and carries its own lamp.-Willmott. Our grief may be guessed from the solace and self-deception we resort to. -Richter. There is no wise or good man that would change persons or conditions entirely with any man in the world.Jeremy Taylor. free from all indebtedness.-Simms. For every sort of suffering there is sleep provided by a gracious Providence, save sin.-Prof. J. Wilson. It is to be feared that they who marry where they do not love will love where they do not marry.-Fuller. People do not reflect that they may soon die. If they did their quarrels would quickly terminate.-Buddhist Scripture. The manner of a vulgar man has freedom without ease, and the manner of the gentleman has ease without freedom.-Chesterfield. Things are saturated with the moral law. There is no escape from it. Violets and grass preach it; rain and FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY. snow, wind and tides, every change, every course in nature, is nothing but a disguised missionary.-Emerson. There are some men so exquisitely selfish, that they go through life not only without ever being loved, but without even wishing to be.-Richter. Despair makes a despicable figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness, of impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty too.-Collier. No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier for life for having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure.-Sidney Smith. O FAIR and holy city, That wondrous, crystal river, May not with it compare! From whence these waters glide, Which evermore full freighted With life and heavenly grace; And by the springing verdure, The healing stream we trace. The prophet in his vision* Beheld its earthward flow; He marked the little streamlet, And saw the waters grow; Till, like the Nile o'erflowing O sweet, life-giving waters! The groaning nations languish O pure and crystal river! The water of salvation PEACE. As flows the river, In silence toward the sea, And ceaseth never, He kindly keepeth Those He loves What peace He bringeth The soul that clingeth, How calm at even I reach the longed-for rest. * Ezekiel xlvii. JOHN WICKLIFFE. JOHN WICKLIFFE, the priest of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, a most godly and learned man, was raised up of God to translate the Bible into the English tongue. The desire to learn to read writing-there was no printing in those days-was then felt among all classes; and when Wickliffe's great work was finished, in the year 1380, it was read by many thousands of people. As printing was not discovered until 1450, Wickliffe's Bible had to remain in manuscript seventy years. For this good work Wickliffe was persecuted, and if the pope had had leisure to attend to the matter, he would have had to die a martyr. But it happened that at that time there were two popes contending for the chair of St. Peter; two holy and infallible men denounced and cursed each other, and each called the other antichrist. Wickliffe said both were antichrist, and he went on with his work until his strength failed; and, in 1384, just four years after he finished his great work, he died in his bed at Lutterworth. Ten years after his death, a law was made to prevent the people from reading Wickliffe's Bible; twenty-four years after his death, a law was made to prevent there ading of anything that he had written or translated. But the people would have portions of the Bible, and they read them. The word of God was precious in those days; and many rich men had writers employed all the time transcribing portions of the Bible; and although to read any part of the Scriptures was a crime for which many in authority were not slow to inflict severe punishment, the people continued to read the holy Word. About forty-two years after his death, word came from Rome that Wickliffe's grave must be opened, and his bones burned. So they made a fire outside the churchyard, where his bones were consumed to ashes; those ashes they cast into the river Swift, which runs past Lutterworth. And, as Thomas Fuller has said, as that river runs into the Avon, and the Avon runs into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas, and they run into the great seas, it may be that his ashes have been carried into all parts of the world; emblem of the doctrines of the Bible which he gave to the people of Leicestershire, and which are now spreading themselves over the entire world. John Wickliffe was so far advanced in liberal-mindedness, that he said if any man loved and understood the gospel he might JOHN WICKLIFFE. preach it, and preach it in any place, without waiting to be ordained, and without asking permission of any bishop. In the middle of the fifteenth century, the art of printing was discovered; and the first book that went from the press was the Bible. The first martyr to Protestantism was burned at Smithfield in the early part of that century. He was put to death for saying that he adored the Christ more than the cross which the priests held up before the people. The second martyr was Lord Cobham, one of Wickliffe's followers. He was hung in chains and burned to death in the fields near London. 66 The "Great Reformation" occurred in the sixteenth century. In the year 1521, Wolsey burnt Luther's books at St. Paul's cross. Henry the Eighth was then king of England. He professed to be a good Catholic, and said he abhorred Protestantism, and wrote a book against Martin Luther; and the Pope, to whom a copy was presented, was so delighted with it that he gave him the title of Defender of the Faith; this title the English monarch still wears. The king kept a jester, who happened to come into his room when the king was rejoicing over his new title; and Henry said, "See here, the pope has made me Defender of the Faith." To this the jester replied: Sire, if I were you, I would just let the faith defend itself, and I would defend myself and my kingdom." And yet this king got an act passed in the year 1534, which declared that England would have nothing more to do with the Pope; that his holiness had no authority over the Church of England; and that Henry was the supreme head of the Church of England and Ireland. He did this, not because he had found that the Church of Rome was wrong, and that Protestantism was right; not because he had changed his religious views at all; but because the Pope would not grant him a divorce. He had grown weary of his Queen, to whom he had been married twenty years; and had fallen in love with a fine young woman who lived in the Queen's Court, and who had promised to marry him if he could get free from his wife. The Pope was ready enough to grant Henry the divorce he prayed for; but it happened that Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, a most powerful prince, was the Queen of England's nephew; and as he thought much of his aunt, and was likely to be very angry if she were separated from her husband, his holiness felt it would not do to make out the divorce so much desired. So Henry divorced the Pope, and then compelled the Archbishop of Canterbury to divorce him from the Queen. King Henry had six wives. One died a natural death; from THE ADVENTURES OF AN ENGLISH NAME. two he was divorced; two he beheaded; and one was living when he died. Many people died for Christ during the sixteenth century. Queen Mary, during her reign, put three hundred Christians to death. Three times during that century fires were kindly at St. Paul's Cross, and Bibles, Wickliffe's works, Luther's works, and other good books, were there consumed to ashes. That unsightly building-St. Paul's Cross-which stood on the north side of the cathedral, was taken down many years ago; and on the spot where Bibles used to be burned, the Religious Tract Society's store now stands; and from that store books are going forth into all the world. It was during that century, in 1526, that William Tyndale gave to England her most precious treasure, the printed English Bible. THE ADVENTURES OF AN ENGLISH NAME. THE name of John, though now so common in our midst, was not a favourite with our early English forefathers. With a few rare exceptions, it does not occur before the Norman Conquest. And when we look at the mass of our familiar names, we shall see that this is the case with every one of them. Robert, Thomas, William, Henry, Richard, James; Mary, Ellen, Emily, Catherine, Margaret, Jane: none of these are commonly found as native names until after the invasion of Duke William. In fact, we may say, in a certain sense, that truly English Christian names are now all but unknown in England. Our whole modern nomenclature is almost entirely foreign or scriptural. In the good old English days, when the English nation spoke the pure English tongue in its unadulterated form-which a foolish modern practice has christened Anglo-Saxon-men and women bore names compounded from words having a common significance in the language of the day. Such names, in our own time, are those of Mercy, Charity, or Patience; and to a less degree, Ernest, Clement, or Blanche. But most of our common designations to-day, such as those instanced above, at once show their foreign origin by the fact that they convey no meaning to us as they stand. In early English times, however, before the Dane and the Norwegian from Scandinavian lands, or the Norman (a Scandinavian with a lacquer of Romance civilization) had overflowed the country, every English man or |