* A man who had travelled much once said to me,--"I will tell you the main difference between a Yankee and an Englishman. If you inform the latter of some new discovery-- or propose the use of some recent invention for his own benefit--he will tell you either that the thing is old, or worthless. On the other hand, if you recount to the former what you have told the latter of, his rejoinder will be, I can improve upon that." This is true, and we are now repeatedly adopting from the United States discoveries of various kinds, which we rejected when offered to us in the first place. Yet, notwithstanding the propensity of cultivated nations to remain quiescent, there do appear, from time to time, individuals who, being discontented with things as they are, endeavour to bring about improvements in the arts, the sciences, and the general conditions of life. The recognition of a want, is an incentive to a thoughtful mind to supply the exigency. Whenever an individual endeavours to attain a definite end, he exercises his mind, not only in what he has been already taught, but what he can observe beyond that; he rakes up, if possible, the experience of others, studies their proceedings, and experiments with a definite object, and ponders upon the affinities, nature, and the like, of every substance which he surmises may be of service to him. When, by these means, he has obtained his purpose, he will repeatedly find that he has done no more than rediscover a something which was known thousands of years before his time. Without a doubt, much of the philosophy, science, art, religion, &c., of the present day, is due to a close observation and an attainment to the knowledge possessed by our predecessors. "Is there any thing whereof it may be said, see this is new?--it hath been already of old time, which was before us" (Eccles. i. 10). If this be true, even though it may only be so to a partial extent, it is clearly more philosophical to believe that some primeval men were created with a considerable amount of knowledge, rather than that all were savage, barely, if at all, superior to monkeys, and that one or more of these, gradually elevated their race, by degrees so slow, as to be imperceptible in less time than many thousand years.