Say nothing to your child, good mother, of the bitter thoughts that crowd upon you, as you close your eyes upon the wavering fire-light, and listen, in this stillness, to all the stealthy steps and touches of the wakeful night. Say nothing to your mother, Menie, of the tears which steal down between your cheek and your pillow, as you turn your face to the wall. What might have been—what might have been; is it not possible to keep from thinking of that? for even Jenny mutters to herself, as she lies wakefully contemplating the glow of her gathered fire—mutters to herself, with an indignant fuff, and hard-drawn breath, “I wish her muckle pleasure of her will: she’s gotten her will: and I wadna say but she minds him now—a bonnie lad like yon!” CHRONOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES: WHAT SHALL WE COLLECT? Is knowledge, like Saturn, destined to devour her own masculine offspring, and leave only the weak to live to propagate follies? If Common Sense, the strong born, has escaped, it is because Knowledge has been deceived, like Saturn, with a stone, not very easy of digestion, nor promising to add much to her substance. But this survivor, Common Sense, has the effeminate yet numerous progeny to contend with, who, with a busy impertinence, multiply absurdities, and put them forth under the glorifying name of their parent, Knowledge. We rejoice, therefore, to see a laudable attempt being made to rescue knowledge from the cramming in of uncommon and worthless things, and to substitute for the people’s use a knowledge of “common things.” And we hope an aggregate addition of the bone and muscle of a little more common honesty, and true genuine natural feeling, will be the result of the wholesomer food. The people have been long enough imposed on by false titles; or the “Useful Knowledge,” the pretence of the age, has been exhausted, and resort had to a very useless substitute.