"On his seventieth birthday, two months before his death, his beloved pupils gave him a festival, which is beautiful to read about. It must have gladdened the pure-hearted old man immeasurably. Froebel was wakened at sun-rise by the festal song of the children, and as he stepped out of his chamber to the lecture-room, he saw that it had been splendidly adorned with flowers, festoons, and wreaths of all kinds. The day was celebrated with songs and rejoicing, and gifts were received from pupils and friends in various parts of the world, and in the evening, after a song, a pupil placed a green wreath upon the master's head. "Two months after this he died peacefully. One of his strongest peculiarities was his passionate love for flowers, and during his illness he repeatedly commended the care of his flowers to his friends. He had the window opened frequently, so he could gaze once more on the out-door scenes he loved so well. Almost his last words were: 'Nature, pure, vigorous Nature!'" JOHN FITCH, the inventor of steamboats, was even less fortunate than Froebel. No patron took him by the hand, and although his invention was successfully demonstrated at Philadelphia in 1787, by a small steamboat, the trial being witnessed by the members of the convention that formed the Federal constitution, he could not obtain sufficient co-operation to introduce the invention, and finally left his boat to rot on the shores of the Hudson and returned to his home at Bardstown, Ky., where he died in 1798. The unsuccessful struggles of Fitch make a melancholy history. In his last appeal he used this language: "But why those earnest solicitations to disturb my nightly repose, and fill me with the most excruciating anxieties; and why not act the part for myself, and retire under the shady elms on the fair banks of the Ohio, and eat my coarse but sweet bread of industry and content, and when I have done, to have my body laid in the soft, warm, and loamy soil of the banks, with my name inscribed on a neighboring poplar, that future generations when traversing the mighty waters of the West, _in the manner that I have pointed out_, may find my grassy turf." IN the lives of Pythagoras, Copernicus, Galileo, Ericson, Bruno, Harvey, Kepler, Newton, Hunter, Gall, Young, Froebel, Gray, Fitch, Stephenson, and _many_ others, we learn that he who assails the Gibraltar of conservative and authoritative ignorance must expect to conduct a very long siege, to maintain a resolute battle, and perhaps to die in his camp, leaving to his posterity to receive the predestined surrender of the citadels of Falsehood and Darkness, for the eternal law of the universe declares that all darkness shall disappear, and Light and Peace shall cover the earth, as they already fill the souls of the lovers of wisdom. SOCIAL CONDITIONS.