The following, written from England, is going the round of the papers, and is as true as the gospel, in my opinion. I have seen better ploughing here with a pair of oxen than in the old country with five horses; but Johnny won't learn. 'Lord! only look at five great, elephant-looking beasts in one plough, with one great lummokin fellow to hold the handle, and another to carry the whip, and a boy to lead, whose boots have more iron on them than the horses' hoofs have, all crawling as if going to a funeral! What sort of a way is that to do work? It makes me mad to look at 'em. If there is any airthly clumsy fashion of doin' a thing, that's the way they are always sure to git here. They're a benighted, obstinate, bull-headed people the English, that's the fact, and always was.' Well done, Jonathan--quite true!--_From a private Letter from Boston._ JOHN BUNYAN AND MINCE-PIES. In No. 417 of this Journal it is chronicled that John Bunyan scrupled to eat mince-pies, because of the superstitious character popularly attached to them; but it would appear from an anecdote sent to us by a correspondent, that if this was true at all of the author of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, he must have received new light upon the subject at a later period of life. When he was imprisoned for preaching--so says the anecdote--in Bedford jail, a superstitious lady, thinking to entrap him, sent a servant to request his acceptance of a Christmas pie; whereupon Banyan replied: 'Tell your mistress that I accept her present thankfully, for I have learned to distinguish between a mince-pie and superstition.' FOREST-TEACHINGS. There was travelling in the wild-wood Once, a child of song; And he marked the forest-monarchs As he went along. Here, the oak, broad-eaved and spreading; Here, the poplar tall; Here, the holly, forky-leaved; Here, the yew, for the bereaved; Here, the chestnut, with its flowers, and its spine-bestudded ball. Here, the cedar, palmy-branched; Here, the hazel low; Here, the aspen, quivering ever; Here, the powdered sloe. Wondrous was their form and fashion, Passing beautiful to see How the branches interlaced, How the leaves each other chased, Fluttering lightly hither, thither on the wind-aroused tree. Then he spake to those wood-dwellers: 'Ye are like to men, And I learn a lesson from ye With my spirit's ken. Like to us in low beginning, Children of the patient earth; Born, like us, to rise on high, Ever nearer to the sky, And, like us, by slow advances from the minute of your birth. 'And, like mortals, ye have uses-- Uses each his own: Each his gift, and each his beauty, Not to other known. Thou, O oak, the strong ship-builder, For thy country's good, Givest up thy noble life, Like a patriot in the strife, Givest up thy heart of timber, as he poureth out his blood.