M. Cormenin (Timon), in his _Livre des Orateurs_, has drawn a portrait of Thiers with a pencil of caustic. Perhaps it is too severe; but many say it is just. In that masterly sketch, Cormenin says--"Principles make revolutions and revolutionists. Principles found monarchies, aristocracies, republics, parliaments. Principles are morals and religion, peace and war. Principles govern the world. In truth, M. Thiers affirms that there are no principles, that is to say, M. Thiers has none. That is all." LIFE AND DEATH. BY REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, AUTHOR OF "ALTON LOCKE," "YEAST," ETC. God gives life, not only to us who have immortal souls, but to every thing on the face of the earth; for the psalm has been talking all through not only of men, but of beasts, fishes, trees, and rivers, and rocks, sun, and moon. Now, all these things have a life in them. Not a life like ours; but still you speak rightly and wisely when you say, "That tree is alive, and that tree is dead. That running water is live water; it is clear and fresh; but if it is kept standing it begins to putrefy; its life is gone from it, and a sort of death comes over it, and makes it foul, and unwholesome, and unfit to drink." This is a deep matter, this, how there is a sort of life in every thing, even to the stones under our feet. I do not mean, of course, that stones can think as our life makes us do, or feel as the beasts' life makes them do; or even grow as the trees' life makes them do; but I mean that their life keeps them as they are, without changing. You hear miners and quarrymen talk very truly of the live rock. That stone, they say, was cut out of the live rock, meaning the rock as it was under ground, sound and hard; as it would be, for aught we know, to the end of time, unless it was taken out of the ground, out of the place where God's Spirit meant it to be, and brought up to the open air and the rain, in which it is not its nature to be; and then you will see that the life of the stone begins to pass from it bit by bit, that it crumbles and peels away, and, in short, decays, and is turned again to its dust. Its organization, as it is called, or life, ends, and then--what? Does the stone lie forever useless? No. And there is the great, blessed mystery of how God's Spirit is always bringing life out of death. When the stone is decayed and crumbled down to dust and clay, it makes _soil_. This very soil here, which you plow, is the decayed ruins of ancient hills; the clay which you dig up in the fields was once part of some slate or granite mountains, which were worn away by weather and water, that they might become fruitful earth. Wonderful! But any one who has studied these things can tell you they are true. Any one who has ever lived in mountainous countries ought to have seen the thing happen--ought to know that the land in the mountain valleys is made at first, and kept rich year by year by the washings from the hills above; and this is the