Supposing him to be furnished with counters of small value, so as to be able readily to pay fractions of a penny, how long would it take him to pay the shilling? The answer is that he would never pay it. It is true that he would pay elevenpence-farthing in four days, but after that his progress would be slow and he could never get out of debt. GOOD VERSES BY A BAD POET. Few things in Dryden or Pope, it has been remarked, are finer than the following lines by a man whom they both continually laughed at--Sir Richard Blackmore-- "Exhausted travellers, that have undergone The scorching heats of Life's intemperate zone, Haste for refreshment to their beds beneath And stretch themselves in the cool shades of Death." LOVE OF COUNTRY. "The love we bear our country is a root, Which never fails to bring forth golden fruit; 'Tis in the mind an everlasting spring, Of glorious actions which become a king-- Not less become a subject. 'Tis a debt Which bad men, though they pay not, can't forget; A duty which the good delight to pay, And every man can practise every day." _Churchill._ THE PASSING CLOUD. Cloud and storm only intimate the passing commotion needful to purify the air and the water; and compared with the azure depths above and below, they are superficial and transitory. They retire, and the beautiful blue of heaven reappears, and the ocean again becomes a sapphire foundation on which the sun scatters his jewels of light with regal lavishness. And so no dark trial, no grievous judgment, can cross our sky without revealing some spot of heavenly blue in the midst of it, or if concealed for a moment, breaking forth again with greater brightness and beauty. _Rev. Dr. Hugh Macmillan._ CHINA MARKS. ENGLISH PORCELAIN. PART I. The name porcelain is derived from the Italian _porcellana_, signifying a cowrie shell, on account of the delicate translucent glaze on its surface. At how early a date the manufacture of pottery began in this country, before the Roman invasion, is not absolutely known. In the Anglo-Saxon times the pottery of the Celtic tribes was confined to the manufacture of cinerary urns and very common utensils of household use; as they preferred the employment of glass and horn for drinking purposes, and metal or wood for solid food. In the thirteenth century pottery was reinstated in public favour; and a great advance was made in the art, a glaze being employed from the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, when a new description of pottery was invented, a salt-glazed stoneware, which came into the market with importations of Italian fayence and oriental porcelain.