Greater changes have taken place in no single age than are at this time in progress; and the revolutions in which empires, kingdoms, or republics are made and unmade, and political constitutions rise and burst like bubbles upon a standing pool, when its stagnant waters are disturbed by a thunder-shower, are not the most momentous of those changes, neither are they those which most nearly concern us. The effects of the discovery of printing could never be felt in their full extent by any nation, till education, and the diffusion also of a certain kind of knowledge, had become so general, that newspapers should be accessible to every body, and the very lowest of the people should have opportunity to read them, or to hear them read. The maxim that it is politic to keep the people in ignorance, will not be maintained in any country where the rulers are conscious of upright intentions, and confident likewise in the intrinsic worth of the institutions which it is their duty to uphold, knowing those institutions to be founded on the rock of righteous principles. They know, also, that the best means of preserving them from danger is so to promote the increase of general information, as to make the people perceive how intimately their own well-being depends upon the stability of the state, thus making them wise to obedience. * * * * * The heart and mind can as little lie barren as the earth whereon we move and have our being, and which, if it produce not herbs and fruit meet for the use of man, will be overrun with weeds and thorns. Muley Ismael, a personage of tyrannical celebrity in his day, always employed his troops in some active and useful work, when they were not engaged in war, "to keep them," he said, "from being devoured by the worm of indolence." In the same spirit one of our Elizabethan poets delivered his wholesome advice:-- "Eschew the idle vein Flee, flee from doing nought! For never was there idle brain But bred an idle thought." * * * * * FLOGGING. Little did king Solomon apprehend, when his unfortunate saying concerning the rod fell from his lips, that it would occasion more havoc among birch-trees than was made among the cedars for the building of his temple, and his house of the forest of Lebanon! Many is the phlebotomist who, with this text in his mouth, has taken the rod in hand, when he himself, for ill teaching, or ill temper, or both, has deserved it far more than the poor boy who, whether slow of comprehension, or stupified by terror, has stood untrussed and trembling before him. * * * * * THE SKETCH BOOK. * * * * * THE VISION OF VALDEMARO. _Translated from the Spanish._