I will not early learn to pine My summer life away, But ever bend at pleasure's shrine, And mingle with the gay. Should sorrow come with coming years, And touch the strings of woe, I'll learn to smile away its tears, Or check their idle flow; And still I'll sing; a song as bright, And wake as glad a measure, Bid grief and sorrow wing their flight, And hail the reign of pleasure. W.H. PRIDEAUX. * * * * * SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY. * * * * * IMPROVEMENTS IN BLACK WRITING INK. _By John Bostock, M.D._[2] When the sulphate of iron and the infusion of galls are added together, for the purpose of forming ink, we may presume that the metallic salt or oxide enters into combination with at least four proximate vegetable principles--gallic acid, tan, mucilage, and extractive matter--all of which appear to enter into the composition of the soluble parts of the gall-nut. It has been generally supposed, that two of these, gallic acid and the tan, are more especially necessary to the constitution of ink; and hence it is considered, by our best systematic writers, to be essentially a tanno-gallate of iron. It has been also supposed that the peroxide of iron alone possesses the property of forming the black compound which constitutes ink, and that the substance of ink is rather mechanically suspended in the fluid than dissolved in it. Ink, as it is usually prepared, is disposed to undergo certain changes, which considerably impair its value. Of these the three following are the most important: its tendency to moulding, the liability of the black matter to separate from the fluid, the ink then becoming what is termed ropy, and its loss of colour, the black first changing to brown, and, at length, almost entirely disappearing.