profitable production of the article by our farmers; that the old manner of breaking the flax by a laborious process in the latter stages of preparation, may be superseded by the use of a small machine in an earlier stage to the advantage of the material, and the great saving of labor; and that the former mode of extracting the gluten is susceptible of great improvement."

These conclusions have been practically and successfully applied, and there is good reason to believe that an article may be produced upon our own northern soil that shall answer every purpose for which cotton is used, and which will prove superior to it on the score of economy. A small factory has been erected at Watertown, Mass., for the manufacture of fibrilia composed in part of flax, and Mr. ALLEN exhibited samples of white cloth, calicoes, jean, and a pair of hose, in the manufacture of which from twenty to fifty per cent of it was used. Several gentlemen availed themselves of Mr. ALLEN'S invitation to question him, thus eliciting considerable information further than what he had already given.

In order to show the importance of the article which had engaged the attention of the meeting, Gov. DYER read from a slip of paper a statement which he had compiled of the export, import, and consumption, by which it appeared that the last eight years the average import of the raw material has amounted to $196,900; average import of manufactures of flax, $9,811,336; average export, $147,845; average consumption, $7,663,511.

On motion of AMOS PERRY, Esq., a vote of thanks was tendered Mr. ALLEN for his interesting and valuable address, after which the meeting dissolved.

The subject is one of great importance. The successful introduction of the fibrilia of flax in the production of cloths would work a complete revolution in manufactures. We have seen some specimens of cloth, prints, crash stockings, etc., manufactured in part from this material, which are of superior quality. The flax fibrilia can be mixed either with cotton or wool.

DIRECTIONS FROM A PARENT TO HIS SON

ON HIS ENTERING INTO MERCANTIE BUSINESS.

1. You are to give your constant attendance at the counting-room or store, (business or no business) during office hours, except you are sent out by Mr. or go by his permission.

2. When out on business, finish it with dispatch, and return immediately. 3. Keep your store in the most regular and neatest order, especially your desks, books, and files of papers.

4. Whatever business you may have on hand, execute it, not in a hurry, but in the best style, instantly without delay. "Procrastination is the thief of time." 5. Whenever you deliver an article, see that it be charged the very first thing you do. It will regard your utmost attention and consideration to enable you to execute your duties faithfully and correctly, especially till practice makes business familiar.

6. The last and most important: you are inviolably to keep your master's secrets; relate none of his business, not even to your most intimate friends. A breach of this injunction would be treason on your part, and the reason will be obvious to you. Mr. - will cheerfully grant you every indulgence. Should you want to be absent an hour, or even more, he will not object; but you must

be careful never to ask these favors when your presence is necessary in the store. Think it not derogatory to perform any work amongst the goods in the store; the exercise will be useful to strengthen your muscles and preserve your health. Be careful to improve your handwriting by copying in the best style, and when you write a letter, you should do it as if it was to be inspected by all your acquaintance, and you should never write fast.

MORE NEW USES FOR INDIA RUBBER.

In Great Britain, as well as in the "Great Republic," they are discovering manifold uses for this flexible and protean agent. The Edinburgh Journal says :— New applications of India rubber to mechanical purposes are being discovered almost every month; in springs to lift the saw in sawing machines, and with a considerable economy in power; in springs for cables, or for moorings, proof against any strain to which they may be subject; and in a new code of signals recently introduced into the navy at Plymouth, comprising a series of flexible

cones.

By substituting India rubber cloth for canvas, one set of rope or halyards is got rid of, namely, that by which the cone was hauled down, for the India rubber collapses and descends of itself, and only requires the rope which holds it up. Attach a bundle of India rubber ropes or springs to a beam over head; stretch down spring after spring, and hook them to a heavy weight to be lifted, and presently the weight rises, as it were, of itself. Mr. HODGES, of Southampton Row, has invented many ingenious applications of this sort. His India rubber radiating carriage spring obviate entirely the effect of jolts and noise upon driver and passengers. The wheels are, of course, heard to rattle upon the pavement; but there is no communication of the sound through the carriage. A layer of vulcanized India rubber is inserted in the joints of the girders of the new Westminster bridge. There have been also some very clever applications of India rubber to surgical instruments, producing results, by mere elasticity, which could be accomplished otherwise only by complicated mechanism.

PRECEPTS.

Common sense and common prudence are better guides as to diet than any positive rules.

A morose, unhappy disposition predisposes to indigestion and disease. Cultivate cheerful and hopeful feelings to insure good digestion and health.

Let not your field or your mind lie fallow too long; they will produce a crop of weeds; and weeds are much readier too take root than to leave it.

JEFFERSON'S TEN GOOD RULES.

1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. 2. Never trouble others for what you can do yourself.

3. Never spend your money before you have it.

4. Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap.

5. Pride costs us more than thirst, hunger, or cold.

6. We never repent of having eaten too little.

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

8. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, one hundred.

9. Take things always by the smoothest handle.

10. In all cases when you cannot do as you would, do the best you can.

THE BUSINESS OF LIFE.

Getting money is not all a man's business; to cultivate kindness is a great part of the business of life.-Johnson.

EARLY RISING.-The difference between rising every morning at six, and eight, in the course of forty years, amounts to 20,000 hours, or 8 years, 121 days, and 10 hours, which will afford eight hours a day for exactly ten years; so that it is the same as if ten years were added to a man's life, in which he could command eight hours each day for the cultivation of his mind and heart.

GENTLEMANHOOD.-Mr. Justice TALFOURD, in a recent trial, thus defined the character of a gentleman. The evidence proved that the defendant, while in the theater, had said to the plaintiff, "Do not speak to me, I am a gentleman, and you are a tradesman ;" and in summing up, the learned Justice said, "Gentleman is a term which does not apply to any station, but to the mind and feelings in every station. The man of rank who deports himself with dignity and candor, the tradesman who discharges the duties of life with honor and integrity, are alike entitled to it; nay, the humblest artizan, who fulfills the obligations cast upon him with virtue and with honor, is more entitled to the name of a gentleman than the man who indulges in offensive and ribald remarks, however high his station."

EXPERIENCE.-Seldom can experience help one who could not also do without it. Nothing is more untrue than the saying that fools will be made wise by suffering. The fool feels only the smart; but will not thereby be cured of the cause of his suffering, of his folly. In order to profit rightly by the teachings of experience, there is need of a presaging spirit, which shows the creature of experience before it makes its appearance, so that upon its first stepping forth, thou mayest distinguish its looks, and seize it by the head.

INDECISION. Habitual indecision is an evidence of weakness; for it evinces either a want of capacity to apprehend what is best, or a want of energy to pursue it.

INDOLENCE.-Indolence leaves the door of the soul unlocked, and thieves and robbers go in and despoil it of its treasures.

FINANCIAL PARADOX.-It is a remarkable peculiarity with debts that their expanding power continues to increase as you contract them.

FRIENDLY EXPECTATIONS.-You may expect friends if you deserve them, and enemies whether you deserve them or not.

UTILITY ELEVATES EMPLOYMENT.-Let the young man remember, there is nothing derogatory in any employment which ministers to the well being of the race. It is the spirit that is carried into an employment that elevates or degrades it.

PERSEVERANCE.-All the performances of human art at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.

PURPOSE is the edge and point of character; it is the superscription on the letter of talent. Character without it is blunt and torpid; genius without it is bullion-splendid and uncirculating.

THE BOOK TRADE.

1.- Religious and Moral Sentences, culled from the works of Shakespeare, compared with Sacred Passages drawn from Holy Writ. From the English edition, with an introduction by FREDERICK D. HUNTINGTON, D. D. Boston: James Munroe & Co.

The writings of the immortal playright of Avon have recently received such a revision, sifting, and ingenious twisting, for the purpose, we suppose, of satisfying every admirer of the great genius, that, until we saw this last book of extracts from his works and from the Scriptures placed together in parallel positions, to show the close affininity existing between the sentences there exhibited from his works and passages taken from Holy Writ, we imagined that no other part or role could the pen of Will Shakespeare be made to play. Only the other day we saw him (through a fusion of law and literature) claimed as a lawyer, and that, too, by one of the occupants of the Queen's Bench--that the familiarity displayed by the great bard with law terms and the phraseology of the court, confirm his once being a scion of the law. Now we see many of his beautiful couplets clad with a divinity which we fancy would provoke a smirk, or a prolonged wink of gratified surprise, on the countenances of even the staid wives of Windsor, were any of them on the boards at this day. To our notion, there is but little which goes to prove Will Shakespeare's all-gifted mind greatly im bued with the sublimity and hallowed character of the sacred Scriptures, and as little in his writings, unless it be the power of grasping in its fullest scope every subject with which it had to do, and that gift only imparted by true genius, which touches nothing which it does not ornament. The little book is very neatly got up, and is a curiosity in its way, as showing how palpable incongruities, by the help of imagination, may be made to show affinities which really have no existence.

2.-Revolutions in English History. By ROBERT VAUGHAN, D. D. Vol. I., 8vo. pp. 563. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

This work, though bearing the title of English history, is only so as embraces its revolutionary character, including only just so much of the past as will suffice to give full presentation and prominence to the great changes in its history, showing whence they have come, what they have been, and whither they have tended, due place being assigned to the great cause in regard to each of them. Although pertaining strictly to England, and as a consequence most interesting to Englishmen, yet still, as descendantants of one common mother, the various great phases of change in history, as well as the legitimate cause in regard to each of them, is not without interest to the people on this side of the Atlantic, which has doubtless been well considered by the the American publishers ere assuming the expense attendant on getting out a series of such copious volumes as these. May success attend them.

3.-Notes of Travel aud Study in Italy. By CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 12mo., pp. 320. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

Pleasure travelers seem more than ever possessed with a penchant for writing out their ideas of what they may have casually seen, or rather, every one, now-adays, after taking the parting kiss, may-be of children, but more likely from the lips of long-frozen friendship, who leaves home on a foreign trip, either of business or pleasure, is all but sure to leave the footsteps of his hasty flight marked with printing ink, to serve as portraits for ready reference to all future comers, who, in their turn, but realize how

"One star differeth from another star in glory;"

Or rather, what we were prepared to see from some author long before us, appears, to our vision, to have been with him matters of faith rather than of sight. The work before us attempts the profile of that classic land-Italy-of which so much has been written. Although speaking in terms of disparagement of the compendiums of travelers in general, yet still there are those, liable as they are to draw false inferences from what they see and hear in a country whose people are of a different race, and whose institutions are of a different character from their own, whose intelligence and lively conception throws around everything they touch an interest both pleasing and edifying. Such is Mr. Norton, who displays throughout his whole narrative extensive observation, with the rulings of a scholar, rendering the book one of unusual interest.

4.-Essays Critical and Miscellaneous. By T. BABINGTON MACAULAY. 8vo., pp. 744. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

The lovers of classic literature will have a treat in this new and revised edition of Macaulay's miscellaneous writings, which have been collected from the Edinburgh Reviews and given to the public in this neat and compact form by the Messrs. Appletons. The very general and high commendation in which Macaulay has been held by the American public is creditable to our tastes as a people, nor will not diminish now that death has stopped the flow of his pen. His essays are not only models of composition, but they contain a vast amount of information to the general reader, which, though we ransack the bequests of literary patriarchs the world over, it will be hard to find condensed in the same space. The issuing of this edition just at this time cannot but meet with the success it merits.

5-Friends in Council; a series of Readings and Discourse thereon. Reprinted from the English edition. 2 vols. 12mo., pp. 242, 280. Bosson: James Munroe & Co.

The very general and high commendation bestowed by the English press and community has induced their republication here by Messrs. Munroe & Co. They consist of promiscuous pieces on the various questions of the day, combining both theory and criticism, such as the "Miseries of Human Life," "The Arts of Self-advancement," "War," " Worry," "Pleasantness," etc., etc., and make up two charming volums, well worthy a niche in the library.