connection between the mind and body; for we find them exceedingly anxious and careful about the health of their children in other respects. Entirely forgetful of the brain, they know there is danger in exercising many other parts of the body too much, when they are but partially developed. They know that caution is necessary with children in respect to their food, lest their delicate digestive organs should be injured by a too exciting and stimulating regimen.

A parent would be greatly alarmed if his little child, by continued encouragement and training, had learned to eat as much food as a healthy adult. Such a prodigy of gluttony might undoubtedly be formed. The method of effecting it, would be somewhat like that of enabling a child to remember, and reason, and study, with the ability and constancy of an adult. Each method is dangerous, but probably the latter is the more so, because the brain is a more delicate organ than the stomach.

The activity of most of the organs of the body can be very greatly increased; they can be made to perform their functions for a while with unusual facility and power. I will dwell upon this fact a little. A child, for instance, may be gradually accustomed to eat and digest large quantities of stimulating animal food. I have seen an instance of this kind, and when I remonstrated with the parents on the impropriety and danger of allowing a child but two years old, such diet constantly, I was told that he was uncommonly robust; and indeed he appeared to be in vigourous health; but soon after this he had a long inflammatory fever, of an unusual character for children, which I attributed at the time, to the stimulating diet allowed him. This diet appeared also to have an effect upon his disposition, and confirmed the observation of Hufeland, that "infants who are accustomed to eat much animal food become robust, but at the same time passionate, violent and brutal.”

A child may also be made to execute surprising muscular movements, such as walking on a rope, and other feats; but these are learned only by long practice, which grealy developes the muscles by which the movements are executed. From frequent and powerful action, the muscles of the arms of blacksmiths and boxers and boatmen, those of the lower limbs of dancers, and those of the faces of buf

foons, become strikingly enlarged when compared with the muscles in other parts of the body. Every employment n which men engage brings into relatively greater action particular parts of the system; some organs are constantly and actively exercised, while others are condemned to inactivity. To make, therefore, one organ superior to another in power, it is necessary not only to exercise it frequently, but to render other organs inactive, so as not to draw away from it that vital energy which it requires in order to be made perfect.

The important truth resulting from these facts, that the more any part of the human system is exercised, the more it is enlarged, and its powers increased, applies equally to all organs of the body; it applies to the brain as well as the muscles. The heads of great thinkers, as has been stated, are wonderfully large; and it has been ascertained by admeasurement, that they frequently continue to increase until the subjects are fifty years of age, and long after the other portions of the system have ceased to enlarge. "This phenomenon," says Itard, "is not very rare, even in the adult, especially among men given to study, or profound meditation, or who devote themselves, without relaxation, to the agitations of an unquiet and enterprising spirit. The head of Bonaparte, for instance, was small in youth, but acquired, in after life, a development nearly

enormous."

I would have the parent, therefore, understand, that his child may be made to excel in almost anything; that by increasing the power of certain organs through exercise, he can be made a prodigy of early mental or muscular activity. But I would have him, at the same time, understand the conditions upon which this can be effected, and its consequences. I would have him fully aware, that in each case, unusual activity and power are produced by extraordinary development of an organ; and especially that in early life, no one organ of the body can be disproportionately exercised, without the risk of most injurious consequences. Either the over-excited and over-tasked organ itself will be injured for life, or the development of other and essential parts of the system will be arrested forever.

From what has been said hitherto, we gather the following facts, which should be made the basis of all instruc

tion; facts which I wish often to repeat.

The brain is the material organ by which all the mental faculties are manifested; it is exceedingly delicate, and but partially developed in childhood; over-excitement of it when in this state, is extremely hazardous.

LESSON XLIX.

Early History of Kentucky.-N. A. REVIEW.

THOSE now alive, who have reached the age of seventy years, were born before the first white man entered Kentucky. For the English have never displayed the same love of discovery as the Spaniards and French, either in North or South America. Wherever they have fixed themselves, they remain. A love of adventure, an eager curiosity, a desire of change, or some like motive, had carried the French all over the continent, while the English colonists continued quietly within their own limits. The French missionaries coasted along the lakes and descended the Mississippi, a whole century before the Virginians began to cross the Alleghany ridge, to get a glimpse of the noble inheritance, which had remained undisturbed for centuries, waiting their coming.

It was not till the year 1767, only eight years before the breaking out of the revolutionary war, that John Finley, of North Carolina, descended into Kentucky for the purpose of hunting and trading. The feelings of wonder and delight experienced by this early pioneer in passing through the rich lands, which were filled with deer, buffaloes, and every kind of game, and covered with the majestic growth of centuries, soon communicated themselves to others. Like the spies, who returned from Palestine, they declared, "The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land." They compared it to parks and gardens, or a succession of farms stocked with cattle, and full of birds tame as farm-yard poultry.

Instigated by these descriptions, in 1769, Daniel Boone, a man much distinguished for bravery and skill, entered Kentucky. And now commenced a series of enterprise

romantic adventure, chivalric daring, and patient endurance, not surpassed in the history of modern times. Nothing in those voluminous tales of knight errantry, which occupied the leisure of pages and squires in old baronial days, or in the Waverley novels and their train of romances of the second class, which amuse modern gentlemen and ladies,nothing in these works of imagination can exceed the realities of early Kentucky history.

From 1769 till Wayne's victory on the Maumee in 1794, a period of twenty-five years, including the whole revolutionary war, the people of Kentucky were engaged in Indian warfare, for life and home. Surrounded by an enemy far outnumbering them; deadly in hatred, of ferocious cruelty, wielding the same rifle with themselves, and as skilful in its use, they took possession of the country, felled the forest, built towns, laid out roads, and changed the wilderness into a garden. No man could open his cabin-door in the morning, without danger of receiving a rifle-bullet from a lurking Indian; no woman could go out to milk the cows, without risk of having a scalping-knife at her forehead before she returned. Many a man returned from hunting, only to find a smoking ruin where he had left a happy home with wife and children.

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But did this constant danger create a constant anxiety? Did they live in terror? Fightings were without; were fears within? By no means. If you talk with the survivors of those days they will tell you: We soon came to think ourselves as good men as the Indians. We believed we were as strong as they, as good marksmen, as quick of sight, and as likely to see them, as they were to see us; so there was no use in being afraid of them." The danger produced a constant watchfulness, an active intelligence, a prompt decision; traits still strongly apparent in the Kentucky character.

By the same causes, other, more amiable and social qualities, were developed. While every man was forced to depend on himself and trust to his own courage, coolness and skill, every man felt that he depended on his neighbour for help in cases where his own powers could no longer avail And no man could decline making an effort for another, when he knew that he might need a like aid before the sun went down. Hence we have frequent examples of

him.

one man risking his life to save that of another, and of desperate exertions made for the common safety of the dwellers in fort or stockade.

Can we, then, wonder at the strong family attachments still existing in Kentucky? The remembrance of hours of common danger and mutual sacrifice, and generous disregard of self, must have sunk deep into the hearts of those earnest men, the early settlers. "He saved my life at the risk of his own. He helped me bring back my wife from the Indians. He shot the man who was about to dash out my infant's brains." Here was a foundation for friendships, which nothing could root up. "Whispering tongues can poison truth;" but no tongues could do away such evidences of true friendship as these. as these. No subsequent coldness, no after injury, could efface their remembrance. They must have been treasured up in the deepest cells of the heart with a sacred gratitude, a religious care. And hence, while Indian warfare developed all the stronger and selfrelying faculties, it cultivated also all the sympathies, the confiding trust, the generous affections, which, to the present hour, are marked on the heart of that people's cha

racter.

LESSON L.

The Fall of Napoleon.-C. PHILLIPS.

I HAVE heard before of states ruined by the visitation of Providence, devastated by famine, wasted by fire, overcome by enemies; but never until now did I see a state like England, impoverished by her spoils, and conquered by her successes! She has fought the fight of Europe; she has purchased all its coinable blood; she has subsidized all its dependencies in their own cause; she has conquered by sea, she has conquered by land; and here she is, after all her vanity and all her victories, surrounded by desolation, like one of the pyramids of Egypt; amid the grandeur of the desert, full of magnificence and death, at once a trophy and a tomb!

The heart of any reflecting man must burn within him,