The lambs sport in the field; they totter by the side of their dams; their young limbs, at first, can hardly support their weight.

If you fall, little lambs, you will not be hurt; there is spread under you a carpet of soft grass; it is spread for you and for us.

The butterflies flutter from bush to bush, and open their wings to the warm sun.

The young animals, of every kind, are sport, ing about; they feel themselves happy, they are glad to be alive they thank Him that has made them alive.

They may thank Him in their hearts, but we can thank Him with our tongues our gifts are greater than theirs; therefore, we ought to praise Him more.

The birds can warble, and the young lambs can bleat; but we can open our lips in His praise, we can speak of all His goodness.

Therefore, we will thank Him, for ourselves, and we will thank Him, for those that cannot speak.

Trees that blossom, and little lambs that skip about; if you could, you would say, how good He is; but you are dumb, and we will say it for you.

We will not offer you in sacrifice, but we will offer sacrifice for you; on every hill, and in every green field, we will offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and the incense of praise.

Henry. My dear father, you once observed, that we had a great many manufactures in this country. Pray, what is manufacture?

Father. A manufacture is something made by the hand of man. It is derived from two Latin words, manus, the hand, and facere, to make. Manufactures are, therefore, to be distinguished from productions, which are what the bounty of Nature spontaneously affords us ; as fruits, corn, marble.

H. But there is a great deal of trouble with corn. You have often made me take notice, how much pains it costs the farmer, to plough his ground, and put the seed in the earth, and keep it clear from weeds.

F. Very true. But the farmer does not make the corn; he only prepares for it a proper soil and situation, and removes every hinderance, arising from the hardness of the ground, or the neighborhood of other plants, which might obstruct the secret and wonderful process of vegetation; but with the vegetation, itself, he has nothing to do. It is not his hand that draws out the slender fibres of the root, pushes up, by degrees, the green stalk, and the spiky ear; swells the grain,

and imbrowns it with that rich tinge of tawny russet, which informs the husbandman, it is time to put in his sickle; all this operation is performed without his care, or even knowledge.

H. Now, then, I understand; corn is a production, and bread a manufacture.

F. Bread is certainly, in strictness of speech, a manufacture; but we do not, in general, apply the term to any thing, in which the original material is so little changed. If we wanted to speak of bread philosophically, we should say, it is a preparation of grain.

H. Is sugar a manufacture?

Besides which,

F. No; for the same reason. I do not recollect the term being applied to any article of food; I suppose, from an idea that food is of too perishable a nature, and generally obtained by a process too simple, to deserve the name. We say, therefore, sugar-works, oilmills, chocolate-works; we do not say a beermanufactory, but a brewery; but this is only a nicety of language; for, properly, all those are manufactories, if there is much of art and painstaking in the process.

H. Do we say a manufactory of pictures?

F. No; but for a different reason. A picture, especially if it belong to any of the higher kinds of painting, is a work of genius. A picture cannot be produced by any given combinations of canvass and color. It is the hand, indeed, that executes, but the head that works. Sir Joshua Reynolds could not have gone, when

he was engaged to paint a picture, and hired workmen, the one to draw the eyes, another the nose, a third the mouth; the whole must be the painter's own, that particular painter's, and no other; and no one, who has not his ideas, can do his work. His work is, therefore, nobler, and of a higher species.

H. Pray, give me an instance of a manufacture ?

F. The making of watches is a manufacture. The silver, iron, gold, or whatever else is used in it, are productions, the materials of the work ; but it is by the wonderful art of man, that they are wrought into the numberless wheels and springs, of which this complicated machine is composed.

H. Then is there not as much art in making a watch as a picture? Does not the head work?

F. Certainly, in the original invention of watches, as much or more than in painting. But, when once invented, the art of watch-making is capable of being reduced to mere mechanical labor, which may be exercised by any man of common capacity, according to certain precise rules, when made familiar to him, by practice. This, painting is not.

H.. But, my dear father, making of books surely requires a great deal of thinking and study; and yet, I remember, the other day, at dinner, a gentleman said, that Mr. Pica had manufactured a large volume, in less than a fortnight.

F. It was meant to convey a satirical remark on his book, because it was compiled from other authors, from whom he had taken a page in one place, and a page in another; so that it was not produced by the labor of his brain, but of his hands. Thus, you heard your mother complain, that the London cream was manufactured; which was a pointed and concise way of saying, that the cream was not what it ought to be, nor what it was pretended that it was; for cream, when genuine, is a pure production; but, when mixed up and adulterated with flour and isinglass, and I know not what, it becomes a manufacture. It was as much as to say, art has been here, where it has no business; where it is not beneficial, but hurtful. Much of the delicacy of language depends upon an accurate knowledge of the specific meaning of single terms, and a nice attention to their relative propriety.

H. Have all nations manufactures ?

F. All that are in any degree cultivated; but it very often happens, that countries, naturally the poorest, have manufactures of the greatest extent and variety.

H. Why so?

F. For the same reason, I apprehend, that individuals, who are rich without any labor of their own, are seldom so industrious and active, as those who depend upon their own exertions; thus, the Spaniards, who possess the richest gold and silver mines in the world, are in want of many conveniences of life, which are enjoyed