pulling a string fastened to its tail, but others declare that a grain of corn was put above the wheel, and the little animal kept making vain attempts to reach it, and thus accomplished the boy’s purpose. It was Isaac Newton who brought the fashion into his school of flying paper kites; he also made paper lanterns to light him to school on winter mornings, and attached these to his kite-tails at night to make the country-folk believe they were comets. The boy was very fond of drawing, and he ornamented his room with these performances; he was also clever at writing verses, When Newton was fifteen years old his mother thought he had received sufficient school education, and she had him at home to manage the farm at Woolsthorpe, and he had to go to market on Satur- days to sell grain and other things. As soon as ‘Isaac had transacted this business he used, we are told, to go off to his former lodging in Grantham town, to pore over the books which Mr. Stokes possessed. But the lad made a bad farmer; he would let the sheep stray and the cattle devour the corn while he was taken up with plans for con- structing a water-wheel or some other model, and at last his mother resolved to leave him to his studies; and accordingly he was sent back to Grantham, to prepare for Cambridge. ' It was in June, 1660, in his eighteenth year, that Newton was received into Trinity College ; five years after he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts, and in 1668 he was Master of Arts, and appointed in the same year to the Senior Fellowship, and then he began to enter upon his career of discovery which has made his name so famous—the invention of the telescope, his optical researches, and the first knowledge of gravitation of which we have heard so much. Since those days many men have made new and wonderful researches in scientific things, butnone have dimmed the lustre which beams around the name of Newton; and yet his modesty and humility have hardly ever beensurpassed. ‘Ido not know what I may appear to the world,’ he said, a little while before his death ; y ‘in myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.’ When Sir Isaac was a great man living in London, in a style necessary to his position, he was always simple in his own personal tastes and habits, and his generosity to others was boundless, He died on the 20th of March, 1727, in the eighty- fifth year of his age, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a handsome monument was raised to his memory. THE FIR-TREE. A FABLE AGAINST DISCONTENT. From the German. ITHIN a green and shady wood A young and slender fir-tree stood ; He wore no leaves like other trees, To wave in every passing breeze: ¥or narrow needles, rough and keen, Are all the leaves on fir-boughs seen. Full often said he to his brothers, ‘I wish that I had leaves like others !’ *Twas night, and all the forest slept, But in his dreams the fir-tree wept; He said—‘ My neighbours look so fine, I wish that golden leaves were mine !’ But in the night there passed a change, At morn the tree felt somewhat strange : He woke—O joy! O bliss untold! He found his leaves were made of gold! Throughout that morn, and all the day, The fir-tree felt both proud and gay. At eve a beggar passed, whose back Was furnished with an empty sack For scraps of meat, and such small doles As beggars win from kindly souls. He saw the tree, and stripped it bare, Nor left one leaf remaining there. The shivering fir-tree cried, ‘Ah! me, What shall I do, poor leafless tree ? In woods like these where bad folks pass *Twere best to wear, not gold, but, glass, That tempts no thieves, but looks as fine As diamonds, when the sun doth shine.’ He slept, and (judge of his delight !) Woke dressed in glass as diamonds bright. But stormy clouds o’ercast the sky, The wind blew chill, the wind blew high ; The fir-tree’s leaves of shining glass Fell shattered on the dust and grass. “Alas, my glittering dress!’ he cries, ‘ All spoiled upon the ground it lies: Those leaves:are best which every tree Within the forest wears but me.’ He slept again, and when he woke, Had leaves like those on elm or oak: No tree in all that wood was seen With leaves more broad, more smooth, more green. The little fir-tree quite laughed out, And gave a merry, joyful shout; He said—‘ They cannot mock me now— I’m just like them, they must allow.’ But with her kids in merry play A mother-goat came past that way, In search for leaves and herbage sweet To give her little ones'a treat. Our friend, the tree, she soon perceives, With all his wealth of fresh green leaves ; Both goat and kidlings munched away, Nor left one stalk at close of day. Then spake the tree in his despair, ‘For gay attire no more I care ; Though gold and glass may please the sight, Though green leaves in the sun look bright, Give me again my needles keen ! Better than any leaves of green, Better than glass or gold are they. Give me but these, is all I pray!’