BRITISH MARBLES.-Why our native mar- | Trent was famous for it, and the taste for bles should so long have been neglected by "confectionery work" in monuments_kept architects is one of the mysteries of fashion. alive the demand for it all through the Stuart They were known - that of Ipplepen, in South period. But, in general, British marbles have Devon, indeed, was prized-more than two been chiefly worked into knickknacks for hundred and fifty years ago, but in most cases tourists, who, in Derbyshire, like to have a they were till the other day scarcely used at letter-weight of "duke's red," or an inkstand all for building-purposes. The shelly lime- inlaid with "all sorts," and who in Devonshire stone of Purbeck (far inferior as "marble" to must, of course, carry off a polished fragment many of the Devonshire kinds) is almost the of the breakwater. Till lately the ambition only exception. It was, we all know, much of our marble-workers hardly soared above valued by the medieval church-builders. The chimney-pieces. Here and there may be black marble of Bakewell has always found a found a memorial church into which nothing market. Alabaster, too, which occurs in the but English marble enters; but, on the other new red sandstone, had its day; Burton-on- | hand, you may readily find a reredos, just put

up in the midst of a marble-district, of which the boast will be that " every bit of it came from abroad." Those who have seen the pillars in the Home and Colonial Offices, will never again doubt that Devonshire marble is quite worthy to stand beside that of Sienna. Gilpin said so a century ago in his "Picturesque Tour;" he even preferred the Devonshire stone; he thought there was less harsh-in hallowed silence, that the thoughts and ness of tone in it than in the foreign, while yet the tints were fully as rich in the former as in the latter. Limestone of almost every colour, hard enough to take a good polish, is to be found round Plymouth. Besides the wellknown grey madrepores, there are in the quarries of Cattedown, Radford, Billacombe, Pomphlett, etc., rose-red, fine black veined with white, olive green, brilliant yellow, etc. Samples of many of these may be seen in the walls of the Plymouth houses, and in the paving-stones of the roads. Unpolished, they of course want a shower to bring out their various tints; but, as it generally rains at Plymouth, the visitor will seldom be disappointed.

has its meaning and intention, and we should deny ourselves no portion of either. We should study the harmony of the whole, and make it quite a common enjoyment. It is a lyric piece, whose music should flow unbroken to the end, and when the last word of the benediction has fallen with its sweet influence on our ears, let us rest for a moment

feelings awakened and kindled within us may sink deep into our hearts, and remain with us through the whole. We should neither be slow to come nor in haste to go.

Pall Mall Gazette.

--

PUNCTUALITY AT CHURCH. If the worshippers be not as punctual as the ministerif there be steps heard in the aisle from the earliest whisper of the organ to the announcement of the text, and the sound of opening doors keeps time with the footfall of every new addition to the audience - there is disturbance, says the New York Churchman, of the quiet not only of the minister, but of every devout breast that is turned toward him. All are conscious of the interruption; and one of the number, who has most need to be calm and collected, must eminently suffer. Every new comer must affect, to some extent, his concentration of mind. In his efforts for the right discharge of his sacred duties, every footstep cannot but disturb his attention. The effect will be different in proportion to temperament; one will be affected more than another; but to all it must be more or less a disturbance. It may be thought to be enough to be in time for the chief part of the service, and particularly for the sermon; but if, on the part of the pew, we make bold to claim for prayer and praise an importance not second to that of the discourse, the pulpit will not gainsay the assertion. It will concur in the argument that supplication and psalmody, chapter and chant, heighten the value and deepen the emphasis of the word of exhortation. They promote that receptive frame and attitude of mind which the preacher seeks to possess, in the pew. The service which he conducts does not consist of unconnected parts; it is a compacted unity. From the first syllable to the last what passes is complete. Every word of morning and evening service

PUNCTUALITY IN CHURCH. - On this subject the Monthly Harbinger offers the following pungent remarks:- Impressed with the fact that there is no book or treatise in the known world which sets forth the advantages of late attendance on worship in the house of God, or which at all adequately defends the practice, and feeling that it would be an ineffable solace to thousands of professing Christians if this habit could be shown to be right, the shade of Thomas Didymus (who, being late, was absent when our Lord appeared to the other disciples) offers a prize of ten thousand shekels to the writer of the best essay on the subject, provided that he shall prove to the satisfaction of the world, the flesh, and the devil, who volunteer to be the adjudicators, the following points: - "That the habit of late attendance is perfectly scriptural; that God has granted, in all ages, pecul iar blessings to those who keep him waiting for praise; that eminent saints have invariably chuckled over curtailed hours of worship. Especially should attention be called to the calm Sabbatic spirit which he must possess who hurries away from his own door, and, in a hurry, flings himself into the house of God; to the thankfulness which he must feel as he knows that he is disturbing the devotions of others, and depressing and weakening the energies of the minister whom He has chosen to be over him in the Lord; also the happy effects which his examples produce on the children whom God has given him, and on his worldly neighbours: also should it be shown that there is a most marked and delightful contrast in the punctual attendance which he demands from his own servants, and the listless, loitering, lazy manner in which he keeps his engagements with the great, God. Moreover, as some ladies have copied the example of the sterner sex, it will be well if convincing arguments can be invented to show that the time spent on a Sabbath morning in the arrangement of a lock of hair, the pose of a hat or bonnet, or the stretching of a new pair of gloves, is better employed than in arraying the soul for eternity."

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From Blackwood's Magazine.
ETON COLLEGE.

them, the general public gave the institution but small attention. We all rememTHE old institution of Eton, which has bered dimly how Cowper vituperated with gone on without much talk, though with a something of that shrill passion peculiar great deal of substantial prosperity and to the amiable mind when unduly excited, importance for centuries, has suddenly and how Charles Lamb maundered in his blossomed out into literature of various delightful way. But Christ's Hospital, kinds,— not, we presume, by previous un- though it came to such fame in the little derstanding, but by a sufficiently whim- brotherhood of whom Lamb was the sical coincidence. While Eton has been spokesman, did not look very delightful clamouring in the newspapers for and in his pages; and it has remained for the against a recent exercise of authority Arnoldian brotherhood to introduce a new which of itself was startling enough to deity into our mythology and a new ideal claim the notice of the day, Eton has been to our aspirations. The head-master is rolling out of the more permanent press the god, and the public-schoolboy is the in big books, biographies, sketches, his- ideal, of this new creed, and a quickened tories, as if all her chroniclers se sont don-interest in everything belonging to the nés le mot, to seize upon this occasion for sphere in which they flourish is the natbringing her more and more completely ural consequence; while all the recent before the world. We have etchings of overturning of the old constitutions, and Eton with appropriate letterpress, biogra- modelling to suit modern ideas of their phies of Etonians with appropriate por- systems of government, have at once intraits; and here, in the most dignified creased and given expression to the pubperformance of all, "A History of Eton lic interest. In the mean time the book College," carefully done, and ably illus- before us presents us with a full account trated, which must certainly afford the of Eton at all times and under all its reader, whether he is or is not specially changes. The smallness of the fountaininterested in Eton, as much information head and the bigness of the stream, as he can require on the subject. There the curious twist away from, yet never till are, however, a great many people who now in direct contradiction of, the original are interested in Eton; and it is, per se, a meaning of the foundation, which the enpicturesque institution, so full of attract- ergetic life of the place has taken, are set ive phases, and rich in its varied connec- before us as clearly as the natural effects tions with social life, that it affords room of a landscape. It is an instance of the for a great deal of commentary. Public development theory which might please schools altogether have, of recent days · Mr. Darwin himself, without displeasing must we say chiefly in consequence of the the most orthodox of Mr. Darwin's adversupreme difficulties which are apparently saries. Of the religious corporation and found in working them?-come into the educational institute which were great fashion and favour as subjects of founded together, the first was much the discussion. Perhaps the remarkable au- greatest at the beginning. The little tocracy of Dr. Arnold, by creating a cer- school humbly placed under its guardiantain small school of prophets whose lives ship has, however, been as the cuckoo's have been a perpetual chorus in his praise, egg in this mild ecclesiastical nest; it has was the real first cause of the current of outgrown its secondary position and thrust public attention which, since the time of out one by one the other claimants to the "Tom Brown," has made it profitable for superior place, and at last is left in immeliterature, light and otherwise, to make diate conflict or grim truce with the parent what it could of this subject. Before that sparrow herself in the person of those lintime, except for a vague pride in our pub-gering old fellows — the last of their race lic schools, or an equally vague horror of whom the young giant, flapping its wings, is now ready to swallow up altoA History of Eton College. By H. C. Maxwell Lyte, M.A. Illustrated by P. H. Delamotte. Mac-gether at a moment's notice- or without.

millan & Co.

The foundation of Eton College presents