THEORY OF THE EYES. Dark-blue eyes are most common in persons of delicate, refined, or effeminate nature; lightblue, and, much more, grey eyes, in the hardy or active. Greenish eyes have generally the same meaning as the grey. Hazel eyes are more usual indications of a mind masculine, vigorous, and profound. CHILDREN. Plenty of warmth, plenty of substantial food and ripe fruits, plenty of sleep, and plenty of joyous out-door exercise, would save millions of children annually. RESOLUTION. There are multitudes of people who destroy themselves through irresolution. They are eternally telling about what they mean to do but they never do it. THE FASHION THAT NEVER CHANGES. There is one fashion that never changes. The sparkling eye, the coral lip, the rose-leaf blushing on the cheek, the rounded form, the elastic step, are always in fashion. Health, rosy, bounding, gladsome health, is never out of fashion; what pilgrimages are made, what prayers are uttered, for its possession! Failing in the pursuit, what treasures are lavished in concealing its loss or counterfeiting its charms. HEALTH IN YOUTH. Late hours, irregular habits, and want of attention to diet, are common errors with most young men, and those gradually, and at first imperceptibly, undermine the health, and lay the foundation for various forms of disease in after life. It is a very difficult thing to make young people believe this. Indeed, nearly all the shattered constitutions with which too many are cursed, are the result of a disregard to the plainest precepts of health in early life. OLD SONGS. We often hear that such and such things are not 'worth an old song.' Alas! how very few things are. What pleasurable recollections do some of them awaken! What pleasurable tears do they excite! They purify the stream of life; they can delay it on its shelves and rapids; they can turn it back again to the soft, mossy banks, amidst which its sources issue, or like, indeed, the potent staff of one of old, they can bid the waters of a clear and joyous spring gush from the rocks in a wilderness, where only corroding cares might be supposed to dwell. HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT. The economy of a household is a distinct duty from that of making provision for the support of it. It is the province of the wife to manage the domestic concerns, just as it is the part of the husband to earn wages for the maintenance of his family. In fact, whilst he is or ought to be Prime Minister, she is Chancellor of the Exchequer, and hence it depends on his wife not only to make him and his children comfortable; but to place them beyond the reach of embarrassment and distress. Lorenzo Dow once said of a grasping avaricious farmer, that if he had the whole world enclosed in a single field, he would not be content without a patch on the outside to raise potatoes. MRS PARTINGTON ON WEDDINGS. 'I like to 'tend weddings,' said Mrs Partington, as she came back from one in church, and hung her shawl up, and replaced the bonnet in the longpreserved bandbox; 'I like to see young people come together with the promise to love, cherish, and nourish each other. But it is a solemn thing is matrimony-a very solemn thing where the minister comes into the chancery with his surplus on, and goes through the ceremony of making them man and wife. It ought to be husband and wife, for it isn't every husband that turns out to be a man. I declare I shall never forget when Paul put the nuptial ring on my finger, and said, "With my goods I thee endow." He used to keep a dry goods store then, and I thought he was going to give me the whole there was in it. I was young and simple, and didn't know till afterwards that it meant only one calico dress a-year !' DIDN'T EXPECT IT. A couple of pedestrian 'gents from town,' passing through a toll-bar, attempted a joke at the expense of a woman who stood in the door, by asking what the charge was for passing through the bar. 'If you are gentlemen, nothing; if you are donkeys, a penny each,' replied the damsel, much to their discomfiture. SQUIES BY DOUGLAS JERROLD. "That tune,' said somebody in the company once, 'always carries me away with it.'-' Will nobody whistle it?' said Douglas, instantlyThe late Mrs Glover, at another time, was complaining that her hair turned grey, and attributed it to her using 'essence of lavender.''Nay, my dear lady-essence of thyme (time),' was his remark.-' Call that a kind man,' said an actor, speaking of an absent acquaintance'a man who is away from his family, and never sends them a farthing. Call that kindness.''Unremitting kindness,' Jerrold chuckled. PROGRESS OF MATERNAL LOVE. It is said that the kind mothers down east are grown so affectionate that they give their children chloroform previous to whipping them. A certain young clergyman, modest almost to bashfulness, was once asked by a country apothecary, of a contrary character, in a public assembly, and in a tone sufficient to catch the attention of the whole company, 'How it happened that the patriarchs lived to such an old age?' To which he immediately replied, 'Perhaps they took no physic.' Faith, and I want to look at a will,' said a son of Erin, presenting himself one day at Doctors' Commons. 'What is the name of the deceased?' inquired the official in attendance.'Shure, yer honour, and it's O'Donoghue,' replied Pat; 'I have jist left him in a coffee-house, where he tould me he had done something handsome for me in his will, so I thought I'd jist slip round and inquire.' A reverend sportsman in Wiltshire, seeing a Quaker on the road as he was returning home at night, laid a wager that he would get a direct answer from him. 'Well, friend,' said he, as they met, 'did you see the fox ?'-'If I had seen it,' was the reply, 'I would have told it to go where thou wouldst never find it.'-'Why, where's that?'-'Into thy study.' THE VISION ON THE MIRROR; OR, WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. The old year was breathing his last on his bed of drifted snows, while the attendant winds, who had been moaning sorrowfully behind the grey cloud-curtains all the short wintry day, howled a requiem around. Outside the door stood the lusty heir, the blithe new year, full of hope and promise, awaiting the solemn hour which should summon him to clothe his broad shoulders with the kingly mantle of responsibility, that his dying predecessor was about to lay down. Already, in steeple and tower, the mellowthroated bells trembled and swung in anticipation of the ringers' measured touch; and close beside the bright fireblaze, on a respectable merchant's hearth, sat three loving young sisters, carrying on in subdued tones that kind of unrestrained and dreamy converse which is indulged in by youthful spirits at such an hour and season. Undistinguished in other respects from thousands of their sex and years, the souls of the three maidens were richly gifted with the rarest faculties for music. Clara, the eldest, a small swift sprite, with sparkling hazel eyes and nut-brown hair, could warble from out her slender throat the shrilly-sweet song of the lark, when he soars highest in the golden beams. Alice, the next in age, a grave dark beauty, with deep calm eyes, regular features, and a robustly feminine form, possessed a mellow contralto voice of wonderful depth and volume. While Ethel, the youngest of the three, whose rich brown eyes lighted up a mobile countenance, expressive of both genius and sensibility, emulated that sweetest of varied songsters, the nightingale, when in the sunset groves she tunes her melody to plaintive wood-notes wild. They had been eagerly conversing, these three sweet sisters, of the high career they might have achieved, had the young ambition of their hearts been granted; had their grave, sober, Puritan parents consented to their being trained and brought out as public singers. This had also constituted the dearest wish of Ethel's godfather and their uncle, a musical professor, some years deceased; and with his ardent support and anxious recommendations, consent might have been won from the prudent and reluctant parents. But with his premature death all hope had vanished; and Clara, Alice, and Ethel Mortimer were compelled to content themselves with bestowing their rare talents upon the unappreciating and very respectable ears of a dull and very respectable circle in a small manufacturing town. Their father was an unimaginative and somewhat parsimonious man, who voted the little personal wants of women and young girls frivolities. His wealth being embarked in numerous speculations, he had comparatively scanty funds to spare for the house and for the pockets of his daughters. Appearances he despised; and very hard work had the three young girls to fashion their apparel so as not to appear quite behind others of their own age and standing. Trifling grievance as this may appear to the sage and philosopher, it is a bitter and most annoying trial to a handsome young creature on her first entrance into life-that sort of life which moves in a limited and monotonous round, and mainly consists in an incessant compliance with neighbourly demands, in the shape of dinners, teas, picnics, and dances. Perhaps it was this little uncomprehended but worrying grievance that had chiefly given the tone to the unrestrained conversation of the three Misses Mortimer on this last night of the old year, as they sat girl-like around the fire, with their feet upon the fender, enjoying the unaccustomed luxury of being alone together, and without supervision. 'Well!' said Clara, at length, jumping up from her chair, and pushing it decidedly into a corner, 'I think we have grumbled quite enough for to-night. I do not know how you feel, sisters mine, but I am so fatigued that I am sure I cannot sit up either to see papa and mamma or the new year in. So good-night to you, my dears. I suppose I shall be far and fast in my beauty-slumber before either of you follows my example.' Alice and Ethel kissed her affectionately, and then sat down again as before. But their dreams were dissipated, their castles in the air tattered and vanished away into thin mist, leaving an irrepressible feeling of despondency behind; and finding it impossible to reconstruct the fairy edifices after their previous grand proportions, the sisters each took up a favourite volume. And the old year settled downward in his bed of snows, the death-rattle already sounding in his aged throat, for his hours were very nearly numbered. Shortly afterwards, Ethel, startled by the clear ring of the French clock on the mantelpiece, looked up and found that it wanted only three-quarters of midnight; and that her sister Alice, ensconced in the morocco depths of an easy-chair, had dropped her book out of her nerveless hand, and was sleeping soundly. Then the young girl, with a slight wondering when her parents would return, remained quietly looking into the fire, and enjoying the silence. And, by and by, as she still gazed thoughtfully before her, her glance wandered to the large mirror above the mantelpiece. She could not see herself therein, nor the sleeping dear one by her side-she sat too low for that; but she could perceive the dimmed jets of light in the gaselier, the ancient carved cornice, and the vague shadows upon the opposite wall. The fire flickered and leaped up, and the shadows became more distinct and monstrous; then faded away, while a light mist appeared to pass over the mirror itself. This gradually cleared off, and then 'A vision! certainly,' murmured Ethel to herself. But how came it there, in that commonplace sheet of silvered glass, wherein she had gazed upon her own face a thousand and a thousand times? She had not time to question further, nor even to ascertain by a gentle compression of her rounded arm whether she were indeed awake or asleep, for the vision proceeded to unfold itself before her. As the mist or vapour cleared away, there became visible within the depths of the mirror a numerous assemblage, semicircularly arranged opposite the spacious orchestra of a large concert-room. Brilliant cut-glass chandeliers depended from the ornamented dome, their lustre flashing back from the diamonds of the high-born dames beneath, gleaming in the star that reposed on many a noble breast, and reflected in a thousand hues from the jewels adorning the stately persons of shawled and turbaned orientals. But now an electric thrill ran through this brilliant audience; ladies, nobles, and eastern potentates, arose en masse, and joined in overpowering welcome to three young maidens, who appeared on the orchestra simply attired in white, and curtseyed gracefully to the high-born assemblage. The sisters took their places side by side, and, without roll of music or any accompaniment, they sang. The rich harmony of their united voices flowed in upon the rapt senses of the audience like a silver stream, now stealing gently along through sedgy meadows, now rushing onward over the broad plain, with the swell, and foam, and murmur of a mighty river. Again the fashionable throng arose, and testified their enthusiastic admiration-the ladies by the sweep of their perfumed gossamer handkerchiefs; the men by reiterated 'bravos!' While these passionate plaudits yet rang and quivered through the mirror, Ethel rose from her chair, and bending forward, looked more closely upon the blushing faces of the maidens. She knew them well; she could not be mistaken-they were the shadowy representatives of herself, Clara, and the sleeping Alice. An interval elapsed, whether long or short, Ethel Mortimer knew not, for her brain reeled before this mimic realisation of her unaccomplished dreams; she fell back in her chair, and for a space all was oblivion. When she recovered, and again raised her eyes to the magic mirror, the scene had changed. It represented a handsome apartment, luxuriously furnished, and opening into a conservatory filled with the loveliest flowers. On a low couch of ivory, exquisitely carved, and covered with rich blue satin, reclined the mimic Clara. A transparent cloud of lace and muslin fell around her fairy form, and her shining nut-brown tresses were knotted up, after a fantastic fashion of her own, with ribands of the same hue as the cushions upon which the pretty head reclined. Her youngest sister sat on a low stool at her feet, and a shadowy Alice lounged gracefully in the downy depths of an easy-chair, placed on the opposite side of the fire. Time had written no record on the features of the sister-band of songstresses, but heavier fingers than those of time had been there. The world's favour and dissipation had done their cruel work, rudely effacing the bloom of the parental home. The warm tears rushed to the eyes of the real Ethel, and fell slowly down her cheeks, as she marked the meretricious charm, the false gaiety, the real ennui, so rapidly substituted for maiden innocence and cheerfulness of heart. A page brought in a letter on a silver salver. It was from their home-the superscription on the envelope in the well-known large round text of the Puritan father. The shadowy Clara took it languidly, and gazed at the direction for a moment, then threw the letter carelessly, the same side up, into the lap of her younger sister. 'Read it, Ethel,' she seemed to say, her words quivering slightly through the mirror's surface. 'I really cannot be bored; our good father becomes so importunate with his prosy lectures.' 'Lord Algernon and his friend Bertram Gray said they would call this morning,' yawned Alice from the easy-chair. ་ Ah! so they did-and here they are,' replied the younger sister. 'This dreary epistle must wait.' And she rose to receive two young men, who entered unannounced, with the easy air of permitted visiters. They introduced a third, who followed at a little distance, and was remarkable for nothing save a pervading appearance of the man about town.' All three were welcomed by the young ladies with careless gaiety; and the despised home-letter, wholly disregarded, fell to the ground, where it lay snugly hidden beneath the silken fringe of the ivory couch. The real Ethel watched with surprise and sorrow, not unmingled with indignation, the interview that followed. Familiar as are the details of a scene of fashionable flirtation, to the simply-reared home-maiden they were repulsive in the extreme. be our task deliberately to trace the downward steps from innocence to dubious fame, to shameful notoriety and to a wanton's grave! As the last scene of all passed before the horrorstricken maiden's frenzied gaze, and nature itself was succumbing beneath the frightful reality of the apparition, a solemn hush of music descended over the magic glass. The horrid panorama disappeared, and in its stead there hovered on poised wing the breathing, beauteous figure of an angel! Bending forward from out the mirror's tranquil | surface, he spoke these words to his entranced listener: 'Repine not, daughter of man, at thy obscure lot and thy buried talents. God gives ye not all to expend upon that transitory scene called earth. Adore Him, that he has preserved thee and thy frail sisters from temptations, which have proved perdition to many firmer spirits; and gratefully look forward and upward to the eternity and the heaven which shall require from ye the free and joyful exercise of the rare gifts unused upon the earth.' 'Ethel! sweet Ethel!' It was the gentle voice of Alice, who, passing one arm around her sister's neck, awakened her by most loving caresses. Ethel started from her chair and extended her arms towards the ceiling. 'Is he gone? Did you see him, Alice?' Whom? Ethel, my sister, I saw no one. I only know that I awoke from a long slumber, found the fire waning low, and you, my darling, sleeping somewhat restlessly in your chair. Then, when I stood by you to rouse you, Ó Ethel, you were smiling so sweetly, yet with a look of awe, as if you beheld a vision!' When the young men were gone, the mimic sisters left the apartment to dress for their drive in the park. Ethel gathered this from their faintly-heard conversation, shadowy as themselves. While her gaze yet lingered on the home-letter, still lying just beneath the couch, a footman entered to rearrange the room. He piled a fresh supply of coals on the fire, replaced a chair or two, and then stooped to pick up the letter. He turned it over -it bore a black seal-Ethel's heart beat with apprehension. The audacious man- Ethel smiled again, and glanced toservant seated himself on the ivory couch, wards the mirror. But its smooth surface opened the letter, and read it aloud. It only reflected the ordinary objects in the announced, in a few grave words of stern room, her own face, and that of Alice agony, the sudden decease of the worthy, standing beside her. loving Puritan mother. There was no longer a gazer on the shadowy scene: the real Ethel was once more-but from a different cause this time-lying back fainting in her chair. Again she roused herself, again she gazed upon the prophetical mirror. But it is far from our purpose to relate what she beheld, as each successive phase of what might have been her own fate and that of her sisters unfolded itself to her agonised apprehension. Sad indeed would 'Alice,' she said, taking her sister's hands within her own, and looking earnestly into her calm eyes, 'we were all wrong in our murmuring and discontent this evening. God gave us our beautiful voices, not that we might display them upon earth before wondering equals, not that we might nurture our vanity upon the loud "bravos" of applauding roués, but that we should hereafter swell the choir of the angels!' The French clock struck the hour of midnight. Their parents and the new year entered together, along with the joyous pealing of bells. Hither and thither, near and far, streamed the tuneful clangour-with no mingling of regret for a forsaken couch of snows, whence the dead face of an old year looked calmly up to the midnight skies. DIVING FOR PEARLS. Pearls are found in great abundance on the coast of Ceylon; and the fishing of that delicate and valued bauble, which is a great source of revenue to the island, is both dangerous and curious. The manner of diving is thus accomplished: About half-past six or seven o'clock, when the rays of the sun begin to emit some degree of warmth, the diving cominences. A kind of open scaffolding, formed of oars and other pieces of wood, is projected from each side of the boat, and from it the diving-tackle is suspended -three stones on one side, and two on the other. The diving-stone hangs from an oar by a light country rope and slip knot, and descends about five feet into the water. It is a stone of fifty-six pounds weight, of the shape of a sugar-loaf. The rope passes through a hole in the top of the stone, above which a strong loop is formed resembling a stirrup-iron, to receive the foot of the diver. The diver wears no clothes, except a slip of calico about his loins; swimming in the water, he takes hold of the rope, and puts one foot into the loop or stirrup on the top of the stone. He remains in this perpendicular position for a little time, supporting himself by the motion of one arm. Then a basket, formed of a wooden hoop and network, suspended by a rope, is thrown into the water to him, and into it he places his other foot. Both the ropes of the stone and basket he holds for a little while in one hand. When he feels himself properly prepared and ready to go down, he grasps his nostrils with one hand, to prevent the water from rushing in; with the other, gives a sudden pull to the running knot suspending the stone, and instantly descends; the remainder of the rope fixed to the basket is thrown into the water after him at the same moment; the rope attached to the stone is in such a position as to follow him of itself. As soon as he touches the bottom, he disengages his foot from the stone, which is immediately drawn up, and suspended again to the projecting oar in the same manner as before, to be in readiness for the next diver. The diver in the bottom of the sea throws himself as much as possible upon his face, and collects everything he can get hold of into the basket. When he is ready to ascend, he gives a jerk to the rope, and the person who holds the other end of it, hauls it up as speedily as possible. The diver, at the same time, free of every encumbrance, warps up by the rope, and always gets above water a considerable time before the basket. He presently comes up at a distance from the boat, and swims about, or takes hold of an oar or rope, until his turn comes to descend again; but he seldom comes into the boat until the labour of the day is over. The basket is often extremely heavy, and requires more than one man to haul it up, containing, besides oysters, pieces of rock, trees of coral, and other marine productions. The manner of diving strikes a spectator as extremely simple and perfect. There is no reason to believe that any addition has been made to the system by Europeans; nor, indeed, does there seem the smallest room for improvement. The superstition of the divers renders the shark-charmers a necessary part of the establishment of the pearl-fishery. All these impostors belong to one family; and no person who does not form a branch of it can aspire to that office. The natives have firm confidence in their power over the monsters of the sea; nor would they descend to the bottom of the deep without knowing that one of those enchanters were present in the fleet. Two of them are constantly employed. One goes out regularly in the head pilot's boat, the other performs certain ceremonies on shore. He is stripped naked, and shut up in a room, where no person sees him from the period of the sailing of the boats until their return. He has before him a brass basin full of water, containing one male and one female fish made of silver. If any accident should happen from a shark at sea, it is believed that one of these fishes is seen to bite the other. The shark-charmer is called, in the Malabar language, cadalcutti, and in the Hindostanee, hybanda; each of which signifies a binder of sharks. The divers also believe, that, if the conjurer should be dissatisfied, he has the power of making the sharks attack them, on which account he is sure of receiving liberal presents from all quarters. Sharks are often seen from |