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"What

"If the gods favour us, we may conquer Africa and Carthage." then, Sir?" saith Cineas. "Nay, then," saith Pyrrhus, we may take our rest, and sacrifice and feast every day, and make merry with our friends." "Alas! Sir," said Cineas, "may we not do so now, without all this ado?"-Bacon.

'A notorious rogue, being brought to the bar, and knowing his case to be desperate, instead of pleading, he took to himself the liberty of jesting, and thus said, "I charge you, in the king's name, to seize and take away that man (meaning the judge) in the red gown, for I go in danger because of him."-Bacon.

If anecdotes such as these may lawfully be included in a selection of Apophthegms, then I think the following beautiful story, which I find in a work of Lord Lindsay's, may not inappropriately close a paper, treating of the way in which the wisdom of the good and wise has been concentrated into, as it were, gleams and rays of light, glancing here and there to brighten up some half-forgotten truth, and arrest our attention to its beauty and its worth.

'There was a noble lady on whom allway the sun shone by day and the moon by night; and men marvel'd at it; and the bishop went to see her, hoping she was of great penance in clothing, or in meat, or in other things. And when he came, he found her allway merrie and glad. The bishop said, "Dame, what eat ye?" she answered, "Divers meats and delicate." Then he asked if she used the hair; she answered, "Nay;" and the bishop marvel'd that God would show so great a wonder for such a woman. And when he had taken his leave, and was gone his way, he thought he would ask her of one other thing; so he went to her again, and said, "Love ye not mekille Jesu Christ?" And she said, "Yea! I love Him, for He is all my Love; for when I think of Him, I may not withhold myself for the gladness and mirth I ever feel in Him."

AUNT CECILY'S MUSIC LESSONS.

PART I-MABEL'S MUSIC-BOOK.

LESSON V.

BEGAN with practising the five-finger exercises; first, the lifting of each finger and striking the same key several times, while the other fingers were held down; after that, the playing five notes of the scale up and down with each hand separately, and then together, beginning with middle C, afterwards changing to G for the Tonic.

When this had been done for some minutes, Miss Wells stopped, and made her pupil repeat the names of the notes she had been playing, then the lines and spaces of the Treble stave. That done, she told the child

to put her hands over the five notes she had played, beginning on middle C with the left hand, and on C 3rd space with the right. 'Do not strike them,' she said; 'merely place your fingers ready to strike. Now strike the key I mention, and when I say REST! lift up your hand, and keep it up till I name the next note, which you must try to strike directly I name it.' Then Miss Wells named the following notes, slowly and distinctly, in perfect time, like the click of a metronome, and giving the emphasis necessary to mark the accent. ĈE&ECE & E &, rest, rest, rest, &, rest, rest, rest, C D E F G FEDC, rest, Ĉ, rest, C, rest, rest, rest.

A

Now let us sing this exercise. Do Mi Sol Mi Do Mi Sol Mi Do, rest rest rest Do Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Do

After this had been played and sung several times, Miss Wells said, 'We will go to my room to finish the lesson.' Arrived there, she placed the little girl at her writing-table, where a sheet of music-paper, and HB pencil cut to a fine point, lay in readiness.

Miss Wells. Now write down the exercise we have just been playing, Mabel. I will sing it to you first. Listen well.

This was what Miss Wells sang

Mabel began to write, saying, 'There is middle C, now Mi 1st line, Sol 2nd line, Mi again. Must I write it twice over?'

Miss W. Yes; we sung it twice, you know. Listen again. (She sings 'Do Mi Sol Mi Do Mi Sol Mi Do, rest, rest, rest'-)

Mabel (interrupting eagerly.) O Aunt Cecily, am I to write 'rest' three times? It will take up such a lot of space.

Miss W. Give me the pencil. (She makes a crotchet rest, saying, "That will stand for the word rest.")

Mabel's exercise was written in this way, as she had not seen any notes besides semibreves, and had heard nothing of Bars or Time :

&c.

'You have done very well, Mabel,' said her aunt, smiling over the semibreves and crotchet rests; 'but I see I must tell you at once what Time in music is.'

Mabel. Time!

Oh, I often hear Miss Ruler say to Lucy, 'You are
Count your time.' And she often says, 'You

playing out of time.

haven't the slightest ear for time, I do believe.' Poor Lucy! she nearly cries when that comes. Auntie, I hope I've got an ear for time! Miss W. (laughing.) We'll contrive to give you one before long, if you haven't got it already. Open the door, Mabel, and then we shall hear the old clock on the staircase ticking. Now listen. What does it say? Mabel says, 'Tick, tick, tick, tick,' keeping time with the pendulum. Miss W. Now, Mabel, look at me.-(She waves her hand backwards and forwards, like a pendulum, saying, 'One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four,' in time with the ticking of the clock.)-Do as I do, Mabel. (And both hands were waved in time to the words, 'One, two, three, four,' many times.)

While Mabel amuses herself with mimicking the old clock, her aunt takes a reel of cotton from her work-basket, and ties a bit of narrow tape to it. Mabel stops to see what is coming. Miss Wells holds the end of the tape (which is about half a yard long) between her finger and thumb, and jerks it backwards and forwards in imitation of the pendulum of the clock, counting, 'One, two, three, four.'

Mabel is in ecstacies. Oh, do let me try!' she cries. She soon has the bit of tape in her little hand, but cannot jerk it with the same precision that her aunt did. But with a little practice she manages it

pretty well.

and she waves

Miss Wells then takes it, telling her to shut the door; the cotton pendulum, telling Mabel to count by her eye. 'Now, Mabel, I am going to wave it very slowly. Look at it, and count steadily with me.'-(They count in very slow time. Then Miss Wells quickens it a little, and they change to moderate time. Then she jerks it quickly, and they say, 'One, two, three, four,' rapidly.)

The pendulum is laid aside, and Miss Wells teaches the child to beat time with her hand. One stroke down, the second to the left, third to the right, and fourth upwards. The child imitates her, but forgets to go to the left before the right, now and then. Miss Wells takes her hand and guides it a few times. Then she lets her try alone again.

Miss W. Now, Mabel, stop beating. You feel what 'time' is now. I must make you understand its use in music. When we sing a tune, we stay longer on some sounds than on others, do we not?

Mabel. I don't know; I never noticed.

Miss W. Then take notice now.-(She sings the air of 'In my cottage,' exaggerating the accent a little. She vocalizes it-using no words.)-— Now, Mabel, don't I stop on some notes longer than on others?

Mabel. Yes, I think so. You go quicker-you jump some of the

sounds.

Miss W. Listen to this air.-(She sings 'Rule Britannia.')

Mabel. Oh, you go very quick in one place; I hear that plain enough. Miss W. Then I spend more 'time' on some sounds than on others.

So we must have long notes and short notes. Look here.-(She makes a semibreve.) This is the longest note we use in music, now-a-days. We call it a semibreve. Repeat the word. (She makes a bar after the semibreve.) This stroke is called a Bar.-(She makes another.)—This space between these two lines is also called a Bar. Now, when I put a semibreve, I cannot put any other note, because the semibreve takes up the whole bar. In this way. (She points to the semibreve, and sings Do, sustaining the sound while she taps on the note with the point of her finger four times.)

She makes Mabel write Do four times, with a bar between each. Then she makes her tap each note four times. Ther she makes her tap them again, counting, 'One, two, three, four,' while she herself sings the note, sustaining it during the four beats. Lastly, she tells Mabel to make four more bars, and taking the pencil from the child, puts two minims in each.

'These notes,' she says, 'are called "minims." They are worth half the semibreve, just as sixpence is worth half a shilling.'

'Worth?' said Mabel doubtfully.

Miss W. Yes; worth in this case means that this note (pointing to the minim) is to have only half the time that we give to this one (pointing to the semibreve.) That is the proper time that belongs to it. The semibreve rast trave four beats. Then how much-must the minim have?

Miss W. Right. The Beats are the taps or strokes that mark the time. The clock marked the beats, you know, and so did my reel of cotton; and our hands 'beat time,' as it is called, when we waved them just now and counted four. Take this pencil, and keep the point of it steady on the semibreves, while I sing and beat four. When I come to the minims, you must move your pencil on after I have beat two. Now begin.

Mabel puts her pencil on the first Do, but jerks it up when her aunt begins to beat.

'I will guide your hand once,' Miss Wells says, taking the little hand gently.

She keeps it steady on the semibreve, singing during the four beats, and moves it on to the next semibreve precisely at the moment she begins the second bar, and so on, moving it at the third beat when she comes to the minims.

Just then the dinner-bell rung, and Miss Wells said, 'We have done quite enough. I must run away.' And Lesson the Fifth came to an end suddenly.

(To be continued.)

CONVALESCENT INSTITUTIONS.

SOME months ago we ventured in the pages of the Monthly Packet to bring forward the subject of Convalescent Homes for the Sick Poor, and for those just recovering from sickness.

These Convalescent Homes may be divided into two classes: first, those which are for the really convalescent; patients who having recovered from illness need only rest and change of air to enable them to regain their usual strength, and who are quite able to take care of themselves in the Convalescent Home; and secondly, for those who sufficiently recovered from illness to be discharged from the wards of a Hospital, are yet in need of careful nursing and medical attendance, and to whom to be without such care would probably be to fall back again into the stage of illness from which they were beginning to recover.

It was to advocate these latter, which we believe to be of the greatest possible service, that those pages were written; more especially to bring forward the working of the St. Andrew's Convalescent Hospital at Clewer near Windsor, which from its short distance from London is likely to be a great blessing to the poor discharged from the London Hospitals, while with its staff of Sisters to nurse and watch over the patients, it provides for them all the tender care which the most weak and suffering of convalescents could wish to enjoy.

The St. Andrew's Home, commenced on a small scale so successfully as to warrant its promoters in erecting a building especially adapted for its patients, may, it is hoped, be opened on St. Andrew's Day next; but funds are much needed to meet the cost involved in the undertaking, and an earnest appeal is now made to the public to assist this good work by contributions of any amount, in order that the Home may be opened unencumbered with debt.

We might have divided Convalescent Hospitals once again into two classes: those which require payments from or on behalf of the patients, and those which admit them free of all charge. We believe these latter to be very few indeed. Generally speaking, all these Homes require a certain weekly payment from each patient; and if the patient himself is too poor to pay the required amount, it is either contributed or collected and paid on his behalf by the clergyman or district visitor, or friends by whom he was recommended to the Institution.

Having briefly mentioned the Convalescent Institution at Walton-onThames, the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary at Margate, for a particular class of patients, with one or two others, we have since been reminded by more than one correspondent that there are others equally worthy of notice, and quite as much in need of support. Of neither of these facts have we any doubt. As, however, we were writing to advocate those Institutions which are intended especially to benefit the poor of London,