their proffers, choosing to retire once more to his farm and his cottare content with temperance and fame.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

XII.-YOUNG MEN OF EVERY CREED.

YOUNG men of every creed!

Up and be doing now;

The time is come to "run and read,"

With thoughtful eye and brow.

Extend your grasp to catch

Things unattained before;

Touch the quick springs of Reason's latch,

And enter at her door.

The seeds of mind are sown

In every human breast;

But dormant lie, unless we own

The spirit's high °behest!

Look outwardly, and learn;

Look inwardly, and think;

And Truth and Love shall brighter burn

O'er Error's wasting brink.

Give energy to thought,

By musing as ye move;
Nor dream unworthy aught,

Or trifling for your love.

Plunge in the crowded mart,

There read the thoughts of men;
And human nature's wondrous chart
Shall open to your ken.

Shun drunkenness-'tis sin!

The deadliest, fatal ban
Which ever veiled the light within,
And palled the soul of man!

In Freedom walk sublime,

As God designed ye should;
Pillared props of growing time,
Supporting solid good.

Tread the far forest; climb
The sloping hill-way side,
And feel your spirits ring their chime
Of gladness far and wide.

Where'er your footsteps tend,
Where'er your feelings flow,
Be man and brother to the end,-
Compassionate the low!

Curb Anger, Pride, and Hate;
Let Love the watchword be;
Then will your hearts be truly great,
God-purified and free!

WILLIAM HOWITT.

XIII.-LIFE.

LIFE is a great fact. We live. Here is a momentous verity. Most mysterious, and yet most real, is this solemn now. We live, and some few years since, we were not. Out of the dread, dark, speechless abyss' of possibilities, we have come to be among things which are to move, to breathe. Before us lies the immense unknown, and deep silence is its covering.

What a sacred thing, in its completeness, is an hour of human life, containing, as it seems, the elements of all other life! Mere sensation is grateful, and to feel being, even in that, is a privilege. To breathe the air, to look upon the light, to hear the voice of nature in her countless tones, to rest upon her fragrant lap, and to be conseious of a beating pulse, this, low as it seems, is not unworthy of desire. But when existence is glorified with the perception of beauty, with the sentiment of grandeur, with the radiance of fancy, with the graces of culture; when it is cheered by the warmth of friendship, by the sweetness of affection, by the associations of memory, by all that stirs within a kindred and a loving humanity; when it is sanctified, moreover, by the sacred convictions of religion, it is of worth unutterable.

If it is precious to know existence, even in our instincts, how excellent to know it in our most godlike capacities! We live, and if our nature be to any extent active, vital, how vast is the range of our life! Our existence, to us, involves the existence of creation. The present hour is not to me the hour of an isolated being. It is the hour of the earth which bears me on its surface. It is the hour

of the heavens which stand over me with their unpillared canopy, which enfold me in an ocean of infinite glory and infinite light. It is the hour of all my sentient fellow-creatures, in every region and every element, which move with myself in the world of pleasure and of pain. It is the hour of my friends, to whom my first sympathies are given, and from whom sympathies come to me in turn. It is the hour of my whole human brotherhood-with every movement of my heart the vibrations of a thousand millions keep time, and all the mysteries of life are within them, with all the varieties of sorrow and satisfaction. What a worth is therefore in this hour, if, indeed, it is an hour of life, not one of apathy, nor yet one of confusion! What worth, I repeat, in a single hour of true life! The worth of all that we perceive, of all that we feel, of the gracious earth, of the blessed heavens, of immeasurable vitality, of loving friends, of universal brotherhood.

True, that material things existed before us, and without us. Once, they were alone with their God; the earth had no habitable places, the sunshine was not glad in human dwellings, the stars guided no mariner upon the seas; old ocean roared, but no man heard, no brave voices mingled with the noise of waters; deep called unto deep, and had only deep to answer. So it was before there was an Adam; but man was created, and all things lived. And these now live to us, and besides these, all which the sons of Adam have wrought, language, learning, arts, cities with their adornments, governments with their laws, and whatever else, the contrivance of man's head and the cunning of his hand have enabled him to do. Surely, even our present life is sacred, and is grand.

REV. HENRY GILES.

XIV. CONTEMPT.

I HAVE unlearned contempt. It is the sin
That is engendered earliest in the soul,
And doth beset it like a poison-worm,
Feeding on all its beauty: As it steals
Into the bosom, you may see the light
Of the clear heavenly eye grow cold and dim,
And the fine upright glory of the brow
Cloud with mistrust, and the unfettered lip,
That was as free and changeful as the wind,

Even in sadness redolent with love,
Curled with the iciness of constant scorn.

It eats into the mind till it pollutes

All its pure fountains. Feeling, reason, taste,
Breathe of its chill corruption. Every sense
That could convey a pleasure is benumbed,
And the bright human being that was made
Full of rich, warm affections, and with power
To look through all things lovely up to God,
Is changed into a cold and doubting fiend,
With but one use for reason-to despise!

Oh! if there is one law above the rest,
Written in wisdom-if there is a word
That I would trace as with a pen of fire
Upon the unsunned temper of a child—
If there is anything that keeps the mind
Open to angel visits, and repels
The ministry of ill-'tis human love!

God has made nothing worthy of contempt.
The smallest pebble in the well of truth
Has its peculiar meaning, and will stand
When man's best monuments have passed away.

The law of Heaven is love, and though its name
Has been usurped by passion, and profaned
To its unholy uses through all time,
Still the eternal principle is pure:

And in these deep affections that we feel
Omnipotent within us, we but see

The lavish measure in which love is given;
And in the yearning tenderness of a child
For every bird that sings above his head,
And every creature feeding on the hills,
And every tree and flower, and running brook,
We see how everything was made to love;
And how they err, who in a world like this,
Find anything to hate but human pride.

NATHANIEL P. °WILLIS.

XV.-WHAT MAKES THE MAN.

THE very attempt is noble; for self-improvement constitutes the true excellence and dignity of a man. It is a mistake as pernicious as it is prevalent-one inherent in our evil nature-one by which

the young are more especially liable to be deluded—that a man is to be measured by what he has, rather than by what he is—by his circumstances, rather than by his moral and mental condition. The consequence is, that most young men set out on a false principle, pursue a false course, and run to a false goal. They imagine that to climb the social ladder, to exalt or distinguish themselves above their fellows, to accumulate wealth, or win renown, is the supreme end of life; they think to make themselves great and happy by attending to what is extrinsic, shadowy, and °ĕvanescent, whilst they neglect what is intrinsical, real, and immortal. What is the consequence? They give the first care to the big world without, whilst they disregard the little world within. They absorb themselves in external matters, in politics, in rivalries, in projects of gain or ambition; but all the while the miniature kingdom within them is a scene of anarchy and desolation, ungoverned, insubordinate, licentious.

Yet, in very deed, man is something too real, too wonderful, too grand to be estimated according to anything external to his own being. His true greatness or meanness lies in himself. I do not disparage rank or riches, or outward advantages, in their place; but, after all, it is neither rank, nor riches, nor circumstances, that make the man. A bad man is not a great man, though he wear a crown and sit on a throne; and a good man is not a mean man, though he dwell in a cottage and toil day by day for his bread. No man can be truly great that is not truly good; no man truly °despicable that is not morally bad.

Power and position are at most but a pedestal. Place there an object which will bear elevation and conspicuousness, and you make its excellence the more illustrious; but place there an object which the more it is illumined and inspected, the more it will disclose blemishes and imperfections, and you do but make it the more conspicuously despicable.

We all need to wake more fully to the thrilling truth that the. inward state and character constitute the man. The man is not his title, nor his rank, nor his dwelling, nor his fortune, nor his fame. The man is the soul, and the soul is the man. Neither the "encrustation nor the setting is the gem, but the simple naked stone. Whatever can be taken away from a man cannot be the man. But strip him of all that he possesses, yea, of the very body that enshrines his deathless spirit, and what remains-that, that alone, is the man.

The character imprinted in time will be stereotyped in eternity. Awake from the strong delusion so apt to fasten on the young imagination, and from which even the hoary head does not ordinarily get free-that circumstances make the man. Awake to the great truth, that a man is just what he is, independently of all circumstances,