off some little John to run before, and with his half-gospel tell of some great Emmanuel, and signify to men that the kingdom of heavenly beauty is near at hand. Now that forerunner disappears, for the desire of all nations has truly come; the green grass is creeping everywhere, and it is spangled with many flowers that came unasked.

What if there was a spring time of blossoming but once in a hundred years! How would men look forward to it, and old men, who had beheld its wonders, tell the story to their children, how once all the homely trees became beautiful, and earth was covered with freshness and new growth! How would young men hope to become old, that they might see so glad a sight! And when beheld, the aged man would say, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

THOMAS STARR KING. 1824-1864. (Manual, p. 532.)

From "Patriotism and other Papers."

141. GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.

If we go to Nature for our morals, we shall learn the necessity of perfection in the smallest act. Infinite skill is not exhausted nor concentrated in the structure of a firmament, in drawing the orbit of a planet, in laying the strata of the earth, in rearing the mountain cone. The care for the bursting flower is as wise as the forces displayed in the rolling star; the smallest leaf that falls and dies unnoticed in the forest is wrought with a beauty as exquisite as the skill displayed in the sturdy oak. All the wisdom of Nature is compressed and revealed in the sting of the bee; and the pride of human art is mocked by the subtile mechanism and cunning structure of a fly's foot and wing. However minute the task, it reveals the polish of perfection. Omnipotent skill is stamped on the infinitely small, as on the infinitely great. It is a moral stenography like this which we need in daily life.

The lesson of Christianity, then, urged and enforced by Nature, is the inestimable worth of common duties, as manifesting the greatest principles; it bids us attain perfection, not by striving to do dazzling deeds, but by making our experience divine; it tells us that the Christian hero will ennoble the humblest field of labor; that nothing is mean which can be performed as duty; but that religious virtue, like the touch of Midas, converts the humblest call of conscience into spiritual gold.

GENERAL AND POLITE LITERATURE.

JOHN RANDOLPH. 1773-1832. (Manual, p. 487.)

From "Letters to a young Relative,”

142. THE ERROR OF DECAYED FAMILIES.

ONE of the best and wisest men I ever knew has often said to me that a decayed family could never recover its loss of rank in the world, until the members of it left off talking and dwelling upon its former opulence. This remark, founded in a long and clear observation of mankind, I have seen verified in numerous instances in my own connections, who, to use the words of my, oracle, will never thrive until they can become poor folks. He added, they may make some struggles, and with apparent success, to recover lost ground; they may, and sometimes do, get half way up again; but they are sure to fall back, unless, reconciling themselves to circumstances, they become in form, as well as in fact, poor folks.

A MAN who marries a woman that he does not esteem and treat kindly is a villain; but marriage was made for man; and if the woman be good-tempered, healthy (a qualification scarcely thought of nowadays, all-important as it is), chaste, cleanly, economical, and not an absolute fool, she will make him a better wife that nine out of ten deserve to have. To be sure, if to these beauty and understanding be added, all the better. Neither would I quarrel with a good fortune, if it has produced no ill effect on the possessor Do you remember A. V.? He could neither read nor think; any wife, even a scolding one, would have been a blessing to that poor man.

a rare case.

144. CHOICE OF COMPANIONS.

IF my life were to go over again, I should make a very different sort of thing of it from what it is. Community of tastes and pursuits, very often vicious ones, are the foundations of most youthful friendships. I was most fortunate in two Rutledge and Bryan. As for Banister, he was as a brother from infancy; I could not go amiss in him. Archer said to me last night, "When a young man conducts himself so as to be forced to borrow from his companions, his independence and self-respect are gone." It is true.

TIMOTHY FLINT. 1780-1840. (Manual, p. 490.)

From "Recollections of the Mississippi Valley."

145. THE WESTERN BOATMAN.

THERE is no wonder that the way of life which the boatmen lead, in turn extremely indolent and extremely laborious, for days together requiring little or no effort, and attended with no danger, and then on a sudden laborious and hazardous beyond the Atlantic navigation, generally plentiful as it regards food, and always so as it regards whiskey, should always have seductions that prove irresistible to the young people that live near the banks of the river. The boats float by their dwellings on beautiful spring mornings, when the verdant forest, the mild and delicious temperature of the air, the delightful azure of the sky of this country, the fine bottom on the one hand, and the romantic bluff on the other, the broad and smooth stream rolling calmly down through the forest, and floating the boat gently forward, - all these circumstances harmonize in the excited youthful imagination. The boatmen are dancing to the violin on the deck of their boat. They scatter their wit among the girls on the shore, who come down to the water's edge to see the pageant pass. The boat glides on until it disappears behind a point of wood; at this moment, perhaps, the bugle, with which all the boats are provided, strikes up its note in the distance, over the water. These scenes, and these notes, echoing from the bluffs of the beautiful Ohio, have a charm for the imagination, which, although I have heard a thousand times repeated, and at all hours, and in all positions, is even to me always new, and always delightful. No wonder that the young, who are reared in these remote regions, with that restless curiosity which is fostered by solitude and silence, who witness scenes like these so frequently, -no wonder that the severe and unremitting labors of agriculture, performed directly in the view of such scenes, should become tasteless and irksome.

WASHINGTON IRVING. 1783-1859. (Manual, pp. 478, 498.)

146.

From "Knickerbocker's History of New York."

FROM "TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS."

A HISTORY of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty, being the only authentic history of the times that ever hath been or ever will be published, by Diedrick Knickerbocker.

Book I., chap. i. Description of the World.

. . Book II., chap. i. his discovery of a strange country.

Also of Master Hendrick Hudson,

Chap. vii. How the people

of Pavonia migrated from Communipaw to the Island of Manhattan. . Chap. ix. How the city of New Amsterdam waxed great under the protection of St. Nicholas, and the absence of laws and statutes. Book III., chap. iii. How the town of New Amsterdam arose out of mud, and came to be marvellously polished and polite, together with a picture of the manners of our great-great-grandfathers. . . Book IV.,

chap. vi. Projects of William the Testy for increasing the currency; he is outwitted by the Yankees. The great Oyster War. . . Book V., chap. viii. How the Yankee crusade against the New Netherlands was baffled by the sudden outbreak of witchcraft among the people of the East. Book VII., chap. ii. How Peter Stuyvesant labored to civilize the community. How he was a great promoter of holydays. How he instituted kissing on New Year's Day. Chap. iii. How troubles thicken on the province. How it is threatened by the Helderbergers, — the Merrylanders, and the Giants of the Susquehanna.

147. THE ARMY AT NEW AMSTERDAM.

FIRST of all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders of the Bronx. These were short, fat men, wearing exceeding large trunk-breeches, and are renowned for feats of the trencher; they were the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk. ... Lastly came the Knickerbockers, of the great town of Schahticoke, where the folks lay stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away. These derive their name, as some say, from Knicker, to shake, and Beker, a goblet, indicating thereby that they were sturdy tosspots of yore; but in truth, it was derived from Knicker, to nod, and Bocken, books, plainly meaning that they were great nodders or dozers over books: from them did descend the writer of this History.

THE arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, a prisoner, and in chains, produced almost as great a sensation as his triumphant return from his first voyage. It was one of those striking and obvious facts, which speak to the feelings of the multitude, and preclude the necessity of reflection. No one stopped to inquire into the case. It was sufficient to be told that Columbus was brought home in irons from the world he had discovered. A general burst of indignation arose in Cadiz, and its neighboring city, Seville, which was immediately echoed throughout all Spain.

However Ferdinand might have secretly felt disposed

towards Columbus, the momentary tide of public feeling was not to be resisted. He joined with his generous queen in her reprobation of the treatment of the admiral, and both sovereigns hastened to give evidence to the world, that his imprisonment had been without their authority, and contrary to their wishes.

149. HIS ARRIVAL AT COURT.

He appeared at court in Granada, on the 17th of December, not as a man ruined and disgraced, but richly dressed, and attended by an honorable retinue. He was received by their majesties with unqualified favor and distinction. When the queen beheld this venerable man approach, and thought on all that he had deserved, and all that he had suffered, she was moved to tears. Columbus had borne up firmly against the rude conflicts of the world; he had endured with lofty. scorn the injuries and insults of ignoble men; but he possessed strong and quick sensibility. When he found himself thus kindly received by his sovereigns, and beheld tears in the benign eyes of Isabella, his long-suppressed feelings burst forth. He threw himself upon his knees, and for some time could not utter a word for the violence of his tears and sobbings.

From "A Tour on the Prairies."

150. THE BUFFALO.

Of all animals, a buffalo, when close-pressed by the hunter, has an aspect the most diabolical. His two short, black horns curve out of a huge frontlet of shaggy hair; his eyes glow like coals; his mouth is open, his tongue parched and drawn up into a half crescent; his tail is erect, and tufted, and whisking about in the air; he is a perfect picture of mingled rage and terror.

151. THE SOLITUDE OF THE PRAIRIE.

To one unaccustomed to it there is something inexpressibly lonely in the solitude of a prairie. The loneliness of a forest seems nothing to it. There the view is shut in by trees, and the imagination is left free to picture some livelier scene beyond. But here we have an immense extent of landscape without a sign of human existence. We have the consciousness of being far, far beyond the bounds of human habitation; we feel as if moving in the midst of a desert world. As my horse lagged slowly back over the scenes of our late scamper, and