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But we do not see why he should not say it, when we all mean it and do it, with our whole heart, and mind, and strength.

5. And pray what should be the business of a College but to prepare young gentlemen for the business of life? Then why should we not have Professorships of Stock Broking? Chairs devoted to the art and mystery of cornering a stock? Teachers of the science of bamboozling a jury and of driving a coach and horses through the flaws of an indictment? Lecturers on the pure mathematics of Number One? Good, hard-headed, practical Doctors of the Main Chance, with appropriate and necessary text-books? If it is to come to that at last, why not in the beginning? Questions like these bring us out of the salt fog of our cynicism into a grateful and sunny recognition of what the Colleges have done for us, and may, with all their faults, still do for us. This is a very imperfect world: it is" prone and obedient," as Sallust has it," to the appetites ;" and colleges, like churches, are perpetual protests against complete surrender to the temporal and the mechanical. They are a confession of faith which it is better to gabble unconsciously than not to say at all.

6. When a man who can hardly read English, dies, and leaves $50,000 to endow a Hebrew chair, he acknowledges duly by hand and seal that there is something better than bulling or bearing stock. He would have scoffed at Parson Adams if he had met him with Eschylus in his pocket in Wall-st.; but as the roar of that seething thoroughfare grows faint in his dying ears, he bethinks him that it will be a very good thing to have poor boys taught Greek. These are miracles, but we have had too many of them to disbelieve in them altogether. Most of our seats of polite learning, owe their existence to the liberality of departed shop-keepers. Hundreds of churches are under like obligations. A mutation of the hide and tallow market may give the languishing Chinese mission a new lease of life. So Colleges are to be cultured and endowed, and honorably mentioned in last wills and testaments, if for no other rea

son than for proof that Poor Richard was right, and that "learning is better than house or lands." All the world, in a muzzy sort of way, feels and acknowledges this.

7. On the other hand, what Wealth does for Learning, is amply and generously repaid, both by the new paths of enterprise and emolument which cultivation opens, and by respectable methods of expending money which refinement establishes. Mr. Astor would never have thought of establishing his great library, if there had not been so many little ones in the country. One never knows in what form the planted seed will spring up. Harvard College generates picture galleries in New-York, and Yale may have something to do with the Academy of Music. The beginning of all newspaper success, is in the dame-school where the alphabet is taught. The great operations of the banks are first scrawled upon a boy's slate. It is not the ignorant money-changer who is intolerable, but the money-changer who is ignorant of the wretchedness of ignorance. The main educational idea of this age is that of diffusion: that of a past age, concentration. We may have fewer great scholars than lived, and pored, and endlessly wrote in monastic times: but what we have gained is a sufficiency of knowledge, so that no man need be miserable through ignorance. In the promotion of this, Colleges do their part, especially in keeping up a high standard; and the multiplication of universities only shows an advance in the ambition and intelligence of the masses. For this, whatever may be collegiate shortcomings, let us be grateful.

CLXIX. THE MISER.

1. An old man sat by a fireless hearth,
Though the night was dark and chill,
And mournfully over the frozen earth
The wind sobbed loud and shrill.

His locks were gray, and his eyes were gray,
And dim, but not with tears;

CUTTER.

And his skeleton form had wasted away
With penury, more than years.

2. A rush-light was casting its fitful glare
O'er the damp and dingy walls,

Where the lizard hath made his slimy lair,
And the venomous spider crawls;

But the meanest thing in this lonesome room
Was the miser worn and bare,

Where he sat like a ghost in an empty tomb,
On his broken and only chair.

3. He had bolted the window and barred the door,
And every nook had scanned;

And felt the fastening o'er and o'er,
With his cold and skinny hand;
And yet he sat gazing intently round,

And trembled with silent fear,

And startled and shuddered at every sound

That fell on his coward ear.

4. "Ha! ha!" laughed the miser: "I'm safe at last,
From this night so cold and drear,
From the drenching rain and driving blast,
With my gold and treasures here.

I am cold and wet with the icy rain,
And my health is bad, 'tis true;
Yet if I should light that fire again,
It would cost me a cent or two.

5. But I'll take a sip of the precious wine:
It will banish my cold and fears:

It was given long since by a friend of mine-

I have kept it for many years."

So he drew a flask from a mouldy nook,

And drank of its ruby tide;

And his eyes grew bright with each draught he took,
And his bosom swelled with pride.

6. "Let me see: let me see!" said the miser then,
"Tis some sixty years or more

Since the happy hour when I began

To heap up the glittering store;

And well have I sped with my anxious toil,

As my crowded chest will show:

I've more than would ransom a kingdom's spoil,
Or an emperor could bestow."

7. He turned to an old worm-eaten chest,

And cautiously raised the lid,

And then it shone like the clouds of the west,
With the sun in their splendor hid;

And gem after gem, in precious store,

Are raised with exulting smile;

And he counted and counted them o'er and o'er,

In many a glittering pile.

8. Why comes the flush to his pallid brow,

While his eyes like his diamonds shine?
Why writhes he thus in such torture now?
What was there in the wine?

He strove his lonely seat to gain :
To crawl to his nest he tried;

But finding his efforts all in vain,

He clasped his gold, and―died.

CLXX. THE WRECK OF THE ARCTIC.

H. W. BEECHER.

1. Ir was autumn. Hundreds had wended their way from pilgrimages: from Rome and its treasures of dead arts, and its glory of living nature: from the sides of the Switzer's mountains, from the capitals of various nations: all saying in their hearts, we will wait for the September gales to have done with their equinoctial fury, and then we will embark: we will slide across the appeased ocean, and in the gorgeous month of October, we will greet our longedfor native land, and our heart-loved homes. And so the throng streamed along from Berlin, from Paris, from the Orient, converging upon London, still hastening toward their welcome ship, and narrowing every day the circles of engagements and preparations.

2. They crowded aboard. Never had the Arctic borne such a host of passengers, nor passengers so nearly related to so many of us. The hour was come. The signal-ball fell at Greenwich. It was noon also at Liverpool. The anchors were weighed: the great hull swayed to the current: the national colors streamed aboard, as if them

t

selves instinct with life and national sympathy. The bell strikes: the wheels revolve: the signal gun beats its echoes in upon every structure along the shore, and the Arctic glides joyfully forth from the Mersey, and turns her prow to the winding channel, and begins her homeward run.

3. The pilot stood at the wheel, and men saw him. Death sat upon the prow, and no eye beheld him. Whoever stood at the wheel in all that voyage, Death was the pilot that steered the craft, and and no one knew it. He neither revealed his presence nor whispered his errand. And so hope was effulgent, and lithe gayety disported itself, and joy was with every guest. Amid all the inconveniences of the voyage, there was that which hushed every murmur-home is not far away, and every morning it was one night nearer home, and at evening one day nearer home! Eight days had passed. They beheld that distant bank of mist that forever haunts the vast shallows of Newfoundland. Boldly they made it, and plunging in, its pliant wreaths wrapped them about. They shall never emerge. The last sunlight has flashed from that deck. The last voyage done to ship and passengers.

4. At noon there came noiselessly stealing from the north that fated instrument of destruction. In that mysterious shroud, that vast atmosphere of mist, both steamers were holding their way with rushing prow and roaring wheels, but invisible. At a league's distance, but unconscious, and at nearer approach unwarned: within hail, and bearing right toward each other, unseen, unfelt, till in a moment more, emerging from the gray mist, the illomened Vesta dealt her deadly blow to the Arctic. The death blow was scarcely felt along that mighty hull. She neither reeled nor shivered. Neither commander nor officers deemed that they had suffered harm.

5. Prompt upon humanity, the brave Luce (let his name be ever spoken with admiration and respect) ordered away his boat with the first officer, to inquire if the stran ger had suffered harm. As Gourley went over the ship's

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