bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar?

Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man can not say it: "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even can not say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some

HE functions of the poetical faculty are twofold; by one it creates new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it.

Poetry is indeed something divine.

a season:

It is at once the center and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and the color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and curruptions What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendshipwhat were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit-what were our consolations on this side of the grave-and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to

invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory, brightness; this power arises from within,

like the color of a

flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departures Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the

greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conception of the poet. Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there can not but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it.

ANY lovable people miss each other

being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions; and while they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abideabide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

unfavorable star. There is the nice and critical moment of declaration to be got over. From timidity or lack of opportunity a good half of possible love cases never get 'so far, and at least another quarter do there cease and determine. 1 A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to prepare the way and out with his declaration in the nick of time. And then there is a fine, solid sort of man, who goes on from snub to snub; and if he has to declare forty times will continue imperturbably declaring amid the astonished consideration of men and angels, until he has a favorable answer I daresay, if one were a woman, one would like to marry a man who was capable of doing this, but not quite one who had done so. It is just a little bit abject, and somehow just a little bit gross; and marriages in which one of the parties has been thus battered into consent scarcely form agreeable subjects for meditation. Love should run out to meet love with open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together in a dark room. From the first moment when they see each other, with a pang of curiosity, through stage after stage of growing pleasure and embarrassment, they can read the expression of their own trouble in each other's eyes. There is here no declaration properly so called; the feeling is so plainly shared, that as soon as the man knows what is in his own heart, he is sure of what is in the woman's.-Robert Louis Stevenson.

VERY man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and it is in the nature of things that he can not really improve himself without in some degree improving other men.-Charles Dickens.

Be not prodigal of your opinions, lest by sharing them with others you be left without.-Ambrose Bierce.

HERE is something extremely fascinating in quickness; and most men are desirous of appearing quick.

The great rule for becoming so is, by not attempting to appear quicker than you really are; by resolving to understand yourself and others, and to know what you mean, and what they mean, before you speak or answer.

Every man must submit to be slow before he is quick; and insignificant before he is important. The too early struggle against the pain of obscurity corrupts no small share of understandings Well and happily has that man conducted his understanding who has learned to derive

as they have flowed on in the ages that are past; to see why nations have risen, and why they have fallen; to speak of heat, and light, and winds; to know what man has discovered in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath; to hear the chemist unfold the marvelous properties that the Creator has locked up in a speck of earth; to be told that there

are worlds so dis

tant from our sun that the quickness of light traveling from the world's creation has never yet reached us; to wander in the creations of poetry, and grow warm again, with that eloquence which swayed the democracies of the old world; to go up with great reasoners

from the exercise of it regular occupation and rational delight; who, after having overcome the first pain of application, and acquired a habit of looking inwardly upon his own mind, perceives that every day is multiplying the relations confirming the accuracy, and augmenting the number of his ideas; who feels that he is rising in the scale of intellectual beings, gathering newstrength with every new difficulty which he subdues, and enjoying today as his pleasure that which yesterday he labored at as his toil.

There are many consolations in the mind of such a man which no common life can ever afford, and many enjoyments which it has not to give! It is not the mere cry of moralists, and the flourish of rhetoricians; but it is noble to seek truth, and it is beautiful to find it. It is the ancient feeling of the human heart-that knowledge is better than riches; and it is deeply and sacredly true! se se

To mark the course of human passions

of all, and to per

ceive in the midst of all this dissolution and decay, and cruel separation, that there is one thing unchangeable, indestructible, and everlasting;-it is worth while in the days of our youth to strive hard for this great discipline; to pass sleepless nights for it, to give up to it laborious days; to spurn for it present pleasures; to endure for it afflicting poverty; to wade for it through darkness, and sorrow, and contempt, as the great spirits of the world have done in all ages and all times. Sidney Smith.

IR-The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be. I recommend him, however, to those civilities which every stranger, of whom one knows no harm, has a right to; and I request you will do him all the favor that, on further acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve. I have the honor to be, etc.-Paris, April 2, 1777.-Franklin.

When the state is most corrupt, then laws are most multiplied.-Tacitus.

HUSBANDMAN who had a quarrelsome family, after having tried in vain to reconcile them by words, thought he might more readily prevail by an example. So he called his sons and bade them lay a bundle of sticks. before him. Then having tied them up into a fagot, he told the lads, one after another, to take it up and break it. They all tried, but tried in vain. Then, untying the fagot, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the greatest ease. Then said the father: "Thus, my sons, as long as you remain united, you are a match for all your enemies; but differ and separate, and you are undone."-Esop.

The nation that has the schools has the future.-Bismarck.

HEN man has come to the Turnstiles of Night, all the creeds in the world seem to him wonderfully alike and colorless.-Rudyard Kipling.

Love comes unseen; we only see it go. -Austin Dobson.

HOEVER examines, with due cir

cumspection, into the Annual Records of Time, will find it remarked, that war is the child of pride, and pride the daughter of riches-the former of which assertions may be soon granted, but one can not so easily subscribe to the latter; for pride is nearly related to beggary and want, either by father or mother, and sometimes by both: and to speak naturally, it very seldom happens among men to fall out when all have enough: invasions usually travelling from north to south, that is to say, from poverty to plenty. The most ancient and natural grounds of quarrels, are lust and avarice; which, though we may allow to be brethren, or collateral branches of pride, are certainly the issues of want.-Jonathan Swift.

"T is the mind that makes the body rich. -Shakespeare.

ERHAPS none of Shelley's poems

is more purely and typically Shelleian than "The Cloud," and it is interesting to note how essentially it springs from the faculty of make-believe. The same thing is conspicuous, though less purely conspicuous, throughout his singing; it is the child's faculty of makebelieve raised to the "nth’ power. He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to watch, and his playthings are those which the gods give their children. The universe is the box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright mischief with the moons meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. He teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven; its floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fashions, to see how she will look nicest in his song.-Francis Thompson.

The