Burke, whom the late Mr. Buckle would put in a strait-jacket, but who will be likely to outlive his keepers; (quis custodiet custodes?) whose volume of thought pours out very much as Niagara pours over the Horseshoe, with the rapid's thunder, the mist, the spray, the bow of everlasting beauty; never seems exhausted, but as if there were an hundred inland seas of thought behind, waiting to be poured out.

A little reflection will satisfy us how constantly, though it may be unconsciously, we use this test of the fulness or want of reserved power. You read a book, an essay, or an article in a review, and you determine almost at a glance whether the matter has just been pumped into the author's skull, and then pumped out again, or whether he draws from a full living spring. The modern multiplication of books is, for the most part, the pouring of water from one pitcher into another. Very few of them are mixed, as Mr. Opie mixed his colors, with brains. As we grow older, we seek the fountains, the old wells of English undefiled; for the great teachers of the race and of the coming generations have spoken or written in our mother-tongue. I shall go to my grave, I fear, in the delusion that Bacon,

that Shakspeare held the perfect mirror up to nature; that the "Paradise Lost" is the greatest of epics, if not the first; that, of written and forensic eloquence, the great masters are Edmund Burke and Thomas Erskine; that no man is fitted for the bar, the pulpit, or the chair of instruction, who has not given himself to the diligent

and thorough study of the English classics. A certain grace, polish, refinement, may be got in other schools: these constitute our pabulum vitæ.

Reserved power may not always prevent partial defeat or temporary failure; but it will avert the dismay and despondency which too often follow partial failure. The man of reserved power may bend before the storm; but he will bend only as, Landor says, "the oak bends before the passing wind, to rise again in its majesty and in its strength." Nay, it seems at times as if, Antæus-like, he got new strength from contact with the earth, new vigor from the fall. Apparent defeat may be real victory; the moving from Moultrie to Sumter. His army of the reserve may not have been brought into action at the needed moment. He will be ready for another trial. He knows the power is in him, and will do its work.

We all remember the case of Sheridan. After his first speech in the House of Commons, he asked Mr. Woodfall what he thought of it. "I am sorry to say, I do not think it is in your line. You had much better have stuck to your old pursuits."-"It is in me, and it shall come out." It did indeed come out. He lived to hear from Pitt (no longer sneering Pitt) the motion, that the House of Commons should adjourn to recover from the effects of Mr. Sheridan's eloquence.

The brilliant writer and statesman D'Israeli, late Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the House of Commons, was literally groaned and sneered down in his first attempt to speak upon the floor. He knew his reserved strength. "The day will come when you will be

glad to hear me." It came long ago. He is to-day, with the exception of his successor, Mr. Gladstone, the most effective debater in the Commons of England.

The material army of the reserve, though trained by the discipline of conflict and endurance, is worn and wasted by the same cause. Its thinned and broken ranks must be filled and replenished with new life, new brain, bone, and muscle.

It is not wholly so with the spiritual army of the reserve. This, too, is trained and strengthened by struggle and suffering: but, in this, every accretion of power is permanent; every enlistment not only for the campaign of life, but for the life everlasting. It is a beautiful doctrine, which the study of the human mind tends more and more to confirm, that knowledge, once gained, is never lost; that we never really forget; that what we call imperfection of memory is but a defect in the material instrument, some mist or dulness in the mirror which reflects the beam of light. It is a beautiful doctrine, but a fearful one; suggesting the questions, What knowledges have we garnered in this everlasting storehouse? on what spiritual breads have we fed, that have thus entered into the very substance and framework of our being? what unfading pictures have been frescoed on the ever-enduring walls of the soul?

It is, I trust, scarcely necessary to suggest, that though our spiritual powers enlarge by use, and are nurtured by effort and struggle, there are limits to the law; that they do not grow by over-work; that the bow must not always be bent, and never strained. I have no faith in working with jaded powers, or in holding up, as exem

plars to the young, the men who give their nights as well as days to study.

"And wherefore does the student trim his lamp,

And watch his lonely taper, when the stars

Are holding their high festival in heaven,

And worshipping around the midnight throne?"

The just and sensible answer to this glowing question is, Because he don't know any better; because he don't understand, or care to recognize and obey, the laws of his spiritual as well as physical health and life. It were far better for him to be infolded in the arms of "Nature's sweet restorer, gentle sleep."

In a busy life, we cannot measure our daily work by exact rules. The true rule is, to work much, not many hours. More work must be done on one day than another but eight hours of mental labor is enough for the most vigorous constitution; more than most men can do with safety. He who seeks to do more must often bring to his work a flagging brain; or if he be of the class, who, when they work, must work with intensity, break, not indeed his spirit vital in every part, but the material instruments by which it works.

No better illustration of these truths can be found than in New England's most accomplished advocate.

Of brilliant powers, enriched by wide and varied culture; of rapid perceptions; of retentive and capacious memory; of rich, glowing, Oriental imagination; of a quiet and subtle wit, whose delicate aroma it is in vain to hope to preserve; with that projectile force of mind which is the peculiar trait of a great advocate; with a logic keen and vigorous, though, like the dagger of Har

modius, it was often hidden beneath the myrtles; with a heart gentle as a woman's, yet capable of stiffening its sinews; with little inclination to social life, yet the most delightful of companions, Mr. Choate was, at the bar or in his own library, the most interesting man it has been my privilege to know: yet, during the last six years of his life (and it was during those years I saw him most frequently), I never heard him, even in the most brilliant of his efforts, without a feeling of sadness. He not only worked too much, but he had no just economy of labor. He did a thousand things which men of narrower capacity might have done as well, or well enough. He expended upon his work a vast amount of superfluous strength. He brought the whole army of the reserve into action, when the victory might have been easily and gracefully won by the van and corps of battle. If he had tried half as many causes, worked half as many hours, he would have been a yet greater man, and his life might have been spared to the courts of which he was the pride and ornament; nay, more, those large and generous powers might have been used upon a broader theatre, and for nobler and more enduring service. As it was, we may write upon his monument the inscription upon the bust of Erskine at Holland House:

"Nostræ eloquentiæ forensis facile princeps."

Pardon one or two practical suggestions.

We all need this reserved power; but it comes only from the union of contemplation and action. Our life is stir, bustle, everlasting motion; the whistle of the engine, the click of the telegraph.