Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise; But for these obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence, in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We, in thought, will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight;

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, —
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which, having been, must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight,
To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born day

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

O, YET WE TRUST.

ALFRED TENNYSON. EXTRACT.

O YET we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,

То pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall

At last far off at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night :
An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

DUTIES OF THE SCHOLAR.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

THE men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other the best ideas of their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source therefore of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections; and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century; and their services to Germany were in this way inestimably precious. Generations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far more perfect

than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in Germany; and yet the names of these two men will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And why? Because they humanized knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. With St. Augustine, they said: "Let us not leave Thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as Thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness: let the children of Thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth. Mark the division of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times; for the old order is passed and a new arises: the night is spent; the day is come forth; and Thou shalt send forth laborers into Thy harvest sown by other hands than theirs; when Thou shalt send forth new laborers to new seed-times whereof the harvest is not yet.'

POWER.

JOHN RUSKIN.

MIGHTY of heart, mighty of mind-"magnanimous!" -to be this is indeed to be great in life; to become this increasingly is indeed to "advance in life," in life itself not in the trappings of it.

Do you remember that old Scythian custom when