HERE are two sorts of people in the world, who, with equal degrees of health and wealth, and the other comforts of life, become, the one happy, and the other miserable. This arises very much from the different views in which they consider things, persons and others about the contraries, it is good for others to avoid an acquaintance with them; which is always disagreeable, and sometimes very inconvenient, especially when one finds one's self entangled in their quarrels.-Franklin. NEED tell you it is be and events; and the effect of those differ. I knocking about in whatpens boat. ent views upon their own minds. In whatever situation men can be placed they may find conveniences and inconveniences; in whatever company they may find persons and conversation more or less pleasing; at whatever table they may meet with meats and drinks of better and worse taste, dishes better and worse dressed; in whatever climate they will find good and bad weather; under whatever government, they may find good and bad laws, and good and bad administration of those laws; in whatever poem or work of genius they may see faults and beauties; in almost every face and every person they may discover fine features and defects, good and bad qualities. Under these circumstances the two sorts of people above mentioned fix their attention; those who are disposed to be happy, on the convenience of things, the pleasant parts of conversations, the welldressed dishes, the goodness of the wines, the fine weather, etc., and enjoy all with cheerfulness. Those who are to be unhappy think and speak only of the con traries. Hence they are continually dis contented themselves, and by their remarks, sour the pleasure of society, offend personally many people, and make themselves everywhere disagreeable. If this turn of mind was founded in nature, such unhappy persons would be the more to be pitied. But as the disposition to criticise, and to be disgusted, is perhaps taken up originally by imitation, and is unawares grown into a habit, which, though at present strong, may nevertheless be cured, when those who have it are convinced of its bad effects on their felicity. . . . If these people will not change this bad habit, and condescend to be pleased with what is pleasing, without fretting themselves I remember nights and days of calm when we pulled, we pulled, and the boat seemed to stand still, as if bewitched within the circle of the sea horizon. I remember the heat, the deluge of rainsqualls that kept us bailing for dear life (but filled our water-cask), and I remember sixteen hours on end with a mouth dry as a cinder and a steering-oar over the stern to keep my first command head on to a breaking sea. I did not know how good a man I was till then. I remember the drawn faces, the dejected figures of my two men, and I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more-the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires and expires, too soon-before life itself.-Joseph Conrad. raise and appreciation of others; be strong and true; to be generous to impute worthy motives even to enemies; to give without expectation of return; to practise humility, tolerance and self-restraint; to make the best use of time and opportunity; to keep the mind pure and the judgment charitable; to extend intelligent sympathy to those in distress; to cultivate quietness and nonresistance; to seek truth and righteousness; to work, love, pray and serve daily, to aspire greatly, labor cheerfully, and take God at His word-this is to travel heavenward.-Grenville Kleiser. Manners, the final and perfect flower of noble character.-William Winter. EN I find to be a sort of beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do mischief to each other than to make reparation, much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more pride and even pleasure in killing than in begetting one another; for without a blush they assemble in great armies at noonday to destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can, they exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory. In what light we are viewed by superior beings may be gathered from a piece of late West India news. A young angel of distinction being sent down to this world on some business, for the first time, had an old courier-spirit assigned him as a guide. They arrived over the seas of Martinico, in the middle of the long day of obstinate fight between the fleets of Rodney and De Grasse. When, through the clouds of smoke, he saw the fire of the guns, the decks covered with mangled limbs, and bodies dead or dying; the ships sinking, burning, or blown into the air; and the quantity of pain, misery, and destruction, the crews yet alive were thus with so much eagerness dealing round to one another, he turned angrily to his guide, and said: "You blundering blockhead, you are ignorant of your business; you undertook to conduct me to the earth, and you have brought me into hell!" "No, Sir," says the guide, "I have made no mistake; this is really the earth, and these are men. Devils never treat one another in this cruel manner; they have more sense, and more of what men (vainly) call humanity."-Franklin. I horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in; glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of Chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiments and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.-Edmund Burke. W E make daily great improvements in natural, there is one I wish to see in moral philosophy; the discovery of a plan, that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first cutting one another's throats When will human reason be sufficiently improved to see the advantage of this? When will men be convinced, that even successful wars become misfortunes, who unjustly commenced them, and who triumphed blindly in their success, not seeing all its consequences.-Franklin. ERFECT love has this advantage in it, that it leaves the possessor of it nothing farther to desire. There is one object (at least) in which the soul finds absolute content, for which it seeks to live, or dares to die. The heart has, as it were, filled up the moulds of the imagination. The truth of passion keeps pace with and outvies the extravagance of mere language. There are no words Over the shoulders and slopes of so fine, no flat the dune HE presence that thus rose strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which 66 all the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has I saw the white daisies go down to the sea, A host in the sunshine, an army in The people God sends us to set The bobolinks rallied them up The orioles whistled them out of And all of their saying was, "Earth, tery so soft, that there is not a sentiment beyond them, that it is impossible to express, at the bottom of the heart where true love is. What idle sounds the comable creature, anmon phrases, adorgel, divinity, are! What a proud reflection it is to have a feeling answering to all these, rooted in the breast, unalterable unutterable, to which all other feelings are light and vain! Perfect love reposes on the object of its choice, like the halcyon on the wave; and the air of heaven is around it.-William Hazlitt. And all of their dancing was," Life, "Daisies," by Bliss Carman passed! All the An appreciation of da Vinci's Mona Lisa Time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sun set and evening star, In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the Moon. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature. Sir Thomas Browne. And one clear call for me! But such a tide as moving seems asleep, UT the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it; Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantages of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of Time? ... Oblivion is not to be hired; the greater part must be content to be as When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! to me that almost any Man And may there be no sadness of farewell may, like the spiWhen I embark. For tho' from out our bourne of Time The flood may bear me far, "Crossing the Bar," by Alfred Lord Tennyson though they had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it can not be long before we lie down in darkness and have our light in ashes; since the brother of Death daily haunts us with dying Mementoes, and Time that grows old itself bids us hope no long duration, diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation. Darkness and light divide the course of der, spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadelthe points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine Web of his Soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean-full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his luxury. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness. I have not read any Books-the Morning said I was rightI had no idea but of the Morning, and the Thrush said I was right. -John Keats. What we can do for another is the test of powers; what we can suffer for is the test of love.-Bishop Westcott. A picture is a poem without words. -Horace. E that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason that those that have children should have greatest care of future times, unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants; but not always best subjects; for they are light to run away-and almost all fugitives are of that condition. A single life doth well with churchmen, for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool. It is indifferent for judges and magistrates; for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant five times worse than a wife. For soldiers, I find generals commonly, in their hortatives, put men in mind of their wives and their children, and I think the despising of marriage amongst the Turks maketh the vulgar soldier more base. Certainly, wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hardhearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their tenderness is not so oft called upon. Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age, and old men's nurses; so that a man may have a quarrel to marry when he will so se But yet he was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry: A young man, not yet; an elder man, not at all."-Francis Bacon. Success lies, not in achieving what you aim at, but in aiming at what you ought to achieve, and pressing forward, sure of achievement here, or if not here, hereafter.-R. F. Horton. IB IBERIUS, maintaining an honorable and just cause, and possessed of eloquence sufficient to have made a less creditable action appear plausible, was no safe or easy antagonist, when, with the people crowding around the hustings, he took his place and spoke in behalf of the poor. "The savage beasts," said he, " in Italy, have their particular dens, they have their places of repose and refuge; but the men who bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of their country, enjoy in the meantime nothing in it but the air and light; and, having no houses or settlements of their own, are constrained to wander from place to place with their wives and children." He told them that the commanders were guilty of a ridiculous error, when, at the head of their armies, they exhorted the common soldiers to fight for their sepulchers and altars; when not any amongst so many Romans is possessed of either altar or monument, neither have they any houses of their own, or hearths of their ancestors to defend. They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men. They were styled the masters of the world, but had not one foot of ground they could call their own.-Plutarch. LL real and wholesome enjoyments possible to man have been just as possible to him since first he was made of the earth as they are now; and they are possible to him chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over plowshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray-these are the things that make men happy.... Now and then a wearied king, or a tormented slave, found out where the true kingdoms of the world were, and possessed himself, in a furrow or two of garden ground, of a truly infinite dominion. -John Ruskin. Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them-Washington Irving. |
