happy, and making the commonest offices
beautiful, by the energy and heart with
which she does them, and seeing this, we
admire and love her and them, and say,
'Lo! a genuine creature of the fair earth,
not dissipated, or too early ripened by books,
philosophy, religion, society, or care!' in-
sinuating a treachery and contempt for all
we had so long loved and wrought in our-
selves and others.

No fixed
Rule
Binds

IF

F we could have any security against moods! If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is ready to sell all and join the crusade, could have any certificate that to-morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony! But the truth sits veiled there on the bench, and never interposes an adamantine syllable; and the most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if the ark of God were carried forward some furlongs, and planted there for the succour of the world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set aside by the

same speaker, as morbid; 'I thought I was right, but I was not '-and the same immeasurable credulity demanded for new audacities. If we were not of all opinions! if we did not in any moment shift the platform on which we stand, and look and speak from another! if there could be any regulation, any 'one-hour-rule,' that a man should never leave his point of view, without sound of trumpet! I am always insincere, as always knowing there are other moods.

WE

WE are natural believers. Truth, or the connection between cause and effect, alone interests us. We are persuaded that a thread runs through all things: all worlds are strung on it, as beads: and men, and events, and life, come to us, only because of that thread: they pass and repass, only that we may know the direction and continuity of that line. A book or statement which goes to show that there is no line, but random and chaos, a calamity out of nothing, a prosperity and no

Man Believes by Nature

Skepticism

Blind

ness to Defects

account of it, a hero born from a fool, a fool from a hero-dispirits us. Seen or unseen, we believe the tie exists. Talent makes counterfeit ties; genius finds the real ones. Representative Men.

KEPTICISM is the attitude assumed

SKR

by the student in relation to the particulars which society adores, but which he sees to be reverent only in their tendency and spirit. The ground occupied by the skeptic is the vestibule of the temple.

N

Representative Men.

ATURE never spares the opium or nepenthe; but wherever she mars her creature with some deformity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it, though all the world point their finger at it every day. The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a

social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.

Representative Men.

UT the craft with which the world is

BUT

character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which nature had taken to heart. Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters. Not less remarkable is the overfaith of each man in the importance of what he has to do or say.

No One is Sane

THE poet, the prophet, has a higher The

value for what he utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. The

Poet and the Prophet

The Youthful

Diary

strong, self-complacent Luther declares with an emphasis, not to be mistaken, that 'God Himself cannot do without wise men.' Jacob Behmen and George Fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their controversial tracts, and James Naylor once suffered himself to be worshipped as the Christ. Each prophet comes presently to identify himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. However this may discredit such persons with the judicious, it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to their words. A similar experience is not infrequent in private life.

EACH young and ardent person writes a

diary, in which, when the hours of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The pages thus written are, to him, burning and fragrant: he reads them on his knees by midnight and by the morning star: he wets them with his tears: they are sacred; too good for the world, and hardly yet to be shown to the dearest friend. This is the