sists by murder, as another does by bigamy and adultery. Scott would have recoiled from the blood as well as from the ordure, he would have allowed neither to have defiled his noble page. He knew that there was no pretense for bringing before a reader what is merely horrible; that by doing so you only stimulate passions as low as licentiousness itself the passions which were stimulated by the gladiatorial shows in degraded Rome, which are stimulated by the bullfights in degraded Spain, which are stimulated among ourselves by exhibitions the attraction of which really consists in their imperiling human life. He knew that a novelist had no right even to introduce the terrible except for the purpose of exhibiting human heroism, developing character, awakening emotions which, when awakened, dignify and save from harm. It is want of genius and of knowledge of their craft that drives novelists to outrage humanity with horrors. Miss Austen can interest and even excite you as much with the little domestic adventures of Emma as some of her rivals can with a whole Newgate calendar of guilt and gore.

VII. The Lamp of Chivalry.-Of this briefly. Let the writer of fiction give us humanity in all its phases, the comic as well as the tragic, the ridiculous as well as the sublime; but let him not lower the standard of character or the aim of life. Shakespeare does not. We delight in his Falstaffs and his clowns as well as in his Hamlets and Othellos; but he never familiarizes us with what is base and mean. The noble and chivalrous always holds its place as the aim of true humanity in his ideal world. Perhaps Dickens is not entirely free from blame in this respect; perhaps Pickwickianism has in some degree familiarized the generation of Englishmen who have been fed upon it with what is not chivalrous, to say the least, in conduct, as it unquestionably has with slang in conversation. But Scott, like Shakespeare, wherever the thread of his fiction may lead him, always keeps before himself and us the highest ideal which he knew, the ideal of a gentleman. If any one says there are narrow bounds wherein to confine fiction, I answer there has been room enough within them for the highest tragedy, the deepest pathos, the broadest humor, the widest range of character,

the most moving incident that the world has ever enjoyed. There has been room within them for all the kings of pure and healthy fiction-for Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Molière, Scott! Farewell, Sir Walter," says Carlyle at the end of his essay, "farewell, Sir Walter, pride of all Scotchmen." Scotland has said farewell to her mortal son. But all humanity welcomes him as Scotland's noblest gift to her, and crowns him, as on this day, one of the heirs of immortality.

JOHN LANCASTER SPALDING

OPPORTUNITY

[Address by Bishop J. L. Spalding, Roman Catholic Bishop of Peoria, Ill., since 1877 (born in Lebanon, Pa., June 3, 1840; — -), delivered at the opening of the Spalding Institute, Peoria, December 6, 1899.]

How shall I live? How shall I make the most of my life and put it to the best use? How shall I become a man and do a man's work? This, and not politics or trade or war or pleasure, is the question. The primary consideration is not how one shall get a living, but how he shall live, for if he live rightly, whatever is needful he shall easily find. Life is opportunity, and therefore its whole circumstance may be made to serve the purpose of those who are bent on self-improvement, on making themselves capable of doing thorough work. Opportunity is a word which, like so many others that are excellent, we get from the Romans. It means near port, close to haven. It is a favorable occasion, time, or place for learning or saying or doing a thing. It is an invitation to seek safety and refreshment, an appeal to make escape from what is low and vulgar and to take refuge in high thoughts and worthy deeds, from which flows increase of strength and joy. It is omnipresent. What we call evils, as poverty, neglect, and suffering, are, if we are wise, opportunities for good. Death itself teaches life's value not less than its vanity. It is the background against which its worth and beauty stand forth in clear relief. Its dark form follows us like our shadow, to bid us win the prize while yet there is time; to teach that if we live in what is permanent, the destroyer cannot blight what we know and love; to urge us, with a

Copyright, by A. C. McClurg. Published by permission.

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power that belongs to nothing else, to lay the stress of all our hoping and doing on the things that cannot pass away. "Poverty," says Ouida, "is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings." "Lowliness is young ambition's ladder." What is more pleasant than to read of stronghearted youths, who, in the midst of want and hardships of many kinds, have clung to books, feeding, like bees to flowers? By the light of pine-logs, in dim-lit garrets, in the fields following the plough, in early dawns when others are asleep, they ply their blessed task, seeking nourishment for the mind, athirst for truth, yearning for full sight of the high worlds of which they have caught faint glimpses; happier now, lacking everything save faith and a great purpose, than in after years when success shall shower on them applause and gold.

Life is good, and opportunities of becoming and doing good are always with us. Our house, our table, our tools, our books, our city, our country, our language, our business, our profession,-the people who love us and those who hate, they who help and they who oppose—what is all this but opportunity? Wherever we be there is opportunity of turning to gold the dust of daily happenings. If snow and storm keep me at home is not here an invitation to turn to the immortal silent ones who never speak unless they are addressed? If loss or pain or wrong befal me, shall they not show me the soul of good there is in things evil? Good fortune may serve to persuade us that the essential good is a noble mind and a conscience without flaw. Success will make plain the things in which we fail: failure shall spur us on to braver hope and striving. If I am left alone, yet God and all the heroic dead are with me still. If a great city is my dwelling place, the superficial life of noise and haste shall teach me how blessed a thing it is to live within in the company of true thoughts and high resolves. Whatever can help me to think and love, whatever can give me strength and patience, whatever can make me humble and serviceable, though it be a trifle light as air, is opportunity, whose whim it is to hide in unconsidered things, in chance acquaintance and casual speech, in the falling of an apple, in floating weeds, or the accidental explosion in a chemist's mortar.

Wisdom is habited in plainest garb, and she walks modestly, unheeded of the gaping and wondering crowd. She rules over the kingdom of little things, in which the lowly-minded hold the places of privilege. Her secrets. are revealed to the careful, the patient, and the humble. They may be learned from the ant or the flower that blooms in some hidden spot or from the lips of husbandmen and housewives.

He is wise who finds a teacher in every man, an occasion to improve in every happening, for whom nothing is useless or in vain. If one whom he has trusted prove false, he lays it to the account of his own heedlessness and resolves to become more observant. If men scorn him, he is thankful that he need not scorn himself. If they pass him by, it is enough for him that truth and love still remain. If he is thrown with one who bears himself with ease and grace, or talks correctly in pleasantly modulated tones, or utters what can spring only from a sincere and generous mind-there is opportunity. If he chance to find himself in the company of the rude, their vulgarity gives him a higher estimate of the worth of breeding and behavior. The happiness and good fortune of his fellows add to his own. If they are beautiful or wise or strong, their beauty, wisdom, and strength shall in some way help him. The merry voices of children bring gladness to his heart; the songs of birds wake melody there. Whoever anywhere, in any age, spoke noble words or performed heroic deeds, spoke and wrought for him. For him Moses led the people forth from bondage; for him the three hundred perished at Thermopyla; for him Homer sang; for him Demosthenes denounced the tyrant; for him Columbus sailed the untraveled sea; for him Galileo gazed on the starry vault; for him the blessed Savior died. knows that whatever diminishes his good-will to men, his sympathy with them, even in their blindness and waywardness, makes him poorer, and he therefore finds means to convert their faults even into opportunities for loving them more. The rivalries of business and politics, the shock of conflicting aims and interests, the prejudices and perversities of men, shall not cheat him of his own good by making him less just or kind. He stands with the

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