things which can be owned by but one, and those which can be owned and enjoyed by all. If I own a ship, a house, a farm, or a mass of the metals called precious, my right to them is, in its nature, sole and exclusive. No other man has a right to trade with my ship, to occupy my house, to gather my harvests, or appropriate my treasures to his use. They are mine, and are incapable both of a sole and of a joint possession. But not so of the treasures of knowledge, which it is the duty of education to diffuse. The same truth may enrich and ennoble all intelligences at once. Infinite diffusion subtracts nothing from depth. None are poorer because others are made rich. In this part of the Divine economy, the privilege of primogeniture attaches to all, and every son and daughter of Adam is an heir to an infinite patrimony.

H. Mann, Mass., 1796-1859.

3. Books.

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to our longing with full instruction, but pursues us never. It is not offended at our absent-mindedness, nor jealous if we turn to other pleasures, of leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even of books. It silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And, yet more noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transformation there, until the outward book is but a body and its

soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit. And while some books, like steps, are left behind us by the very help which they yield us, and serve only our childhood or early life, some others go with us, in mute fidelity, to the end of life, a recreation for fatigue, an instruction for our sober hours, and solace for our sickness or sorrow. Except the great out-doors, nothing that has so much life of its own gives so much life to us.

H. W. Beecher, Conn., 1813-.

4. Work.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life purpose; he has found it and will follow it! How, as a free flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an everdeepening river there, it runs and flows; draining off the sour, festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green, fruitful meadow, with its clear, flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small! Labor is life; from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force,—the sacred, celestial life-essence, breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, "self-knowledge," and much else, so soon as work fitly begins.

Thos. Carlyle, Scotland, 1795—.

5. Reflection.

Nothing has such a tendency to weaken, not only the power of invention, but the intellectual powers in general, as a habit of extensive and various reading without reflection. The activity and force of mind are gradually impaired in consequence of disease; and, not unfrequently, all our principles and opinions come to be lost in the infinite multiplicity and discordancy of our acquired ideas.

Dugald Stewart, Scotland, 1753-1828.

6. Knowledge.

It is noble to seek Truth, and it is beautiful to find it. It is the ancient feeling of the human heart that knowledge is better than riches; and it is deeply and sacredly true. To mark the course of human passions as they have flowed on in ages that are past; to see why nations have risen, and why they have fallen; to speak of heat, and light, and the winds; to know what man has discovered in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; to hear the chemist unfold the marvelous properties that the Creator has locked up in a speck of earth; to be told that there are worlds so distant from our own that the quickness of light, traveling from the world's creation, has never yet reached us; to wander in the creations of poetry, and grow warm again with that eloquence which swayed the democracies of the Old World; to go up, with great reasoners, to the First Cause of all, and to per

ceive, in the midst of all this dissolution and decay and cruel separation, that there is one thing unchangeable, indestructible, and everlasting; it is worth while, in the days of our youth, to strive hard for this great discipline; to pass sleepless nights for it; to give up for it laborious days; to spurn for it present pleasures; to endure for it afflicting poverty; to wade for it through darkness, and sorrow, and contempt, as the great spirits of the world have done in all ages and all times.

Sydney Smith, England, 1771-1845.

7. Life.

Throughout this beautiful and wonderful creation there is never-ceasing motion, without rest by night or day, ever weaving to and fro. Swifter than a weaver's shuttle, it flies from birth to death, from death to birth; from the beginning seeks the end and finds it not; for the seeming end is only a dim beginning of a new out-going and endeavor after the end. As the ice upon the mountain, when the warm breath of the summer's sun breathes upon it, melts, and divides into drops, each of which reflects an image of the sun, so life, in the smile of God's love, divides itself into separate forms, each bearing in it, and reflecting, an image of God's love.

H. W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807-.

8. A Nation's Glory.

The true glory of a nation is in the living temple of a loyal, industrious, and upright people. The busy click of machinery, the merry ring of the anvil, the lowing of peaceful herds, and the song of the harvesthome, are sweeter music than the pæans of departed glory, or songs of triumph in war. The vine-clad cottage of the hillside, the cabin of the woodsman, and the rural home of the farmer, are the true citadels of any country. There is a dignity in honest toil which belongs not to the display of wealth, or the luxury of fashion. The man who drives the plow, or swings his axe in the forest, or with cunning fingers plies the tools of his craft, is as truly the servant of his country as the statesman in the senate, or the soldier in battle.

Bishop II. B. Whipple, New York, 1819-.

9. Knowledge and Gold.

We hear much, at present, of the veins of gold which are brought to light in almost every latitude of either hemisphere. But I care not what mines are opened in the North or in the South; in the mountains of Siberia or the Sierras of California; wheresoever the fountains of the golden tide may gush forth, the streams will flow to the regions where educated intellect has woven the boundless network of the useful and ornamental arts. It matters not if this new Pactolus flow through a region which stretches for fur