and good. We despise only the despicable, we honor only the honorable. In that world no divinity hedges a king, no accident of rank or fashion ennobles a dunce or shields a knave.

E. P. Whipple, Mass., 1819-.

44. Erroneous Action.

It is pity that, commonly, more care is had, yea, and that among very wise men, to find out rather a cunning man for their horse, than a cunning man for their children. They say nay in word, but do so in deed. For to the one they will gladly give a stipend of two hundred crowns by year, and loth to offer to the other two hundred shillings. God, that sitteth in heaven, laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their liberality as it should; for He suffereth them to have a tame and well-ordered horse, but wild and unfortunate children; and, therefore, in the end, they find more pleasure in their horse than comfort in their children.

R. Ascham, England, 1515-1568.

45. Intelligence.

Education, to accomplish the ends of good government, should be universally diffused. Open the doors of the school-house to all the children of the land. Let no man have the excuse of poverty for not educating his own offspring. Place the means of education within his reach, and if they remain in ignorance, be it his own reproach. If one object of the expenditure

of revenue be protection against crime, you could not devise a better or cheaper means of obtaining it. Other nations spend their money in providing means for its detection and punishment, but it is for the principles of our government to provide for its never occurring. The one acts by coercion, the other by prevention. On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.

D. Webster, New Hampshire, 1782-1852.

46. Nature.

Nature has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of color are in the sunsets among the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless forms of inconceivable delicacy, threads, and flakes of vapor, which would in common daylight be pure snow-white, and which give, therefore, a fair field to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The whole sky, from the zenith to the horizon, becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language and no ideas in the mind,-things which can only be conceived while

they are visible,-the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it all,-showing here deep, and pure, and lightless,-there modulated by the filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold.

J. Ruskin, England, 1819-.

47. The Skeptic.

Did the skeptic ever contemplate the landscape at the close of the year, when seed, and grains, and fruit have ripened, and stalks have withered, and leaves have fallen, and winter has forced her icy curb even into the roaring jaws of Niagara, and sheeted half a continent in her glittering shroud, and all this teeming vegetation and organized life are locked in cold and marble obstructions, and after week upon week, and month upon month, have swept, with sleet and chilly rain, and howling storm, over the earth, and riveted their crystal bolts upon the door of nature's sepulchre,— when the sun at length begins t wheel in higher cir cles through the sky, and softer winds to breathe over melting snows,-did he ever behold the long-hidden earth at length appear, and soon the timid grass peep forth; and anon the autumnal wheat begin to paint the field, and velvet leaflets to burst from purple buds, throughout the reviving forest, and then the mellow soil to open its fruitful bosom to every grain and seed dropped from the planter's hand,-buried, but to spring up again, clothed with a new, mysterious being;

then, as more fervid suns inflame the air, and softer showers distill from the clouds, and gentler dews string their pearls on twig and tendril, did he ever watch the ripening grain and fruit, pendent from stalk and vine and tree; the meadow, the field, the pasture, the grove, each after his kind, arrayed in myriadtinted garments, instinct with circulating life; seven millions of counted leaves on a single tree, each of which is a system whose exquisite complication puts to shame the shrewdest cunning of the human hand; every planted seed and grain, which had been loaned to the earth, compounding its pious usury thirty, sixty, a hundred fold,—all harmoniously adapted to the sustenance of living nature, the bread of a hungry world; here a tilled corn-field, whose yellow blades are nodding with the food of man; there an unplanted wilderness, the great Father's farm, where He "who hears the raven's cry" has cultivated, with His own hand, His merciful crop of berries, and nuts, and acorns, and seeds, for the humbler families of animated nature; the solemn elephant, the browsing deer, the wild pigeon whose fluttering caravan darkens the sky, the merry squirrel, who bounds from branch to branch, in the joy of his little life, has he seen all this? Does he see it every year, and month, and day? Does he live, and move, and breathe, and think, in this atmosphere of wonder,-himself the greatest wonder of all, whose smallest fiber and faintest pulsation is as much a mystery as the blazing glories of Orion's belt? And does he still maintain that a mir.

acle is contrary to experience? If he has, and if he does, then let him go in the name of Heaven, and say that it is contrary to experience that the august Power which turns the clods of the earth into the daily bread of a thousand million of souls could feed five thousand in the wilderness.

E. Everett, Mass., 1794-1865.

48. Success.

Every man must patiently abide his time. He must wait, not in listless, not in useless pastime, not in querulous dejection, but in constant, steady fulfilling and accomplishing his task; that when the occasion comes, he may be equal to the occasion. The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, without a thought of fame. If it come at all it will not come because it is sought after. It is a very indiscreet and troublesome ambition which cares so much about fame; about what the world says of us; to be always looking in the face of others for approval; to be always anxious about the effects of what we do or say; to be always shouting to hear the echoes of our own voices.

H. W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807—.

49. Motive.

In some respects our mental education resembles the system pursued by some of the ancient islanders of the Mediterranean. In order to teach their chil