upon their shoulders, clipped or lashed down. They see their companions rising, but they cling to the earth, and feel the difference as a humiliation. Alas! how many souls chafe against the consciousness of inferior powers, till even the fine susceptibilities with which nature endowed them are destroyed!

There would seem to be no end of the causes which produce sore and tender and sensitive spots upon the human soul. I have said nothing of grief and love and pity and anger, and a whole brood of powerful passions, but they are all operative toward the results which we are discussing. The cure for these sensitive sores is obvious enough. I would prescribe for a man as I would for a horse-go out to pasture, or adopt another kind of collar, and never wear the old one again. If a man has become sore by working against the apathy, the misconceptions, the miscon structions, and the prejudices of the world, so that he feels the galling burden of the collar in all his actions, let him change his style of labor until the ulcer heal. If the conscience becomes sore, relieve it of that which made it sore, and never believe that padding can effect a cure. Even wounded pride will heal if we let it alone, and refrain from opening the wound on all occasions, and rubbing it against the causes which inflicted it. All the natural peculiarities of our constitution which wound our pride may be happily got along with

by ignoring them. If my neighbor is a lovable man, I do not love him any the less because he wears a long nose, and I should never think of it if he were not always joking about it, and trying to convince me that it did not offend him. A man who quarrels with his own constitution, and questions the benevolence that adjusted it to its conditions, quarrels with, and questions, his Maker. I believe there are no sorenesses of the sort we are considering which time or change will not heal.

It seems to me a very melancholy thing for a man to carry a mental ulcer with him through life-to feel its prick and pang in every effort to be conscious of its presence every hour-to be engaged in covering it from sight, or in the attempt to deceive the world with regard to it. Life is altogether too good a thing to be spoiled by a little sore, or a large one, when there exists an obvious mode of cure. It is our immense and intense self-consciousness that stands in our way always in this matter. The truth is that the world does not think half so much about us as we imagine it does. A man may walk through the city of New York with a face "as homely as a hedge-fence," thinking about it all the time, and wondering what people think of it, and not a man of all the throng will even see it. It is so in the world at large. Our personal peculiarities, our personal failures, our personal weaknesses, our per

sonal affairs generally possess very little interest for others. They have enough to do in taking care of themselves, and have weaknesses, and failures, and peculiarities enough of their own; and if the world should spurn our well-meant efforts in its behalf, why, let it go. It mends nothing to get sore and sensitive over it. When a man truly learns how little important he is in the world, he is generally beyond the danger of becoming galled by his harness, whatever it may be.

LESSON XIX.

THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE.

"Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I delivered them unto you."-St. Paul.

"O popular applause! What heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?

COWPER.

"Arbaces. Why now, you flatter.
"Mardonius. I never understood the word."

A KING AND NO KING.

"Praising what is lost

Makes the remembrance dear."

SHAKSPERE.

T is pleasant to be praised. The man does not live

IT

who is insensible to honest praise. The love of approbation is as natural to every human soul as the love of offspring, or the love of liberty. It was planted there by God's hand, and it is as useful and important in its fruit, as it is fragrant and beautiful in its flower. I repeat that the man does not live who is insensible to honest praise. That great orator who seems to be a

king in the world, independent of his race, holding dominion over human hearts, lifted far above the necessity of the plaudits of those around him, will pause with gratified and grateful ear, to listen to expressions of approval and admiration from the humblest lips. The greatest mind drinks praise as a pleasant draught, if it be honest and deserved. Perhaps you think that Doctor of Divinity who weighs two hundred pounds more or less, and is clad in glossy broad-cloth, and lifts his shining forehead above a white cravat, as Mont Blanc pierces a belt of cloud, and talks articulated thunder, and veils his wisdom behind gold-mounted spectacles, and moves among men with ineffable dig. nity, is above the need of, and the appetite for, praise. Ah! you don't know the soft old heart under that satin waistcoat! It can be made as warm and gentle and grateful, with just and generous praise, as that of a boy. Nay, the barber who takes his reverent nose between his thumb and finger, and sweeps the beard from his benevolent chin, understands exactly what to say in order to draw from his pocket an extra sixpence. There is no head so high, there is no neck so stiff, there is no back so straight, that it will not bend to take the flowers which praise tosses upon its path.

"It's a sign of weakness, after all," sighs my friend, who is not praised quite as much as he would like to be. Begging your pardon, sir, it is no such thing.