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4. We should endeavor, simultaneously, to cultivate both those affections of the heart which prove the ignorant to be God's children no less than the wise, and those moral qualities which have made men great and good when reading and writing were scarcely known. Patience and fortitude under poverty and distress; humility and beneficence amidst grandeur and wealth; justice, the father of all the more solid virtues, softened by charity, which is their loving mother; accompanied by these, knowledge, indeed, becomes the magnificent crown of humanity,. -not the imperious despot, but the checked and tempered sovereign of the soul.

SIR E. BULWER LYTTON.

5. It is a miserable mistake, though by no means an unfrequent one, to suppose that the value of the intellect consists mainly or principally in its sufficiency for our worldly furtherance. The man who can come to such a conclusion is in much the same degree of baseness and absurdity as those who were followers of Our Saviour only for the sake of the loaves and fishes. We value intelligence high, not because it may lead us to such things, as, indeed, it often does, but because it raises us above them. Not that I am one of those who regard the advantages of this world as things absolutely of no account. Good houses and good clothes, and a good diet, and good possessions generally, are welcome, for the most part, even to the most rational man. I would not detract from them; let them pass for their full value; only thus much would I say, that the only effect upon our welfare of these and all other external things is by their impressions upon

the mind.

6. Impressions from without never fail to be dulled and deadened by repetition. But our intellectual habits, on the contrary, are strengthened by exercise; they become quicker, more vivid, and more agreeable, from day to day. As the mind is the man, we must address ourselves to the mind if we would procure the man's enjoyment; we must frame it to energy, and quickness, and sensibility. A person of loose, and feeble, and listless disposition, will be feeble and listless still, though he be surrounded with pleasurable resources. They will merely tantalize him; he can do nothing with great means; whereas the man of intelligence, quick, lively, and full of spirit, can make much of very little means, turn all things to account, find everywhere a soul of gladness, and "good in everything."

7. Thus am I requited. This is the service that my mind, with all the pains that I have bestowed upon it, has rendered me; and verily, the reward is not such as to attract the worldly

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eye, or kindle the lust of covetousness. There is nothing of show or glitter in it; nothing of pomp or circumstance neither by its means have I arrived, nor am I ever likely to arrive, at greatness. It speaks not in the trumpet-blast of fame, but in the still voice of consciousness. Nor yet am I altogether sure that my mind, as I have framed it, will insure me what is called success in life; for this depends not on one's self; occasion may be wanting to it, competition may keep it out, accident may frustrate it.

8. But, though it has given me none of these things, it has done me a far better service, inasmuch as it has enabled me tc forego them, and to live contentedly without them. It can never assure me the favors of fortune, but it has made me independent of her. By its aid I can find my happiness in myself, instead of looking for it anxiously, and hurriedly, and vainly, in things without me. This is my reward; and, on the whole, comparing what I have gained with what I have undergone, I am well satisfied with it, satisfied to the very fulness of gratitude. Truly then did Solomon say unto us, "Wisdom is the principal thing. therefore get wisdom; and, with all thy getting, get understand. ing. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to honor when thou dost embrace her. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee; love her, and she shall keep thee."

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CXIV.

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HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.

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"OF all political characters," says the German historian, Heeren, "Demos'thenes is the most sublime; he is the purest tragic character with which history is acquainted. When, still trembling with the vehement force of his language, we read his life in Plutarch, when we transfer ourselves into his times and his situation, we are carried away by a deeper interest than can be excited by any hero of the epic muse or of tragedy. From his first appearance till the moment when he swallowed poison in the temple, we see him contending against destiny, which seems to mock him with malignant cruelty. It throws him to the ground, but never subdues him.

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"What a crowd of emotions must have struggled through his manly breast amidst this interchange of reviving and expiring hopes! How natural was it that the lines of melancholy and of indignation, such as we yet behold in his bust, should have been imprinted on his severe countenance! It was his high calling to be the pillar of a sinking state. Thirty years he remained true to this cause, nor did he yield till he was buried beneath the ruins of his country."

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It was about the middle of the fourth century before our era when Demosthenes began to command attention in the Athenian assemblies. His first attempt, like those of Walpole and Sheridan in the British parliament, was a failure; and the derision which he received from the multitude would have discouraged an inferior spirit forever. It only nerved Demosthenes to severer study, and to a more obstinate contest with his physical disadvantages. He assiduously practised his growing powers as an advocate before the legal tribunals before he again ventured to speak on state affairs. But at length he reäppeared before the people, and the dominion of his genius was supreme.

2. CICERO AND DEMOSTHENES COMPARED. - Fenelon.

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To me Demosthenes seems superior to Cicero. I yield to no one in my admiration of the latter. He adorns whatever he touches. He lends honor to speech. He uses words as no one else can use them. His versatility is beyond description. He is even concise and vehement when disposed to be so, against Căt ́iline, against Verres, against An'tony. But we detect the embellishments in his discourses. The art is marvellous, but it is not hidden. The orator does not, in his concern for the

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republic, forget himself, nor does he allow himself to be for gotten.

Demosthenes, on the contrary, seems to lose all consciousness of himself, and to recognize only his country. He does not seek the beautiful; he unconsciously creates it. He is superior to admiration. He uses language as a modest man uses his garment for a covering. He thunders, he lightens; he is like a torrent hurrying all before it. We cannot criticize him, for we are in the sweep of his influence. We think on what he says, not on how he says it. We lose sight of the speaker; we are occu

pied only with his subject.

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As great and good in peace as he was great and good in war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to improve his people. He made just laws, that they might live more happily and freely; he turned away all partial judges, that no wrong might be done them; he was so careful of their property, and punished robbers so severely, that it was a common thing to say that under the great King Alfred garlands of golden chains and jewels might have hung across the streets, and no man would have touched

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He founded schools; he patiently heard causes himself in his court of justice. Every day he divided into certain portions, and in each portion devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide his time exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, which were all of the same size, were notched across at regular distances, and were always kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down, he divided the day into notches, almost as accurately as we now divide it into hours upon the clock. He had the candles put into cases formed of wood and white horn; and these were the first lanthorns ever made in England.

All this time he was afflicted with a terrible unknown disease, which caused him violent and frequent pain, that nothing could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne all the troubles of his life, like a brave good man, until he was fifty-three years old; and then, having reigned thirty years, he died. He died in the year nine hundred and one; but, long ago as that is, his fame, and the love and gratitudes with which his subjects regarded him, are freshly remembered to the present hour.

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To all the charms of beauty, and the utmost elegance of external form, Mary added those accomplishments which render

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their impression irresistible. Polite, affable, insinuating, sprightly and capable of speaking and of writing with equal ease and dignity; sudden, however, and violent in all her attachments, because she had been accustomed from her infancy to be treated as a queen; no stranger, on some occasions, to dissimulation, which, in that perfidious court where she received her education, was reckoned among the necessary arts of government; not insensible of flattery, or unconscious of that pleasure with which almost every woman beholds the influence of her own beauty; formed with the qualities that we love, not with the talents that we admire, she was an agreeable woman, rather than an illustrious queen. No man, says Brantome, ever beheld her person without admiration or love, or will read her history without sorrow.

5. LAST MOMENTS OF ADDISON.

Macaulay.

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The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. terview with his son-in-law is universally known. said, "how a Christian can die!" The piety of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful character. The feeling which predominates in all his devotional writings is gratitude. God was to him the all-wise and all-powerful Friend, who had watched over his cradle with more than maternal tenderness; who had listened to his cries before they could form themselves in prayer; who had preserved his youth from the snares of vice; who had made his cup run over with worldly blessings; and who had doubled the value of those blessings by bestowing a thankful heart to enjoy them, and dear friends to partake them; who had rebuked the waves of the Ligurian Gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the Campagna, and had restrained the avalanches of Mount Cenis.

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Of the Psalms, his favorite was that which represents the Ruler of all things under the endearing image of a shepherd whose crook guides the flock safe through gloomy and desolate glens, to meadows well watered and rich with herbage. On that goodness to which he ascribed all the happiness of his life he relied in the hour of death, with the love that casteth out fear. He died on the seventeenth of June, 1719. He had just entered on his forty-eighth year.

6. LORD CHATHAM IN PARLIAMENT.

Hazlitt.

He controlled the purposes of others, because he was strong in his own ob'durate self-will. He convinced his followers, by never

doubting himself. He did not argue but assert; he took what

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