the golden chance, wherewith to snatch Thought's blessed fruition, the joy of the Present, the hope of the Future. Thought makes the time that is, and thought the eternity to come:

"O bright presence of To-day, let me wrestle with thee, gracious angel;

I will not let thee go except thou bless me; bless me, then, To-day!

O sweet garden of To-day, let me gather of thee, precious Eden;
I have stolen bitter knowledge, give me fruits of life To-day.
O truo temple of To-day, let me worship in thee, glorious Zion;
I find none other place nor time than where I am To-day.

O living rescue of To-day, let me run into thee, ark of refuge;
I see none other hope nor chance, but standeth in To-day.

O rich banquet of To-day, let me feast upon thee, saving manna;
I have none other food nor store but daily bread To-day."

8. THE DUELLIST'S HONOR.-Bishop England. Born, 1786; died, 1842.

HONOR is the acquisition and preservation of the dignity of our nature that dignity consists in its perfection; that perfection is found in observing the laws of our Creator; the laws of the Creator are the dictates of reason and of religion: that is, the observance of what He teaches us by the natural light of our own minds, and by the special revelations of His will manifestly given. They both concur in teaching us that individuals have not the dominion of the own lives; otherwise, no suicide would be a criminal. They concur teaching us that we ought to be amenable to the laws of the societ of which we are members; otherwise, morality and honor would be consistent with the violation of law and the disturbance of the social system. They teach us that society cannot continue to exist where the public tribunals are despised or undervalued, and the redress of injuries withdrawn from the calm regulation of public justice, for the purpose of being committed to the caprice of private passion, and the execution of individual ill-will; therefore, the man of honor abides by the law of God, reveres the statutes of his country, and is respectful and amenable to its authorities. Such, my friends, is what the reflecting portion of mankind has always thought upon the subject of honor. This was the honor of the Greek; this was the honor of the Roman; this the honor of the Jew; this the honor of the Gentile; this, too, was the honor of the Christian, until the superstition and barbarity of Northern devastators darkened his glory and degraded his character.

Man, then, has not power over his own life; much less is he justi fied in depriving another human being of life. Upon what ground can he who engages in a duel, through the fear of ignon jny, lay claim to courage? Unfortunate delinquent! Do you not see by how many links your victim was bound to a multitude of others? Does his vain and idle resignation of his title to life absolve you from the enormous claims which society has upon you for his services, - his family for that support, of which you have robbed them, without your own enrichment? Go, stand over that body: call back that sou

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which you have driven from its tenement; take up that hand whict. your pride refused to touch, not one hour ago. You have, in your pride and wrath, usurped one prerogative of God. You have inflicted death. At least, in mercy, attempt the exercise of another; breathe into those distended nostrils, let brother be once more a living your soul! Merciful Father! how powerless are we for good, but how mighty for evil! Wretched man! he does not answer, he cannot rise. All your efforts to make him breathe are vain. His soul is already in the presence of your common Creator. Like the wretched Cain, will you answer, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Why do you turn away from the contemplation of your own honorable work? Yes, go as far as you will, still the admonition will ring in your ears: It was by your hand he fell! The horrid instrument of death is still in that hand, and the stain of blood upon your soul. Fly, if you will, go to that house which you have filled with desolation. It is the shriek of his widow, they are the cries of his children, the broken sobs of his parent; and, amidst the wailings, you distinctly hear the voice of imprecation on your own guilty head! Will your honorable feelings be content with this? Have you now had abun dant and gentlemanly satisfaction?

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9. DAY CONCEALS WHAT NIGHT REVEALS.-J. P. Nichol.

VAST as our firmament may be, has it boundaries, or does it stretch away into infinitude? Are those awful spaces, that surround it on every side, void, empty, or are they tenanted by worlds and systems similar to our own? No wonder that a mind like Herschell's should have rushed to the conclusion that the space around our system was a vault, in whose capacious bosom myriads of mighty clusters like our own universe are placed. If it be true that this great scheme of ours is simply that which Herschell first supposed it, but still a great, separate, distinct scheme, whose nature is, perhaps, more than anything else, represented by these singular Nebula, what must we think with regard to it? Surely it is, that notwithstanding its immense diffusion, its vast confines, the great space through which its different portions range, there must lie around it, on every side, vast untenanted and, if this be so, may it not be that amid all that space, also, there are floating great schemes of being like ours, schemes, I say, of different shape, of different character, but lying in these vast regions of space like ours,-schemes quite as magnificent as that vast system to which we ourselves belong? If this be so, what a conception, in regard to the material universe, must press itself upon our notice!

spaces;

How strange that this Universe is only yet cognizable by one human sense! that the veil of the sun's light entirely conceals its wonders from our view! that, had the light of that Sun not been veiled by the curtain of night we had lived amid it and never have known of the existence of the Stellar Universe! May it not, then, be true, that

during midnight, when these infinite orbs appar to us from their unmeasured depths, - may it not be true that through veils as thin, we are withheld now from the consciousness of other Universes, vast even as the world of stars? But, in reference to an idea so lofty, let ale use the language of a great mind: *

"Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee by report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus and the hosts of Heaven came,
And, lo! Creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?-
If Light can thus deceive, why may not Life?"

10. MAN'S MATERIAL TRIUMPHIS. — Original Translation.

WHEN We contemplate man in his relations to the rest of creation, how lofty, in the comparison, appears his lot! He subdues all the pow ers of nature. He combines or separates them according to his wants, -according to his caprices. Master of the earth, he covers it at will with cities, with villages, with monuments, with trees, and with harvests. He forces all the lower animals to cultivate it for him, to serve him for use or pastime, or to disappear from his domain. Master of the sea, he floats at case over its unfathomed abysses; he places dykes to its fury, he pillages its treasures, and he makes its waves his highway of transportation from clime to clime. Master of the elements, fire, air, light, water, docile slaves of his sovereign will, are imprisoned in his laboratories and manufactories, or harnessed to his cars, which they drag, invisible couriers, swift as thought!

What grandeur and what power, in a frail being of a day, a hardly perceptible atom amid that creation, over which he acquires such empire! And yet this creature, so diminutive, so weak, has received an intelligent and reasoning soul; and, alone, among all the rest, enjoys the amazing privilege of deriving from the Fountain of life and light an intellectual radiance, in the midst of worlds whose glow is but the pale reflex of material orbs. The empire of the world has been given to him, because his spirit, greater than the world, can measure, admire, comprehend, and explain it. Nature has been subjected to him, because he can unveil the marvellous mechanism of her laws, penetrate her profoundest secrets, and wrest from her all the treasures which she holds in her bosom. Placed at such a height, man would, indeed. bo perilously tempted;-giddy and dazzled, he would forget

J. Blanco White.

the adorable Benefactor, who had made him so great, and admire and adore hin.self as the principle and the first source of his grandeur, but that Divine Goodness has been quick to secure him from this danger, by graving in his being a law of dependence, of original infirmity, of which it is impossible for pride itself to efface the celestial imprint.

And so has Nature been commissioned to render up her secrets and her treasures with a reluctant hand, one by one, at the price of harassing labors and profound meditations; to make man feel, at every movement, that if she is obliged to succumb to his desires, she yields less to his will than to his exertions; -a sure sign of his dependence. And so shall there be no progress, no conquests for man, which are not at once a signal proof of his strength and his weakness, and which do not bear the indelible impress at once of his power and his insuffi. ciency.

11. FORTITUDE AMID TRIALS.— - Anonymous.

O, NEVER from thy tempted heart
Let thine integrity depart!
When Disappointment fills thy cup,
Undaunted, nobly drink it up;
Truth will prevail, and Justice show
Her tardy honors, sure though slow.
Bear on - bear bravely on!

Bear on! Our life is not a dream,
Though often such its mazes seem;
We were not born for lives of ease,
Ourselves alone to aid and please.
To each a daily task is given,
A labor which shall fit for Heaven;
When Duty calls, let Love grow warm;
Amid the sunshine and the storm,
With Faith life's trials boldly breast,
And come a conqueror to thy rest.
Bear on bear bravely on!

12. THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE - Original Translation

From Victor Hugo's Presidential Address at the Peace Congress, 1813.

A DAY will come when you, France, — you, Russia, — you, Italy -you, England, you, Germany, all of you, Nations of the Conanent, shall, without losing your distinctive qualities and your glorious individuality, blend in a higher unity, and form a European Fraternity, even as Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace," all the French provinces, have blended into France. A day will come

*Pronounced Alsass.

when war shall seem as absurd and impossible between Paris and London, between Petersburg and Berlin, as between Rouen * and Amiens, between Boston and Philadelphia. A day will come when bullets and bombs shall be replaced by ballots, by the universal suffrages of the People, by the sacred arbitrament of a great sovereign Scnate which shall be to Europe what the Parliament is to England, what the Diet is to Germany, what the Legislative Assembly is to France. A day will come when a cannon shall be exhibited in our museums, as an instrument of torture is now, and men shall marvel that such things could be. A day will come when shall be seen those two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, in face of cach other, extending hand to hand over the ocean, exchanging their products, their commerce, their industry, their arts, their genius, clearing the earth, colonizing deserts, and ameliorating creation, under the eye of the Creator.

And, for that day to arrive, it is not necessary that four hundred years should pass: for we live in a fast time; we live in a current of events and of ideas the most impetuous that has ever swept along the Nations; and at an epoch when a year may sometimes effect the work of a century. And, to you I appeal,- French, English, Germans, Russians, Sclaves, Europeans, Americans, what have we to do to hasten the coming of that great day? Love one another! To love one another, in this immense work of pacification, is the best way of aiding God. For God wills that this sublime end should be accomplished. And, see, for the attainment of it, what, on all sides, He is doing! See what discoveries He causes to spring from the human brain, all tending to the great end of peace! What progress! What simplifications! How does Nature, more and more, suffer herself to be vanquished by man! How does matter become, more and more. the slave of intelligence and the servant of civilization! How do the causes of war vanish with the causes of suffering! How are remote Nations brought near! How is distance abridged! And how does this abridgment make men more like brothers! Thanks to railroads, Europe will soon be no larger than France was in the middle ages! Thanks to steamships, we now traverse the ocean more easily than we could the Mediterranean once! Yet a few years more, and the elec tric thread of concord shall encircle the globe, and unite the world!

When I consider all that Providence has done for us, and all that politicians have done against us, a melancholy consideration presents itselt. We learn, from the statistics of Europe, that she now spends annually, for the maintenance of her armies, the sum of five hundred millions of dollars. If, for the last thirty-two years, this enormous sum had been expended in the interests of peace, — America meanwhile aiding Europe, know you what would have happened? The face of the world would have been changed. Isthmuses would have been cut through; rivers would have been channelled; mountains † Ahmeeang.

• Prozounced Rooang.