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trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of feudal life. He lived the life of all. He was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He listened to the eager eloquence of the great orators, and sat upon the cliffs, and with the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He saw Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of falsehood. He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and met the night of death, tranquil as a star meets morning. He listened to the peripatetic philosophers, and was unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched Phidias as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.

He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Cæsar with his legions in the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs, and watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls, when from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life.

The Imagination had a stage in Shakespeare's brain, whereon were set all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and where his players bodied forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the careless shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.

Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition, and revenge; upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky, lit with the eternal stars-an intellectual ocean-towards which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive their dew and rain.

A Cottage.

EDGAR ALLEN POE.

The point of view from which I first saw the valley was not altogether, although it was nearly, the best point from which to survey the house. I will therefore describe it as I afterwards saw it-from a position on the stone wall at the southern extreme of the amphitheater.

The main building was about twenty-four feet long and sixteen broad-certainly not more. Its total height, from the ground to the apex of the roof, could not have exceeded eighteen feet. To the west end of this structure was attached one about a third smaller in all its proportions-the line of its front standing back about two yards from that of the larger house; and the line of its roof, of course, being considerably depressed below that of the roof adjoining. At right angles to these buildings, and from the rear of the main one-not exactly in the middle-extended a third compartment, very small-being, in general, one-third less than the western wing. The roofs of the two larger were very steep-sweeping down from the ridge-beam with a long con- · cave curve, and extending at least four feet beyond the walls in front, so as to form the roofs of two piazzas. These latter roofs, of course, needed no support; but as they had the air of needing it, slight and perfectly plain pillars were inserted at the corners alone. The roof of the northern wing was merely an extension of a portion of the main roof. Between the chief building and western wing arose a very tall and rather slender square chimney of hard Dutch bricks, alternately black and red-a slight cornice of projecting bricks at the top. Over the gables the roofs also projected very much. -in the main building about four feet to the east and two to the west.

The piazzas of the main building and western wing had

no floors, as is usual; but at the doors and at each window, large, flat, irregular slabs of granite lay imbedded in the delicious turf, affording comfortable footing in all weather. Excellent paths of the same material-not nicely adapted, but with the velvety sod filling frequent intervals between the stones, led hither and thither from the house, to a crystal spring about five paces off, to the road, or to one or two outhouses that lay to the north, beyond the brook, and were thoroughly concealed by a few locusts and catalpas.

PAUSE AND THE UNUSUAL.

[As a rule, an unusual statement, to be adequately comprehended, demands increased pause to give the listener sufficient time to refer the idea to his experience. Ex. (Alexander McLaren): "The dead are the living;" (Milton): "stupidly good."]

Aphorisms.

JOHN MORLEY.

Lichtenberg, a professor of physics, who was also a considerable hand at satire a hundred years ago, composed a collection of sayings, with a little wheat amid much chaff, among which were, "People who never have any time are the people who do least," and "He who has less than he desires should know that he has more than he deserves," and "Enthusiasts without capacity are the really dangerous people." This last, by the way, recalls a saying of the great French reactionary, De Bonald, and which is never quite out of date: "Follies committed by the sensible, extravagances uttered by the clever, crimes committed by the good-that is what makes revolutions."

Some have found light in the sayings of Balthasar Gracian, a Spaniard, who flourished at the end of the Seventeenth century. I do not myself find Gracian much of a companion, though some of his aphorisms give a neat turn to common

place. Thus: "To equal a predecessor one must have twice his worth." And "What is easy ought to be entered upon as though it were difficult, and what is difficult as though it

One of the most commonly known of all books of maxims, after the Proverbs of Solomon, is the Moral Reflections of La Rochefoucauld. "Interest," he says, "speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of parts, even the part of the disinterested." And again, "Gratitude is with most people only a strong desire for greater benefits to come." And this"Love of justice is with most of us nothing but the fear of suffering injustice.”

No more important name is associated with the literature of aphorisms than that of Pascal. On man, as he exists in society, he said little; and what he said does not make us hopeful. He saw the darker side. "If everybody knew what one says of them, there would not be four friends left in the world." "Would you have men think well of you, then do not speak well of yourself." "What a chimera is Man!" said Pascal. "What a confused chaos! What a subject of contradiction! A professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth; the great depository and guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty; the glory and the scandal of the universe!"

There is a smart spurious wisdom of the world which has the bitterness not of the salutary tonic, but of the mortal poison; and of this kind the master is Chamfort "If you live among men," he said, "the heart must either break or turn to brass." "The public! the public!" he cried, "how many fools does it take to make a public !" "What is celebrity? The advantage of being known to people who don't know you" We cannot be surprised to hear of the lady who said that a conversation with Chamfort in the morning made her melancholy until bedtime. Yet Chamfort is the author of

the not unwholesome saying that "the most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed." One of his maxims lets us into the secret of his misanthropy. "Whoever," he said, "is not a misanthropist at forty can never have loved mankind."

Chamfort I will leave, with his sensible distinction between pride and vanity. "A man," he says, "has advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity. The first is lofty, calm, immovable; the second is uncertain, capricious, unquiet. The one adds to a man's stature; the other puffs him out. The one is the source of a thousand virtues; the other is that of nearly all vices and all perversities. There is a kind of pride in which are included all the commandments of God; and a kind of vanity which contains the seven mortal sins."

PAUSE AND LEADING STATEMENT.

[Where a statement is followed by one or more clauses or sentences that directly bear on it, the pause after the statement should be increased sufficiently to enable the listener to so fix the thought in his mind that the support can be seen in its proper relation to it. If the parent statement is lost to the listener or is not sufficiently grasped, the supporting matter may lose its full significance. Ex. (G. F. Pierce): "The spirit of Christianity is essentially a public spirit. It ignores all selfishness. It is benevolence embodied and alive, full of plans for the benefit of the world.”]

Freedom-What Is It?

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

I call that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison with its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognizes its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat