L THE FORSAKEN CHILD. IE down in that low quiet bed, weary, crew of Thou weary care-worn child of clay, The earth's cold pillow props thy head, Thine eyes have closed on busy day; No sounds thy deafened ear can reach, No dreams thy aching brain perplex, Nor scornful eye, nor taunting speech, Thy meek and wounded spirit vex. A heavy doom was thine to bear, Oh! close the turf above her head, And hide her from the world's cold eyes, They shall not now profane the dead, Nor see how calm and still she lies. Come let us steal away, and bid SONNET. BY R. F. HOUSEMAN. H! there is music in my heart to-night, Sweeter than lapsing river-waters, when Before my eyes-how beautiful! and now, Erewhile I plucked from youth's full-foliaged tree Hope's perishing buds, and love's delicious bloom! Wherefore thus brought, in wakeful fantasy, To mock the spirit's loneliness?-Ah me, What spell had triumphed o'er the envious tomb? THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE. BY THE REV. W. H. FURNESS, D.D. A LTHOUGH no moral worth can justly be attributed to the man who is honest, industrious, and temperate, merely for the sake of the honor and thrift to which these qualities conduce, yet modes of thinking prevail, which cause the intrinsic value of these virtues to be overlooked, and lead men to account them solely or chiefly valuable as means, means to the attainment of some one of the authorized objects of pursuit, ease, wealth, or place. Unquestionably they are the best qualifications for success in life. Still it greatly derogates from their essential worth, to regard them only as means to something better; as if anything the world has to give could be better than virtue itself. It is at once the most solid wealth, and the highest dignity. It is to be estimated, not only, nor principally as a means of worldly well-being, but as an end, as life's noblest end.. And he has the true way of thinking, who, instead of being industrious and temperate that he may be rich, is ambitious of being rich that he may have a larger sphere of activity, and a better opportunity of self-control. As it is important that men should know that personal virtue is the great means of happiness, so is it certainly not less important that we should see, far more clearly than we commonly do, that happiness, or rather the possession of those things in which happiness is generally considered to consist, should be a means of virtue, of personal improvement, and should be sought on this account, and for the sake of this good end. As it is in the moral concerns of life, so is it in relation to intellectual pursuits, the acquisition of knowledge. In order to demonstrate the value of knowledge, it might seem to most persons to be enough simply to enumerate its practical benefits, to show its utility, how it contributes to the daily purposes of life, and confers power, power over inanimate nature, power over men, putting the sceptre of the physical universe in our grasp, and pouring its treasures at our feet. But even were we able to specify all the uses of knowledge, the half would not be told. After all, there would remain for the love and pursuit of knowledge, a reason above all these reasons; namely, in knowledge itself. When Henry More, the old platonizing divine, was asked why he studied so hard, he replied, "That I may know." When he was asked again, why he wanted to know, again he made answer, "That I "That I may know." Apparently he gave no reason for his intellectual toil; but, in fact, he gave the very best reason. For there is an absolute worth in knowledge which cannot be computed. It is the natural and necessary food of the mind, the nutriment of our intellectual being. It is in us an ineradicable instinct, to crave knowledge as we crave daily bread. A striking analogy presents itself here between the body and the mind. As the former desires food, so does the mind hunger to know. And this intellectual appetite is felt before we can possibly have any experience of the benefits of knowledge. This simple fact, by the way, that we desire knowledge before we have the least idea of its advantages, claims particular attention; because it furnishes a decisive argument against that false philosophy, which has unhappily become the practical, unwritten philosophy of the present day, and which maintains that selfish calculation is the grand spring and wheel of all human activity, that, in all that a man does, whether it be good or evil, he has always an eye to his own pleasure or profit, and that the purest virtue is only a disguised self-seeking. Against this doctrine, so painfully repugnant to every generous sentiment, Nature herself does most emphatically testify. Here is the natural desire of knowledge, for instance, one of the primal facts in the constitution of man. It is the instinctive yearning of the mind towards something out of itself. It is obviously originated by no calculations of self-interest. For it springs up within us antecedently to any perception on our part of the uses of knowledge. Even the common bodily appetite for food is not, in the first instance, nor ever, while the body is in health, the offspring of calculation. The infant, when it first hungers for nourishment, does not know whether the food it craves will nourish or destroy. Nor can you excite hunger in a sick man by discoursing ever so eloquently upon "the ordinance and institution of eating." But, without discussing the point any further, we recommend to such of our readers as may wish to know the truth in regard to |