Struggle preferable ence. free condition put into circumscription and confine for the sea's worth." He has been decided a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat, observed Thoreau, would gnaw his third leg off to be free. The human race, its whole history proves, prefers struggle to dependence, as horses to depend prefer the wild plain to the stall. There is a remarkable bird called the Quetzal a native of Guatemala - a curious creature — resembling a parrot, and is so constituted that if but one of its feathers is plucked it instantly dies. If an attempt is made to cage this strange feathered visitant, it deliberately attempts suicide by pulling out its own feathers, preferring death to captivity. One of these birds was shown at the New Orleans Exhibition in the winter of 1884-5. Fénelon wrote, in a letter to one of his friends, "It is only upon a very small number of true friends that I count, and I do it not from motives of interest, but from pure esteem; not from a desire to derive any advantage from them, but to do them justice in not distrusting their affection. I would like to oblige the whole human race, especially virtuous people; but there is scarcely anybody to whom I would like to be under obligation. Is it through Fencion to one of his friends. haughtiness and pride that I think thus? Nothing could be more foolish and more unbecoming; but I have learned to know men as I have grown old, and believe that it is the best way to do without them, without pretending to superior wisdom." Pope Clement the Sixth offered to Petrarch not only the office of Apostolic Secretary, but many considerable bishoprics. Petrarch constantly refused them. "You will not accept of anything I offer you!" said the Holy Father: "Ask of me what you please." Two months afterwards Petrarch Petrarch. wrote to one of his friends: "Every degree of elevation creates new suspicions in my mind, because I perceive the misfortunes that attend them. Would they but grant me that happy mediocrity so preferable to Preferred gold, and which they have promised me, I to gold. should accept the gift with gratitude and cordiality; but if they only intend to invest me with some important employment, I should refuse it. I will shake off the yoke; for I had much rather live poor than become a slave." mediocruy "Uncle," said Walter Gay to Captain THE Hope Cuttle, gayly, laying his hand upon the old man's shoulder, "what shall I send you No word for it. Hieroglyphs. home from Barbados?" "Hope, my dear Wally. Hope . . . Send me as much of that as you can.” How short would life be if hope did not prolong it, is an Arabic maxim. Alas, in the Tamil language (it is said) there is no word for it. "Hast thou hope?" they asked of John Knox when dying. He said nothing, but raised his finger and pointed upwards. Lamartine, in Raphael, says of one of his characters: "There was but one thing grieved me as I looked at him - it was, to see him advancing towards death without believing in immortality. The natural sciences that he had so deeply studied had accustomed his mind to trust exclusively to the evidence of his senses. Nothing existed for him that was not palpable; what could not be calculated contained no element of certitude in his eyes; matter and figures composed his universe; numbers were his god; the phenomena of nature were his revelations; nature being his Bible and his gospel; his virtue was instinct - not seeing that numbers, phenomena, nature, and virtue are but hieroglyphs inscribed on the veil of the temple, whose unanimous meaning is Deity. Sublime but stubborn minds, who wonderfully ascend the steps of science, one by one, but will never road. pass the last, which leads to God." It is now a good many years since I found myself walking on a solitary country road on a solitary with a scientist of considerable distinction. country It was, I think, late in December. The mercury was many degrees below freezing. It was with the utmost difficulty that we escaped suffering by rapid walking. A deep snow covered everything. The road, even, was white like the fields, and the crushed crystals under our feet gave the accustomed resentful complaint. The cloudless expanse of heaven seemed colder than the earth beneath a very firmament of pellucid ice. Some winter birds, we observed, had bunched themselves on twigs, and were as motionless and still as if they had grown there. The only creature on the wing was a lustrous great crow, which flew uncertainly, as if lost or bewildered. Its plumage had a supernatural icy glitter. No sound was distinctly audible but of our own voices, and of the snow under our feet, except the pitiful wail of an infant, as it came to us appealingly over the frozen fields. Arctic as could be was everything Arctic was -above, below, on every side - and the scene infixed itself ineffaceably in my mem everything. The dead season in its shroud. This but a beginning. ory. The conversation had become grave, and the tendency to despairing views was momentarily increasing. The dead season was in its shroud. The bitter experiences and pitiful limitations of life were remarked upon, and the infinite discouragements to effort. The little that we achieved seemed the least that was possible. The inevitable difficulties of the human lot were so discouraging and obstructive, if not overwhelming. So much of the little that we know is acquired only by suffering and blundering. Our passions so often commit us to a blind undertaking of the impossible. In certain moods, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that we should view it all as an inexplicable enigma, and ourselves as an insignificant part of it. The hope of a better condition seemed to me the only inspiration to carry us through this. In the logic of things, to say nothing of Scripture, there must be something better. It is not natural to die in infancy; and what could be much more immature than the wisest human being? This must be but a beginning. It must be that here we only begin to be what we are to be. Would a wise man, as we understand wisdom, arrange a vast scheme of difficulty |