It is a great thing to live in such a period as this; in some respects it is a great privilege; in other respects it involves great peril. For, as might be expected, at such a crisis there is a strange conjunction of the mind's elements, both claim good and evil. It needs a wise judgment to discriminate between the two; for the counterfeit, coined like silver, and stamped like the genuine, would seem to be more valuable than the genuine, which is abused and bent in its passage from hand to hand, receiving an appearance hardly indicating its value. The glittering falsehood and the homely truth lie together on every side. We see a singular mingling of influences-muddy rivulets empty themselves into the clear river of truth, and of affinity with its waters; phosphorescent meteors glisten among the eternal stars; mock suns gleam fitfully out, lighting all the horizon with a wild, fictitious, glaring light; spurious revelations throw discredit upon the real doctrine of inspiration; men call themselves after the name of Christ, falsifying His spirit and doctrine, while others, professing to be the real Christ, deny His name.

These are strange times, full of peril, full of hope. In one quarter there is a blue sky and glorious sunlight, in another quarter there is a black-draped cloud, crossed and cut with red and jagged fires, and hoarse with thunders. It is such a time as this in which you should be able to combine strong individual forces with a clear individual discernment. You should never rush heedlessly into the strife, neither should you turn aside from the contest of the cause. You should learn to judge between good and evil, and then be ready to strike manfully for the right. It is indispensable that you should put yourself into a wholesome and thorough discipline in youth. You need, in the first place, to cultivate your intellectual faculties with the greatest care. It is getting to be of comparatively little importance, in all our departments of business, how a young man commences life, if he will only cultivate his faculties.

The secret of success lies in improving to the best advantage such opportunities as lie around us. It is not by changing their positions that men acquire influence. The good workman on the bench, who determines first that the article which he manufactures shall be as perfect as he can make it, and then, after the toil of the day is over goes to work with another set of tools, beginning to inform himself, cultivating his mind, his moral faculties, in the end will become more influential than the soporific person in the pulpit, or the flaunting advocate at the bar.

THE SAME.

The time has been when general mental culture would have been impossible and useless, but by the grace of God it is so no

RESPONSIBILITIES OF YOUNG MEN.

23

longer. Go into the City Councils, the legislatures, the scientific conventions; read over the laws, the sayings of popu.ar poets and journalists, all who give tone to popular opinion and control society. Are they generally such as were born in wealth, born in institutions of honor, and bred in universities? Some inherit distinction, but the great majority of society is composed of men who have struggled against obstructions, and forced their way upward by their own strength.

But, it is not merely the cultivation of mental powers with a view to high position which is necessary. The young man who cultivates his mental and moral powers thereby elevates himself to a higher circle in society.

The world is bound to find out what there is in such a man; what he is capable of doing. Consequently, the young man should develop himself not for the sake of securing honor or titles, being elected to office, or filling high positions, but from simple regard to what is due to his own nature.

He who utters his own thoughts is the one who now awakens the echo. The opinions of most men are at the best only echoes. What we need in this generation is that each voice should have its own signification. One of the great evils of American society is popular opinion, manufactured out of very strange materials, which cannot be resisted without the risk of a social martyrdom. We want men who feel that they are strong enough and intelligent enough to sit in judgment upon popular opinion, and if an idol be erected in the land, even though it should be seventy cubits in height, and gilded from tip to toe, and labelled with the most sacred name, they should have the courage to declare it an idol, and have the manfulness to stand by the declaration midst the sound of the dulcimer and many-toned instruments calling upon the people to bow down and worship it. We want men who will tell the proud Nebuchadnezzar that he is only fit to eat grass with the oxen; we want men who can dare to walk quietly into the lion's den of popular wrath, rather than be disloyal to God and the truth.

Young men are wanted to face the fiery furnace seven times heated, confident that the Son of God walks with them also in the flames to shield them from harm. Young men are wanted who would bear to be poor rather than violate their conscientious convictions; who would rather be called liars than endure the defamation of their confessions of truth; who would be defamed for a time rather than lose their hold upon the generations that are coming. And such men must commence their training early; bear the yoke through their entire youth, kept under any earnest and truthful discipline, and learn to say with the divine Galilean to the wondering spectators: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

"The Engine Song," by an anonymous author, is less a lyric than an apostrophe in rhyme. It is, as a descriptive, very fine-each line expressive of some distinct quality or feature of the engine. It will require the "art" of the master for its fullest effect. As a study in expression, and as suggestive of the appropriate action, it is a most profitable lesson.

With a clamor, and a clank, and a clang!
With clatter, and clamor, a clank, and a clang!
With veins full of fire, and the artery steam,

Roused to the pulse of a feverish dream;
With a gray plume trailing, fleecy and pale,
Like mist-boats sailing to sea with the gale;
With the ring and the rattle of lever and wheel,
And the blow and the battle of track and of steel;
With the tremulous spring, like the launch of a wing
From the condor's cliff, where the wild vines cling,
An eagle of iron, with sinews of steel,
And blow of a pinion like avalanche peal;
With talons of flame and a blaze in the blood,
I tunnel the mountain and compass the flood;
I startle the morning and shiver the noon;
And splinter the cold, pale rays of the moon;
From pine and from granite to orange and palm,
From storm of sleet fury to zephyrs of balm;
From Alleghan summit to Michigan wave,
From the life of the East to the pioneer's grave,
Dragging a train,

As a flying prisoner drags his chain;
Climbing the grade,

Panting and sullen, but undismayed.

Then away to the prairie, with antelope speed,
Belting the forest and skimming the mead,
Awaking the boar from its underground lair,

And startling the deer to a leap in the air;

Breaking the Indian's solitude rest,

Pushing the buffalo far to the west;

Skirting the current with spur and with thong,

Where the drain of the continent thunders along,

Mixing and mingling the races of men,

Bearing the Now in advance of the Then!

Then ceasing the rattle of lever and wheel,
And parting the battle of track and of steel,
And ending, at last, the roll and the race,
And checking the flight into gradual pace-
With clatter, and clamor, a clank, and a clang;
With a clamor, and a clank, and a clang;
With a clank and a clang;

With a clang!

"The Bells," by Edgar A. Poe, is, doubtless, one of the most perfect specimens of poetic art in the English language. Its versification is intricate; yet, so eloquently harmonious are the lines, so delicately adjusted are the very syllables, and so full of the music of utterance, that it may be pronounced a remarkable example of word music.

The rhythmic iterations, while adding to the delicious harmony of the lines, may betray the speaker into sing-song-which is to be avoided. Articulate each syllable distinctly; practise assiduously the lines :

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells,
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells !

:

Be, also, careful to give to each syllable its due quantity, else the measure's flow will be marred. Thus, the refrain

Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells

imitates the motion or pulses of the bell in the steeple. If these words are repeated in haste, and without the half explosive force of the hammer's stroke on the resonant metal, all the significance of the composition is lost.

Each stanza, it will be observed, embodies a different sentiment or feeling. The student must, therefore, be particular to adapt his manner and tone to that sentiment.

Public readers rarely attempt this poem, for the good reason that few possess the voice requisite to meet all the demands upon it. The tone must be round, full, resonant; then persuasive and glad; then again strong and stormy as the raging of fire and the tumult of frenzy; then solemn, serious, and sad, as if a great sorrow were at hand. Few voices can master all these modulations or moods.

THE BELLS.-Edgar A. Poe.

I.

Hear the sledges with the bells—(6)
Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, (2)
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II.

Hear the mellow wedding bells, (2)
Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night

How they ring out their delight!