are.

ALL IN EACH.

Inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into peace. As I am, so I see. Use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, Newton, Bonaparte, are the mind's ministers. Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the newcomer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture. The partial action in each strong mind in one direction is a telescope for the objects on which it is pointed. But every other part of knowledge is to be pushed to the same extravagance, ere the soul obtains her due sphericity. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations and many characters, many ups and downs of fate and meantime it is only puss with her tail. How long before our masquerade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and performance? A subject and an object-it takes so much to make the galvanic circuit complete; but magnitude adds nothing. What imports it whether it is Kepler and the sphere; Columbus and America; a reader and his book; or puss with her tail?-Essay on Experience.

RECOGNIZING REAL WORTH.

In society high advantages are set down to the possessor as disadvantages. It requires the more weariness in our private estimates. I do not forgive in friends the failure to know a fine character, and to entertain it with thankful hospitality. When at last that which we have always longed for is arrived, and shines on us with glad rays out of that far celestial land, then to be coarse, then to be critical, and treat such a visitant with the jabber and suspicion of the

streets, argues a vulgarity that seems to shut the doors of heaven. This is confusion, this the right insanity, when the soul no longer knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, are due. Is there any religion but this to know that wherever in the wide desert of being the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into a flower, it blooms for me? If none sees it, I see it; I am aware-if I alone-of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep sabbath or holy time, and suspend my gloom and my folly and jokes. There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable. But when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, allaspiring, which has vowed to itself that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our houses, only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it. -Essay on Character.

RECEIVING AND GIVING.

He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift; and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence I think is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, corresponding to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at a level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, and all mine his. Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. The expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning from one who has had the ill luck to be served by you.

It is

a very onerous business this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so admire in the Buddhist, who never thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your benefactors."-Essay on Gifts.

CELTS, GERMANS, NORSEMEN, AND NORMANS.

The sources from which tradition derives the English stock are three. First, the Celts or Sidonians, of whose beginning there is no memory, and their end is likely to be still more remote in the future, for they have endurance. They planted Britain, and gave to the seas and mountains names which are poems, and imitate the pure voices of Nature. They had no violent feudal tenure, but the husbandman owned the land. They had an alphabet, astronomy, priestly culture, and a sublime ritual. They made the best popular literature of the Middle Ages, in the songs of Merlin and the tender and delicious mythology of Arthur. But the English come mainly from the Germans, whom the Romans found it hard to conquer-say impossible to conquer, when one remembers the long sequel; a people about whom, in the old empire, the rumor ran, "There was never any that meddled with them that repented it not." The Norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. But they have a singular turn for homicide. Their chief end of man is to murder or be murdered. Oars, scythes, harpoons, crowbars, peat-knives, hay-forks are valued by them more for their charming aptitude for assassination. Never was poor gentleman so surfeited with life, so furious to get rid of it, as the Norseman. It was a proverb of ill condition to die the death of old age. The Normans came out of France into England worse men than they went into it one hundred and sixty years before. They had lost their own language, and learned the Romance, or barbarous Latin of the Gauls, and had acquired with the language all the vices it had names for. The Conquest has obtained in the chronicles the name of the "memory of sorrow." Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the

House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates. They were all alike. They took everything they could carry; they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until everything English was brought to the verge of ruin. Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits by assuming for types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally resembled.-English Traits.

ENGLISH DOMESTICITY.

Born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him indoors whenever he is at rest, and being of an affectionate and loyal temper, the Englishman dearly loves his home. If he is rich, he buys a demesne and builds a hall; if he is in middle condition he spares no expense on his house. An English family consists of a very few persons, who from youth to age are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some tie tense as that cartilage which we have seen uniting the two Siamese. England produces, under favorable conditions of ease and culture, the finest women in the world. And as the men are affectionate and truehearted, the women inspire and refine them. Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing more firm and based in nature and sentiment than the courtship and mutual character of the sexes.-English Traits.

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.

The English Church has many certificates to show of humble, effective service in humanizing the people, in cheering and refining men, feeding, healing, and educating. It has the seal of martyrs and confessors; the noblest Book; a sublime architecture; a ritual marked by the same secular merits-nothing cheap or purchasable. From the slow-grown Church important reactions proceed; much for culture, much for giving a direction to the nation's affection and will to-day. The

carved and pictured chapel-its entire surface animated with image and emblem-made the parish church a sort of book and Bible to the people's eyes. Then when the Saxon instinct had secured a service in the vernacular tongue it was the tutor and university of the people. The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization; for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved. Here in England every day a chapter of Genesis and a leader in The Times. This is a binding of the old and the new to some purpose.— English Traits.

UPON GREAT MEN.

The search after great men is the dream of youth, and the occupation of manhood. We travel into foreign parts to find their works-if possible, to get a glimpse of them. . . . I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and with difficulty. He has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; while they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error. But the great man must be related to us. I cannot tell what I would know; but I have observed that there are persons who, in their character and actions, answer questions which I have not skill to put. One man answers some questions which none of his contemporaries put, and is isolated.-Representative Men.

PLATO.

Among books, Plato is entitled to Omar's fanatical compliment to the Koran, when he said, "Burn the libraries; for their value is in this book." These sentences contain the culture of nations; these are cornerstones of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures. A disciple in logic, arithmetic, ontology, morals or practical wisdom. There never was such range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all these drift-boulders were detached. For it is fair to credit the broad