finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him; this the piece of true knowledge or sight which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever; engrave it on a rock, if he could, saying, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate and drank and slept and loved and hated, like another; my life was as the vapor and is not. But this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." That is his writing;" it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of truc inspiration is in him, his inscription or scripture. That is a "Book.”

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There seems to you and me no reason why the electric forces of the earth should not carry whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain-top, so that kings and people might know that all the gold they could get was there; and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, nobody knows where; you may dig long and find none; you must dig painfully to find any.

And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. When you come to a good book you must ask yourself, "Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper? "And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. Your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to

get at any good author's meaning without those tools and that fire. And therefore, first of all, I tell you, carnestly and authoritatively—I know I am right in this-you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable, nay, letter by letter. You might read all the books in the British Museum if you could live long enough, and remain an utterly uneducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, that is to say with real accuracy, you are forever more in some measure an educated person. The entire difference between education and noneducation, as regards the merely intellectual part of it, consists in this accuracy. A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages-may not be able to speak any but his own-may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly. But an uneducated person may know by memory any number of languages, and talk them all, and yet truly not know a word of any— not a word even of his own. An ordinarily and clever seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most ports; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for an illiterate person; so also the accent or turn of expression of a single sentence will at once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted by educated persons, that a false accent or mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing forever. And this is right; but it is a pity that the accuracy insisted on is not greater, and required to a serious purpose. It is right that a false Latin quantity should excite a smile in the House of Commons, but it is wrong that a false English meaning should not excite a frown there. Let the

accent of words be watched, by all means, but let their meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer will do. the work.

Nearly every word in our language has been first a word in some other language-Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek. Many words have been all these, that is to say have been Greek first, Latin next, French or German next, and English last; undergoing a certain change of sense and use on the lips of each nation; but retaining a deep, vital meaning which all good scholars feel in employing them even at this day. If you do not know your Greek alphabet, learn it; young or old, boy or girl, whoever you may be, if you think of reading seriously, learn your Greek alphabet; then get good dictionaries of all these languages, and whenever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. It is severe work, but you will find it, even at first, interesting and at last endlessly amusing; while the general gain to your character in power and precision will be quite incalculable.-Sesame and Lillies.

What matters it? the ship does not stop. The wind is blowing; that dark ship must keep on her destined course. She passes away.

The man disappears, then reappears; he plunges and rises. again to the surface; he calls, he stretches out his hands. They hear him not; the ship, staggering under the gale, is straining every rope; the sailors and passengers see the drowning man no longer; his miserable head is but a point in the vastness of the billows.

He hurls cries of despair into the depths. What a spectre

is that disappearing sail! He looks upon it; he looks upon it with frenzy. It moves away; it grows dim; it diminishes. He was there but just now; he was one of the crew; he went and came upon the deck with the rest; he had his share of the air and of the sunlight; he was a living man. Now, what has become of him? He slipped, he fell; and it is finished.

He is in the monstrous deep. He has nothing under his feet but the yielding, fleeing element. The waves, torn and scattered by the wind, close round him hideously; the rolling of the abyss bears him along; shreds of water are flying about his head; a populace of waves spit upon him; confused openings half swallow him; when he sinks he catches glimpses of yawning precipices full of darkness; fearful unknown vegetations seize upon him, bind his feet, and draw him to themselves; he feels that he is becoming the great deep; he makes part of the foam; the billows toss him from one to the other; he tastes the bitterness; the greedy ocean is eager to devour him; the monster plays with his agony. It seems as if all this were liquid hate. But yet he struggles.

He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he struggles; he swims. He-that poor strength that fails so soon-he combats the unfailing. ·

Where now is the ship? Far away yonder. Hardly visible in the pallid gloom of the horizon.

The wind blows in gusts; the billows overwhelm him. He raises his eyes, but sees only the livid clouds. He, in his dying agony, makes part of this immense insanity of the sea. He is tortured to his death by its immeasurable madness. He hears sounds which are strange to man, sounds which seem to come not from carth, but from some frightful realm beyond.