It is better to receive the rebuke of the wise,

The wise in heart

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.

SHAKESPEARE.

THE TRULY NOBLE MAN.

HE man of noble spirit converts all occurrences into experience, between which experience and his reason there is marriage, and the issue are his actions. He moves by affection, not for affection; he loves glory, scorns shame, and governeth and obeyeth with one countenance, for it comes from one consideration. Knowing reason to be no idle gift of Nature, he is the steersman of his own destiny. Truth is his goddess, and he takes pains to get her, not to look like Unto the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs their steps in a regular motion. He is the wise man's friend, the example of the indifferent, the medicine of the vicious. Thus time goeth not from him, but with him, and he feels age more by the strength of his soul than by the weakness of his body. Thus feels he no pain, but esteems all such things as friends that desire to file off his fetters and help him out of prison.

her.

SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.

Will receive commandments.

Than for a man to hear the song of fools.

"Putting off" does no work.

Let thy word be as a bond.

KEEP OUT of Debt.

HE honourable man is frugal of his means, and pays his way honestly. He does not seek to pass himself off as richer than he is, or, by running into debt, open an account with ruin. As that man is not poor whose

means are small but whose desires are controlled, so that man is rich whose means are more than sufficient for his wants. When Socrates saw a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture of great value carried in pomp through Athens, he said, "Now do I see how many things I do not desire." "I can forgive everything but selfishness," said Perthes. "Even the narrowest circumstances admit of greatness with reference to 'mine and thine;' and none but the very poorest need fill their daily life with thoughts of money, if they have but prudence to arrange their housekeeping within the limits of their income."

A man may be indifferent to money because of higher considerations, as Faraday was, who sacrificed wealth to pursue science; but if he would have the enjoyments that money can purchase, he must honestly earn it, and not live upon the earnings of others, as those do who habitually incur debts which they have no means of paying. When Maginn,

Stand not on gentility.

"Hand-in-use" is father of wealth.

Let not your sail be bigger than your boat.

Learn to be wise,

always drowned in debt, was asked what he paid for
his wine, he replied that he did not know, but he
believed they "put something down in a book."
This "putting-down in a book" has proved the ruin
of a great many weak-minded people, who cannot
resist the temptation of taking things upon credit
which they have not the present means of paying for;
and it would probably prove of great social benefit if
the law which enables creditors to recover debts con-
tracted under certain circumstances were altogether
abolished. But, in the competition for trade, every
encouragement is given to the incurring of debt, the
creditor relying upon the law to aid him in the last
extremity. When Sydney Smith once went into a
new neighbourhood, it was given out in the local
papers that he was a man of high connections, and
he was besought on all sides for his "custom." But
he speedily undeceived his new neighbours. "We
are not great people at all," he said; "we are only
common honest people—people that pay our debts."

Hazlitt, who was a thoroughly honest though
rather thriftless man, speaks of two classes of persons,
not unlike each other-those who cannot keep their
own money in their hands, and those who cannot
keep their hands from other people's. The former
are always in want of money, for they throw it away
on any object that first presents itself, as if to get rid
of it; the latter make away with what they have of

And practise how to thrive.

"Haste" is always in the rear.

Make use of what you read.

Read to understand.

their own, and are perpetual borrowers from all who
will lend to them; and their genius for borrowing, in
the long run, usually proves their ruin.

SAMUEL SMILES.

ADVANTAGES OF READING.

F I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading. I speak of it, of course, only as a worldly advantage, and not in the slightest degree as superseding or derogating from the higher office, and surer and stronger panoply, of religious principles; but as a taste, an instrument, and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless indeed you put into his hands a perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history-with the wisest, the wittiest, with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters

Good books nourish the soul.

Do not read too much at a time.

He that walketh with wise men shall be wise.

History maketh men

You make him a

that have adorned humanity.
denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages.
The world has been created for him. It is hardly
possible but that the character should take a higher
and better tone from the constant habit of asso-

ciating in thought with a class of thinkers, to say
the least of it, above the average of humanity. It
is morally impossible but that the manners should
take a tinge of good-breeding and civilisation from
having constantly before one's eyes the way in which
the best-bred and the best-informed men have talked
and conducted themselves in their intercourse with
each other. There is a gentle but perfectly irresist-
ible coercion in a habit of reading, well directed, over
the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct,
which is not the less effectual because it works in-
sensibly, and because it is really the last thing he
dreams of. It cannot, in short, be better summed up
than in the words of the Latin poet :-

"Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.”

It civilises the conduct of men, and suffers them not
to remain barbarous.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.

Contemporary with all ages.

A wise king is the upholding of his people.