for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto, the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality. JOHN RUSKIN.

men and women merely play

They have their exits, and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the in-
fant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then, the whining school-boy, with his
satchel,

To truth aud love and meekness; they who And shining morning face, creeping like snail

own

This gift, by the all-gracious Giver sent,

Ever by quiet step and smile are known; By kind eyes that have wept, hearts that have sorrowed,

By patience never tired, from their own trials borrowed.

An excellent thing it is, when first in gladness,

A mother looks into her infant's eyes, Smiles to its smiles, and saddens to its sad

ness

Pales at its paleness, sorrows at its cries; Its food and sleep, and smiles and little joys,

All these come ever blent with one low, gentle

voice.

An excellent thing it is when life is leaving, Leaving with gloom and gladness, joys and cares;

The strong heart failing, and the high soul grieving,

Unwillingly to school: and then, the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eye-brow: Then, a sold-
ier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded llke the
pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth; And then, the
justice;

In fair round belly, with good capon lin❜d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,

And so he plays his part: The sixth age

shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon;
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly
voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes With strangest thoughts, and with unwont- And whistles in his sound: Last scene of all,

ed fears;

Then, then a woman's low, soft sympathy Comes like an angel's voice, to teach us how to die.

That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every-
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.

thing.

WORK.

(From "Past and Present.")

"HERE is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works. Work, never so mammonish, mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations which are truth.

The latest Gospel in this world is, "to know thy work and do it!" "Know thyself;" long enough has that poor "self" of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to "know" it, I believe. Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual; know what thou canst work at; and work at it like a Hercules! That will be the better plan.

Religion, I said; for, properly speaking, all true work is Religion; and whatsoever Religion is not Work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it will; with me it shall have no harbor. Admirable was that of the old monks: Laborare est orare: "Work is Worship."

Older than all preached Gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicabie, forever enduring gospel: Work, and therein have well-being! Man, Son of Earth and Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a Spirit of active Method, a Force for Work; and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest until thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent Facts around thee? What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable; obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest Disorder, there is thy eternal enemy; attack him swiftly, subdue him; make Order of him, the subject, not of Chaos, but of Intelligence, Divinity, and thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out, that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered.

There is no rest! the feet of Pain
Are shod with motion-Pleasure's eyes
Pale faster than the sun-kissed rain,
Swung arching in the mid May skies.

There is no rest! Religion shakes

Her stainless robes, and skyward lifts

Her tremulous white palms, and takes
Faith's priceless and eternal gifts.
There is no rest! the long gray caves
Of death are rife with force and heat,
Nor Fancy pauses till she paves
The floors of Heaven with flying feet.
J. N. MATTHEWS.

PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY.

HE virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which earrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflietions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and dis tastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needleworks and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground: judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly, virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant where they are incensed, or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

better the "Well done!" at the last than the Better a death when work is done than earth's air with shouting rent. most favored birth;

Better to have a quiet grief than a hurrying Better a child in God's great house than the

N him that appears to pass through things temporal with no other care than not to lose finally the things eternal, I look with such veneration as inclines me to approve his conduct in the whole, without a minute examination of its parts; yet I could never forbear to wish, that while Vice is every day multiplying seducements, and stalking orth with more hardened effrontery, Virtue would not withdraw the influence of her presnce, or forbear to assert her natural dignity by open and undaunted perseverance in the right. Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance o the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and he actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and, however free from aints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence.

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

THERE'S A SILVER LINING TO If their bosoms were opened, perchance we