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I am convinced that the consciousness of merit makes a man of sense more modest, though more firm. A man who displays his own merit is a coxcomb, and a man who does not know it is a fool.

Merit.

Consciousness of Merit.

A man of sense knows it, exerts it, avails himself of it, but never boasts of it, and always seems rather to under than over value it, though, in truth, he sets the right value upon it. A man who is really diffident, timid and bashful, be his merit what it will, never can push himself in the world; his despondency throws him into inaction, and the forward, the bustling and the petulant will always get the better of him. The manner makes the whole difference. What would be impudence in one manner is only a proper and decent assurance in another. A man of sense and knowledge of the world will assert his own rights and pursue his own objects as steadily and intrepidly as the most impudent man living, and commonly more so; but then he has art enough to give an outward air of modesty to all he does. This engages and prevails, whilst the very same things shock and fail from the overbearing or impudent manner only of doing them. I repeat my maxim, Suaviter in modo, sed fortiter in re.

Hurry.

A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry, because he knows that whatever he does in a hurry he must necessarily do very ill. He may be in haste to despatch an affair, but he will take care not to let that haste hinder his doing it well. Little minds are in a hurry when the object proves, as it commonly does, too big for them; they run, they hare, they puzzle, confound and perplex themselves; they want to do everything at once, and never do it at all. But a man of sense takes the time necessary for doing the thing he is about well, and his haste to despatch a business only appears by the continuity of his application to it; he pursues it with a cool steadiness and finishes it before be begins any other.

DAWSON.

[Much of the life of the compiler has been spent in the country, amongst the trees and silent streams, believing, as he ever has, that there we

"Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

The

Author a Confessed

Angler.

The following article from the pen of a brother angler appeals to him so strongly that he cannot refrain from reproducing it. Then, again, the book "The Pleasures of Angling" is on his "favorite book-shelf," and it is a fit and loving companion for all the wealth of wit and wisdom found in the pages of those here associated with it. No lover of angling will fail to read with enthusiasm the following description of a fight with a royal trout]:

Royal Sport.

During a short afternoon I landed from a deep pool in Cold Brook fifty splendid trout, and fished three hours for one. It was on this wise: For an hour or more before sunset a trout which I estimated to weigh more than three pounds kept the water in constant agitation and myself in a fever of excitement. I cast for him a hundred times at least. With almost every cast he would rise, but would not strike. He would come up with a rush, leap his full length out of the water, shake his broad tail at me, as if in derision, and retire to repeat his aggravating exploits as often as the fly struck the water. Other trout rose, almost his equal in dimensions, and were taken, but their capture soon ceased to afford me the slightest pleasure. The sun was rapidly declining. We had eight miles to row, and prudence dictated a speedy departure. But I was bound to land that trout "if it took all summer." I tried almost every fly in my book

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in vain; I simply witnessed the same provoking gyrations at every cast. If, however, I threw him a grasshopper disconnected from my line, he would take it with a gulp; but the moment I affixed one to the hook and cast it ever so gently, up he came and down he went unhooked, with the grasshopper intact. I was puzzled, and as a last resort I sat quietly down hopeless of achieving success so long as light enough remained for the wary fellow to detect the shadow of rod or line. The sun soon set. Twilight gently began its work of obscuration, and in due time just the shadow I desired fell upon the surface of the pool. I then disrobed my leader of its quartette of flies, put on a large miller, and with as much caution as if commissioned to surprise a rebel camp, and with like trepidation, I chose my position. Then, with a twist of the wrist, which experts will comprehend, I dropped my fly as gently as a zephyr just where the monster had made his last tantalizing leap, when, with the ferocity of a mad bull and with a quick dash which fairly startled me in the dim twilight, he rose to my miller, and with another twist of the wrist, as quick and as sudden as his rise, I struck him! I have been present in crowds when grand victories have been suddenly announced, and when my blood has rushed like electric currents through my veins as I joined in the spontaneous shout of the multitude, but I have passed through no moment of more intense exhilaration than when I knew, by the graceful curve of my rod and by the steady tension of my trusty line, that I was master of the situation. He pulled like a Canastoga stallion, and "gave me all I knew" to hold him within the restricted circle of the deep pool, whose edges were lined with roots and stumps and things equivalent. It was half an hour's stirring contest, and the hooting of the owl in the midst of the darkness which enveloped us was the trout's requiem. When I landed him and had him fairly in quad, will it be deemed silly for me to say that I made the old woods ring with such a shout as one can only give when conscious of having achieved a great victory?

Royal Sport.

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DICKENS.

Difficult

Than the Dirge.

Why is it that we can better bear to part in spirit than in body, and while we have the fortitude to act farewell, have not the nerve to say it? On the eve of long voyOn the eve of long voy- The Adieu More ages or the absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will separate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and that the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties? We do not shun our dying friends; the not having distinctly taken leave of one among them, whom we left in all kindness and affection, will often embitter the whole remainder of a life.

Love of

Home in the

Poor.

And let me linger in this place, for an instant, to remark that if ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those that link the poor man to his humble hearth are of truer metal and bear the stamp of heaven. The man of high descent may love the halls and lands of his inheritance as a part of himself; as trophies of his birth and power; his associations with them are associations of pride and wealth and triumph; the poor man's attachment to the tenements he holds, which strangers have held before, and may tomorrow occupy again, has a worthier root, struck deeper into a purer soil. His household gods are flesh and blood, with no alloy of silver, gold or precious stone; he has no property but in the affections of his own heart; and when they endear bare floors and walls, despite of rags and toil and scanty fare, that man has

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his love of home from God, and his rude hut becomes a solemn place.

Oh, if those who rule the destinies of nations would but remember this-if they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to have engendered in their hearts, that love of home from which all domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses where social decency is lost, or, rather, never found, if they would but turn aside from the wide thoroughfares and great houses, and strive to improve the wretched dwellings in by-ways where only Poverty may walk, many low roofs would point more truly to the sky than the loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from the midst of guilt and crime and horrible disease to mock them by its contrast! In hollow voices from Workhouse, Hospital and Jail, this truth is preached from day to day, and had been proclaimed for years. It is no light matter, no outcry from the working vulgar, no question of the people's health and comforts that may be whistled down on Wednesday nights. In love of home, the love of country has its rise; and who are the truer patriots or the better in time of need-those who venerate the land, owing to its wood, and stream, and earth, and all that they produce, or those who love their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide domain?

A Rookery.

It was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the cawing of the rooks who had built their nests among the branches of some tall old trees, and were calling to one another high up in the air. First, one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung and dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance, as it would seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to himself. Another answered, and he called again, but louder than before; then another spoke, and then another; and each time the first, aggravated by contradiction, insisted on his case more strongly. Other voices, silent till now, struck in from boughs lower down