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THE NEAREST SOCIETY PRECIOUS.

ever had been in old times, a power which nothing could withstand. Oakfield.

If a man will let matters take their chance, he may live smoothly and quietly enough; but if he will sift things to the bottom, he must account himself a man of strife. His language must be "It is not enough that you feed me or fill my pocket-there is something between me and thee." Cecil.

Life wastes itself while
Let us suck the sweet-

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man or men on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when? To-morrow will be like to-day. we are preparing to live. ness of those affections and consuetudes that grow near us. Undoubtedly we can easily pick faults in our company, can easily whisper names prouder, and that tickle the fancy more. Every man's imagination hath its friends; and pleasant would life be with such companions. But, if you cannot have them on good mutual terms, you cannot have them. If not the Deity, but our ambition hews and shapes the new relations, their virtue escapes, as strawberries lose their flavor in garden-beds.

Emerson.

Society is spoiled, if pains are taken, if the associates

are brought a mile to meet.

And if it be not society, it

SOCIETY TOO CHEAP.

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is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle, though made up of the best. All the greatness of each is kept back, and every foible in painful activity, as if the Olympians should meet to exchange snuff-boxes. 1b.

not very

I would say to the young, "be anxious about those enjoyments which result from the society of accomplished and intellectual persons. There is a subtle snare in every thing that appeals to the mind on the side of its tendency to self-glorification, and its capacity for estimating talent; and we never think less of ourselves for being in association with gifted persons. Seek and delight in that which meekens rather than exalts your mind. Keep a watchful eye over yourself on the side of your disposition to self-exaltation."

Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling.

Always believe that those things which elicit the most patience and prayer and humility, are your best things, and those which the most please and excite your pride and self-complacency, are your worst, let them come in what garb they may. Visiting my Relations.

Abn-Horairah was making a daily visit to the prophet Mustafa-Mohammed, on whom be God's blessing and peace. He said, "O Abn Horairah, let me alone every other day, that so affection may increase; that is, come not every day, that we may get more loving." Sadi.

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable, and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another; and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Thoreau.

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations, let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people, with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, Ọ wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. Emerson.

We foolishly think, in our days of sin, that we must

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NATURE'S CHOICE BETTER THAN OURs. court friends by compliance to the customs of society, to its dress, its breeding, and its estimates. But later, if we are so happy, we learn that only that soul can be my friend, which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline to me, but native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others' eyes. Emerson.

Some virtues increase by extending their object, others by intensifying or refining the feeling. Their only possible infinity is an infinitely close approach to perfection. This latter kind of advance is often more in our power than the former. We may not have it in our power to contract all varieties of relations, but we may make our part of every existing one, as perfect, as delicate, as satisfying, as it has been in a single instance since the world began.

Time was that I thought lightly of the ties of blood, and held that every man should choose for himself a kindred and a brotherhood, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit; but whether I be grown wiser or weaker, I now believe that nature, which though not God, is the law and power, and manifestation of God, is wiser than man, a more permanent and trustworthy exponent of

888

TO SET RELATIONS RIGHT.

the eternal reason than the mere human understanding,

at best but the balance-sheet of the debtor and creditor accounts of the senses, too often miscalculated and sophisticated by the corrupt will.

Hartley Coleridge.

To embrace the whole creation with love sounds beautiful, but we must begin with the individual, with the nearest. And he who cannot love that deeply, intensely, entirely, how should he be able to love that which is remote and which throws but feeble rays upon him from a foreign star? How should he be able to love it with any feeling which deserves the name of love? The greatest cosmopolites are generally the neediest beggars, and they who embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part, love nothing but their narrow self.

Herder.

To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; it imperatively requires to be amended; and the remedy is, Abolish it; let there henceforth be no relation at all. Human beings used ever to be manifoldly related one to another, and each to all; and there was no relation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its grievances and difficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear and forbear. Carlyle.