GUILELESSNESS.

In spite of all that grovelling minds may say about the necessity of acquaintance with the world and with sin, in order to get on well in life, yet, after all, inexperienced guilelessness carries a man on as safely and more happily. The guileless man has a simple boldness and a princely heart; he overcomes dangers which others shrink from, merely because they are no dangers to him; and thus he often gains even worldly advantages by his straightforwardness, which the most crafty persons cannot gain. It is true such single-hearted men often get into difficulties, but they usually get out of them as easily; and are almost unconscious both of their danger and their escape.

Newman.

The same writer notices also the general peace and serenity such persons enjoy, who suspect nobody and nothing who live in no fear of their own plots failing, counterplots crossing, and equivocations detecting each other.

"We may not be able to change our natures from crooked to straight: but in a few minutes or hours we shall be called on to speak or to act-let us determine to do either, for once at least, truly, and honestly, and guilelessly. "

ATHEISM.

DIDEROT'S Atheism comes, if not to much, yet to something; we learn this from it, (and from what it stands connected with, and may represent for us,) that the mechanical system of thought is, in its essence, atheistic; that whosoever will admit no organ of truth but logic, and nothing to exist but what can be argued of, must even content himself with this sad result, as the only solid one he can arrive at; and so, with the best grace he can, of the æther make a gas, of God a force, of the second world a coffin, of man an aimless nondescript, little better than a kind of vermin. If Diderot, by bringing matters to this parting of the roads, have enabled or helped us to strike into the truer and better road, let him have our thanks for it. As to what remains, be pity our only feeling was not his creed miserable enough-nay, moreover, did not he bear its miserableness, so to speak, in our stead, so that it need now be no longer borne by any one?

:

Carlyle.

66 ANTICHRIST ALSO BEARS OUR CROSS FOR US."

E

"Ludovicus Vives has a story of a clown that killed his ass because it had drunk up the moon, and he thought the world could ill spare that luminary. So he killed his ass ut lunam redderet.' Poor ass! He has drunk not the moon; but only the reflection of the moon in his own poor water-pail.” ”

Tinkler Ducket was convicted of atheism at Cambridge, and brought up to receive sentence of expulsion before eight heads of colleges. An atheist was a rare bird in those days. Bentley, then almost eighty years old, came into the room, (he was one of the caput, I suppose,) and, being almost blind, called out, "Where's the Atheist ?" Ducket was pointed out to him-a little thin man. "What is that the Atheist ?" cries Bentley, "I expected to have seen a man as big as Burrough the beadle !"*

* One of the three Esquire Bedells of that day, celebrated as,

"Pinguia tergeminorum abdomina Bedellorum."

OLD AGE.

Ir is a man's own fault-it is from want of use- -if his mind grows torpid in old age.

Johnson.

"A man should keep always learning something-always, as Arnold said, keep the stream running - whereas most people let it stagnate about middle life.”

Goethe is a great instance of a mind growing, growing, and putting out fresh leaves up to eighty years of life.

GUILE.

"In looking over my books some years ago, I found the following memorandum: 'I am this day thirty years old, and till this day I know not that I have met with one person of that age, except in my father's house, who did not use Guile, more or less.""

John Wesley.

"ENOUGH IS A FEAST."

A MAN came home from the sea-side, and brought some shells for his little son. The boy was full of wonder and delight: he counted and sorted them over and over again. What a wonderful place must the sea-shore be!

The boy

So one day his father took him to the sea-shore. picked up shell after shell, each seeming fairer than the last; threw down one in order to carry another; till growing vexed with himself and the shells, he threw all away, and when he got home, also threw away those his father had given him before.

German.

WIT.

DISEUR DE BONS MOTS MAUVAIS CARACTERE.

Pascal.

PERHAPS he (Schiller) was too honest, too sincere, for the exercise of Wit; too intent on the deeper relation of things to note their more transient collisions. Besides, he dealt in affirmation, and not in negation: in which last, it has been said, the material of Wit chiefly lies.

Carlyle.