confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one shoeblack happy? They cannot accomplish it above an hour or two; for the shoeblack also has a soul quite other than his stomach.

The whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus: By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such overplus as there may be do we account happiness; any deficit again is misery. Now, consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of self-conceit there is in each of us, do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way.

True it is that the fraction of life can be increased in value, not so much by increasing your numerator, as by lessening your denominator. Nay, unless my algebra deceive me, unity itself divided by zero will give infinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the wisest of our time write: It is only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.

I asked myself, What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting, and fuming, and lamenting, and self-tormenting, on account of? Say it in a word; is it not because thou art not HAPPY? Because the THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? Foolish soul!

what Act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy?

Hast thou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this: Fellow, see, thou art taking more than thy share of happiness in the world, something from my share; which, by the heavens thou shalt not; nay, I will fight thee rather.' Alas! and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, not enough to quench one appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them! Can we not, in all such cases, rather say, Take it, thou too ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest; take it with a blessing; would to heaven I had enough for thee!

There is in man a HIGHER than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the poet and the priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony through life and through death, of the godlike that is in man, and how in the godlike only has he strength and freedom? Which God-inspired doctrine art thou too honored to be taught; O heavens! and broken with manifold merciful afflictions, even till thou become contrite, and learn it! O, thank thy destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remains ; thou hast need of them; the self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is life root

ing out the deep-seated chronic disease, and triumphs over death. On the roaring billows of time, thou art not ingulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of eternity. Love not pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." Carlyle.

To an upright man, indeed, Happiness is not necessary. God knows well on whom he can lay the Evil which is as it were unavoidable in His World, so that it weighs little or nothing on those who must bear it - on the Patient and the Pure in Heart. Therefore Albert thanked God even for this, which he reflected on gladly, that of all the Houses in the World, his was the best into which his Agnes could have come, where she was as happy as it was possible for her to be, untroubled and uninjured. The Artist's Married Life.

When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. The soul will not know either deformity or pain. If in the hours of clear reason we should speak the severest truth, we should say that we had never made a sacrifice. In these hours the mind seems so great, that nothing can be taken from it that seems much.

No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. For it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.

Emerson.

I saw on the sea-shore a holy man, who had been torn by a tiger and could get no salve to heal his wound. For a length of time he suffered much pain, and was all along offering thanks to the Most High. They asked him, saying, Why are you so grateful? He answered, God be praised that I am overtaken with misfortune and not with sin! Sadi.

Looking forward, the crowd of possible misfortunes may hide from us the greatest possible one; looking back, sin seems the only real evil.

This is the natural history of calamity. The changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men, are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth. Evermore it is the order of nature to grow, and every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and law, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant, and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming as it were a transparent fluid membrane, through which the form is always seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates, and of no settled character, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday.

And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances, day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed state, resting not advancing, resisting not coöperating with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks.

The sure years reveal the deep, remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth, which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation. of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. Emerson.

With the wind of tribulation God separates in the floor of the soul, the Chaff from the Corn. Molinos.

"Alles haben heisse darben."

"Voll, toll."

We find it difficult to believe in that Almighty goodness that inflicts trials on those whom it loves. Why, we say, should it please God to make us suffer? Why should he not make us good without making us miserable? Doubtless he could, for he is all-powerful; the hearts of men are in his hands, and he can turn them as he will. But he, who could save us from sorrow, has not