DIVES

HAD a great swamp bequeathed him. He drained, and planted, and stocked it with fish-ponds and game preserves, and enclosed it carefully, so that he might have his pleasure there alone.

One day he was showing it to an aged friend, who admired it much, but said it wanted one thing hugely. Dives asked, "What?"

"Know you not," replied his friend, "that when God Almighty planted Eden, it was for the sake of putting man therein?”

Isaiah says, "great men build desolate places for themselves; which doing, Camden says, was the ruin of good housekeeping in England.-Fuller.

"IT TAKES A LONG TIME TO FEEL THE WORLD'S PULSE. ""

SUCH is the complication of human destinies, that the same cruelties which stained the conquest of the two

Americas have been renewed under our eyes, in times which we believed characterized by a prodigious progress of civilization, and a general mild-· ness of manners: and yet one man, scarcely in the middle of his career, might have seen the reign of terror in France, the inhuman expedition to St. Domingo, the political reactions and the civil wars of continental Europe and America, the massacres of Chios and Ipsara, the recent acts of atrocity in America, its abominable slave - legislation, &c. In the two epochs regrets have followed public calamities; but in our times, of which I have traced the gloomy remembrance, still more unanimous regrets have been more loudly manifested. Philosophy, without obtaining victory, has started in defence. The modern tendency is, to seek freedom by laws, order by the perfecting of institutions. This is like a new and salutary element of the social order; an element which acts slowly, but which will make the return of sanguinary commotions less frequent and more difficult.-Humboldt, Ex. Cr.

TASTE,

IF it means any thing but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodwheresoever or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen.-Carlyle.

ness,

"Taste is the feminine of genius."

THE NEW CHIVALRY.

Two boys were playing at chess. A knight was broken, so they put a pawn to serve in his stead.

"Ha!" cried the knight to the pawn, "whence come you, Sir Snailpace?"

But the boy said to him, "Peace! he does the same service as you!"— German.

WEAKNESS AND VIGOUR
OF MIND.

LA foiblesse est le seul defaut qu' on ne sauroit corriger.-Rochefoucauld.

Difficult as it is to subdue the more violent passions, yet I believe it to be still more difficult to overcome a tendency to sloth, cowardice, and despondency. These evil dispositions cling about a man and weigh him down. They are minute chains binding him on every side to the earth, so that he cannot even turn himself to make an effort to rise. It would seem as if right principles had yet to be planted in the indolent mind; whereas violent and obstinate tempers had already something of the nature of firmness and zeal in them; or rather, what will become so with care, exercise, and God's blessing. Besides, the events of life have a powerful influence in sobering the ardent or self-confident temper; disappointments, pain, anxiety, advancing years, bring with them some natural wisdom, as a matter of course.

On the other hand, these same circumstances do but exercise the defects of the timid and irresolute, who are made more indolent, selfish, and faint-hearted by advancing years, and find a sort of satisfaction of their unworthy caution in their experience of the vicissitudes of life.-Newman.

66 YOU CAN'T HANG SOFT CHEESE ON A HOOK,"

66 NOR DRIVE A NAIL OF WAX."

CONTENT.

THE fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing any thing but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.-Johnson.