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self worthless, and must for that cause alone fall to the ground. Still the internal force which is at the bottom of the enterprise is at all times the secure hope on which we may confidently rest. If it does not accomplish its purposes to-day, it may do so to-morrow. If it is but the slowly expanding bud now, it may be the gloriously blooming flower hereafter. Our present ability may go no farther than to give ease and facility to mechanical execution, and thus secure to ourselves a greater share of outward comfort and convenience. But the same internal force will continue to act with resistless power, and may in time to come be the prolific germ of a thousand truths and a thousand virtues. Our condition as understood now is a transition state, in which we are perhaps quite as much engaged in pulling down as we are in building up. It must necessarily happen that this condition of things is attended with very considerable preparation; with some noise, and still more confusion. Our ends and designs may not in all instances be distinctly seen and comprehended; our measures may not for all purposes succeed. While we are busily employed in leveling and destroying, we may be at a loss to know what to remove and what to spare. The destruction of a favorite relic or ornament may be attended with regret, if not with absolute pain. Add to all this, that we are everywhere incommoded by heaps of rubbish, which are not only disagreeable to the eye, but serve in no little degree to blind and bewilder that sensitive organ. Our age is a busy one, and must of consequence overlook some things, and do others imperfectly. But it is not on that account either barren or unprofitable.

One of the most remarkable features of the present age is, that knowledge is more generally diffused; that the masses have in a most wonderful manner acquired the ability to reason and to think. This shows the ubiquity and universality of that mighty influence which is everywhere so mysteriously imparting new ideas to the human mind. It is not like that partial inspiration which once in a century produces a Newton or a Milton, while the rest of the world are left to gaze at these remarkable luminaries in silent wonder and astonishment. There may, indeed, still be Newtons and Miltons in our literary firmament, but not so incomparably bright as entirely to

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darken and overshadow the luster of all other luminaries. Other suns are there, shining with no borrowed light, and if not so intensely brilliant, yet sending a powerful blaze "from one end of heaven to the other." We no longer acknowledge the sovereignty of a single individual, possessing kingly honors and prerogatives, surrounded by all the trappings of royalty, and sparkling in the artificial decorations of courts and palaces. But we are placed under the plain government of the people, strong in their confederate union, mighty in their aggregate wisdom and intelligence, and each man walking forth as a prince and a king by virtue of his independent power of thinking and of acting.

This spirit would seem to be emphatically characteristic of the age in which we live. If we excel in no one department of literature or science, we improve in them all. It is not by the agency of machinery that our progress in refinement is retarded and impaired. It is not by the agency of machinery, either, that our progress in refinement is essentially hastened on and promoted. But we nevertheless believe that the multiplied outward contrivances at which so much umbrage is taken are the strongest evidences of those internal promptings within which are now urging men to unparalleled achievements in the province of intellect; to a more thorough search after the great principles of truth; and, what is still better, to a more perfect knowledge and improvement of the human heart.

It might be asked, in conclusion, from whence has the world received that onward tendency that mighty impulse which is overturning dynasties; which is penetrating the depths of the human mind, and bringing up to our view things new and wonderful; which is discarding all bigotry; which is restoring all truth and simplicity; which is diffusing a new charm over all the ordinary pursuits and operations of society? The answer to this question might much more readily be made by a series of plain negations, than by any statement that may be supposed to involve a satisfactory explanation. We might say with confidence that it is not owing to, although it is vastly augmented by, the agency of the press, the pulpit, and the lecture room; that it has grown out of no change in our mental or physical constitutions; that it is founded on no move

ments of kings, philanthropists, or philosophers; that it proceeds from no sudden discovery of any royal road to wisdom and knowledge. On the other hand, we might refer to causes that are higher and holier. But we forbear, lest our attempts to furnish an adequate answer should only provoke the sneers of the skeptic and unbeliever.

said Griffiths, "as I do ?" But this suggestion only made the scribe button that vestment more closely round his throat. The vulgar wife of the bibliopole laughed vulgarly, and made an allusion to the person's linen, or the lack of it. The writer did not look up; but the very tips of his ears were scarlet, and he could be heard, lowly but distinctly, as though he were reading to himself rather than addressing others, uttering these words: "Ego cultu

THE FIRST ARTICLE OF A POPULAR non proinde speciosus, ut facile appararet

IN

AUTHOR.

'N the middle of the month of July, 1757, and consequently just a hundred years ago, Griffiths, the publisher, might have| been seen in the parlor behind the shop, seated without his wig, while his wife wiped his head with a cotton handkerchief. In a closet beyond the parlor was visible a young man at a desk, busily engaged in writing. He was ill-dressed, awkwardly made, and coarse of feature. He had even a heavy, stupid look, as he sat intent on his labor. It was only his side-face that could be seen; but as he now and then had occasion to turn full round to Mr. Griffiths in the parlor, or as he did so, from time to time, when some remark attracted his attention, there was an expression on his features and a light in his eye which seemed to give promise of no common man. Still, his slovenly, wearied, and plodding appearance was decidedly against him. As Morgan entered the parlor, the literary drudge-for that was evidently his office-blushed slightly; for Mrs. Griffiths, ceasing to polish the skull of her husband, looked sharply round, and, with a voice sharper than her look, bade him "get on with the article in hand, and let her have it for approval and correction when finished." The young man did not answer, although he was evidently irritated. Around his mouth there was an expression as if he had swallowed vinegar. He sat for a moment biting the end of his pen as vigorously as the great Coligny, when in deep wrath or reflection, used to champ his toothpick. He smiled at last with mournful resignation; and then passing the not very clean sleeve of his poor coat over a rather begrimed face, he addressed himself to his toil, with a remark which sounded as if he had reference to the intense heat.

"Why don't

you take off your coat,"

me, hâc notâ litteratum esse, quos odisse divites solent."

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"My stars!" said Mrs. Griffiths; 18 that a part of your review of Mr. Mallett's Northern Antiquities?"

"No, madam," answered the young man, with a slight Irish accent; "it is a passage in Petronius Arbiter, a gentleman who was consul in Bithynia, and who also was an officer in the house of Nero, where he lived luxuriously, and died laughing." And the speaker sighed, as if he envied the destiny of the finest gentleman and the greatest scamp of those gay yet dangerous

times.

"I dare say he was a lazy fellow," said Griffiths. " Pray, sir, where is your promised article on the Scotch parson's play?"

"Sir," said the pale writer, "it is nearly finished. But it is not so easy to review a play as it is to read, digest, and judge a few quarto volumes of travels or biography. To enjoy and to judge poetry demands a mind akin to the poet's. Genius lights its flambeau at the skies; and mere men of earth must not be over-hasty in pronouncing upon the purity of the fire."

"O, stuff!" exclaimed Mrs. Griffiths, turning her fat back on him, and showing above her low dress, worn in summer weather, a series of cupping marks, that seemed to designate a patient with a tendency to the head of more blood than judgment. "You might as well say that it is more difficult to make a cribbage-peg than a walking-stick."

"Not so, madam," civilly rejoined the young man; "and yet you would find it more difficult to make a watch than a warming-pan."

"I never found it difficult to do any thing," said the lady, whose conceit was notorious.

"Except to write poetry, Polly," observed her husband.

"And why should I not write verses, if

I tried?" asked the lady, rather more pressible, seductive, subduing, inimitable shrilly than usual. Her husband shook-such as the son of Semele might have his head, smiled, and was silent. "I ask," worn before he took to ferment his grapes she said, “why a woman, why I, should and drink deeply of the liquor. The voice not write verses as well as any other sounded sweet, silvery, and saucy too, as rhymer?" she said:

Her flashing eye rested on the shabby young man; and he, fancying himself peremptorily addressed, looked slightly embarrassed for an instant, and then replied:

"Indeed, madam, I believe only for this reason. Poetesses are generally indifferent housewives. Rhyme does not, in their case, always accord with reason." Having said which, he slowly returned to his work; while the lady looked at him with a puzzled expression, as if she could not very well make out whether he had intended to be caustic or complimentary.

"You doubtless fancy yourself," she said tartly, แ as famous as the authors we have hired you to review."

"Good folks, be kind enough to inform me if you have in the house a gentleman of the name of Mr. Oliver Goldsmith." Before reply was given, she had tapped Mrs. Griffiths on the cheek, and after kissing her husband, clapped his wig on him wrong side before, and broke into melodious peals of laughter, in which every one present would have joined, had they not of one accord kept silence to listen to the silvery intonations of her own mirth.

"My dear Mrs. Bellamy," said Griffiths, "I am glad to find you well enough to be out. As to Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, there he stands; but may I be bold enough to ask what you want with my servant?"

"Don't be impertinent, Griffiths, nor use false terms. Mrs. Griffiths, you should teach your husband better manners. You can't? Don't I know it, my dear? Mr. Goldsmith, I have read the specimens you have sent me of your intended tragedy, and they will not do. Now don't look downhearted. I commend to you the maxim of our German trumpeter in the orchestra-Time brings roses."

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He looked round, with a flush on his face made up of hope and conviction of present power to be worked to further ends. "Who knows?" he asked, not of them, but of himself. "Who knows?" he repeated; and old Morgan, looking in, and gazing at that strange face with interest, saw the tears in his eyes. "Who knows?" he asked for a third time. "There is something there," he added, "Alas! madam," said Goldsmith timidly, placing his podgy finger on his pallid"even if it be so, shall I ever reach then brow. "Patience! God does not let the without pricking my fingers with the tide run up to high-water in an instant. I thorns ?" can wait." And he resumed his task, with this final remark, murmured low to himself, "I can wait. The spring will yet bloom for me. I know that he who cuts the balsam in the winter gets no juice. I can wait; I can wait."

"Of course not! Why should you? Who does? As long as we can pluck the roses, never mind a scratch or two. Everybody has a thorn. Even wealthy Griffiths here feels the smart of it. Who is Griffiths' thorn, eh, Mrs. Griffiths ?" "Madam," said that lady, who hated Mrs. Bellamy, "I hope she is not.”

"I hope so too, my dear," answered the actress: "and I did not say she was. I only asked the question. And, then, we have all got our pleasant little faults, which we must strive to amend-some day." (This was said with a saucy look.) "Have we anything else that is objectionable, Mr. Goldsmith?"

In a few minutes a lady entered the shop, one of those bright creatures who can scarcely be described, and who defy criticism, except, of course, from a sister. If it be true that Lycurgus set up a graceful statue representing Laughter, and that he bade his Spartans worship the new goddess, this was the deity herself. Eye, lip, cheek, nay, as the poet says, her foot smiled. Praxiteles might have thought himself happy to have had her for a model. "Well, madam," said Oliver, "I dare Had she been by when Paris had to give say we all have; our vices, which we away the apple, it would not have fallen surrender, as Lais did her mirror, when into the bosom of Helen. Semele was she grew old, and found no more pleasure only a dairymaid in comparison with her; in using it. Our hopes, I trust, we may aland, then, she wore a saucy look-inex-ways retain. Do you bid me keep mine?"

"Bid you! Young man, there is stuff in you that shall make people talk of you centuries to come." "And love me?" "And love you. Some of us will be despised, and some forgotten, when you, sir, will be honored; but you must not write tragedies. You have the most charming style possible, but no more suited to tragedy than my muslin slip to-to-to Titus Andronicus. What have you done besides making these attempts on stilts?" "I have only written a trifle," said the author modestly. "It's my first article -a review of Mr. Mallet's Northern Antiquities."

Mrs. Bellamy made a comically wry face, shook her head, and then remarked, "I dare say it is as bad as your tragedy." Probably," replied the perplexed

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author.

"And perhaps not," good-naturedly exclaimed the actress. "Will you come and take a dish of tea with a queen, and read this article to her majesty ?"

"Queen!" cried the two Griffithses. "What queen? We have no queen since the demise of her most gracious majesty Queen Caroline. He take tea with a queen ?"

"Ah, dear stupid old folks, Mr. Goldsmith has more wit than both of you. Now, sir," she added, "put your manuscript in your pocket, and come along." She glanced rapidly at his coat, slightly curled her charming and ineffably impertinent nose; and then, with a "pshaw," and a stamp of her little foot, as if annoyed with herself, she exclaimed, "My chariot waits ; let us go."

She swept through the shop like a graceful vision; and as Goldsmith, his hour for labor having expired, prepared to follow her, Griffiths put his hand on his sleeve, and asked with great simplicity, "Mr. Goldsmith, who is the queen you are going to take tea with, and to read to her your first article?"

"Queen Roxalana," said Goldsmith, with a smile.

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inducement to labor, and I will endure much for the great recompense."

"Ah, sir, I see, from the company you keep, you will be a miserable writer of comedies, or some such trash. Sir, you will die in the Mint, and be forgotten a fortnight afterward."

"I have faith in her promise, and in my own perseverance to make reality of it. This is 1757, and I have written nothing but an article for a review. Perhaps, in 1857, sovereigns may have my collected works in their libraries, and I may be affectionately known beyond the ocean. Perhaps—"

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Now, Mr. Goldsmith," called the sweet voice from the coach at the door.

"You are stark staring mad,” said Griffiths; but remember, sir, I expect you here early to-night, and at work by nine tomorrow. There is the article on Douglas to be concluded, and a second is to follow on Mr. Jonas Hanway's book; and I fear that this rantipole company will unfit you for steady labor."

"Cease to fear it, sir. What I have undertaken to perform shall be accomplished;" and he hurried off to the impatient sovereign lady in the glittering vehicle at the door. She kissed the tips of her rosy fingers to the pair who had followed Goldsmith to the threshold; and many a queen would have given her ears—or, at least, her earrings-to have looked half so imperiously and saucily handsome.

"Humph," said Griffiths, as the carriage drove off with its well-contrasted freight, "Beauty and the Beast."

"Beauty!" cried his lady; "why she's crooked! They look like what they are― an impudent hussey and a mastiff puppy. And Goldsmith is ninny enough to think people will talk of him in 1857. I really shall die of laughing. Dr. Hawksworth may be the darling of ages to come; but a half-starved drudge like Oliver Goldsmith -Pshaw!"

"WHEN I was a little child," said a good old man, "my mother used to bid me kneel beside her, and place her hand upon my head while she prayed. Ere I was old enough to know her worth she died, and I was left too much to my own guidance. Like others, I was inclined to evil passions, but often felt myself checked, and as it were, drawn back by a soft hand upon my head."

PENCILED PASSAGES.

FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS.

JOHN NEWLAND MAFFITT, with all his eccentricities, was one of the most eloquent pulpit orators of his day. His imaginative powers have been seldom equaled, and his command of language was wonderful. His written style, however, will not bear the severity of criticism. It is overloaded with ornament. Occasionally, as in this handsome tribute to

MORAL EXCELLENCE,

his sentiments, unobscured by the gorgeousness of their drapery, are worthy of preservation for their intrinsic beauty and truthfulness:

Wide and far-reaching as is the triumph of genius and art, the triumph of moral excellence is more endearing; its empire more undisputed; its immortality more certain. The great Luther, who graved the deep lines of the Reformation upon the tablet of the sixteenth century, and bade the clock of eternity pause until he had "notched the century with the impress of his master mind," he was the man! Around his brow the honors cluster that belong to him who hews an age into a shape of moral beauty, and fashions a huge fragment of time after the great model of eternity. To express the moral grandeur of these men-a Luther-a Phidias, and a Praxiteles, and a Thorswalsden might carve; a Raphael, a David, and a West might paint. They only fashion blocks and breathe beauty into tableaux: he was the creator of an age; he rolled back the dial of the dark years of the world, and wound up destiny to a brighter course."

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There are dark hours that mark the history of the brightest years. For not a whole month in many of the millions of the past, perhaps, has the sun shone brilliantly all the time.

And there have been cold and stormy days in every year. And yet the mists and shadows of the darkest hour disappeared and fled heedlessly. The most cruel ice fetters have been broken and dissolved, and the most furious storm loses its power to harm.

And what a parable is this in human life, of our inside world, where the heart works at its destined labors! Here, too, we have the overshadowings of the dark hours, and many a cold blast chills the heart to its core. But what matters it? Man is born a hero, and it is only in the darkness and storms that heroism gains its greatest and the best development, and the storm bears it more rapidly on to its destiny. Despair not, then. Neither give up; while one good power is yours, use it. Disappointment will not be realized. Mortifying failure may attend this effort and that one; but only be honest and struggle on, and it will work well.

CURIOSITY AND THE LOVE OF STUDY

Are reciprocal. The one promotes the other, and both are susceptible of indefinite increase, as is well observed by SIDNEY SMITH:

Curiosity is a passion very favorable to the love of study, and a passion very susceptible of increase by cultivation. Sound travels so many feet in a second, and light travels so many feet in a second. Nothing more probable; but you do not care how light and sound travel. Very likely; but make yourself care; get up, shake yourself well, pretend to care, make believe to care, and very soon you will care, and care so much, that you will sit for hours thinking about light and sound, and be extremely angry with any one who interrupts you in your pursuits; and tolerate no other conversation but about light and sound; and catch yourself plaguing everybody to death who approaches you, with the discussion of these subjects.

THE BITTER AND THE SWEET.

DR. BONAR, in his account of the great desert of Sinai, thus moralizes upon the two fountains found by the Israelites in their journeyings:

THE EXPECTED MESSENGER.

Whom the gods love die young. So reads the ancient heathen proverb. And blessings brighten as they take their flight. So sings the Christian poet; and another, com

Marah and Elim! How near they lie to each other? ing still nearer to the heart,

Thus near to each other are the bitter and sweet of life, the sorrow and the joy of time! Both in the same desert, and oftentimes following each other in the progress of one day or hour. The bitter, too, is first, and then the sweet. Not first Elim and then Marah; but Marah first and then Elim; first the cloud, then the sunshine; first the weariness, then the rest. In token of this we broke off a small branch of palm from one of these Elim trees, and laying it on the similar branch which we had brought from Marah, we tied them together, to be kept in perpetual memorial, not merely of the scenes, but of the truth which they so vividly teach.

GLOOM AND SUNSHINE.

Here is a striking parallel between the natural and the moral world, which may induce some faint heart, in the hour of adversity, to be of good cheer:

There is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there!

In plain prose, and yet poetically, a writer in the Olive Branch, the editor, we suppose, describes the coming of the dreaded but expected messenger:

For weary days and nights his coming had been anticipated. Love had kept its nightly vigils by the cradle-side. "Hope against hope" kept the heart from bursting. Only those who have waited anxiously, and waited long, in painful suspense, can appreciate such thrilling moments. At midnight, when all was silent as the grave, save the quick, short breathing of the little sleeper, a watcher said, "He will come ere the morning sun look in at the window." "O, that he might tarry long, yea, forever," was the first impulsive outburst of bleeding hearts! Unwelcome messengers darken every door they enter. But O! how dark when the visitor comes to dash away cups of human

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