builder, building with snow where better material is not to be had; and a ship-builder, constructing out of a few wooden ribs, and stretched animal-skins, canoes which may survive where our ships of oak have gone to destruction.

10. The savage of the warmer regions seeks a covering, not from the cold, but from the sun, which'smites him by day; and the moon, which smites him by night. The palm, the banana, the soft-barked trees, the broad-leaved sedges, and long-fibered grasses, are spoiled by him, as the beasts of the field are by his colder brother. He becomes a sower, a reaper, a spinner, a weaver, a baker, a brewer, a distiller, a dyer, a carpenter; and while he is these, he bends the pliant stems of his tropical forests into roof-trees and rafters, and clothes them with leaves, and makes for himself a tabernacle of boughs, and so is the arch-architect of a second great school of architecture.

11. It is not, however, his cultivation of the arts which have been named, or of others, that makes man peculiar as an industrial animal; it is the mode in which he practices them. The first step he takes toward remedying his destitution and helplessness, is in a direction where no other creature has led the way, and none has followed his example. He lays hold of that most powerful of all weapons of peace or war, fire, from which every other animal, unless when fortified by his presence, flees in terror; and with it alone not only clothes himself, but lays the foundation of a hundred arts. Man is the only animal that can strike a light, the solitary creature that knows how to kindle a fire.

12. Once provided with his kindled brand, the savage technologist soon proves what a scepter of power he holds in his hand. He tills with it; by a single touch burning up the withered grass of a past season, and scattering its

ashes to fertilize the plains, which will quickly be green again. It serves him as an ax to fell the tallest trees, and hollows out for him the canoe in which he adventures upon strange seas. It is an all-sufficient defense against the fiercest wild beasts; and it reduces for him the iron ore of the rocks, and forges it into a weapon of war. Indeed, his kindled brand makes the savage, without further help, a farmer, a baker, a cook, a carpenter, a smith, a potter, a brick-maker, a lime-burner, and builder; and, besides much else, a soldier and a sailor.

13. You may think this sketch of the savage's obligation to fire fanciful and exaggerated; but if you consider how every human industrial art stands directly or indirectly related to fire, while no animal art does, you will not regard the statement as extravagant. The great conquering people of the world have been those who knew best how to deal with fire. The most wealthy of the active nations are those which dwell in countries richly provided with fuel. No inventions have changed the entire world more than steam and gunpowder. We are what we are, largely because we are the ministers and masters of fire.

14. Every other animal is by nature fully equipped and caparisoned for its work; its tools are ready for use, and it is ready to use them. We have first to invent our tools, and then to fashion them, and then to learn how to handle them. Man's marvelous hand is, no doubt, in itself, an exquisite instrument of art; but our hands would be nothing to us but for our wise heads. Two-thirds, at least, of our industrial doings are preliminary. Before two pieces of cloth can be sewed together, we require a needle, which embodies the inventiveness of a hundred ingenious brains; and a hand, which only a hundred botchings and failures

have, in the lapse of years, taught to use the instrument with skill.

15. It is so with all the crafts, and they are inseparably dependent on each other. The mason waits on the carpenter for his mallet; and the carpenter, on the smith for his saw; the smith, on the smelter for his iron; and the smelter, on the miner for his ore. Each, moreover, needs the help of all the others. This helplessness of the single craftsman is altogether peculiar to the human artist. The lower animals are all polyartists, and never heard of such a doctrine as that of the division of labor.

16. The same bee, for example, markets, and bakes beebread, and manufactures sugar, and makes wax, and builds store-houses, and plans apartments, and nurses the royal infants, and waits upon the queen, and apprehends thieves, and smites to the death the enemies of the Amazons. The nightingale, though he is a poet, builds and furnishes his. nest without any help from the raven; and the lark does not excuse herself from her household duties because she is an excellent musician.

17. Nor are there degrees of skill among the animal artists. The beavers pay no consulting fees to eminent beaver-engineers experienced in hydraulics; the coral insects do not offer higher wages to skilled workmen at reefbuilding; every nautilus is an equally good sailor; and the wasps, engaged in "just and necessary wars," offer no bounties to tempt veteran soldiers into their armies. The industrialness, then, of man is carried out in a way quite peculiar to himself, and singularly illustrative of his combined weakness and greatness. The most helpless, physically, of animals, and yet the one with the greatest number of pressing appetites and desires, he has no working instincts to secure the gratification of his most pressing wants, and no tools which such instincts can work with.

18. He is compelled, therefore, to fall back upon the powers of his reason and understanding, and make his intellect serve him instead of a crowd of instinctive impulses ; and his intellect-guided hand, instead of an apparatus of tools. Before that hand, armed with the tools which it has fashioned, and that intellect, which marks man as made in the image of God, the instincts and weapons of the entire animal creation are as nothing. He reigns, by right of conquest, as indisputably as by right of inheritance, king of this world.

the

1.

WA

LESSON LXIII.

THE BEAUTIFUL.

E. H. BURRINGTON.

ALK with the Beautiful, and with the Grand;
Let nothing on the earth thy feet deter;
Sorrow may lead thee weeping by the hand,
But give not all thy bosom-thoughts to her:
Walk with the Beautiful!

2. I hear thee say, "The Beautiful! what is it?"
O, thou art darkly ignorant! Be sure

'Tis no long, weary road, its form to visit;
For thou canst make it smile beside thy door:
Then love the Beautiful!

3. Ay, love it; 'tis a sister that will bless,

And teach thee patience when thy heart is lonely: The angels love it; for they wear its dress;

And thou art made a little lower only:
Then love the Beautiful!

4. Some boast its presence in a Grecian face; * Some, in a favorite warbler of the skies;

But be not fooled!

Whate'er thine eye may trace,

Seeking the Beautiful, it will arise:

Then seek it everywhere.

5. Thy bosom is its mint; the workmen are

Thy Thoughts, and they must coin for thee. Believing
The Beautiful exists in every star,

Thou mak'st it so; and art thyself deceiving,
If otherwise thy faith.

6. Dost thou see Beauty in the violet's cup?

I'll teach thee miracles. Walk on this heath,
And say to the neglected flowers, "Look up,
And be ye beautiful!" If thou hast faith,
They will obey thy word.

7. One thing I warn thee: bow no knee to gold; Less innocent it makes the guileless tongue;

It turns the feelings prematurely old;

And they who keep their best affections young,
Best love the Beautiful.

QUESTIONS. 1. What rule for spelling deceiving with ei, and believing with ie, 5th stanza? Answer: All words of this class, in which the diphthong is preceded by the letter c, are spelled with ei; if the diphthong is preceded by any other letter, they are spelled with ie. 2. What is the meaning of the suffix less in the word guileless, 7th stanza? See Sanders' Union Speller, page 143.

* GRECIAN FACE. The ancient Grecians were distinguished for their symmetry and beauty, many proofs of which may be seen in those exquisite specimens of statuary which have been handed down to us as the beau-idéal of the Grecian form.