gions have the wealth of nature, the temperate regions are the most perfectly organized for the development of man. They are opposed to each other, as the body and the soul, as the inferior races and the superior races, as savage man and civilized man, as nature and history. Of this contrast, so marked as it is, the history of human societies will give us the solution, or, at least, will enable us to obtain a glimpse of the truth.

LESSON LXXV.

THE WONDERS OF CIVILIZATION.

ARNOTT.

HE condition of the present inhabitants of this country

Tis very different from that of their forefathers. These,

generally divided into small states or societies, had few relations of amity with surrounding tribes, and their thoughts and interests were confined very much within their own little territories and rude habits. Now, however, every one sees himself a member of one vast civilized society which covers the face of the earth, and no part of the earth is indifferent to him.

2. A man of small fortune may cast his regards around him, and say, with truth and exultation,-"I am lodged in a house that affords me conveniences and comforts, which even a king could not command some centuries ago. There are ships crossing the seas in every direction, to bring what is useful to me from all parts of the earth. In China, men are gathering the tea-leaf; in America, they are planting cotton; in the West-India Islands, they are preparing sugar and coffee; in Italy, they are feeding silk-worms; in Saxony, they are shearing the sheep to make clothing; at home, powerful steam-engines are

spinning and weaving, and making cutlery, and pumping the mines, that materials useful to me may be procured.

3. "My patrimony is small: yet I have carriages running day and night on all the roads, to carry my correspondence; I have roads, and canals, and bridges, to bear the coal for my winter fire; nay, I have protecting fleets and armies around my happy country, to secure my enjoyment and repose. Then I have editors and printers, who daily send me an account of what is going on throughout the world, among all these people who serve me; and, in a corner of my house, I have books, the miracle of all my possessions; for they transport me instantly, not only to all places, but to all times.

4. "By my books I can conjure up before me, to vivid existence, all the great and good men of antiquity; and, for my individual satisfaction, I can make them act over again the most renowned of their exploits: the orators declaim for me; the historians recite; the poets sing ;— in a word, from the equator to the pole, and from the beginning of time until now, by my books I can be where I please. This picture is not overcharged, and might be much extended, — such being the miracle of God's goodness in providence, that each individual of the civilized millions that cover the earth, may have nearly the same enjoyments as if he were the single lord of all.

LESSON LXXVI.

THE LOVE OF TRUTH.

THE future, with its vastness, its infinitude, — so distant,

of the present, so small, so near, so completely at your

disposal. Reality borrows from futurity, from eternity. Germs are the only realities; possibilities are the only certainties. What is a seed? It is the future harvest. What is the present hour? It is the future age,—a destiny of happiness or misery. What is this field before you? It is all that you can make of it by industry, by effort, by vigilance, by enterprise.

2. While I note this truth, I stand before a landscape, the grand prominent feature of which, toward the southeast, is a lofty expanse of land called Folly Hill. Fifty years ago, if any man had planted it with oak trees, or walnut, or pine, or all together, at a cost of a few dollars, it would to-day have been worth as many thousands; whereas it is all covered with worthless trees, the growth of Nature's chance.

3. A man built a house on the summit, which was blown down in a great tempest; and hence the place was named Folly Hill. That was an external structure, not character; - but those broad acres might have been covered with broad, rich forests, had the man spent a twentieth part of the money he put into that house, in planting for posterity. And so with moral planting, so with principles. They make no show when you are setting them out, perhaps, in the seed. Men see not, know not, when it is done, nor when, nor how, the seeds are germinating; but they create anew the whole being, - they transfigure it, they enrich it to all future time.

4. When the heart comes in magnetic power and sympathetic glow to the great ideas of immortality and personal responsibility, then great truths enter in and combine powerfully with the emotional and intellectual being. The bright ideal that the soul ardently desires and seeks after, embraces the offer, and they become united in the indissolu

ble bonds of sympathy and love. But let that season of sympathy and impressibleness pass away, and the creative vitality is gone with it.

5. When the mind, the memory, the heart, are vital with moral magnetism, they will select and hold fast and reproduce the most precious thoughts, just as a steel magnet will catch and hold iron chips and filings, if you have prepared it for action with magnetic forces; but otherwise it will attract nothing. Just so with the mind and heart, magnetized, ardent, when held toward great vital truths, which, radiating through the mind, fill it with light, like magnets covered with sparkling diamonds and gold-dust.

LESSON LXXVII.

ASPIRATIONS OF YOUTH.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

AY by day, wherever our homes may be in this great

land, we have watched the passing pageant of the year. Day by day, from the first quick flush of April, through the deeper green and richer bloom of May and June, we have seen the advancing season develop and increase, until, at last, among roses and golden grain, the year stood perfect, in midsummer splendor.

2. As you have contemplated the brief glory of our summer, where the clover almost blooms out of snow-drifts, and the red apples drop almost with the white blossoms, you have, perhaps, remembered that the flower upon the tree was only the ornament of a moment, a brilliant part of the process by which the fruit was formed,

and that

the perfect fruit itself was but the seed-vessel, by which the race of the tree is continued from year to year.

3. Then have you followed the exquisite analogy, that youth is the aromatic flower upon the tree; the grave life of maturer years, its sober, solid fruit; and the principles and character deposited by that life, the seeds by which the glory of this race also is perpetuated' ?

4. I know the flower in your hand fades while you look at it. The dream that allures you, glimmers and is gone. But flower and dream, like youth itself, are buds and prophecies. For where, without the perfumed blossoming of the spring orchards all over the hills and among all the valleys of New England and New York, would the happy harvests of New York and New England be? And where, without the dreams of the young men lighting the future with human possibility, would be the deeds of the old men, dignifying the past with human achievement? How deeply does it become us to believe this, who are not only young ourselves, but living with the youth of the youngest nation in history!

5. I congratulate you that you are young; I congratulate you that you are Americans. Like you, that country is in its flower, not yet in its fruit; and that flower is subject to a thousand chances before the fruit is set. Worms may destroy it; frosts may wither it; fires may blight it; gusts may whirl it away. But how gorgeously it still hangs blossoming in the garden of time, while its penetrating perfume floats all round the world, and intoxicates all other nations with the hope of liberty!

6. Knowing that the life of every nation, as of each individual, is a battle, let us remember, also, that the battle is to those who fight with faith and undespairing devotion. Knowing that nothing is worth fighting for at