executioner showed it to the people, amid universal long-continued cries of Vive la République.' WORK. There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations which are truth. Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it! How, as a free flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows; draining off the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small! Labor is life; from the inmost heart of the worker rises his Godgiven force, the sacred celestial life-essence, breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge "self-knowledge," and much else, so soon as work fitly begins. Knowledge! the knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working; the rest is yet all an hypothesis of knowledge, a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds in endless logic vortices, till we try it and fix it. "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone." * * * Older than all preached gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, forever-enduring gospel: work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active method, a force for work; and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent facts around thee! What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable; obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest disorder, there is thy eternal enemy; attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order of him, the subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it, that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered. But, above all, where thou findest ignorance, stupidity, brutemindedness, attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God! The highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his unspoken voice, is fuller than any Sinai thunders, or syllabled speech of whirlwinds; for the SILENCE of deep eternities, of worlds from beyond the morning-stars, does it not speak to thee? The unborn ages; the old Graves, with their long mouldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry, do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard? The deep death-kingdoms, the stars in their never-resting courses, all space and all time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou, too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work. All true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroism, martyrdoms,-up to that "agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not "worship," then, I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow-workmen there, in God's eternity; surviving there, they alone surviving: sacred band of the immortals, celestial body-guard of the empire of mind. Even in the weak human memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving: peopling, they alone, the immeasured solitudes of Time! To thee, Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind-as a noble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying, while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it!" Thou, too, shalt return home, in honor to thy far-distant home, in honor; doubt it not,-if in the battle thou keep thy shield! Thou, in the eternities and deepest death-kingdoms, art not an alien; thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain. PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF CROMWELL. "His highness," says Whitelocke, "was in a rich but plain. suit,-black velvet, with cloak of the same; about his hat a broad band of gold." Does the reader see him? A rather likely figure, I think. Stands some five feet ten or more; a man of strong, solid stature, and dignified, now partly military carriage: the expression of him, valor and devout intelligence,energy and delicacy on a basis of simplicity. Fifty-four years old, gone April last; brown hair and moustache are getting gray. A figure of sufficient impressiveness,-not lovely to the man-milliner species, nor pretending to be so. Massive stature; big, massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect; wart above the right eyebrow; nose of considerable blunt-aquiline proportions; strict yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if nee were, of all fiercenesses and rigors; deep, loving eyes,-call them grave, call them stern,-looking from under those craggy brows as if in life-long sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow,-thinking it only labor and endeavor: on the whole, a right noble lionface and hero-face; and to me royal enough. HONEST STUDY If you will believe me, you who are young, yours is the golden season of life. As you have heard it called, so it verily is,—the seed-time of life, in which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tare instead of wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards.-you will bitterly repent when it is too late. The habits of study acquired at universities are of the highest importance in afterlife. At the season when you are young in years, the whole mind is, as it were, fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the mind pleases to let it, or order it to form itself into. Pursue your studies in the way your conscience calls honest. Keep an actual separation between what you have really come to know in your own minds and what is still unknown. Count a thing known only when it is stamped on your mind. so that you may survey it on all sides with intelligence. There is such a thing as a man endeavoring to persuade himself, and endeavoring to persuade others, that he knows about things, when he does not know more than the outside skin of them; and yet he goes flourishing about with them. Avoid all that, as entirely unworthy of an honorable mind. Gradually see what kind of work you can do; for it is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe. A man is born to expend every particle of strength that God has given him, in doing the work he finds he is fit for,-to stand up to it to the last breath of life, and to do his best. We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get is that we have got the work done, or, at least, that we have tried to do the 1 From an Address delivered April 2, 1866, to the students of the University of Edinburgh, upon his installation as Lord Rector. work. For that is a great blessing in itself; and, I should say, there is not very much more reward than that going in this world. If the man gets meat and clothes, what matters it whether he have ten thousand pounds or seventy pounds a year? He can get meat and clothes for that; and he will find very little difference, intrinsically, if he is a wise man. Finally, gentlemen, I have one advice to give you, which is practically of very great importance, that health is a thing to be attended to continually, that you are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things. There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health. What to it are nuggets and millions? The French financier said, "Alas! why is there no sleep to be sold?" Sleep is not in the market at any quotation. It is a curious thing that the old word for "holy"-in the German language, heilig also means healthy." Look, then, always at the heilig, which means "healthy" as well as "holy." Stand up to your work, whatever it may be, and be not afraid of it,-not in sorrows or contradiction to yield, but push on towards the goal. 66 WILLIAM HOWITT, 1795 A MORE agreeable and instructive prose-writer of this century can hardly be named than William Howitt. He was born in 1795, at Heanor, in Derbyshire, of an old Quaker family, and received his education in the various schools connected with that Society. In 1823 he married Mary Botham, of Uttoxeter; and the same year appeared their joint work, The Forest Minstrel, a series of poems. For three or four years they were both employed in contributing to "annuals," -The Literary Souvenir, and The Amulet. In 1831 appeared his Book of the Seasons; in 1833, History of Priesteraft in all Ages; in 1837, Rural Life in England, and Visits to Remarkable Places. In 1840 he removed with his family to Germany, and settled in Heidelberg for two years, where he wrote Student Life in Germany. On his return home he published that very interesting and instructive book, Homes and Haunts of the British Poets, and also The Aristocracy of England. In 1846 he purchased a share in the People's Journal, which proved very unfortunate and involved him in much trouble and pecuniary loss.1 Extricating himself from this connection, he started, in 1847, Howitt's Journal, which was well received and encouraged, mingling, as it did, tasteful literary essays with radical political disquisitions, and bringing them within the reach of every-day men of business and toil. But, for want of sufficient "capital," this Journal was given up. In 1852 appeared a History of the Literature of Scandinavia, written in conjunction with his wife, the most complete account 1 One would think that the example of Sir Walter Scott would have shown him how dangerous it is for literary men to enter into busi ness partnerships. They do not suspect the various tricks of the trade," and, if they did, would hardly be able to cope with them." of that interesting literature in any language. The same year he went to Australia, to witness for himself the great progress of that colony. In 1854 be returned, and published Land, Labor, and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, wh Visits to Sydney and Van Diemen's Land, two volumes; giving, of course, an account of his experiences in that country. More recently he has published Men of the People, a novel designed to show the great progress of the people in the last forty years; and has written Cassell's Illustrated History of England. It will thus be seen what a laborious writer Mr. Howitt has been; and it may be added that every thing that has come from his pen has been of a pure and elevating tendency. His writings in behalf of complete suffrage, religi toleration, Irish relief, the abolition of slavery, &c., are as honorable to the benevolence of his heart, as are his numerous literary works to the fertility his genius. POLITICS INSEPARABLE FROM CHRISTIANITY. We are often warned against indulging in politics, as if it were some sinful indulgence, like swearing or gin-drinking. The religious warn us with a solemn shake of the head; and none more than the members of the Society of Friends deal in cautions against this bugbear of politics, "lest," say they, "it disturb the serenity of our minds; lest it unfit us for religious meditation." Now, I am totally at a loss to comprehend the solid ground of these pious exhortations. It is because I am religious that I feel myself compelled, irresistibly compelled, to be also political. The very practices of the Society of Friends have educated me into this necessity. One excellent practice they have; I wish it were universally adopted, and then we should speedily have s stupendous host of honest, ardent, Christian politicians. It is that of reading every day aloud in the family circle a portion of the Sacred Scriptures. I will defy any one to proceed far in the New Testament without coming upon practices and commands of our Saviour, that, if he comprehend their true and practical inport, will compel him into a politician. Nay, if we go back to the Old Testament, what is the predicted character of the Saviour? Is it merely that he shall be a spiritual Saviour? No, but that he shall be a temporal one, too. He is "to open the prison-doors, to loosen the bonds of the captive, and to let the oppressed go free." But when we enter on the New Testament, when we come to follow that great object of our reverence and model of our conduct in his life, and to listen to his command-, there is no alternative left to us. What is the great command of human duty? What is that greatest of all, next to the adora tion and zealous service of our Creator? It is to love our neigh |