But as men grow rich, they live better. Is there any good in this stopping here? Is mere animal life-feeding, working, and sleeping like an oxentitled to be called good? Certainly not.

But these improvements increase the population. And what good does that do? Where is the good in counting twelve millions, instead of six of mere feeding, working, sleeping animals?

There is, then, no good in the mere animal life, except that it is the physical basis of that higher moral existence which resides in the soul, the heart, the mind, the conscience; in good principles, good feelings, and the good actions-and the more disinterested, the more entitled to be called good-which flow from them.

Now, sir, I say that generous and patriotic sentiments-sentiments which prepare us to serve our country, to live for our country, to die for our country-feelings like those which carried Prescott, and Warren, and Putnam to the battle-field, are good-good, humanly speaking, of the highest order.

It is good to have them, good to encourage them, good to honor them, good to commemorate them; and whatever tends to cherish, animate, and strengthen such feelings, does as much right-down practical good as filling low grounds and building railroads.

EDWARD EVERETT,

Edward Everett was born in Massachusetts in 1794, and died in 1865. Не was one of the most accomplished of American orators. He was educated for the ministry. In 1815, he was elected Professor of Greek in Harvard College. He was Member of Congress, Senator, Secretary of State, Governor of Massachusetts, and Minister to England. He was one of the foremost statesmen of his day.

مرجع

LESSON XCIII.

In'tel lĕet'u al, mental; re

lating to the understanding.

a nǎl'o goŭs, correspondent. de pènd'ençe, subjection; reli

ance.

něç'es sa ri ly, unavoidably. ǎp'pre hĕnd', to understand.

in tĕr'pre tā'tion, meaning. dis erim'i nāte, to distinguish. e nun'çi ā'tion, announcement; utterance.

pre rògʼa tĬveş, peculiar privileges.

děm'on strā’tion, proof.

ON CULTIVATION OF MIND.

I consider that the position of our minds, as far as they are uncultivated, towards intellectual objects, I mean of our minds, before they have been disciplined and formed by the action of our reason upon them,-is analogous to that of a blind man towards the objects of vision, at the moment when eyes are for the first time given to him by the skill of the operator.

Then the multitude of things which present themselves to the sight under a multiplicity of shapes and hues, pour in upon him from the external world all at once, and are at first nothing else but lines and colors, without mutual connection, dependence, or contrast; without order or principle, without drift or meaning, and like the wrong side of a piece of tapestry or carpet.

By degrees, by the sense of touch, by reaching out the hands, by walking into this maze of colors, by turning round in it, by accepting the principle of perspective, by the various slow teaching of experience, the first information of the sight is corrected; and what was an unintelligible wilderness, becomes a landscape or a scene, and is understood to consist of space, and of bodies variously located

in space, with such consequences as thence necessarily follow.

The knowledge is at length gained of things or objects, and of their relation to each other; and it is a kind of knowledge, as is plain, which is forced upon us all from infancy, as to the blind on their first seeing, by the testimony of our other senses, and by the very necessity of supporting life; so that even the brute animals have been gifted with the faculty of acquiring it.

Such is the case as regards material objects; and it is much the same as regards intellectual. I mean that there is a vast host of matters of all kinds, which address themselves, not to the eye, but to our mental sense; namely, all those matters of thought, which in the course of life and the intercourse of society, are brought before us, which we hear of in conversation, which we read of in books; matters political, social, ecclesiastical, literary, domestic; persons and their doings and their writings; events and works, and undertakings, and laws, and institutions. These make up a much more subtle and intricate world than that visible universe of which I was just now speaking.

It is much more difficult in this world than in the material, to separate things off from each other, and to find out how they stand related to each other, and to learn how to class them, and where to locate them respectively.

Still, it is not less true that, as the various figures and forms in a landscape have each its own place, and stand in this or that direction towards each other, so all the various objects which address the intellect have severally a substance of their own, and have fixed relations each of them with

everything else;-relations which our minds have no power of creating, but which we are obliged to ascertain, before we have a right to boast that we really know anything about them.

Yet, when the mind looks out for the first time into this manifold spiritual world, it is just as much confused, and dazzled, and distracted as are the eyes of the blind when they first begin to see; and it is by a long process and with much effort and anxiety that we begin hardly and partially to apprehend its various contents, and to put each in its proper place.

We grow up from boyhood; our minds open; we go into the world; we hear what men say, or read what they put in print; and thus a profusion of matters of all kinds is discharged upon us.

Some sort of an idea we have of most of them, from hearing what others say; but it is a very vague idea; probably, a very mistaken idea.

Young people especially, because they are young, color the assemblage of persons and things which they encounter with the freshness and grace of their own spring-tide; look for all good from the reflection of their own hopefulness; and worship what they have created. Men of ambition, again, look upon the world as a theater for fame and glory, and make it that magnificent scene of high enterprise and august recompense which Pindar or Cicero has delineated.

Poets, too, after their wont, put their ideal interpretation upon all things, material as well as moral, and substitute the noble for the true. Here are various obvious instances suggestive of the discipline which is imperative, if the mind is to grasp

things as they are, and to discriminate substance from shadows. For I am not concerned merely with youth, ambition, or poetry, but with our mental condition generally.

It is the fault of all of us, till we have duly practiced our minds, to be unreal in our sentiments and crude in our judgments, and to be carried off by fancies, instead of being at the trouble of acquiring sound knowledge.

In consequence, when we hear opinions put forth on any new subject, we have no principle to guide us in balancing them; we do not know what to make of them; we turn them to and fro, and over and back again, as if to pronounce upon them, if we could, but with no means of pronouncing.

It is the same, when we attempt to speak upon them, we make some random venture, or we take up the opinions of some one else, which strike our fancy; or perhaps, with the vaguest enunciation possible of any opinion at all, we are satisfied with ourselves, if we are merely able to throw off some rounded sentences, to make some pointed remarks on some other subject, or to introduce some figure of speech, or flowers of rhetoric, which, instead of being the vehicle, are the mere substitutes of meaning.

We wish to take a part in politics, and then nothing is open to us but to follow some person, or some party, and to learn the commonplaces, and the watchwords which belong to it.

We hear about landed interests, and mercantile interests, and trade, and higher and lower classes, and their rights and duties, and prerogatives; and we attempt to transmit what we have received; and soon our minds become loaded and perplexed