world has been created for him. It is hardly possible but the character should take a higher and better tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with a class of thinkers, to say the least of it, above the average of humanity. It is morally impossible but that the manners should take a tinge of good breeding and civilization from having constantly before one's eyes the way in which the best bred and best informed have talked and conducted themselves in their intercourse with each other. There is a gentle but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of. It cannot, in short, be better summed up than in the words of the Latin poet: Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feres.

It civilizes the conduct of men, and suffers them not to remain barbarous.

'HE sharp north-east wind doth never last three days; tempests have but a short time; and the more violent the thunder is, the less permanent it is. In the like manner, it falleth out with jars and crossings of friends, which, begun in a minute, are ended in a moment. Necessary it is that among friends there should be some over-thwarting; but to continue in anger, not convenient. The camel first troubleth the water before he drink; the frankincense is burned before it smell; friends are tried before they are trusted, lest, like the carbuncle, as though they had fire, they be found, being touched, to be without fire. Friendship should be like the wine which Homer, much commending, calleth Maroneum, whereof one pint being mingled with five quarts of water, yet it keepeth his old strength and virtue, not to be qualified by any discourtesy. Where salt doth grow, nothing else can breed; where friendship is built, no offence can harbour.

JOHN LYLY.

AGAINST READINESS TO TAKE OFFENCE.

で

E make ourselves more injuries than are offered us; they many times pass for wrongs in our own thoughts, that were never meant so by the heart of him that speaketh. The apprehension of wrong hurts more than the sharpest part of the wrong done. So, by falsely making ourselves patients of wrong, we become the true and first actors. It is not good, in matters of discourtesy, to dive into a man's mind, beyond his own comment; nor to stir upon a doubtful indignity without it, unless we have proofs that carry weight and conviction with them. Words do sometimes fly from the tongue that the heart did neither hatch nor harbour. While we think to revenge an injury, we many times begin one; and after that, repent our misconceptions. In things that may have a double sense, it is good to think the better was intended; so shall we still both keep our friends and quietness.

OWEN FELTHAM.

PLAGIARISM.

OTHING is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakspere before him.

HEINRICH HEINE.

THE MIND O'ERTHROWN.

(From "Hamlet," Act III., Scene 1.) PHELIA. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye,
tongue, sword:

The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers! quite, quite
down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign rea-
son,

Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and
harsh;

That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth,

Blasted with ecstasy: O, wo is me!

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

I see that those that are aloft,

Mishap doth threaten most of all; These get with toil, they keep with fear;

Such cares my mind could never bear.

Content to live, this is my stay;

I seek no more than may suffice;
I press to bear no haughty sway;

Look, what I lack, my mind supplies;
Lo! thus I triumph like a king,
Content with what my mind doth bring.

Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more;
They are but poor, though much they
have,

And I am rich with little store;
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I leave; they pine, I live.

I laugh not at another's loss;

I grudge not at another's gain;
No worldly waves my mind can toss;
My state at one doth still remain;
I fear no foe; I fawn no friend;
I loathe not life, nor dread my end.

Some weigh their pleasure by their lust,
Their wisdom by their rage of will;
Their treasure is their only trust;
A cloaked craft their store of skill;
But all the pleasure that I find
Is to maintain a quiet mind.

My wealth is health and perfect ease;
My conscience clear my chief defense;
I neither seek by bribes to please,
Nor by deceit to breed offence;
Thus do I live; thus will I die;
Would all did so as well as I!

WILLIAM BYRD.

BOOKS.

(From "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.")

LIKE books. I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get among them, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think I undervalue them, either as companions or instructors. But I can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its greatest scholars great men.

The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, if any, yet they represent to our imagination a very complete idea of manhood; and I think, could we ask an Abraham to dine with us men of letters next Saturday, we should feel honored by his company. What I wanted to say about books is this: that there are times in which every active mind feels itself above any and all human books.

"I think a man must have a good opinion of himself, sir," said the divinity student, "who should feel himself above Shakspere at any time."

"My young friend," I replied, "the man who is never conscious of a state of feeling or intellectual effort entirely beyond expression by any form of words whatsoever, is a mere creature of language. I can hardly believe there are any such men. Why, think for a moment of the power of music. The nerves that make us alive to it are spread out, as the Professor tells me, in the most sensitive region of the marrow, just where it is widening to run upward into the hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of sense rather than of thought; yet it produces a continuous, and, as it were, logical sequence of emotional aud intellectual changes; but bow different from the chain of thought proper! How entirely beyond the reach of symbols! Think of human passions as compared with all phrases! Did you ever hear of a man's growing lean by reading of "Romeo and Juliet," or blowing his brains out because Desdemona was maligned? There are a good many symbols, too, that are more expressive than words. I remember a young wife who had to part with her husband for a time. She did not write a mournful poem; indeed, she was a silent person, and perhaps hardly said a word about it; but she quietly turned of a deep orange color with jaundice. A great many people in this world have but one form of rhetoric for their profoundest experiences, namely, to waste away and die. When a man can read, his paroxysm of feeling is passing. When he can read, his thought is slacking its hold. You talk about reading Shakspere, using him as an expression for the highest intellect; and you wonder that any common person should be so presumptuous as to suppose his thought can rise above the text which lies before him. But think a moment. A child's reading of Shakspere is one thing, and Coleridge or Schlegel's reading of him is another. The saturation point of each mind differs from that of every other. But I think it is as true for the small mind, which can only take up a little, as for the great one, which takes up much, that the suggested train of thought and feeling ought always to rise above, not the author, but the reader's mental version of the author, whoever he may be.

"I think that most readers of Shakspere sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music. Then they may drop the book, to pass at once into the region of thought without words. We may happen to be very dull folk, you and I, and probably are, unless there is some particular reason to suppose the contrary. But we get glimpses now and then of a sphere of spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in vast circles around the largest compass of earthly intelligences.

"I confess there are times when I feel like the friend I mentioned to you some time ago; I hate the very sight of a book. Sometimes it has become almost a physical necessity to talk out what is in the mind, before putting anything else in it. It is very bad to have thoughts and feelings, which ought to come out, strike in, as they say of some complaints which ought to show outwardly.

"I always believed in life rather than in books. I suppose every day of earth, with its hundred thousand deaths, and something more of births, with its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its pangs and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the books that ever were written put together. I believe the flowers growing at this moment send up more fragrance to heaven than was ever exhaled from all the essences ever distilled."

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.