life's earnestness; if she is base, no silken interweavings can keep out of sight her ugly head of discord. If we put a laugh into strait-jacket and leading-strings, it becomes an abortion; if we attempt to refine it, we destroy its pure, mellifluent ring; if we suppress a laugh, it struggles and dies on the heart, and the place where it lies is apt ever after to be weak and vulnerable. No, laugh truly, as you would speak truly, and both the inner and the outer man will rejoice. A full, spontaneous outburst opens all the delicate valves of being, and glides, a subtle oil, through all its complicated mechanism.

Laugh heartily, if you would keep the dew of your youth. There is no need to lay our girlhood and boyhood so doggedly down upon the altar of sacrifice as we toil up life's mountain. Dear, innocent children, lifting their dewy eyes and fair foreheads to the benedictions of angels-prattling and gamboling because it is a great joy to live, should flit like sunbeams among the stern-faced and stalwart. Young men and maidens should walk with strong, elastic tread and cheerful voices among the weak and uncertain. White hairs should be no more the insignia of age, but the crown of ripe and perennial youth.

Laugh for your beauty. The joyous carry a fountain of light in their eyes, and round into rosy dimples, where the echoes of gladness play at "hide and go seek." Your "lean and hungry Cassius" is never betrayed into a laugh, and his smile is more cadaverous than his despair.

Laugh, if you would live. He only exists who drags his days after him like a massive chain, asking sympathy with uplifted eyebrows and weak utterance as the beggar asks alms. Better die, for your own sake and the world's sake, than to pervert the uses and graces and dignities of life. Make your own sunshine and your own music-keep your heart open to the smile of the good Father, and brave all things.

"Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt;
And every laugh so merry draws one out."

LXXVII. TOASTS AND SENTIMENTS.

MAY the honest heart never know distress. May care be a stranger where virtue resides. May hemp bind those whom honor can not. May our prudence secure us friends, but enable us to live without their assistance.

May sentiment never be sacrificed by the tongues of deceit. May our happiness be sincere and our joys lasting. May the smiles of conjugal felicity compensate the frowns of fortune.

May the tears of sensibility never cease to flow.

May the road to preferment be found by none but those who deserve it.

May the liberal hand find free access to the purse of plenty.

May the impulse of generosity never be checked by the power of necessity.

May we always forget when we forgive an injury.

May the feeling heart possess the fortune the miser abuses.

May we draw upon content for the deficiencies of fortune. May Hope be thy physician when calamity is the disease.

CONVERSATION.

CONVERSATION calls into light what has been lodged in all the recesses and secret chambers of the soul. By occasional hints and incidents, it brings old useful notions into remembrance; it unfolds and displays the hidden treasure of knowledge with which reading, observation, and study have before furnished the mind. By mutual discourse the soul is awakened and allured to bring forth its hoards of knowledge, and it learns now to render them most useful to mankind. A man of vast reading, without conversation, is like a miser, who lives only for himself.

LXXVIII.-PATRIOTISM.

BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

"This is my own, my native land?" Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathes, go, mark him well:
For him no minstrel raptures swell.

High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from which he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child,

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires, what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band
That knits me to thy rugged strand?

MELANCHOLY.

SEE yonder poor, o'er-labored wight,
So abject, mean, and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toil;
And see his lordly fellow-worm
The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful though a weeping wife
And helpless offspring mourn.

-Scott.

O death! the poor man's dearest friend,

The kindest and the best!

Welcome the hour my aged limbs

Are laid with thee at rest!

The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow,

From pomp and pleasure torn,

But, oh! a blest relief to those

That weary-laden mourn!

-Burns.

LXXIX. —TRUE POLITENESS.

THE terms lady and gentlewoman are often in our mouths, but the true meaning of them is but little understood.

In this privileged land, where we acknowledge no distinctions but what are founded on character or manners, she is a lady who, to inbred modesty and refinement, adds a scrupulous attention to the rights and feelings of others. Let her worldly possessions be great or small, let her occupations be what they may, such an one is a lady,—a gentlewoman; whilst, on the other hand, the person who is bold, coarse, boisterous, and inattentive to the rights and feelings of others, let her possessions be ever so great, and her style of living and dress be ever so fashionable, will always be looked upon as a vulgar woman. Thus we may see a lady sewing for her livelihood, and a vulgar woman presiding over a most expensive establishment.

A well-bred lady must carry her good manners everywhere with her. It is not a thing that can be laid aside and put on at pleasure. True politeness is uniform in every situation of life, accompanied by a calm self-possession which belongs to a noble simplicity of purpose; and, unless it is cultivated and exercised, it will never become a part of one's self. If it is attempted to be assumed for some particular purpose, it will sit awkwardly, and fail at the utmost need.

The charm which true politeness sheds over a person, though not easily described, is felt by all hearts and responded to by the best feelings of our nature. It is a talisman of great power to smooth our way along the rugged paths of life, and to turn toward us the best side of all we

meet.

LXXX. THE CELESTIAL ARMY.

I STOOD by the open casement,
And looked upon the night,
And saw the westward-going stars
Pass slowly out of sight.

Slowly the bright procession

Went down the gleaming arch,
And my soul discerned the music
Of their long triumphant march,

Till the great celestial army,
Stretching far beyond the poles,
Became the eternal symbol

Of the mighty march of souls.

Onward! forever onward,

Red Mars led down his clan,
And the moon, like a mailed maiden,
Was riding in the van.

And some were bright in beauty,

And some were faint and small

But these might be in their great height,
The noblest of them all.

Downward! forever downward,

Behind earth's dusky shore,

They passed into the unknown night—
They passed, and were no more.