LESSON XI.

Books.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling- if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man; though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. Channing.

GRANDFATHER'S CHAIR.

The chair in which Grandfather sat was made of oak, which had grown dark with age, but had been rubbed

and polished till it shone as bright as mahogany. It was very large and heavy, and had a back that rose high above Grandfather's white head. This back was curiously carved in openwork, so as to represent flowers and foliage, and other devices which the children had often gazed at, but could never understand what they meant. On the very tiptop of the chair, over the head of Grandfather himself, was the likeness of a lion's head, which had such a savage grin that you would almost expect to hear it growl and snarl.

The children had seen Grandfather sitting in this chair ever since they could remember anything. Perhaps the younger of them supposed that he and the chair had come into the world together, and that both had always been as old as they were now. At this time, however, it happened to be the fashion for ladies to adorn their drawing-rooms with the oldest and oddest chairs that could be found. It seemed to Cousin Clara that, if these ladies could have seen Grandfather's old chair, they would have thought it worth all the rest together. She wondered if it were not even older than Grandfather himself, and longed to know all about its history. -Hawthorne.

A clear and sharp-cut enunciation is one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech. Words so uttered are like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges of long service.

The first requisite of good writing is to have an earnest and definite purpose, whether æsthetic or moral; and even good writing, to please long, must have more than an average amount either of imagination or common sense. - Lowell.

LESSON XII.

THE BIBLE.

1. The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying; and while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book to create light in the midst of darkness, to alleviate the sorrow which admits of no other alleviation, to direct a beam of hope to the heart which no other topic of consolation can reach; while guilt, despair, and death vanish at the touch of its holy inspiration.

2. There is something in the spirit and diction of the Bible which is found peculiarly adapted to arrest the attention of the plainest and most uncultivated minds. The simple structure of its sentences, combined with a lofty spirit of poetry-its familiar allusions to the scenes of nature and the transactions of common life the delightful intermixture of narration with the doctrinal and preceptive parts and the profusion of miraculous facts, which convert it into a sort of enchanted ground-its constant advertence to the Deity, whose perfections it renders almost visible and palpableunite in bestowing upon it an interest which attaches to no other performance, and which, after assiduous and repeated perusal, invests it with much of the charm of novelty; like the great orb of day, at which we are

wont to gaze with unabated astonishment from infancy to old age.

3. What other book besides the Bible could be heard in public assemblies from year to year, with an attention that never tires, and an interest that never cloys? With few exceptions, let a portion of the sacred volume be recited in a mixed multitude, and though it has been heard a thousand times, a universal stillness ensues, every eye is fixed and every ear is awake and attentive. Select, if you can, any other composition, and let it be rendered equally familiar to the mind, and see whether it will produce this effect. Hall.

LESSON XIII.

THE GARRET OF THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE.

It has a flooring of laths with ridges of mortar squeezed up between them, which if you tread on you will go to the Lord have mercy on you! where will you go to? — the same being crossed by narrow bridges of boards, on which you may put your feet, but with fear and trembling. Above you and around you are beams and joists, on some of which you may see, when the light is let in, the marks of the conchoidal clippings of the broadaxe, showing the rude way in which the timber was shaped as it came, full of sap, from the neighboring forest. It is a realm of darkness and thick dust, and shroud-like cobwebs, and dead things they wrap in their gray folds. For a garret is like a seashore, where wrecks are thrown up, and slowly go to pieces. There is the cradle which

the old man you just remember was rocked in; there is the ruin of the bedstead he died on; that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put under his pillow in the days when his breath came hard; there is his old chair with both arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had nothing earthly left to lean on; there is the large wooden reel which the blear-eyed old deacon sent the minister's lady, who thanked him graciously, and twirled it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed it out decently to the limbo of troublesome conveniences. And there are old leather portmanteaus, like stranded porpoises, their mouths gaping in gaunt hunger for the food with which they used to be gorged to bulging repletion; and old brass andirons, waiting until time shall revenge them on their paltry substitutes, and they shall have their own again, and bring with them the forestick and backlog of ancient days; and the empty churn, with its idle dasher, and the brown, shaky old spinning-wheel, which was running, it may be, in the days when they were hanging the Salem witches. Holmes.

LESSON XIV.

THE VAN TASSEL HOUSE.

It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with highridged but lowly-sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for