ing and inestimable worth. They all, therefore, are or may be made opportunities. The paramount consideration is not what will procure for him more money, finer houses, better machines, more rapid or more destructive engines, but what will make him wiser, stronger, holier, more loving, more godlike.

What innumerable blessings we miss through lack of sensibility, of openness to light, of fair-mindedness, of insight, of teachableness-virtues which it is possible for all to cultivate! The best is not ours, not because it is far away and unattainable, but because we ourselves are indifferent, narrow, short-sighted and unsympathetic. To make our world larger and fairer it is not necessary to discover or acquire new objects, but to grow into conscious and loving harmony with the good which is ever-present and inviting. How much of life's joy we lose from want of a fearless and cheerful spirit! The brave and gladhearted, like the beautiful, are welcome in all companies.

It is our own fault if beauty is not ours. A fair and luminous mind creates a body after its own image. With health and a soul, nor man nor woman can be other than beautiful, whatever the features. The most potent charm is that of expression. As the moonlight clothes the rugged and jagged mountain with loveliness, so a noble mind transfigures its vesture.

The man himself is the best part of the opportunity. The starlit heaven is not sublime when there is no soul capable of awe; the spring is not fair where there is no glad heart to see and feel. Opportunity is living correspondence with one's environment. Where there is no correspondence there is no opportunity. For ages the exhaustless resources of America lay unknown and unutilized

because the right kind of a man was not here. The Kimberley diamonds were but worthless pebbles, the playthings of the children of savages, until it chanced they fell under the eye of one who knew how to look.

Opportunity in the highest sense of the word is opportunity for education, for making ourselves men. This end every occasion should serve, since for this we are born. "We should, as far as it is possible," says Aristotle, "make ourselves immortal, and strive to live by that part of ourselves which is more excellent." Now, the testimony of the wise of all ages agrees that a virtuous life is the best and the happiest. Choose and follow it then, tho thou find it hard; for custom will make it easy and pleasant. Piety nourishes faith, hope, and love, and therefore sustains life. If thou seekest for what is new and also permanently interesting, live with the old truths, until they strike root in thy being and break into new light and power. The happenings of the day and year are but novelties, but bubbles that burst in the vacant air; that which is forever new is ancient as God. It is that whereby the soul lives. It was with the first man when first he blossomed forth from eternity; it is with thee now and shall be with all men until the end. It is the source whence thy being springs; its roots dip into infinity; its flowers make the universe glad and sweet; it is the power which awakens the soul to the consciousness of its kinship with Him who is all in all, who is life and truth and love, who the more He is sought and loved doth seem to be the more divinely beautiful and good. Learn to live with the thoughts which are symbols of His Eternal Being, and thou shalt come to feel that

nothing else is so fresh or fair. As a sound may suggest light and color, a perfume recall forgotten worlds; as a view, disclosed by a turn in the road, may carry us across years and oceans to scenes and friends long unvisited; as a bee, weaving his winding path from flower to flower, may bring back the laughter of children, the songs of birds, and the visionary clouds fallen asleep in the voluptuous sky of June; so the universe will come to utter for us the voice of the Creator, who is our Father. Nothing touches the soul but leaves its impress, and thus, little by little, we are fashioned into the image of all we have seen and heard, known and meditated; and if we learn to live with all that is fairest and purest and best, the love of it all will in the end become our very life.

THE DEFINITION OF A GENTLEMAN

BY CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined, and, so far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him, and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called the comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature-like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their best in dispelling cold and fatigue, tho nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manner

carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the mind of those with whom he is cast-all clashing of opinion or collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion or gloom or resentment, his great concern being to make every one at ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company, he is tender toward the bashful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful toward the absurd. He can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors when he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudency, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves toward our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults. He is too well employed to remember injuries and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned on philosophical principle; he submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength

on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, indulgence; he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he can be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful or useful, to which he does not assent; he honors the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling which is attendant on civilization. Not that he may not hold a religion, too, in his own way, even when he is not a Christian. In that case his religion is one of imagination and sentiment; it is the embodiment of those ideas of the sublime, majestic, and beautiful without which there can be no large philosophy. Sometimes he acknowledges the being of God, sometimes he invests an unknown principle or qualities with the attributes of perfection. And this deduction of his reason or creation of his fancy he makes the occasion of such excellent thoughts, and the starting-point of so varied and systematic a teaching, that he even seems like a disciple of Christianity itself. From the very accuracy and steadiness of his logical powers he