stretch on the public road. Besides, all such attempts at phys ical improvement, however heroically kept up for a few days or weeks, are sure of a speedy end. Shall the sufferer try the gymnasium? That, too, has been tested thoroughly, and even the most enthusiastic of its early glorifiers are now ready to admit that it has been found wanting. Gymnastics may do for boys whose frames have not been hardened, but are utterly unfit for grown persons, especially for hard thinkers. The hurtfulness, the exhaustion, which such recreations produce, is absolutely incompatible with much brain-work. Every man has a certain fixed amount, or capital stock, of strength; and few have so much that it will admit of being taken out at both ends, head and heels, at once. The total neglect of exercise is hardly more deleterious than too much rushed through perfunctorily. It is simply absurd to think that violent exertions for a couple of hours can atone for the want of a constant supply of fresh air; and still more to think that we can save our candle by burning it at both ends instead of at one only. Nature is not thus to be outwitted. The proper remedy for a period of unhealthy living is not working double tides, not an hour or two occupied in drawing off the remaining strength of an overtaxed system, but, as a sensible writer has observed, now and then an entire day or week or month given to renovation and merely physical improvement. In the intervals, such exercise as is taken ought to be of an easy and amusing rather than of a laborious kind. Such a change as society affords is of more value than muscular activity. But vacations, frequent holidays, though but for a day, are the true safety-valves of professional men; and he who grants himself occasional rest will not only live longer, but do more work, than he who drudges in the office, counting-room, or study from January to December.

Again, one of the worst results of overworking the brain in any exclusive direction is, that it tends, when it does not absolutely break down that organ, to produce mental deformity. As the nursery-maid who carries her burden with one hand

exclusively is afflicted with spinal curvature, so the thinking man who gives his intellectual energies to one subject or class of subjects gets a twist in his brains. Those persons, therefore, who are chained to mental labor and cannot give the brain repose, should try to vary their labors, which is another form of repose. "Intense and prolonged application to one subject," says a writer, "is the root of all the mischief. As your body may be in activity during the whole of the day, if you vary the actions sufficiently, so may the brain work all day at varied occupations. Hold out a stick at arm's length for five minutes, and the muscles will be more fatigued than by an hour's rowing the same principle holds good with the brain.” There is truth in this; yet it must be remembered that even where mental labor is thus varied, there is a limit beyond which the brain cannot be safely tasked. Lands need to lie fallow, and so do brains. You may rest oftentimes by simply changing your work, as the boy at the grindstone rests by changing hands; but the man who gets all his head-rest that way will suffer as truly as the boy who, with either hand, attempts an unceasing grind. To reconcile health with perpetual work, however ingeniously varied, demands, not a human constitution, not even that of a Hercules, but one of lignumvitæ or iron.

CHAPTER XXI.

TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS.

We do not choose our own parts in life, and have nothing to do with those parts. Our simple duty is confined to playing them well. EPICTETUS.

I confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect for men who do not succeed in life, as those words are commonly used. HILLARD.

G. S.

The heart of a man is a short word, a small substance, scarce enough to give a kite a meal; yet great in capacity, yea, so indefinite in desire that the round globe of the world cannot fill the three corners of it! When it desires more, and cries, " 'Give, give!" I will set it over to the infinite good, where the more it hath it may desire more, and see more to be desired. BISHOP HALL.

O, keep me innocent! make others great. of Denmark.

QUEEN CAROLINE MATILDA,

The world will be blind, indeed, if it does not reckon amongst its great ones such martyrs as miss the palm but not the pains of martyrdom, heroes without the laurels, and conquerors without the jubilation of triumph. —J. H. FRISWELL, The Gentle Life.

N the preceding chapters we have endeavored to furnish

wome useful directions touching

the art of "getting on in the world," illustrating our hints by examples of men who have succeeded and of men who have failed. In conclusion, it should be remembered that success in life is to be regarded as a means, and not as an end; and that therefore there is such a thing possible as unsuccessful success, such a thing as gaining every end, while the whole life has been a failure. For what is this success, to which we have been trying to point out the path? Viewed in the light of another world, of that measureless existence compared with

which this earthly one is but a point, what is it, after all,

but a comparatively vulgar, paltry affair? Is it anything for which a man should crawl in the dust, degrade himself in his own estimation, do violence to the divine principle within him, or stoop to the smallest mean or dishonorable action? Is life a scrub-race, where, at every hazard, though you have to blind the man on your right and trip the one on your left, you must struggle to come out ahead? Shall we subscribe to that dangerous materialism running throughout American life, which preaches that money is the great end and evidence of the possession of intellect, that a man must be a failure unless he culminates in the possession of a check-book, a belief worthy only of a people prepared to accept "Poor Richard's" maxims as a New Testament? Were we sent into the world simply, in the slang phrase of the day, "to win a pile"? And when we have a competence, shall we sacrifice health, peace, conscience, that we may boast of our hundreds of thousands, though we know that incessant fear and nervous anxiety are often the shadows that surround the glittering heap? Is it nothing to have a conscience void of offence, a face that never turns pale at the accuser's voice, a bosom that never throbs at the fear of exposure, a heart that might be turned inside out and discover no stain of dishonor?

But perhaps you regard popularity as the great test of success; you covet the digito pretereuntium monstrari; you would be the focus of all eyes, "the observed of all observers," though of that kind of honor, as Cowley says, 66 every mountebank has more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief justice of a city." Then you live a life only in others' breath; your happiness depends on every turn of the weathercock; you are at the mercy of every wind that blows. Are you the lion of to-day, because you have burned the heart of the world with your ardent soul? I am the lion to-morrow, because I balance myself on a wire over the dizzy chasm of Niagara, and you are quite forgotten. The confounding of excellence with pecuniary success or a seat in Congress is both absurd and immoral. Was the divinest life

ever led on this earth a success, humanly speaking? And are you entitled to pronounce your fellow-man, who has humbly tried to copy it, a cipher, because he has not, like you, courted applause, and made some little nook or corner of the earth ring with his name? Has not many a man been a blessing to the world who has made no noise in it, and who has died a beggar? And have not thousands died rich in goods or reputation, who were intellectually and morally bankrupt?

Is

it not too true of the road of ambition, that, as another has said, "the higher it ascends the more difficult it becomes, till at last it terminates in some elevation too narrow for friendship, too steep for safety, too sharp for repose, and where the occupant, above the sympathy of man and below the friendship of angels, resembles in the solitude if not the depth of his sufferings a Prometheus chained to the Caucasian rock"? Whatever you will pay the price for, you can have in this world, that is the rule. Be rich or popular, if you choose,bringing all your faculties, as did Bonaparte his forces, to bear upon one point, and letting your intellectual and moral nature lie fallow. But do not arrogate too much on the strength of this vulgar success; do not expect admiration and applause, or even a tacit assent to your claims, from those who are accustomed to look below the surface. Do not deem yourself authorized to pity those who prefer incorruptible treasures to a balance at their banker's, the "pearl of great price" to the jewel that sparkles on the finger, - and who have been successful as men, though they may have failed as lawyers, doctors, and merchants. The possession of 5-20 bonds, and mortgages, and corner lots does not always and necessarily reward virtuous industry; "a play, a book, a great work, an architect, or a general, may owe success simply to the bad taste of the times; and, again, nonsuccess in any candidate may arise from a conscience too clear and sensitive, a taste too good and too nice, a judgment too discriminative, a generosity too romantic and noble, or a modesty too retiring." There is no possible valuation of human character which would make the slightest show in the stock