LIFE AS A TEST OF FITNESS

ET no man trust to the gentleness, the generosity, or seeming

L goodness of his heart, in the hope that they alone can safely

bear him through the temptations of this world. This is a state of probation, and a perilous passage to the true beginning of life, where even the best natures need continually to be reminded of their weakness, and to find their only security in steadily referring all their thoughts, acts, affections, to the ultimate end of their being: yet where, imperfect as we are, there is no obstacle too mighty, no temptation too strong, to the truly humble in heart, who, distrusting themselves, seek to be sustained only by that holy Being who is life and power, and who, in his love and mercy, has promised to give to those that ask.

Written on the back of a pencil sketch.

A

ART AND RELIGION

REAL debt of gratitude—that is, founded on a disinterested act of kindness-cannot be canceled by any subsequent unkindness on the part of our benefactor. If the favor be of a pecuniary nature, we may, indeed, by returning an equal or greater sum, balance the moneyed part; but we cannot liquidate the kind motive by the setting off against it any number of unkind ones. For an after injury can no more undo a previous kindness than we can prevent in the future what has happened in the past. So neither can a good act undo an ill one: a fearful truth! For good and evil have a moral life, which nothing in time can extinguish; the instant they exist, they start for Eternity. How, then, can a man who has once sinned, and who has not of himself cleansed his soul, be fit for heaven where no sin can enter ? I seek not to enter into the mystery of the atonement, "which even the angels sought to comprehend and could not"; but I feel its truth in an unutterable conviction, and that, without it, all flesh must perish. Equally deep, too, and unalienable, is my conviction that "the fruit of sin is misery." second birth to the soul is therefore a necessity which sin forces upon us Aye,- but not against the desperate will that rejects it. This conclusion was not anticipated when I wrote the first sentence of the preceding paragraph. But it does not surprise

me, for it is but a recurrence of what I have repeatedly experienced, namely, that I never lighted on any truth which I inwardly felt as such, however apparently remote from our religious being (as, for instance, in the philosophy of my art), that, by following it out, did not find its illustration and confirmation in some great doctrine of the Bible,-the only true philosophy, the sole fountain of light, where the dark questions of the understanding which have so long stood, like chaotic spectres, between the fallen soul and its reason, at once lose their darkness and their terror.

Written in his sketchbook.

EDMONDO DE AMICIS

(1846-)

DMONDO DE AMICIS, one of the most attractive prose writers of modern Italy, was born at Oneglia, October 21st, 1846. From 1865 to 1870, he served in the Italian army from which he retired to devote himself to literature. His books of travel have been extensively translated,- a fact due chiefly to the quality of the intellect they express, but also, no doubt, to the method which is illustrated in his "Studies of Paris." It is a collection of essays on the various phases of Parisian life, written with strength and candor, but without malice, from the standpoint of an observer to whom Parisian habits are still strange and Parisian ethics still unassimilated. It is doubtful if any English or American writer has written of Paris and the Parisians so well and truly as Amicis has done. "They are a frivolous people, but one in whom a noble and resolute word always finds an echo," he says of the Parisians. As their favorite Voltaire has said so much worse things of them, they are not likely to complain that Amicis does them less than justice when he adds to this that "little by little we persuade ourselves that many of the diseases which we believed to be caused by guilt are here only the efflorescence of a too rich blood.»

THE SHAMS, SHAMELESSNESS, AND DELIGHTS OF PARIS

THE

HE idea of having been born at Paris, of having had that sign of predilection from God, is the leading thought of the Parisian, like a star, which irradiates his whole life with a heavenly consolation. The benevolence he shows to all strangers is inspired to a great degree, by a feeling of commiseration for them, and his dislike of them is not a profound one, simply from the fact that he considers his enemies sufficiently punished by the fate which caused them to be born where they were. For this reason he worships all the childishness and vices of his native city, and is proud of them, only because they belong to Paris, which, to his mind, is above all human criticism. Can one find

any capital city which is more insolent to the people from the provinces, represented by its writers as a mass of cretins? and authors who offer incense to their city with a more outrageous imprudence, not only to any other national amour propre, but to all human dignity? They will tell you to your face from the stage that the smoke from its chimneys are the ideas of the universe! All lie prostrate on the ground before this enormous courtesan, mother and nurse of all vanities; of that rabid vanity of pleasing her first among them all, of obtaining from her, at any cost, at least one single glance; of that disgusting vanity which induces a writer to declare himself, in the preface of an infamous novel, capable of all the baseness and all the crimes of Heliogabalus and Nero. Take then, joking aside, their prefaces full of grimaces, puerilities, boasts, and impostures. Vanity is stamped upon them all. There is not in all contemporary literature one of those grand, modest, benevolent, and logical characters which write with the splendors of the mind, the dignity of life; one of those lofty and pure figures, before which one uncovers his head with hesitation and reserve, and whose name is a title of nobility and a comfort to humanity. All is overpowered and spoiled by the mania for pose; pose in literature, pose in religion, pose in love, pose even in the greatest afflictions. An immense and diseased sensuality constitutes the foundation of that life, and is revealed in letters, music, architecture, fashions, in the sound of the voice, glances, and even in the gait. Amusement! All the rest is only a means of attaining this end. From one limit to the other of those superb boulevards resounds a loud laugh of derision for all the scruples and all the modesty of the human soul. And a day arrives at last in which you become indignant at that life; a day in which you find yourself fearfully weary of that theatre, impregnated with the odor of gas and patchouli, where every spectacle ends in a canzonet; in which you are satiated with puns, blague, dances, dyes, puffery, cracked voices, false smiles, and purchased pleasures; then you despise that shameless city, and it seems to you that in order to purify yourself after three months of that life you ought to live for a year on the summit of a mountain, and you feel an irresistible desire to run through green fields in the open air, to smell the odor of the ground and to refresh your soul and blood in solitude, face to face with nature.

"Let us stand aside

At Paris you can say notice of us than do

The fit of passion is over, that is well. so that it may pass," as the Spanish say. whatever you choose; she takes no more the elephants in the zoological gardens of the children whom they carry upon their backs on holidays. But these are not our last impressions of Paris.

The period in which everything looks rose color and that in which everything seems black, is followed by a third that is a return in the direction of the first; that period in which one commences to live peacefully in a circle of choice and well-tried friends. And one must confess it: the friend found there, the good, honest Frenchman, is really worth two. In no other European do you find a more amiable harmony of mind, heart, and manner. Between the friendship, more expansive than profound, of the southern Europeans, and that deep, but reserved one of the north, you prefer this, so warm and cold at a time and so full of solemnity and delicacy. How charming it is, when one is weary of the noise of the great city, to go in the evening to the other bank of the Seine, into a silent street, to visit the quiet, little family, which lives, as it were, on an island in the middle. of that turbulent ocean. What a warm welcome you receive, what unreserved gayety you find at that refined but modest table, and how thoroughly your mind rests there. Paris itself offers you many retreats from its dangers and a thousand remedies for its fevers. After an exciting night, with what inexpressible pleasure do you dash through its beautiful groves, and the gay suburbs of the Seine, where you find the gayety of a country festival, and with its vast gardens in the midst of an enormous hive of children, or through one of its immense and solitary avenues, in which the heart and mind expand, and the sad image of the Babylon on the boulevards seems to you so far away. Everywhere you find a people who reveal more defects the more you study them; but in whom every defect is counterbalanced by some admirable quality.

They are a frivolous people, but one in whom a noble and resolute word always finds an echo. There is always an open and safe road by which to arrive at their hearts. There is no elevated sentiment or beautiful idea which does not take root in their souls. Their quick intelligence makes all the communications of the mind both easy and agreeable. The chance word,