Universe of Space, the whole Eternity of Time, and what they hold that is the price which would content thee; that, and if thou wilt be candid, nothing short of that! It is thy all; and for it thou would'st have all. Thou art an unreasonable mortal; or rather thou art a poor infinite mortal, who, in thy narrow clay-prison here, seemest so unreasonable? Thou wilt never sell thy Life, or any part of thy Life, in a satisfactory manner. Give it, like a royal heart; let the price be Nothing; thou hast then in a certain sense got all for it! The heroic man,— and is not every man, God be thanked, a potential hero? has to do so, in all times and circumstances. Carlyle.

How long shall we sit in our porticos praising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with longsuffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes.

Thoreau.

If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. J. A. Froude.

It is not likely to prosper under the best circumstances, such kid-gloved daintiness and fingering with life. To a man in his case, employment, grasped strongly and vigor

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It is as idle for the mind to

ously, is the only resource. hope to speculate clear of doubt in the closet, as for the body to be physicked out of sickness, kept lying on a sofa.

Every noble Work is at first impossible. Carlyle.

Labor is the Lethe of the Past and the Present.

Ib.

Richter.

Ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true misery. And yet of your strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between vague, wavering capability, and fixed indubitable performance, what a difference! A certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells dimly in us; which only our works can render articulate and decisively discernible. Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, Know what thou canst work at.

Carlyle.

All work in this world no doubt rests at bottom on the elementary animal requirements of our nature; but it is then most worthily performed, not when these requirements are most obtrusive, but when they are most withdrawn. It is the specific moral benefit which social organization

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confers upon man, that it enables him to retreat from the constant presence of sheer necessity, and stand at a sufficient distance from it, to allow other and higher feelings to connect themselves with his industry.

Martineau.

To use the hands in making quicklime into mortar, is better than to cross them on the breast in attendance on a prince.

Sadi.

Pleasure indeed makes inspiration, and energy and resolve animate expiration, but pleasure and energy are sometimes united in the joy of work, and then the inspiration and expiration are at one, and the man breathes con amore. In this state both sides of the Janus of breath, peace and war, pleasure and energy, are combined in happiness. Wilkinson.

Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, everworking universe; it is a seed-grain that cannot die.

Carlyle.

Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toil-worn craftsman, that with earth-made implement, laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence ! for

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it is the face of a man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed. Thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee, too, lay a God-created form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labor; and thy body like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on; thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.

A second man I honor, and still more highly; him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavoring towards inward harmony; revealing this by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors, be they high or low? Highest of all when his outward and his inward behavior are one; when we can name him artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, that with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us. If the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him, in return, that he have light and guidance, freedom, immortality? These two, in all their degrees, I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth.

Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the

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lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a peasant saint, could such now any where be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness. It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor. We must all toil or steal, (howsoever we name our stealing,) which is worse. No faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst; but for him also there is food and drink <; he is heavy-laden and weary, but for him also the heavens send sleep, and of the deepest. In his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted dreams. But what I do mourn over is that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly or even of earthly knowledge should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and Indignation. Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! was this too a Breath of God; bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded? That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. Carlyle.

The vast instrumentalities involved in the division of labor, have their appointed uses in the providential econ