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plain truths to it; it requires thinkers who will remodel its thoughts for it; it wants poets who will show it the sources of true honor and joy; it wants painters who will teach it how to recognize beauty.

But, in general, it does not want to pay for any of these things. Therefore they must be omitted from the ways of earning bread. The world is very willing to pay people who speak smooth falsehoods to it, who make level the grooves in which its warped thoughts run, who sing songs in honor of its folly and passions, who draw vulgar and base pictures for its illustrated papers, or paint the portraits of its millionaires and professional beauties. Now very few of those who are gifted with literary or artistic talents prepare to prostitute them in these ways; and yet how many sink to do so because, if they mean to live by their gifts, they must shape them to what the world asks!

Therefore, if anybody feels that he or she has a mission to preach, or write, or paint, the first thing they have to do is to be independent of the world's payment. That may come-it often does come, sooner or later. But they must be independent of it. Does this mean that only rich men are able freely to use such gifts? No. The greatest of such gifts have been most successfully exercised by poor men. Shakespeare did not live by his plays; he lived by his diligence as a man of business. Milton did not live by his epics, but by his secretarial and his tutorial work. Burns did his best work while he followed his plough. Millet, the painter of the Angelus, when he could not sell his masterpieces, turned an honest penny by painting signboards. Spinoza would have starved on his philosophy, but he kept alive by grinding spectacles.

Nobody should dream of getting a living as a genius. Let the geniuses

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keep themselves in the rank of the average people and seek answer to the second division of my question: "For what of work really wanted is the world willing to pay?"

It is most willing to pay for food, for clothing, for shelter, for help in sickness, and within limits (very shameful limits sometimes) for teaching.

Those occupations which lie nearest to the natural instincts are not only the most happy, but also the most permanent and prosperous.

The trades which minister to the real necessities of humanity are the most desirable and the most honorable. Farmers and fishers, builders, carpenters and road-makers, bakers and clothiers, and all the other ministers to the daily needs of work-a-day humanity will be always necessary in every state of society. The woman who really knows how to keep a house, how to cook, how to wash, how to make clothes, will never lack work. In the whole world-though not always in any particular part of it-there will be always more work of this kind than there are workers to do it.

Occupations which minister to luxury are less useful, and therefore less satisfying to the inner consciousness. They are less reliable, too, being apt to fluctuate with taste or wealth, and being all more or less under the fickle rule of fashion. Employments which are altogether at the mercy of mere "fashion" are best avoided. They involve feverish overwork and extravagance, heartbreaking depression and demoralization. The skill which time and practice bring to other pursuits cannot bê gained in them, and the worker's prospects darken rapidly as life advances.

It is best that men should take to callings in which the great mass of womankind will never compete with them. There may be exceptional women who will do anything from coal-mining to navigation, but they are few and

So

will not disturb the labor market. women, again, are wisest, as a rule, to occupy those fields which are all their own, and in which they do not have to compete with men.

In our own day we have seen one field of labor rapidly change hands. Women are driving men out of counting-house and office. It often comes hard on the men, and one hears a good deal of pity for them, which sometimes seems inclined to ignore that women have an equal right to live! The true pity of it is that in such fields the women really have to do as much work as the men, at far lower rates of pay; and while it must not be forgotten that in many instances the man has his family to maintain, while the woman has only herself to keep and remains one of a home, still it is not always so, and anyhow that is no just standard for the value of work. Yet women would do better to confine themselves more to those avocations which are all their own. If the sister earns ten shillings a week by doing work for which the brother used to receive a pound, while he now sits idle, the household is no gainer by the exchange; and possibly she might have found better paid work for herself which would have left him at his desk.

The work of counting-house and office may be, perhaps, quite as suitable for a woman as for a man; perhaps even more so. It will be an unalloyed blessing if the present sharp competition between the sexes reduces the fancied advantages of this kind of work to a vanishing-point. It has too long been rushed upon because of the snobbish idea that it is "gentlemanly," and the young man, in a black coat, making entries in a ledger, has been apt to think himself infinitely superior to the working men whose productive labors and transactions he merely records. As a matter of fact, few occupations offer less stimulus to the mind or develop

ment of the physical frame. It is one of the terrible mistakes of fond parents that they sometimes put a clever, thinking boy into this sort of work, because they imagine it is above manual labor, and more in line with his studious or artistic turn. A great mistake. Nothing can be worse, more trying, more destroying to the higher mental faculties than the constant working of the mere mechanical part of the mind. The balance can be kept only by the wise use of leisure. If anybody thinks himself or herself a genius let them throw gentility to the winds, and straightway apply themselves to some of the plain ways of labor, which will leave the mind free.

Apart from considerations of "gentility," sedentary, indoor occupations are occasionally chosen for delicate boys or girls, just because they are delicate, and it is thought that such work is "light." This, too, is a sad error. Medical men, too, tell us that where there is any tendency to consumption an outdoor life and cheerful movement may often counteract it, while heated rooms, impure atmospheres, and constrained attitudes may develop such tendencies even where they did not previously exist.

There are physical defects which should convince those who suffer from them that certain occupations are not for them, and could yield them only disappointment and defeat. People with short-sighted eyes should not become seamstresses or engravers. One should make sure that one is not colorblind before going into shipping or railway duties. One may be in some ways admirably fitted to impart knowledge and yet quite unfit for the teaching profession if of a nervous, excitable temperament, unable to bear the strain of constant responsibility or the irritation of persistent claims on the attention. It is not wise for any to go into medicine or nursing whose sickly or de

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A few principles may be suggested on which the choice of an occupation may be made, and these principles can be thrown into the form of questions which the individual can answer for himself or for his children, or those who seek his counsel.

"What work is really useful in the world?"

We have already shown that some of the most useful work in the world is not paid for-cannot be paid for. But some of the most useless occupations are almost the most highly paid. They are not, therefore, the most desirable. "Lightly come, lightly go," and the enormous earnings of jockeys, dancers, and other hangers on of idle frivolity generally enrich themselves in the end as little as their labors enrich the world! They give their lives, their very souls for nought. Therefore we leave them out of our consideration. We will infer that our determination is that our choice of life-work shall be of the distinctly useful, and then we go on to the next question.

"Out of these useful occupations, which do I like best?"

Now this is a question for each soul. Nobody can help him in the answer; for in this matter, as in most others, "one man's meat is another man's poison." At this point parents are wise to leave perfect liberty. They should have helped their children to be able to give answer for themselves. Parents and teachers should watch for children's inclinations, and foster them, instead of throwing cold water upon them, as they sometimes do. The little instinctive effort of a child of six might, if duly encouraged, become the strong aptitude and inclination in the boy or girl of fourteen. If Florence Nightingale's friends had jeered at her bandaged dolls, and taken them away from her, she might never have developed into the great Nursing Sister. By the time West, the artist, was sixteen he would readily' have said "I want to be a painter," but if, when, as a child of six, he drew the baby's portrait, his mother had laughed at him or scolded him for "making a mess," instead of kissing him, his talent might have perished in its birth. One even wonders whether the elaboration of modern toys, leaving nothing to a child's own imagination and inclination, may not have something to do with indecision in the choice of future occupation. Germs are easily killed. An oak is a mighty monarch, hard to destroy, but anybody can trample an acorn.

Then, when we have decided what we would like to do, the next question is:

"Can we do it?"

This question comes in two forms: "What are we best fit to do?" and "What will our circumstances permit us to do?"

The answer to either question is this: When there is any hindrance in oneself or in one's surroundings to one's achieving the occupation of one's heart's desire, then let us do that nearest to it,

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and which we find within our compass. For instance, one longs to be a sculptor, but is poor and knows that ready bread does not lie in that direction. Then let him be a stonemason. wishes to be an artist, but one cannot afford either the training or the delay. Let him be a house decorator. Or one wants to be a sailor, but feels he must not leave his widowed mother quite alone. Then be a fisherman. And so through the whole range of occupations.

There are two advantages in taking this course. The calling one takes up as second best exercises the same aptitudes as the calling one desires. The two roads going in the same direction are likely at some point to join in one. Then the final question is: "What is it that is most essential to one, and what is one prepared to give up?”

This is a most important question. Much of the dissatisfaction and unrest of life come from its neglect. People will not realize that everything has its price. They try to grasp incompatible advantages, and are disgusted when they fail.

They will refuse to submit to a long training, and then they are indignant to find themselves employed in some calling which lies quite open to everybody who rushes in, and where the veteran has no advantage over the novice.

Or they pursue an avocation which is

The Leisure Hour.

their happy "hobby," but instead of resting content in the lifelong satisfaction of its practice they rail at society because they have not also made a fortune.

Or they desire an even, regular, reliable employment, and then grumble at the "monotony of their life."

The consideration of what we really want and what we are prepared to sacrifice having once decided the life-work, there will remain only to live the life! Let us remember that "the hand of the diligent maketh rich"-not necessarily rich in money, which would be but a poor result, since a rich man may be foolish, and unrespected and miserable. But "the hand of the diligent maketh rich" in skill, in power, in comfort, in influence. And in "all labor there is profit"-not only in the labor which can be paid for in wages, but in the labor which is of love, the extra touch, whose withholding nobody would blame, whose putting in nobody notices-yes, there is profit in thatthe great gain of self-respect, which straightens one's back and brightens one's eye, and makes one of the number of nature's noblemen. Let each be proud of his calling. Let us learn all about it, and know its history. Be sure it has its romances. It has been dignified by some great man in this country or another. Probably it has its heroisms. We know far too little about these things.

Edward Garrett.

LEAVE NO POINTS PRICKING WHEN YOU PIN YOUR CREED.

God save our faith from that schismatic heart
That snaps at others' creeds its "There we part."
God grant us charity, whose thoughts are sweet,
And ripen difference to, "There we meet!"

Frederick Langbridge.

CROMWELL'S CONSTITUTIONAL AIMS.

We have been taught of late to regard Cromwell as an Opportunist, and if all that is meant is that he changed from time to time the methods by which he hoped to accomplish a fixed aim, I have nothing to say against the employment of the term, except that it is hardly distinctive enough to separate him from other statesmen of equal eminence. If, however, it is intended to imply that he had no fixed aim at all, except to reach a vague and unspecified settlement, which was to give to his government that national support without which no political system can hope to endure, I think there is good reason to dispute its applicability to the case.

No doubt the view here referred to is plausible enough. After the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament, Cromwell in turn supported systems as opposed to one another as those of the Nominated or-as it is commonly styled -the Barebones Parliament; the Instrument of Government; arbitrary rule with the help of the Major-Generals; the new Parliamentary Constitution of the Humble Petition and Advice; and, to all appearance, would have rallied to yet another plan if his career had not been cut short by death. What I propose to show is that under these differences there lay one and the same principle, firmly grasped and that whether that principle be for us an object of praise or blame it must be taken into account in any judgment which we think good to formulate of the man and his work.

No part of Cromwell's career is more difficult for the modern politician to understand than his resolution, after the break-up of the Long Parliament, to side with the dreamer Harrison rather than with Lambert, that incarnation of common sense, by placing the govern

ment in the hands of a body selected by the chief officers of the army out of the list drawn up by Congregationalist ministers. That many of those so chosen should be fanatics with impossible ideas was no more than was to be expected, and the only wonder is that men who were not fanatics found seats at all. The speech in which Cromwell surrendered authority into the hands of this assembly is fuller of enthusiasm, or, as many will say of fanaticism, than any other of his utterances. Yet there is one passage in it which throws some light upon the reasoning which had induced him to take so strange a resolution.1

If it were a time to compare your standing with that of those that have been called by the suffrages of the People-Which who can tell how soon God may fit the people for such a thing? None can desire it more than I! Would all were the Lord's People; as it was said, "Would all the Lord's People were Prophets!" I would all were fit to be called so. It ought to be the longing of our hearts to see men brought to own the interest of Jesus Christ: and give me leave to say: If I know anything in the world, what is there likelier to win the People to the Interest of Jesus Christ, to the love of Godliness (and therefore what stronger duty lies on you being thus called), than an humble and godly conversation? So that they may see that you love them; that you lay yourselves out, time and spirits, for them! It not this the likeliest way to bring them to their liberties? . . . At least, you convince them that, as men fearing God have fought them out of their bondage under the regal power, so men fearing God do now rule them

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1 I adopt here Carlyle's version, though it is eked out by explanatory words, as at the same time most widely known and most intelligible.

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