SELF-DEPENDENCE.

Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,

At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forward, forward, o'er the starlit sea.

And a look of passionate desire

O'er the sea and to the stars I send;

"Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me, Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!

Ah, once more, "I cried "

ye stars, ye waters,

On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you! "

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, Over the lit sea's unquiet way,

In the rustling night air came the answer,

"Wouldst thou be as these are?

Live as they.

Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,

These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see.

O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,
A
cry like thine in mine own heart I hear;
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he
Who finds himself loses his misery! "

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

PURE, COLD WATER.

There, there is the liquor which God, the Eternal, brews for all his children. Not in the simmering still, over smoky fires, choked with poisonous gases, surrounded with the stench of sickening odors and corruptions, doth your Father in heaven prepare the precious essence of life- pure, cold water; but in the green glade and grassy dell, where the red deer wanders, and the child loves to play, there God brews it and down, low down in the deepest valleys, where the fountain murmurs and the rills sing; and high upon the mountain tops, where the naked granite glitters like gold in the sun, where the storm-cloud broods and the thunderstorms crash; and far out on the wide, wild sea, where the hurricane howls music, and the big waves roll the chorus, sweeping the march of God- there He brews it, that beverage of life-health-giving water.

And everywhere it is a thing of life and beauty-gleaming in the dew-drop; singing in the summer rain; shining in the ice-gem,till the trees all seem turned to living jewels; spreading a golden veil over the setting sun, or a white gauze around the midnight moon; sporting in the cataract; folding its bright snow-curtains softly about the wintery world; and weaving the many-colored bow, that seraph's zone of the sky-whose warp is the raindrop of the earth, whose woof is the sunbeam of heaven, all checked over with the celestial flowers, by the mystic hand of refraction.

Still always it is beautiful, that blessed life-water! No poison bubbles on its brink; its foam brings not madness and murder; no blood stains its limpid glass; pale widows and starving orphans weep not burning tears in its depths; no drunkard's shrieking ghost, from the grave, curses it in the words of eternal despair! Speak out, my friends: would you exchange it for the demon's drink, alcohol? shout like the roar of the tempest, answered, "No! " JOHN B. GOUGH,

CIVIC RIGHTS FOR THE JEWS.

A

My honorable friend has appealed to us as Christians. Let me, then, ask him how he understands that great commandment which comprises the law and the prophets. Can we be said to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us, if we inflict on them even the smallest pain? As Christians, surely we are bound to consider, first, whether, by excluding the Jews from all public trust we give them pain; and, secondly, whether it be necessary to give them that pain in order to avert some greater evil. That by excluding them from public trust, we inflict pain on them, my honorable friend will not dispute. As a Christian, therefore, he is bound to relieve them from pain, unless he can show, what I am sure he has not yet shown, that it is necessary to the general good that they should continue to suffer.

"But where," he says, " are you to stop, if once you admit into the House of Commons people who deny the authority of the Gospels? Will you let in a Mussulman? Will you let in a Parsee? Will you let in a Hindoo, who worships a lump of stone with seven heads?" I will answer my honorable friend's question by another. Where does he mean to stop. Is he ready to roast unbelievers at slow fires? If not let him tell us why; and I will engage

to prove that his reason is just as decisive against the intol erance which he thinks a duty as against the intolerance which he thinks a crime. Once admit that we are bound to inflict pain on a man because he is not of our religion, and where are you to stop? Why stop at the point fixed by my honorable friend rather than at the point fixed by the honorable member for Oldham (Cobbett,) who would make the Jews incapable of holding land?

And why stop at the point fixed by the honorable member for Oldham rather than at the point which would have been fixed by a Spanish inquisitor of the sixteenth century? When once you enter on a course of persecution, I defy you to find any reason for making a halt till you have reached the extreme point. When my honorable friend tells us that he will allow the Jews to possess property to any amount, but that he will not allow them to possess the small. est political power, he holds contradictory language. Property is power.

"But, "gays my honorable friend," it has been prophesied that the Jews are to be wanderers on the face of the earth, and that they are not to mix on terms of equality with the people of the countries in which they sojourn." Now, sir, I am confident that I can demonstrate that this is not the sense of any prophecy which is part of Holy Writ. For it is an undoubted fact, that in the United States of America Jewish citizens do possess all the privileges possessed by Christian citizens. Therefore, if the prophecies mean that the Jews never shall, during their wanderings, be admitted by other nations to equal participation of political rights, the prophecies are false. But the prophecies are certainly not false. Therefore their meaning cannot be that which is attributed to them by my honorable friend.

Nobody knows better than my honorable friend, the mem

ber for the University of Oxford, that there is nothing in their national character which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens. He knows, that in the infancy of civilization, when our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was after the site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians, and their poets. What nation ever contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence and religion? What nation ever, in its last agonies, gave such signal proofs of what may be accomplished by a brave despair? And if, in the course of many centuries, the oppressed descendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from the qualities of their fathers, if, while excluded from the blessings of law, and bowed down under the yoke of slavery, they have contracted some of the vices of outlaws and of slaves, shall we consider this as matter of reproach to them? Shall we not rather consider it as matter of shame and remorse to ourselves? Let us do justice to them. Let us open to them the door of the House of Commons. Let us open to them every career in which ability and energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees.

LORD MACAULAY.

There is a decisive instant in all matters; and if you look languidly, you are sure to miss it. Nature seems always, somehow, trying to make you miss it." I will see that through," you must say, "without turning my or you won't see the trick of it at all.

head;

Ruskin.