sistent habit of work, and keeps them at the foot of the ladder until they become strong enough to hold every step they are enabled to gain. 5. The first years of every man's business or professional life are years of education. They are intended to be so in the order of nature and Providence. Doors do not open to a man until he is prepared to enter them. The man without a wedding garment may get in surreptitiously, but he immediately comes out wiser than when he went in. 6. We think it is the experience of most successful men who have watched the course of their lives in retrospect, that, whenever they have arrived at a point where they were thoroughly prepared to go up higher, the door to the higher place has swung back of itself, and they have heard the call to enter. 7. The old die, or voluntarily retire for rest. The best men who stand ready to take their places will succeed to their position and its honors and emoluments. The young men will say that only a few can reach the top. That is true; but it is also true that the further from the bottom one goes, the more scattering the neighborhood. 8. One can fancy, for illustration, that every profession and every calling is pyramidal in its constituency, and that, while only one man is at the top, there are several tiers of men below him who have plenty of elbow room, and that it is only at the base that men are so thick that they crowd and grab for the small pieces of meat to keep from starving. If a man has no power to get up out of the rabble at the bottom, then he is self-convicted of having chosen a calling or profession to whose duties he has no adaptation, and he should at once seek some other. 9. The grand mistake that young men make, during the first ten years of their business and professional life, is in idly waiting for their chance. They seem to forget, or they do not know, that during those ten years they enjoy the only leisure they will ever have. After ten years in the natural course of things, they will be absorbingly busy. There will then be no time for reading, culture and study. 10. If they do not become thoroughly grounded in the principles and practical details of their profession during those years, if they do not store their minds with useful knowledge, if they do not pursue habits of reading and observation, and social intercourse, which result in culture, the question whether they will ever rise to occupy a place where there is room enough for them will be decided in the negative. 11. The young physicians and young lawyers who sit idly in their offices, and smoke and lounge away the time 66 waiting for something to turn up," are by that course fastening themselves for life to the lower stratum, where their struggles for a bare livelihood are to be perpetual. The first ten years are golden years that should be filled with systematic reading and observation. Every thing that tends to professional and personal excellence should be an object of daily pursuit. 12. To such men the doors of success open of themselves at last. Work seeks the best hands as naturally as water runs down hill, and it never seeks the hand of a trifler, or one whose only recommendation for work is that he needs it. Young men do not know very much any way, and the time always comes to those who become worthy, when they look back with wonder upon their early good opinion of their acquirements and of themselves. J. G. HOLLAND. Neither idleness nor labor without an aim will produce fruit the world will purchase at first cost. CXXX.-RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. Extract from a speech made in the British Parliament. 1. Can any thing be more absurd and untenable than the argument of the learned gentleman, when you see it stripped of the false coloring he has given to it? First, he alleges that the Catholics are attached to their religion with a bigoted zeal. I admit the zeal, but I utterly deny the bigotry. The 2. He proceeds to insist that these feelings, on our part, justify the apprehensions of Protestants. Catholics, he says, are alarmed for their church; why should not the Protestants be alarmed, also, for theirs? The Catholic desires safety for his religion; why should not the Protestant require security for his? Hence, he concludes that, merely because the Catholic desires to keep his religion free, the Protestant is thereby justified in seeking to enslave it. 3. He says that our anxiety for the preservation of our church vindicates those who deem the proposed arrange ment necessary for the protection of theirs; a mode of reasoning perfectly true and perfectly applicable, if we sought any interference with, or control over, the Protestant church,- if we asked or required that a single Catholic should be consulted upon the management of the Protestant church, or of its revenues or privileges. 4. But the fact does not bear him out; for we do not seek nor desire, nor would we accept of, any kind of interference with the Protestant church. We disclaim and disavow any kind of control over it. We ask not, nor would we allow, any Catholic authority over the mode of appointment of their clergy. Nay, we are quite content to be excluded forever from even advising his Majesty with respect to any matter relating to or concerning the Protestant church,-its rights, its properties or its privileges. 5. I will, for my own part, go much further; and I do declare, most solemnly, that I would feel and express equal, if not stronger, repugnance to the interference of a Catholic with the Protestant church than that I have expressed and do feel to any Protestant interference with ours. 6. In opposing their interference with us, I content myself with the mere war of words. But, if the case were reversed,— if the Catholic sought this control over the religion of the Protestant, the Protestant should command my heart, my tongue, my arm, in opposition to so unjust and insulting a measure. 7. So help me God! I would, in that case, not only feel for the Protestant, and speak for him, but I would fight for him, and cheerfully sacrifice my life in defense of the great principle for which I have ever contendedthe principle of universal and complete religious liberty. DANIEL O'CONNELL. CXXXI.-SONG OF STEAM. 1. When I saw an army upon the land, A navy upon the seas, Creeping along, a snail-like band, Or waiting a wayward breeze; 2. When I measured the panting courser's speed, The flight of the carrier-dove, As they bore a law a king decreed, NTA CLARA ACHERS' LIBKY No... THE FOURTH READER. I could not but think how the world would feel, When I should be bound to the rushing keel, 3. Ha ha ha! They found me at last; And I rushed to my throne with a thunder blast, 4. Hurra! hurra! the waters o'er, The mountains' steep decline; Time, space, have yielded to my power: The world the world is mine! The giant streams of the queenly West 5. The Ocean pales where'er I sweep, I carry the wealth and the lord of the earth; The thoughts of the god-like mind; The wind lags after my going forth; The lightning is left behind. 6. In the darksome depth of the fathomless mine Where the rocks ne'er saw the sun's decline, |