step. The crackling salt offered with honest hands, shall be a more odorous offering than Sabæan spices. If the heartless lover who vows adoration to his mistress while he worships only her gold, is justly spurned, and loses both his mistress and his gold; much more he who seeks an unearthly and spiritual good with low views and an earthly heart, shall find himself perpetually balked and disappointed. There is here no room for paltering, and double dealing. Every man gets what he deserves, not what he would seem to deserve. The lust of gold, however disguised, cannot win wisdom, nor can the desire of mere dignities, or that shameless passion which seeks only popular applause: nay, they are dull orbs, ever near, and impenetrable, which stand forever between the soul's eye and the sun of truth. Is there one who loves truth, and seeks after wisdom? To whom they are in themselves more precious than gold and gems, priceless as light and the stars, more sustaining and comforting than the balsams of human affection and regard? Let him thank God, and take courage. That he desireth, he shall yet have. He has now the key that unlocks every ward. His vision is already purged that, in due time he may gaze on the transcendent brightness. As the tree by its subtle alchemy rejects all noxious and pestilent exhalations, and transmutes the impalpable air into veined leaves, aud spreading branches, and a solid trunk, so does the sincere scholar refusing error and deceit, breath only the pure air of truth, and is quickened in every impulse and affection by its living energy.

The sincerity of the true scholar is no ordinary attainment. It must be unmingled and undefiled; not merely a single purpose, not one strain however melodious, but the consent of all the harmonies of his being ; nor yet a rainbow union, where each hue is diverse while all are blended, but that perfect intermingling in which every separate color is lost in the pure whiteness of their combination, To such an one science reveals itself as to a favorite son. That which others grope for is plain to him. He enters the labyrinth with a clue that shall never mislead.

This sincerity involves a judgment of the heart no less than of the head. It is a moral appreciation. Simple in itself, it loves simplicity and purity. Understanding values, and judging by a right measure, it holds fast what it loves.

Transparent too is it with that liquid clearness in which the sunlight detects no floating mote, or staining vapor.

THE SPIRIT OF THE TRUE SCHOLAR IS A SOLITARY SPIRIT.

Doubtless he who looks aright for wisdom may find it everywhere. Her lessons are written on all material things, and are interwoven with the whole fabric of society. The true scholar learns not less from nature, and from his own experience of life, than from books, "which are the records of other men's lives." Men talk much of the beauties of nature, wherewith boys and maidens are often in raptures. Yet these beauties are of too fine essence to be discerned by gross and vulgar spirits, and lie too deep hidden to be reached by the frivolous and unthinking. Invested with

this beauty, and veiled by it to the common eye, lie, still underneath, the laws and lessons of wisdom. Into this realm only, the true scholar may enter. The harmony of the spheres is his familiar music. The power of elemental numbers none else can understand. The secret workings of life are in some degree disclosed to him, and the mysterious affinity which makes man a brother to the clod. In the loneliness of nature he is not alone. The trees, winds, waters, all have a voice. Airy tongues that syllable" are no longer a poetic fiction. The very shapes of what seems dead are emblems, and the gift of insight is bestowed on him.

Nor less does he gain from every hour of contact with social life. Every man he meets becomes his teacher, alike the wise man and the fool, the toll gatherer and the chance wayfarer. In the market place, and the court room, the shop of the artisan and the hall of debate, the church, the funeral, the wedding, the christening, in every bargain and sale, in every theatre, caucus, and mob, wherever man is and acts, there is his study. The kindling eye, the hasty word, the rude gesture, the clumsy attitude of the rustic, and the swagger of the bully, each tells him something.. Every social assembly is a museum of choice specimens, labelled and ticketed, and offered to the inspection of all who think it worth their while to study them. The ungrateful yielding to necessity, the struggle against want, the conferring a favor, all the actions indeed of daily intercourse teach

us effectually lessons, which when we read them in books we always forget.

In the scenes of nature and the hurrying tide of society, the scholar is still solitary. The learning goes on in the depths of his own mind, and the bystander sees nothing of it. Inferences, analogies, causes, effects, are a portion of the brood that are hourly begotten, and every sight multiplies itself into manifold new phenomena and relations. The business of the throng around is no hindrance or disturbance. Archimedes could continue his demonstration while the soldiers of Marcellus had battered and sacked Syracuse. Xenophon philosophized among the Carduchian mountains. Napoleon was a student at Borodino and Versailles. Bodily presence neither lets nor aids the presence of the spirit.

When the scholar has gathered his treasures by diligent observation of men and things, he retires to the secrecy of his own studious thoughts, as the bee to the hive laden with that which is to be honey. The chemist has drawn from every mine and mountain, the materials for his experiments, but it is the silent laboratory and the crucible, that bring forth their secret powers and agencies. It is solitary thought that animates the dead mass of facts and products. Here no man can help his neighbor. Each must do his work, and bear his burden alone. Whoever relies on the promised or supposed aid of another is no man. The crutch is the better of the two. If the work is ever accomplished, it is by the energies of the soul working within itself. If not thus done, it will be never done.

Let not the scholar hasten from his seclusion to mingle with men, and become one of them. His solitude has fellows and friends enough. Images of the past are there. Events, that are now passing, fling their shadows into his sanctuary. Homer and Milton, bards, seers, heroes and prophets are his counsellors and inmates. Still and unobtrusive are they, aids, in no way incumbrances. The history of ages, the experience of human hearts, the riches of man's intellect are treasured in their few, brief sentences. In such counsellors is wisdom.

Yonder, high in his solitary attic, is he, with scanty furniture and dimly burning lamp. The busy crowd below pass to and fro on their various errands alike unheeding and unheeded. Yet rich and bright are his visions.

Forms of unearthly stature and of celestial beauty wait on, his will. Select spirits of distant ages answer to his call. He converses with the best and bravest. They bring messages of warning and refreshment. Himself changes to their likeness and becomes partaker of their beauty.

THE SPIRIT OF THE TRUE SCHOLAR IS A SPIRIT OF TRUSTFUL HOPE.

Why should not the true scholar hope and trust? He is a docile pupil of nature, he obeys her laws, he has partaken of her spirit, and she, who is no niggard in her bestowments, will give him his full reward. He has much need of hope, for his discipline is severe. Years of toil and watching avail not sometimes to gain him the secret he would know. Yet he may feel assured that silently it may be as the dawning, and sure as that dawning, that truth shall be revealed to him; or the globe of cloud shall burst, in some inspired moment, and the light he has yearned for, be given him. He has need of hope; for the object he aims at comes not within the scope of ordinary sympathy and calculation. It is distant, and the benefits of it are still more distant, and few can see them. There are few who commend. Were not hope strong within him, he would sink by the wayside.

Still more sustaining is his living and perpetual trust. He has undoubting faith in the powers and resources of the human soul. He feels within him that divine energy which links him to the immortals. Himself is a partaker of the Infinite Reason. A reflecting, conscious spirit with reason and free will, he has the consciousness of sovereignty. The realm of thought and feeling, the boundless universe of knowledge is subject to him. All this was made for him, his title has no flaw, and he knows that if not now, yet one day, he shall enter and occupy this vast inheritance.

More perfect, if possible, is his trust in the goodness of that wisdom, which is at once the author of his own being and the source of all truth, and which has made them for each other, that his labor shall not be vain and without reward. As the seeing eye is an evidence beforehand of that light by which it may see, so is his craving of knowledge an earnest and sufficient proof that truth is, and is for him. He who has created the desire and given the power will not suf

fer them finally to mislead and disappoint. With a charter thus heaven-derived, he goes cheerfully to his labor, and wearisome and imperfect as it may be, he is sure that the end will be attained, and the blessing will be given.

He has too an unwavering faith in the worth of truth. He pursues no phantom. The prize he aims at may be unseen, but is none the less real. That which most men take to be real, the visible tangible form, is but the husk and envelopment of the true substance. That by which the crystal is different from the pebble is not so much its form, as the principle of accretion which brings every particle to its place, and is the origin and law of that form. The student of nature, who reads aright, stops not at the outward appearance, but looks beneath to the living force. In society the phantasmagoria which passes before our eyes, is to the student not an amusement, but a deep study, and develops to him the secret powers and principles which make that society what it is: as in books, he reads not merely the printed characters, but the meaning of the writer, not a bare alphabet of Greek or Hebrew, but the mind of Sophocles or of Isaiah. Thus perpetually reaching after substance, his way is always to the heart of things. The knowledge he seeks is that which has life; and the life passes from it to him, and he too lives, and is a man. The fashion of this world passeth away, but the word of God abideth forever. He who has well learned that word, which is written alike in letters and in laws, has a possession which changes not. He can look forward to no disappointment.

Understand

The true scholar will be a friend of man. ing the secret of their acts, he offers them wise guidance, or that they may be self-guided, reveals to them the principles which they unconsciously obey. His is no mysterious power over nature and man, but a wise following and a simple hearted knowledge, which another, though he may not discover it, may use more skilfully than he. Thus the

thoughts, which the scholar has attained by long and patient labor, descend to the common mind and are the property of all. The light which was once seen from only the hill tops, now shines down into the vallies, and all men rejoice in it.

F. H.