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of their life, their retainers. Liveried, we drive them about and exhibit them. We are only homines;' they are 'viri,' around whose persons we revolve submissive satellites, possessed in no degree of the checked enterprise of our brethren in the solar system, who have at the least, a little centrifugal force, and would rush off on their own responsibility, if they could. But we have at last no such impulse, and gradually, by mean passivity, lose that independence which we received at birth, until approaching nearer and nearer to our sun, we rush pell-mell to his surface, and ten chances to one, settle not upon the mountain-top of a virtue, as we had expected, but upon the pestilent bosom of a marsh, stagnant with vice and ingratitude, a profitable squatter to his solar majesty. Yet there we are, and must ever remain, ultimately sharing in no degree that friendship which our regard for him should have merited.

In scholarship and literary ability there are indeed those, within the college-pale, who should receive the respect and esteem of their fellows. Not a single one, however, who should exclusively command the thoughts or regard of any of us. We are all, even the best of us, under a preliminary and disciplinary course of instruction. We hardly are out of the limits of mental boyhood, and are only in the veal-period, as an English doctor expresses it. With respect to stu dents and Israelites, it won't do to worship calves. They would have made a golden ox, I sincerely believe, had they cared to spare the gold and undertake a larger job. Yes, while we are worshipping, let us have the whole figure; worship a Milton, a Shakspeare, not a Sophomoric prize-man, who most of all, if he be reflective, feels himself to be a prose pigmy in comparison. Instead of wasting our time in thinking what some of our fellows are doing, what lightning rushes they are making, what faultless models of composition they produce, even in an hour's mental bumming,' let us have a higher pattern. I lingered of a summer evening at the doorway of an Indian wigwam. Far out over the sea which encircled the isle where he had lived for nearly a century, hung a cloudlet claspt in caresses of silver moonlight. In the converse of a single hour, a lesson was imparted, which should never be forgotten. I had asked him what lent his bow its strength and why he made his arrow so long. Pointing to that cloud, the aged Passamaquoddy replied, "me make 'em for cloud." Truly suggestive was the reply. Shooting at cloud or zenith, our arrow shall overcome the tree-top.

With a firm hand, and a keen-edged knife, then, let us perform a most delicate act of self-surgery, and separate ourselves from others;

living in the bonds of warm friendship and respect with them, but pro. posing no closer ties. With them and yet not of them.

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A second cause consists in a false conception of the purport of collegiate education, and indeed for this error there seems to be somewhat of an excuse. The early period at which very many of us enter college is one characterized by very indefinite views of certain subjects. Among these is that of the relation existing between the early and later stages of life. In reality, the former portion should partake more largely of hard labor and stern regimen than the latter. Then must there be that rough and painful inworking, which shall destroy many a favored conceit and joyous fancy-which shall contradict our self-judgment—which shall quite entirely change the constitution of the mind itself-wisely and rigorously constraining it into channels of freest and most effectual activity. A working which we shall feel, as the weeks slip away. But the outward manifestations of inward power and aptness, are later. The ball is not fired until the cannon itself be first cast. College life, then, is the inmost, most radical, corrective, and intense phase of human life. It should attach to itself all the sacredness and awful responsibility of the truest reformation. Into the hands of experienced masters we commit our minds. In four years shall those minds receive impress for eternity. Just what we make of ourselves while here, or just what we let be made of us, we shall, in the main, continue to be hereafter. Few however of us realize, in any adequate degree, the sanctity of this relationship. We look upon the time, in too many instances, as so many weeks or months through which we must avoid expulsion, studying enough for this purpose and no more. We forget that each hour, relatively, may shape the character and issue of a whole week in the future. We come here to obtain, at the least possible exertion, a diploma, which may prove as a letter of recommendation for us, if we are obliged to seek any position in after life; or if there be no need of that, and we can live in ease, that our previous course here may cast a scholarly and liberal reputation upon us. That such is the result of a degree, we admit. A great help is it to a man to append A. B. to his name, or to have an envelope thus directed to him. But this is mere external gain. Trash it is in comparison with a well-ordered mind. So long as we dwell upon collegiate education as the means to the one, we must fail of appreciating its true import with reference to the other. Were we impressed, however, with the solemnity of mental development, in its relation to future success and happiness; could we feel ourselves as thus sporting with tragic issue, the hand would oftener

turn the leaf of the lexicon, and we should attain, at length, the dignity of true and earnest labor.

The only remaining cause to which we can now allude, lies in our misconception of a failure in recitation. A rush, we will suppose, has its excellence abruptly displayed by an unequivocal fizzle, or a downright flunk. The seeming unfortunate desponds. That brilliant recital has made him believe what he should not believe. It has, perhaps, confirmed his despair of ever reciting well. He feels that he must have some inward defect or inaptitude of mind which utterly precludes success. A very rash though common influence. But who may tell us that the former student has derived more benefit from the recitation than the latter? I will believe no fair and candid scholarship capable of casting the accusing stone. If the poor reciter has devoted hard and patient labor to the preparation of that lesson, and then by some untoward circumstance has failed of giving a clear and satisfactory exposition of the result of that labor, what serious matter is it? The criterion of merit, by which alone a judgment of recitations, in their effect upon the scholar, should be rated, is the degree of careful study which has been expended upon them. Many have left this college with a low appointment, who have derived more benefit from their exertions than some who received high orations. Their internal improvement has been greater. For this reason they have had a larger influence upon their world. They had been quiet and studious, unmarked by any scholarly grace, but silent labor stamped them nobly with its honest glory. No disparagement is here offered inactive genius. I have but adverted to a fact too often overlooked by many of us, in our moments of despondency.

A mere glance at the causes to which reference has been made, will reveal much for our encouragement. They are by no means essential or permanent in their nature, but are wholly transient and extrinsic. A resolute student will throw off the habits they have been inducing upon him. The noble and powerful countenances of great men, looking down upon him while at his labors; of men who once learned their alphabet but did not stop there; who tugged and wearied and resting toiled again, until a forceful culture compelled the slow approval of an opposing world; an earnest, honorable sense of inward defect and of inward remedy too-these will be among the first influences to lift him up out of that dishonorable and inert monotony which may have heretofore marked his life.

Thus, imperfectly, have we seen the irrationality of that Hereafter which we paint for ourselves from the pigment of present laziness, and

have investigated several prominent causes of the inactivity which alone renders that picture unreasonable. May no one of us suppose then that that chasm of character which coldly divides our Real from our Ideal, may be overleapt in the twlinkling of an eye-that we shall hereafter come to the realization of our hope or purpose as uninterruptedly and easily as we do in mere thought. Pillars, walls, roof, are never automatic. Never will they spring, of their own accord, from the crude pile, into a Temple of Life.

S. C. D.

Carlyle and His Religion.
(Concluded.)

Carlyle's spiritual history is a realization of the palingenesia of his great German teacher-the process by which the soul is to rise above the objective and learn to satisfy itself with the subjective truths of its position; in a word, the doctrine of self-sufficiency, the religion of self-righteousness. His strong, independent mind eagerly seized and pursued this philosophic plan of salvation. With a mournful interest we see him turn from the old Scotch Kirk of his forefathers, with its immutable God of the Bible and equally immutable articles of belief, to wander in that wild, enchanted desert of skepticism, where, one by one, the stars of his former faith go out, and his doubting, bewildered soul gropes blindly hither and thither for some new Calvary amid the fast gathering darkness of despair. With a painful disappointment, too, we perceive that he counts as his deliverance, not a sense of victory over but a mere consciousness of battle with the powers of unbelief, and that the spiritual world in which he finally rejoices boasts no higher deity than the God of pantheism, no truer revelation than the nobility of work, and no purer worship than a boundless admiration for heroic workers. "Truly," to quote his own nervous, half-prophetic language, “a thinking man is the worst enemy the Prince of darkness can have. Every time such a one announces himself, I doubt not there runs a shudder through the nether empire, and new emissaries are trained with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him."

Carlyle, however, considers his spiritual struggles and sorrows as a sort of forty-days' temptation, necessary to the full development of his soul, and from which he emerged, purified through much suffering, disciplined by many conflicts, to commence his great apostolic work. With a fiery, Mahomet-like earnestness, he girded up his loins for his ministry, and forthwith proclaimed his gospel of, "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees." He felt that his was not the age to utter glad tidings of peace, which should tickle men's ears and be laid as a delightful unction to their consciences. He saw that the seeds of thought, sown by the encyclodedists and mechanical philosophers, had sprung up in an abundant harvest of skepticism and hypocrisy; that literature was fast degenerating into a vanity fair, where literary hucksters displayed their wares and counted the gains therefrom; that religion was too generally but a Sabbath-day garment, worn as a species of defense against the eternal horrors; that society was a mere imbroglio of frivolities and conventionalities, having for its god Mammon and its bible public opinion. He conceived that his generation had become barren, unspiritual and idolatrous, and that it was for him to appear, like Schiller's ideal artist, "not to delight it with his presence, but, dreadful as the son of Agamemnon, to purify it.” This consciousness of a great evil to oppose, and his authority to oppose it, has to this day invested Carlyle with a singular power and energy. He speaks with the bold, startling vehemence of a prophet, fully convinced of the importance and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his divine calling. With his views of the nineteenth century, it is not strange that his writings should exhibit him chiefly as a reformer. He comes, indeed, as a genuine breaker of idols, armed like Thor with a thunder-hammer, and assailing with pitiless strokes the most venerable citadels of superstition and error. Whatever his heart acknowledges as false and inane, his strong arm is instantly uplifted to strike and dash in pieces. Every temple in which no longer the presence of Divinity abides, or the voice of true worship ascends, every creed which is no longer a living testament of men's faith, but a dead formula of men's words, is to him an abomination, fit only for the everlasting burning.

In his fierce crusade against hypocrisy and cant, he denounces all forms, traditions, hearsays and opinions, everything, in fact, upon which the mind is inclined to fasten and acknowledge as absolute truth. He believes in nothing but strong, earnest manhood, and to his mind all these are as filthy rags, which but defile and obscure the divine Image—a threadbare mantle with which an age, whose very

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