race, but we have been rather good children, and have studied hard the lessons on the page of science and art and history. If, when you look out and see millions rushing to and fro for money, you feel that man is an idolater, you can partly dispel the painful thought if you attempt to count the multitude who in that very hour are poring over books, or who, in meditation, are seeking the laws of the God of nature.

Millions upon millions of the young and the old are in these days seeking, at school or at home, in life's morn or noon or evening, the facts of history and science and art and religion. In order to be ourselves properly impelled or enticed along life's path, we must make no wrong estimate of the influences which are impelling mankind, for if we come to think that all are worshiping gold, we, too, despairing of all else, will soon degrade ourselves by bowing at the same altar. It is necessary for us always to be just.

We must be fully conscious of the fact that there are many feet hurrying along through the places of barter, intent on more gold, but so must we be conscious that there is a vast army of young and old who are asking the great world to come and tell them its great experience, and to lead them through its literature and arts, and down the grand avenues of history.

When the time of our late eclipse drew near, what a procession of arts and of instruments moved far out to where the shadow would fall! And others had marked just where the darkness would come, and the second of its coming. As man can measure

the width of a river and find through what spaces it flows, so modern learning marked out that river of shade and built up its banks, and along came the brief night and flowed in them most carefully.

But the astronomer went not alone. The science which can catch a picture in an instant; the science which can analyze a flame millions of miles distant and tell what is being consumed; the science which can convey the true time two thousand miles while the excited heart beats once these, and that grandest science which can see the rings of Saturn and the valleys of the moon, assembled on that height in the very summer when we were lamenting most that mankind knew no pursuit except that of gold.

That Rocky Mountain scene only faintly illustrated the intellectual activity of our era. If the passion for money is great in our day, it is also true that the intellectual power of the same period is equally colossal. No reader, be he ever so industrious, can keep pace with the issue of good books, and money itself is alarmed lest the new thoughts and invention of to-morrow may overthrow its investment of yesterday. Stocks tremble at the advance of intellect.

A glory of this intellectual passion may be found in the fact that it is not confined to a group of scholars, as old inquiry and education were confined, but, like liberty and property, it has passed over to many. Not all the multitude of the world are gold seekers; there are tens of thousands of men, and women, too, who are lovers of truth more than of money, and are standing by the fountains of knowledge with no thought or expectation of ever being

rich. Education and knowledge, the power to think and to enjoy the thought of others, have long since transformed a cottage into a palace.

In the earliest history of man this impulse began to make noble all who bowed to it. It has ornamented whatever it has touched. What it has always done it will always do, and no youth can look into good books for even only a few moments each day, and can take that habit with him into all his subsequent life, without becoming transformed into a new likeness.

Among the motives of life that must urge us all onward, let us place the constant development of the mind and the daily accumulation of knowledge. This motive will blend perfectly with the motives of business and pleasure. It displaces nothing of life's good, but many of its evils. It destroys idleness, it plucks the charm from vice, it quenches the thirst for riches, it brings us nearer to all times and nations, and binds us by tender ties to all the noble living and to all the noble dead. As foreign travel breaks up local prejudices, so long and wide reading of the world's truths beats down the walls of partition and transforms the reader into a better citizen.

ac cu' mu la' tion, the act of heaping up.

ex' pec ta' tion, the act of looking forward to.

an' a lyze, to separate an idea or thing i dol' a ter, a worshiper of idols (money).

into its parts.

as tron' o mer, one who has a knowledge

of the laws of the heavenly bodies.

co los' sal, gigantic.

in' stinct, natural inward impulse.
med' i ta' tion, quiet thinking.
prej' u dice, one-sided opinion.
trans formed', changed into.

"Books and newspapers are slow weapons for overthrowing error, but they are sure ones."

ENERGY.

A. H. STEPHENS.

By energy I mean application, attention, activity, perseverance, and untiring industry in that business or pursuit, whatever it may be, which is undertaken. Nothing great or good can ever be accomplished without labor and toil. Motion is the law of living nature. Inaction is the symbol of death, if it is not death itself. The hugest engines, with strength and capacity sufficient to drive the mightiest ships across the stormy deep, are utterly useless without a moving power.

Energy is the steam-power, the motive principle of intellectual capacity. A small body driven by a great force will produce a result equal to, or even greater than, that of a much larger body moved by a considerably less force. So it is with our minds. Hence it is that we often see men of comparatively small capacity, by greater energy alone, leave—and justly leave their superiors in natural gifts far behind them in the race for honors, distinction, and preferment.

This is the real vital force, or that principle in human nature which gives power and vim to the efforts of genius, toward whatever objects such efforts may be directed. It is this which imparts that quality which we designate by the very expressive term, "force of character". which meets, defies, and bears down all opposition. This is, perhaps, the most striking characteristic of those great minds and intellects which never fail to impress their names, their

views, ideas, and opinions, indelibly upon the history of the times in which they live.

Men of this class are those pioneers of thought who sometimes, even "in advance of the age," are known and marked in history as originators and discoverers, or those who overturn old orders and systems of things and build up new ones. To this class belong Columbus, Watt, Fulton, Franklin, and Washington. It was to the same class that General Jackson belonged; for he not only had a very clear conception of his purpose, but a will and energy to execute it. And it is in the same class, or among the first order of men, that Henry Clay will be assigned a place.

His aims and objects were high, and worthy of the greatest efforts; they were not to secure the laurels won on the battlefield, but those wreaths which adorn the brow of the wise, the firm, the sagacious, and far-seeing statesman. In his life and character a most striking example is presented of what energy and indomitable perseverance can do, even when opposed by the most adverse circumstances.

ap' pli ca' tion, fixing the mind upon anything.

char' ac ter is' tic, a distinguishing trait.

des' ig nate, indicate; speak of.

in del'i bly, so as not to be erased. in dom' i ta ble, unconquerable.

o rig'i na'tor (ter), one who brings some-
thing into existence.

per' se ver' ance, steadfastness.
pre fer' ment, advancement in office.
sa ga' cious (shus), shrewd
sym' bol, visible sign.

The noblest souls, of whatever creed, have insisted on the necessity of an inspiration, a living emotion, to make moral action perfect.

-MATTHEW ARNOLD.