to see in ourselves germs and promises of a growth to which no bounds can be set; and that, by using the powers which God has given us, we can dart beyond what we have actually gained. But self-culture is possible, not only because we can enter into and search ourselves, but because we have a still nobler power, that of acting on, determining, and forming ourselves. This is a fearful as well as glorious endowment; for it is the ground of human responsibility. We have the power not only of tracing our powers, but of guiding and impelling them; not only of watching our passions, but of controlling them; not only of seeing our faculties grow, but of applying to them means and influences to aid their growth.

3. We can stay or change the current of thought. We can concentrate the intellect on objects which we wish to comprehend. We can fix our eyes on perfection, and make almost every thing speed us toward it. Of all the discoveries which men need to make, the most important, at the present moment, is that of the self-forming power treasured up in themselves. They little suspect its extent, as little as the savage apprehends the energy which the mind is created to exert on the material world. It transcends in importance all our power over outward nature. There is more divinity in it than in the force which impels the outward universe; and yet how little we comprehend it! How it slumbers in most men unsuspected, unused! This makes self-culture possible, and binds it on us as a solemn duty.

4. To cultivate any thing-be it a plant, an animal, or a mind—is to make it grow. Growth, expansion, is the end. Nothing admits culture but that which has a principle of life capable of being expanded. He, therefore, who does what he can to unfold all his powers and

capacities, especially his nobler ones, so as to become a well-proportioned, vigorous, excellent, happy being, practices self-culture.

5. Self-culture is moral. When a man looks into himself, he discovers two distinct orders or kinds of principles, which it behooves him especially to comprehend. He discovers desires, appetites, passions, which terminate in himself; which crave and seek his own interest, gratification, distinction; and he discovers another principle, in opposition to these, which is impartial, disinterested, universal, — enjoining on him a regard to the rights and happiness of other beings, and laying on him obligations which must be discharged, cost what they may, or however they may clash with his particular pleasure or gain.

6. No man, however narrowed to his own interest, however hardened by selfishness, can deny that there springs up within him a great idea, in opposition to interest, — the idea of duty; that an inward voice calls him, more or less distinctly, to revere and exercise impartial justice and universal good will. This disin'terested principle in human nature we call sometimes reason, sometimes conscience, sometimes the moral sense or faculty.

7. But, be its name what it may, it is a real principle in each of us, and it is the supreme power within us, to be cultivated above all others; for on its culture the right development of all others depends. The passions, indeed, may be stronger than the conscience, may lift up a louder voice; but their clamor differs wholly from the tone of command in which the conscience speaks. They are not clothed with its authority, its binding power. In their very triumphs they are rebuked by the moral principle, and often cower before its still, deep, menacing voice.

8. No part of self-knowledge is more important than to

discern clearly these two great principles, - the self-seeking and the disinterested; and the most important part of selfculture is to depress the former and to exalt the latter, or to enthrone the sense of duty within us. There are no limits to the growth of this moral force in man, if he will cherish it faithfully. There have been men whom no power in the universe could turn from the right; to whom death, in its most dreadful forms, has been less dreaded than transgression of the inward law of universal justice and love.

D

LESSON XXI.

THE SKATER AND THE WOLVES.

WHITEHEAD.

URING the winter of 1844, being in the northern part

winter of

of Maine, I had much leisure to devote to the sports of a new country. To none of these was I more passionately addicted than to skating. The deep and sequestered lakes, frozen by the intense cold of a northern winter, present a wide field to the lover of this pastime. Often would I bind on my skates, glide away up the glittering river, and wind each mazy streamlet that flowed, beneath its fetters, on toward the parent ocean, with exultant joy and delight. Sometimes these excursions were made by moonlight; and it was on one of these latter occasions that I had a rencounter, which even now I can not recall without a thrill of horror.

2. I had left my friend's house one evening just before dusk, with the intention of skating a short distance up the Kennebec, which glided directly before the door. The night was beautifully clear. The peerless moon rode

through an occasional fleecy cloud, the stars twinkled in the sky, and every frost-covered tree and shrub sparkled with rare brilliancy. Light also came glinting from ice, and snow-wreath, and incrusted branches, as the eye followed for miles the broad gleam of the river, that, like a jeweled zone, swept between the mighty forests that bordered its banks.

3. And yet all was still. The cold seemed to have frozen tree, air, water, and every living thing. Even the ringing of my skates echoed back from the hill with a startling clearness; and the crackle of the ice, as I passed over it in my course, seemed to follow the tide of the river with lightning speed. I had gone up the river nearly two miles, when, coming to a little stream which empties into the larger, I turned into it to explore its course. Fir and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway radiant with frost-work. All was dark within;

but I was young and fearless, and, as I peered into an unbroken forest that reared itself on the borders of the stream, I laughed with very joyousness.

4. My wild hurrah rang through the silent woods, and I stood listening to the echo that reverberated again and again, until all was hushed. Suddenly a sound arose! It seemed to me to come from the ice beneath my feet. It was low and tremulous at first; but it ended in one long wild yell. I was appalled. Never before had such a noise met my ears. Presently I heard the brushwood on shore. crash, as though from the tread of some animal. The blood rushed to my forehead. My energies returned, and I looked around me for some means of escape. The moon shone through the opening, at the mouth of the creek, by which I had entered the forest; and, considering this the best way of I darted toward it like an arrow. escape,

5. The opening was hardly a hundred yards distant, and the swallow could scarcely have excelled me in flight; yet, as I turned my eyes to the shore, I could see two dark objects dashing through the brushwood, at a pace nearly double in speed to my own. By their great speed, and the short yells which they occasionally gave, I knew at once that these were the much-dreaded gray wolves. I had never met with these ferocious animals; but, from the description given of them, I had little pleasure in making their acquaintance. Their untamable fierceness and untiring strength render them objects of dread to every benighted traveler.

6. The bushes that skirted the shore now seemed to rush past me with the velocity of lightning, as I dashed on in my flight to pass the narrow opening. The outlet was nearly gained; a few seconds more, and I would be comparatively safe; but in a moment my pursuers appeared on the bank above me, which here rose to the hight of ten or twelve feet. There was no time for thought. I bent my head, and dashed wildly forward. The wolves sprang; but, miscalculating my speed, fell behind, while their intended prey glided out upon the river!

7. I turned toward home. The light flakes of snow spun from the iron of my skates, and I was some distance from my pursuers, when their fierce howl told me I was still their fugitive. I did not look back, nor feel afraid. I thought of home, of the bright faces awaiting my return, and then all the energies of body and mind were exerted for escape. I was perfectly at home on the ice. Many were the days that I had spent on my good skates, never thinking that they would thus prove my only means of safety in such imminent peril.

8. Every half minute a furious yelp from my fierce at