"Ceaseless ache! inane endeavor!

What boots all the fierce unrest!
Peace like a river,

Come, oh come and fill my breast!"

But from a social point of view it is certainly desirable that any life having value should continue so long as its efficiency remains. The ingenuous man, though not prizing length of days as a good to himself, must still cherish length of days that he may perform maximum service for his kind.

When society has matured a man, educated him and succeeded in imparting to him a certain value power to enrich men's general estate, it cannot but be a pity for his life to end in the midst of its prime and vigor. His gain, if death prove such, must be society's loss. He should solemnly vow, as did one of old, "All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come."

Health is required that men's blood may contain the necessary iron-that we may possess the hardness or hardiness of good soldierhood-grit, sand. We should rather

nurse cold steel in our own heart than have an enemy drive it there.

Are not cultivated people growing too sentimental; too timid about inflicting pain on animals, children, themselves, and others? The common argument against war is sound; but is not the common sentiment against war mostly a downright weakness? Is not anti-vivisection sentiment the same? And do not these phenomena indicate a very serious lack in our moral character as a nation? Would not a sterner nation in competition with us, other things being equal, get the better of us?

It seems to us that hard-heartedness has been one very important factor in the success of Englishmen on earth. So of Rome. "For Romans in Rome's quarrels

Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life
In the brave days of old."

"Has a nationality ever sprung from a people that had not the power of hate? The devil must add his leaven to the loaf or the bread is no food for time."

The late Sir James Fitzjames Stephen thought that in the particulars just named modern England was falling behind Old England. He had little "enthusiasm about progress" anyway.

that peo

He said: "I suspect ple are more sensitive, less enterprising and ambitious, less earnestly desirous to get what they want and more afraid of pain, both for themselves and others, than they used to be. If this should be so, it appears to me that all other gain, whether it be wealth, knowledge or humanity, affords no equivalent." ". I do not myself see that our mechanical inventions have increased the general vigor of men's characters."

Health is necessary, more particularly, that a man may will and purpose strongly in the great crises of his life. On ordinary occasions, discharging common business, following routine, one may get on tolerably with little robustness. In walking just for exercise you may limp; it does not matter very much. But in a race, limping spells

failure; and the few decisive moments in life, which determine the weal or the woe of it, its success or failure, are each strenuous like a foot-race, calling for infinite lung and heart power and omnipotent nerve. Such a man is described in the ode of Horace beginning "Justum et tenacem propositi virum"

"Not the rough tempest that deforms

Adria's black gulf and vexes it with storms

The tranquil temper of his soul can move,
Not the red arm of angry Jove,

That flings the thunder through the sky

And gives it rage to roar and strength to fly.

Should the whole frame of Nature round him break,
In ruin and confusion hurled,

He unconcerned would hear the mighty crack
And stand serene amid a falling world."

The greatest of all life's crises is the one which ends life, and that, like all the tugs of war before, is aptest to be bravely met by him whose spirit has been buttressed upon a sound physique. As protested in the last lines of Browning's "Prospice,"

* Addison's translation

"I would hate that death bandaged my eyes and forebore

And bade me creep past.

No! Let me share the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old:

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears

Of pain, darkness and cold.

For, sudden, the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again.
And with God be at rest."

A true man must wish health that he may run the least possible risk of ever becoming a burden to others. The fact deserves emphasis that health is absolutely our only at all certain guaranty in this vital matter. Wealth is here no surety whatever; family, position, influence, and power just as little. Wealth may preserve loving hands from slaving for you when you are an invalid, but it can never keep loving hearts from breaking for you when you are an invalid.

Ill health not only renders you a source of care to your friends, but makes you more