hissing heaven-high through its thousand crowned, coroneted, shovel-hatted quack-heads; and he did wrestle with it, the truest and terriblest wrestle I have heard of; and he wrestled it, and mowed and cut it down a good many stages, so that its hissing is ever since pitiful in comparison, and one can walk abroad in comparative peace from it;-and his wages, as I understand, were burial under the gallows-tree near Tyburn turnpike, with his head on the gable of Westminster Hall, and two centuries now of mixed cursing and ridicule from all manner of men. His dust lies under the Edgware road, near Tyburn turnpike, at this hour; and his memory is -Nay what matters what his memory is? His memory, at bottom, is or yet shall be as that of a god: a terror and horror to all quacks and cowards and insincere persons; an everlasting encouragement, new memento, battleword, and pledge of victory to all the brave. It is the natural course and history of the God-like, in every place, in every time.

A BRAVE MAN.

A brave man, strenuously fighting, fails not of a little triumph now and then, to keep him in heart. Everywhere we try at least, to give the adversary as good as he brings; and, with swift force or slow watchful manœuvre, extinguish this and the other solecism, leave one solecism less in God's creation; and so proceed with our battle, not slacken or surrender in it!

HELL.

"The word hell," says Sauerteig, "is still frequently in use among the English people: but I could not without difficulty ascertain what they meant by it. Hell generally signifies the infinite terror, the thing a man is infinitely afraid of, and shudders and shrinks from, struggling with his whole soul to escape from it. There is a hell therefore, if you will consider, which accompanies man, in all stages of his history, and religious or other development: but the hells of

men and peoples differ notably. With Christians it is the infinite terror of being found guilty before the Just Judge. With old Romans, I conjecture, it was the terror not of Pluto, for whom probably they cared little, but of doing unworthily, doing unvirtuously, which was their word for unmanfully. And now what is it, if you pierce through his cants, his oft-repeated hearsays, what he calls his worships. and so forth—what is it that the modern English soul does, in very truth, dread infinitely, and contemplate with entire despair? What is his hell, after all these reputable, oftrepeated hearsays, what is it? With hesitation, with astonishment, I pronounce it to be: The terror of Not succeeding;' of not making money, fame, or some other figure in the world-chiefly of not making money! Is not that a somewhat singular hell?"

WRETCHEDNESS.

It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man wretched; many men have died; all men must die—the last exit of us all is in the fire-chariot of pain. But it is to live miserable we know not why; to work sore and yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated, unrelated, girt-in with a cold universal Laissez-faire: it is to die slowly all our life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, infinite injustice, as in the accursed iron belly of a Phalaris' Bull! This is and remains forever intolerable (to all men whom God has made.

(Miscellaneous Selections.)

ADVICE TO A YOUNG MAN.

The following admirable letter, addresssed by Mr. Carlyle in 1843 to a young man who had written to him desiring his advice as to a proper choice of reading, and, it would appear also, as to his conduct in general, is taken from its hiding.

188

THE CASKET OF LITERARY GEMS.

place in an old Scottish newspaper of a quarter of a century ago:

"DEAR SIR,-Some time ago your letter was delivered me; I take literally the first free half-hour I have had since to write you a word of answer.

"It would give me true satisfaction could any advice of mine continue to forward you in your honorable course of self-improvement, but a long experience has taught me that advice can profit but little; that there is a good reason why advice is so seldom followed; this reason namely, that it so seldom, and can almost never be, rightly given. No man knows the state of another; it is always to some more or less imaginary man that the wisest and most honest adviser is speaking.

"As to the books which you—whom I know so little of— should read, there is hardly anything definite that can be said. For one thing, you may be strenuously advised to keep reading. Any good book, any book that is wiser than yourself, will teach you something—a great many things, indirectly and directly, if your mind be open to learn. This old counsel of Johnson's is also good, and universally applicable: Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.' The very wish and curiosity indicates that you, then and there, are the person likely to get good of it. Our wishes are presentiments of our capabilities; that is a noble saying, of deep encouragement to all true men; applicable to our wishes and efforts in regard to reading as to other things. Among all the objects that look wonderful or beautiful to you, follow with fresh hope the one which looks wonderfullest, beautifullest. You will gradually find, by various trials (which trials see that you make honest, manful ones, not silly, short, fitful ones), what is for you the wonderfullest, beautifullest—what is your true element and province, and be able to profit by that. True desire, the monition of nature, is much to be attended to. But here, also, you are to discriminate carefully between

G

อ

true desire and false.

The medical men tell us we should eat what we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. It is very true; and flimsy, desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all-are not these as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries and confectionaries for their real appetite, of which even they are not destitute, though it lies far deeper, after solid nutritive. food? With these illustrations, I will recommend Johnson's advice to you.

"Another thing, and only one other, I will say. All books are properly the record of the history of past men-what actions past men did: the summary of all books whatsoever lies there. It is on this ground that the class of books specifically named History can be safely recommended as the basis of all study of books-the preliminary to all right and full understanding of anything we can expect to find in books. Past history, and especially the past history of one's own native country, everybody may be advised to begin with Let him study that faithfully; innumerable inquiries will branch out from it; he has a broad-beaten highway, from which all the country is more or less visible: there travelling, let him choose where he will dwell.

"Neither let mistakes and wrong directions—of which every man, in his studies and elsewhere, falls into many— discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding that we are wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully, to be right, he will grow daily more and more right. It is, at bottom, the condition which all men have to cultivate themselves. Our very walking is an incessant falling— a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement!—it is emblematic of all things a man does.

"In conclusion, I will remind you that it is not books alone, or by books chiefly, that a man becomes in all points

a man. Study to do faithfully whatsoever thing in your actual situation, there and now, you find either expressly or tacitly laid to your charge; that is your post; stand in it like a true soldier. Silently devour the many chagrins of it, as all human situations have many; and see you aim not to quit it without doing all that it, at least, required of you. A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading. They are a growing kind of men that can wisely combine the two things-wisely, valiantly, can do what is laid to their hand in their present sphere, and prepare themselves withal for doing other wider things, if such lie before them.

"With many good wishes and encouragements, I remain, yours sincerely,

"THOMAS CARLYLE.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the Infinite; we look for moments, across the cloudy elements, into the eternal sea of light, when song leads and inspires us. Serious nations, all nations that can still listen to the mandate of nature, have prized song and music as the highest; as a vehicle for worship, for prophecy, and for whatsoever in them was divine. Their singer was a vates, admitted to the council of the universe, friend of the gods, and choicest benefactor to man.

THE SONG AND THE SINGER.

To "sing the praise of God," that, you will find, if you can interpret old words, and see what new things they mean, was always, and will always be, the business of the singer. He who forsakes that business, and, wasting our divinest gifts, sings the praise of chaos, what shall we say of him! David, king of Judah, a soul inspired by divine music and much other heroism, was wont to pour himself in song; he,