"INSECTS of a day, that we are! buried along the stream of time that flows at the base of God's immutability, we look up, and think in our schemes and pursuits to imitate his eternity. If those whom death hath severed from us, whose places we occupy, and whose names we inherit, were at this moment to appear among us, it would not be to reclaim their wealth, or to resume their lands, but to bear testimony to their vanity."

"THE liberty of using harmless pleasures will not be disputed. Yet it is still to be discovered what pleasures are harmless.

"Pleasure, in itself innocent, may become injurious by too much endearing, a state which we know to be transient and probationary, and withdrawing our thoughts from that to whose beginning every hour brings us nearer, and of which no length of time can bring us to the end.

"In that state of future perfection to which we aspire,

there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint."-Dr. Samuel Johnson.

"OH Source of strength! 'tis given us oft

Among mankind to see

The reed-like purpose of the soul

That hath no trust in Thee.

A TURKISH ANECDOTE.

"THE pampered favorite of a Sultan, threw a stone at a Dervise who solicited charity. The uncomplaining suppliant took it up, and preserved it, saying in his heart I may have an opportunity to throw it myself, in my turn.' Some time after, the courtier was disgraced, and led through the city, seated on a camel, exposed to the insults of the populace. The Dervise ran to fetch his secreted stone. Yet on reflection he cast it away, saying, 'I perceive now that we ought never to seek revenge when an enemy is powerful, because it is imprudent, nor when he is involved in calamity, because it is mean and cruel.'

"Unconsciously he followed the instruction of Scripture, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.””

BEES.

"So work the honey-bees!

Creatures that by a ruling instinct teach
The arts of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king, and officers of state,
Where some like magistrates correct at home,

Others, like merchant princes trade abroad,
Others, like soldiers armed in their stings
Make war upon the summer's velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor ;
Who busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing mason building roofs of gold,
The thrifty citizens hoarding up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice with his surly hum
Delivering o'er to execution dire

The lazy, yawning drone."

Shakspeare.

From "Henry V."

SENTIMENTS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS.

THALES.

"IN this life, the felicity of the body consists in health; that of the mind in knowledge."

CHILO.

"PRUDENCE is a desirable thing in youth, and good

humor is the balsam of age.

the phantom under which it

Death is not so terrible as is made to appear.”

BIAS.

"OF all accidents in this life, the most difficult to be sustained is change of fortune."

CLYOBOLUS.

"In this life, two things are to be dreaded, the hatred of enemies, and the envy of friends."

ANAXAGORAS.

"AGE and sleep teach us insensibly, the way of death."

ANTISTHENES.

"In this life, the most indispensible of all sciences is to learn how to avoid the contagion of evil example."

SADI.

“A MAN is born, he begins to build and dies. A son is born unto him, who begins to build, and dies also. Thus generations succeed each other. Everything is begun, but nothing finished. Happy is he who has gained on earth the prize of goodness. Its rewards await him in another life."

HIPPOCRATES.

“HUMAN life is not on any account more miserable, than because of the inordinate love of gain, which like a noxious person spreads malignant influence over every period of it."

DEMOCRITUS.

“MEN are in no degree of life easy or contented. Kings would be private men, and private men would be kings. The statesman envies the happiness of the mechanic, and the mechanic the place and dignity of the statesman. Meanwhile, the safe and easy road of virtue is overlooked, or if seen, disregarded."

INTEMPERANCE.

Yet

"AMONG the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of which it is the cause. this evil, great as it is, seems light in comparison with the essential evil of the vice. What matters it, though a man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, the energy, the reason, the virtue of a man. Honest, noble-minded poverty need not be feared. Ancient

philosophers chose it as the natural condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a faithful Christian.

"But the poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having first made himself a brute, is wretched indeed. He has no solace, who with agonizing recollections, and harrowing remorse, looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children. This is indeed, a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers is a light thing. But that he has brought on himself this suffering by the voluntary extinction of reason, that is the terrible thought, the intolerable burden.”

Rev. William Ellery Channing.

AUTUMN LEAVES.

"O SAY not autumn's lovely days
Are sad, and full of gloom,

That all the tunes her wild harp plays,
Are marches to the tomb.

"Not summer with her richest gems,
Or all her golden sheaves,
Can rival on their bending stems,
Our frost-tipped autumn leaves.

"For now o'er all the earth and sky
A pensive beauty glows,
A soften'd radiance from on high
No other season knows.

"While every quiet leaf that drops
So silent through the air,

And all the tree-crown'd mountain tops
A glorious beauty wear.