GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS (1824-1892) belonged both to the ante- and the post-bellum literature. He has been referred to (page 120) as the "Easy Chair" of Harper's Monthly, the editor of Harper's Weekly, etc., but that does not do justice to him. He was greater than his works. He exercised a powerful influence on his generation, but the great mass of his writings is buried in the back numbers of the journals for which he wrote. Two volumes of Essays from the Easy Chair, and Literary and Social Essays have been published, also three volumes of Orations and Addresses. He was the most Addisonian essayist of his time, but he greatly surpassed Addison both in style and conception. His fame, however, will probably rest chiefly on his orations, which in theme, style, treatment, and all the higher attributes of oratory, have rarely been excelled.

OTHER CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.

DONALD G. MITCHELL, elsewhere mentioned (page 120) as author of Dream Life, etc., has lately written English Lands, Letters, and Kings, 4 vols., and a similar work entitled American Lands and Letters, from the Mayflower to Rip Van Winkle. Pleasant, discursive, and conversational in style.

HAMILTON W. MABIE, one of the editors of the Outlook, New York, is one of the best of living essayists, author of My Study Fire, 2 series, Short Studies in Literature, Under the Trees and Elsewhere, etc.

PROF. BRANDER MATTHEWs, of Columbia College, literary and dramatic critic, biographer and novelist-Hours with Men and Books; Men, Places, and Things; Wit and Humor, etc.

MISS AGNES REPPLIER of Philadelphia has published several volumes of essays and criticisms-Points of View, Books and Men, In Dozy Hours and Other Papers, etc.

PATRICK F. MULLANY, "Brother Azarias" (1847-1893)-Development of English Literature, Philosophy of Literature, Phases of Thought and Criti

cism.

ROBERT J. BURDETTE, humorous and miscellaneous writer. He has written some good poems, among them Bartimæus, When My Ship Comes In, and Alone. The last is a touching elegy on the death of his wife. EDGAR W. NYE, "Bill Nye" (1850-1896), a noted humorist. was of the quaint, dry kind, not extravagant, like Mark Twain's. (posthumous), A Guest at the Ludlow.

His humor

Last book

PART III.

A CASKET OF THOUGHT-GEMS.

merica.]

Truth.]

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

I.

WESTWARD the course* of empire takes its way;
The first four acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.

II.

BP. BERKELEY.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Education.]

IV.

SHAK.: Julius Cæsar.

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district, all studied and appreciated as they merit,—are the prin cipal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty. FRAKKLIN Virtue.]

V.

Mortals that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.

* Often quoted "star of empire."

MILTON: Comus

These two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together, manly dependence and manly independence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance.

Death.]

Calumny.]

VII.

But whether on the scaffold high,

Or in the battle's van,

WORDSWORTH

The fittest place where man can die
Is where he dies for man.

VIII.

M. F. BARRY.

To persevere in one's duty and to be silent is the best answer

to calumny.

The Good Time Coming.]

IX

Then let us pray that come it may,

As come it will for a' that,

WASHINGTON.

That sense and worth o'er a' the earth
May bear the gree and a' that.

For a' that and a' that,

It's coming yet, for a' that,

When man to man, the warld o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.

BURNS: Honest Poverty.

X.

School-houses are the republican line of fortifications.

Schools.]

Teaching.]

Teaching.]

XI.

HORACE MANN.

Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast.
THOMSON: The Seasons.

XII.

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity. Learning.]

XIII.

Do you covet learning's prize?
Climb her heights and take it.
In ourselves our fortune lies;

Life is what we make it.

WERSTER

J. W. W.

Life is a casket not precious in itself, but valuable in proportion to what fortune, or industry, or virtue has placed within it.

Self-reliance.]

Life.

XV.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

XVI.

LANDOR.

SHAK.: Julius Cæsar.

It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.

HOLMES.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs; he most lives,
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Benevolence.]

XVIII.

P. J. BAILEY: Festus.

An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves. MRS. L. M. CHILD.

If there is anything that ought to be said, say it; if there is anything that ought to be done, do it. What a man wills to do he will do.

Dare to be true; nothing can need a lie;

A fault which needs it most grows two thereby.

J. W. W.

GEORGE HERBERT.

Dare to say No. To refuse to do a bad thing is to do a good

Heaven is not gained at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by rour d.

J. W. W.

Man.]

I count this thing to be grandly true,
That a noble deed is a step toward God,
Lifting the soul from the common sod
To purer air and a broader view.

We rise by things that are 'neath our feet;
By what we have mastered of good and gain;
By the pride deposed and the passion slain,
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.
J. G. HOLLAND.

XXIV.

Man is the jewel of God, who has created this material world to keep his treasure in.

Self-improvement.]

Schools.]

XXV.

THEODORE PARKER.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight;

But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upwards in the night.

LONGFELLOW: Ladder of St. Augustine.

XXVI.

Jails and state prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more you must have of the former.

HORACE MANN.

The thing most specious cannot stead the true;
Who would appear clean must be clean all through.
ALICE CARY: The Might of Truth.

Leisure is time for doing something useful; this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man never; so that, as Poor Richard says, a life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. FRANKLIN

For strength is born of struggle, faith of doubt,
Of discord law, and freedom of oppression:
We hail from Pisgah, with exulting shout,
The promised land below us, bright with sun,
And deem its pastures won,

Ere toil and blood have earned us the possession!
Each aspiration of our human earth

Becomes an act through keenest pangs of birth;
Each force, to bless, must cease to be a dream,
And conquer life through agony supreme;