The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.

The true order of learning should be, first, what is necessary second, what is useful; and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the edifice.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb there;

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,

But has one vacant chair.

Wit.]

CLXX.

LONGFELLOW: Resignation.

Wit loses its respect with the good, when seen in company with malice; and to smile at the jest that plants a thorn in another's breast, is to become a principal in the mischief. SHERIDAN.

Death of an Infant.]

CLXXI.

There beamed a smile

Books.]

So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow,
Death gazed and left it there. He dared not steal
The signet-ring of Heaven.

CLXXII.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

The past lives but in words; a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale, unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.

BULWER-LYTTON.

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,

As in her breast the wave of life

Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seemed to speak,

So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied;

We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came, dim and sad,

And chill with early showers,

Her quiet eyelids closed; she had

Another morn than ours.

LAMB.

HOOD.

Glorious Life.]

CLXXVII.

Sound, sound the clarion! fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
CLXXVIII.

Death (of Mrs. Lowell).]

The Past.]

Cares.]

SCOTT

Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,
A shadow on those features fair and thin,
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued where but one went in.
LONGFELLOW: The Two Angels.

CLXXIX.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking at the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,—
Oh! death in life! the days that are no more!
TENNYSON: The Princess.

CLXXX.

Too much of joy is sorrowful,

So cares must needs abound;
The vine that bears too many flowers
Will trail upon the ground.

Remembrance.]

ALICE CARY.

CLXXXI.

This is truth the poet sings,

TENNYSON: Locksley Hall.

CLXXXII.

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Sensibility.]

I would not enter on my list of friends,

Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,

Yet wanting sensibility, the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

Sympathy.]

CLXXXIII.

No one is so accursed by fate,

No one so utterly desolate,

But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.

COWPER.

Laughter.]

Responds as if, with unseen wings,
An angel touched the quivering strings,
And whispered in his song,

Where hast thou staid so long?

CLXXXIV.

LONGFELLOW: Endymion.

No one who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably depraved. CARLYLE.

In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of
love.
TENNYSON: Locksley Hall.

If there is anything that keeps the mind open to angel-visits and repels the ministry of ill, it is human love.

Prayer and Love.]

CLXXXVII.

He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast;
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

Slander and Anger.]

Social Evils.]

CLXXXVIII.

Alas! they had been friends in youth;

But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;

And life is thorny, and youth is vain,

And to be wroth with one we love,

WILLIS.

COLERIDGE.

Doth work like madness in the brain. COLERIDGE.

CLXXXIX.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth! Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest nature's rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool! TENNYSON: Locksley Hall

Think, every morning, when the sun peeps through
The dim leaf-latticed windows of the grove,

How jubilant the happy birds renew

Their old melodious madrigals of love;

Evening.]

Home.]

Midnight.]

Night.]

And when you think of this, remember, too,
'T is always morning somewhere, and above
The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore!

LONGFELLOW: Birds of Killingworth.

CXCI.

One long bar

Of purple cloud, on which the evening star
Shone like a jewel on a scimetar,

Held the sky's golden gateway. Through the deep
Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep-

The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep.
WHITTIER: Penn. Pilgrim.

CXCII.

Better than gold is a peaceful home,
Where all the fireside charities come,-
The shrine of love and the heaven of life,
Hallowed by mother or sister or wife.
However humble the home may be,
Or tried with sorrow, by Heaven's decree,
The blessings that never were bought or sold,
And centre there, are better than gold.

CXCIII.

'Tis midnight's holy hour, and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er
The still and pulseless world.

CXCIV.

GEO. D. PRENTICE.

Night, sable goddess, from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty now stretches forth

Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.
YOUNG: Night Thoughts.

The day is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;

My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.