more they strive for it. And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the work of people who know also that they are right. The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks the perfectness of that pose, and the continued sense of failure arises from the continued opening of the eyes more clearly to all the sacredest laws of truth. pur 15 This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious one, namely:-that whenever the arts and labors of life are fulfilled in this spirit of 10 striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have to do, honorably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as much as seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths, by which that happiness is pursued, there is disappointment, or destruction:" for ambition and for passion there is no rest—no fruition-the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater than their past light; and the loftiest and purest love too often does but inflame the cloud of life with endless fire of pain. But, ascending from 20 lowest to highest, through every scale of human industry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the laborer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and with the colors of light; and none of these, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found the law of heaven an unkind one that in the sweat of their face they should eat bread, till they return to the ground; nor that they 30 25 5 ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faithfully to the command-“ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do-do it with thy might." From "Sesame and Lilies." JOHN RUSKIN. THE DAFFODILS. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Continuous as the stars that shine Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they In such a jocund company: I gazed-and gazed-but little thought For oft, when on my couch I lie And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 5 so. SAMUEL JOHNSON. As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our great English souls. A strong and noble man; so much left undeveloped in him to the last in a kindlier element what might he 10 not have been,—Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler! On the whole, a man must not complain of his "element,' of his "time" or the like; it is thriftless work doing His time is bad; well then, he is there to make it better!-Johnson's youth was poor, isolated, hope- 15 less, very miserable. Indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the favorablest outward circumstances, Johnson's life could have been other than a painful one. The world might have had more of profitable work out of him, or less; but his effort against the 20 world's work could never have been a light one. Nature in return for his nobleness, had said to him, Live in an element of diseased sorrow. Nay perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness were intimately and even inseparably connected with each other. At all events, 25 poor Johnson had to go about girt with continual 15 hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain. Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus' shirt on him, which shoots in on him dull incurable misery: the Nessus' shirt not to be stripped off, which is his own natural skin! In this manner, he had to live. Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of "fourpence-halfpenny a day." Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's. One remembers always that story of the shoes at Oxford: the rough, seamy-faced, raw-boned College Servitor stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes worn out; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner secretly places a new pair at his door; and the raw-boned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts,-pitches them out of window ! Wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will; but not beggary: we cannot stand beggary! Rude stubborn self-help here; a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of nobleness and manfulness withal. It is a type of the man's life, this pitching away of the shoes. An original man;—not a second-hand, borrowing or begging Let us stand on our own basis, at any rate! 30 On such shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and 25 man. mud, if you will, but honestly on that; on the reality and substance which Nature gives us, not on the semblance, on the thing she has given another than us! And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and self-help, was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really higher than he? Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them; only small mean souls are otherwise. I could not find a better proof of what I said the other day, that the sincere man was by nature the obedient man; that only in a World of Heroes was there loyal Obedience to the Heroic. The essence of originality is not that it be new Johnson believed altogether in the old; he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for him; and in a right heroic manner, lived under them. He is well worth study in regard to that. For we are to say that Johnson was far other than a mere man of words and formulas; he was a man of truths and facts. He stood by the old formulas; the happier was it for him that he could so stand: but in all formulas that he could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine substance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, the great Fact of this Universe glared in for ever, wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too! How he harmonized his Formulas with it; how he managed at all under such circumstances: that is a thing worth seeing. A thing "to be looked at with reverence, |