man never drew the sword; but in critical moments he failed to reap the natural fruits of his valor by his hesitation and delay.

Literary men are more apt to lack decision than men who have to deal with practical matters. A melancholy example of this is furnished by the life of Sir James Mackintosh, whom Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, in his "Historical Characters," terms "The Man of Promise." The career of Sir James was a perpetual struggle between that which he desired to be and that for which his talents fitted him. At the University of Aberdeen he was alike remarkable for his zeal in politics and his love for metaphysics, that is, for his alternate coquetry between an active and a meditative life. At Edinburgh, also, where he went to study medicine, it was the same thing. Spending his mornings in poetical lucubrations, his evenings in making speeches at a "spouting" club, he gave little attention to the study of medicine till absolute necessity compelled him. He then applied himself with a start to that which he was obliged to know; but his diligence was not of that resolute and steady kind which insures success as the consequence of a certain period of application; and, after rushing into the novelties of "The Brunonian System," which promised a knowledge of medicine with little labor, and then rushing back again, he tried to establish himself as a medical practitioner at Salisbury and at Weymouth in England, but, getting no patients, retired, disgusted and wearied, to Brussels. He next dabbled in politics; wrote the famous pamphlet, "Vindicia Gallica," in reply to Burke; delivered soon after at Lincoln's Inn a course of learned and eloquent lectures on Public Law, which were received with great enthusiasm ; defended M. Peltier in a speech at the bar, which was read with admiration not only in England, but on the Continent, and, though he lost his cause, led him to be considered no less promising as a pleader than, after the "Vindicia Gallicæ," he had been considered as a pamphleteer; became Recorder of Bombay; returned to England, and, feeling that "it was time to be some

thing decided," resolved "to exert himself to the utmost " if he could get a seat in Parliament; entered the House of Commons, and made several remarkable speeches; accepted a professorship at the same time in Haileybury College, unable "either to commit himself to the great stream of public life, or to avoid lingering on its shores"; planned a great historical work, which, like his projected work on Morals, was "always to be projected"; and, at length, within a few yards of the grave, galled by the thought that the season for action was almost passed, and he had accomplished nothing worthy of his great powers, made a start, and crowded into the last few years of his life the most ambitious of his works, - works all, however, of a third-rate character, neither worthy of his abilities nor justifying even in a moderate degree the expectations of his friends. The fatal defect in his character was lack of decision, of concentration, of power to choose some one object to be accomplished, and to sacrifice to its attainment all interfering inclinations. "No man," says Sir Henry L. Bulwer, "doing so little, ever went through a long life continually creating the belief that he would ultimately do so much." He passed from Burke to Fox in half an hour, and remained weeks in determining whether he should employ "usefulness" or "utility" in some particular composition. From the beginning of his life to its close he ever remained the man of promise; until, amidst hopes which his vast and various information, his wonderful memory, his copious elocution, and his transitory fits of energy still nourished, he died, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, universally admired and regretted, though without a high reputation for any one thing, or the ardent attachment of any particular set of persons.

Let every man who would avoid a life so abortive as this decide early what he wishes, and for what his talents fit him; and having fixed upon an object to be attained, let him give his whole soul to its attainment, without swerving to the right or the left. "I respect the man," says Goethe, "who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief

in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut."

Not only is decision necessary, but promptness also, without which decision loses half its value. "Is Philip at Paris?" asked Charles V., after his son, the King of Spain, had gained the decisive victory over the French at Quentin. He estimated Philip's temper by his own. When Ledyard was asked by the African Association when he would be ready to start for Africa, he replied, "To-morrow morning." A similar answer was made by Sir Colin Campbell, when asked when he would set out to lead the British army to India. It was the promptness of Blucher that won for him the cognomen of "Marshal Forward" throughout the Prussian army. Again, besides promptness, tenacity of decision is indispensable to him who would make his mark in the world, or achieve any rare success. All the men whose names have been blazoned on the scroll of fame have been distinguished by their firm adherence to their purposes, by the nescit vox missa reverti, which has made their spoken word like an oath. When a certain commissary-general complained to the Duke of Wellington that Sir Thomas Picton had declared that he would hang him if the rations for that general's division were not forthcoming at a certain hour, the Duke replied, "Ah! did he go so far as that? Did he say he'd hang you?" "Yes, my lord." "Well, if General Picton said so, I have no doubt he will keep his word; you'd better get up the rations in time." When a man of iron will is thus known to be so tenacious in his adherence to his resolution that, once declared, it is like a decree of fate, there is no limit to the good or bad results he may accomplish. Such a will draws men and things after it as a boat does the drift in its wake. that to oppose its possessor would be as futile as

"To wound the loud winds, or, with bemocked-at stabs,

To kill the still closing waters."

Men feel

Some forty years ago murder was so rife in Havana that it

seemed literally to be cultivated as one of the fine arts, to use De Quincey's phrase; and the city, if less libidinous, was probably more blood-stained than Sodom or Gomorrah. Yet, in a short time, by the vigor and decision of one man, this hideous state of things was entirely changed; and through Havana then, as through England under Alfred, or through Geneva now, the most gently nurtured woman could walk at midnight with a female attendant, unscared and unharmed. One night a murder was committed, and Tacon, the Chief of Police, heard in the morning that the perpetrator was still at large. He summoned the prefect of the department in which the crime was committed. "How is this, sir? a man murdered at midnight, and the murderer not yet arrested?" "May it please your Excellency, it is impossible. We do not even know who it is." Tacon saw the officer was lying. "Hark you, sir. Bring me this murderer before night, or I'll garrote you to-morrow morning." The officer knew his man, and the assassin was forthcoming.

Prepare yourselves for the world as the athletæ used to do for their exercises; oil your mind and your manners to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do. CHESTERFIELD.

"The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil
His want in forms, for fashion's sake,
Will let his coltish nature break
At seasons through the gilded pale."

The courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest to the grateful and appreciating heart. It is the picayune compliments which are the most appreciated; far more than the double ones which we sometimes pay. - HENRY CLAY.

A

MONG the qualities of mind and heart which conduce to worldly success, there is no one the importance of which is more real, yet which is so generally underrated at this day by the young, as courtesy, that feeling of kindness, of love for our fellows, which expresses itself in pleasing manners. Owing to that spirit of self-reliance and self-assertion, and that contempt for the forms and conventionalities of life, which our young men are trained to cherish, they are too apt to despise those delicate attentions, those nameless and exquisite tendernesses of thought and manner, that mark the true gentleYet history is crowded with examples showing that, as in literature, it is the delicate, indefinable charm of style, not the thought, which makes a work immortal, as a dull actor makes Shakespeare's grandest passages flat and unprofitable, while a Kean enables you to read them "by flashes of lightning,”. so it is the bearing of a man toward his fellows which oftentimes, more than any other circumstance, promotes or obstructs his advancement in life. We may complain, if

man.