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read. The difficulty is they are not careful to improve it Their hours of leisure are either idled away, or slept away or talked away, or spent in some other manner equally vain and useless; and then they complain that they have no time for the culture of their minds and hearts. This is all wrong.

4. The infinite value of time is not realized. It is the most precious thing in the world; the only thing of which it is a virtue to be covetous, and yet the only thing of which all men are prodigal. Time is so precious that there is never but one moment in the world at once, and that is always taken away before another is given. Only take care to gather up your fragments of time, my friends, and you will never want leisure for the reading of useful books.

5. And in what way can you spend your unoccupied hours more pleasantly, than in holding converse with the wise and good through the medium of their writings? To a mind not altogether devoid of curiosity, books open an inexhaustible source of enjoyment. And it is a high recommendation of this sort of enjoyment that it always abides with us. Nothing can take it away. It is in the mind; and go where we may, if our minds are well furnished and in good order, we can never want for means of enjoyment. The grand volume of nature will always lie spread out before us; and if we know how to read its wonders, the whole world will pour at our feet its treasures, and we shall hold converse with God himself.

6. But to those who are unaccustomed to read other books, this sublime volume must of course appear an unmeaning blank. They cannot read the glorious lines of wisdom and power, of majesty and love, which the Creator has inscribed upon it. All is to them a sealed book, and they pass through the world none the wiser for all the wonders of creative power and goodness by which they are surrounded,

7. A taste for useful reading is an effectual preservation from vice. Next to the fear of God, implanted in the heart, nothing is a better safeguard to the character than the love of good books. They are handmaids of virtue and religion. They quicken our sense of duty, unfold our responsibilities,

strengthen our principles, confirm our habits, inspire in us the love of what is right and useful, and teach us to look with disgust upon what is low and groveling and vicious.

S. Knowledge is power. It is the philosopher's stone, the true alchemy that turns every thing it touches into gold. It is the scepter that gives us our dominion over nature; the key that unlocks the store houses of creation, and opens to us the treasures of the universe. And suppose you that her last victory has been won, the utmost limits of her dominion reached? Nay, my friends, she has but commenced her march.

9. Her most splendid triumphs are yet future. What new honors she has to bestow on her followers, into what new felds of conquest and of glory she will lead them, no one car tell. Her voice to all is, to rally around her standard and go for ward and aid her victories, and share in the honor of her achievements. None are excluded from this high privileg. Her rewards are proffered to all, and all, though in different measures, may share in her distinctions, her blessing, and hopes.

10. The circumstances in which you are placed, as members of a free and intelligent community, demand of you a careful improvement of the means of knowledge you enjoy. You live in an age of great mental excitement. The public mind is awake, and society in general is fast rising in the scale of improvement. At the same time the means of knowledge are most abundant. They exist every where and in the richest variety. Nor were stronger inducements ever held out to engage all classes of people in the diligent use of these means.

11. Useful talents of every kind are in great demand. The field of enterprise is widening and spreading around you, the road to wealth, to honor, to usefulness and happiness, is opened to all; and all who will, may enter upon it with the almost certain prospect of success. In this free community there are no privileged orders. Every man finds his level. If he has talents, he will be known and estimated, and rise in the respect and confidence of society.

a Alchemy; sublime Chemistry.

LESSON CVI. /6

THE LOSS OF NATIONAL CHARACTER.

MAXCY.

1. THE loss of a firm national character, or the degradation of a nation's honor, is the inevitable prelude to her destruction. Behold the once proud fabric of a Roman empire; an empire carrying its arts and arms into every part of the eastern continent; the monarchs of mighty kingdoms dragged at the wheels of her triumphal chariots; her eagle waving over the ruins of desolated countries. Where is her splendor, her wealth, her power, her glory? Extinguished forever.

2. Her moldering temples, the mournful vestiges of her former grandeur, afford a shelter to her solitary monks.. Where are her statesmen, her sages, her philosophers, her orators, her generals? Go to their solitary tombs and inquire. She lost her national character, and her destruction followed. The ramparts of her national pride were broken down, and Vandalism desolated her classic fields.

3. Place their example before you. Let the sparks of their veteran wisdom flash across your minds, and the sacred altars of your liberty, crowned with, immortal honors, rise before you. Relying on the virtue, the courage, the patriotism, and the strength of our country, we may expect our national character will become more energetic, our citizens more enlightened, and may hail the age as not far distant when will be heard, as the proudest exclamation of man; I am an American!

E. In the Roman triumphs, the victorious general, seated in a gilded chariot, drawn by white horses, clad in purple, crowned with laurel, and bearing a scepter, with the eagle ed the procession; while the conquered monarchs followed, being sometimes chained to the triumphal car. b Eagle; the brazen eagle of the Roman standard. c The Vandals were a fierce and barbarous people, once inhabiting the shores of the Baltic Sea.

LESSON CVII. 167

OUR OBLIGATIONS AS CITIZENS.

KNOWLES.

1. LET the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those are daily dropping from among us, who established our liberty and our government. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our appropriate object.

2. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon," and Alfred," and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation; and there is opened to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us.

3. Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects, which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled. conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these thirty states are one country.

4. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself become

• Solon; one of the seven wise men of Greece, and the lawgiver of Athens, B. C. 600. Alfred (alfred; ) one of the wisest of England's kings, and founder of Oxford univer Bity.

a vast and splendid monument. not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration, forever!

LESSON CVIII./

two sons.

THE JUST JUDGE.

1. A GENTLEMAN, who possessed an estate worth about five hundred a year, in the eastern part of England, had also The eldest, being of a rambling disposition, went abroad. After several years, his father died; when the younger son, destroying his will, seized upon the estate. He gave out that his elder brother was dead, and bribed false witnesses to attest the truth of it.

2. In the course of time the elder brother returned; but came home in miserable circumstances. His younger brother repulsed him with scorn, and told him that he was an imposter and a cheat. He asserted that his real brother was dead long ago, and he could bring witnesses to prove it. The poor fellow, having neither money nor friends, was in a most dismal situation. He went round the parish making complaints, and at last to a lawyer, who, when he had heard the poor man's story, replied, "You have nothing to give me. If I undertake your cause and lose it, it will bring me into disgrace, as all the wealth and evidence are on your brother's side.

:

3. "But, however, I will undertake your cause on this condition you shall enter into an obligation to pay me one thousand guineas, if I gain the estate for you. If I lose it, I know the consequences; and I venture with my eyes open." Accordingly, he entered an action against the younger brother, which was to be tried at the next general assizes* at Chelmsford, in Essex.

4. The lawyer having engaged in the cause of the young

* As-sizes; a court in England.

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