princess to whom she gave her daily lessons. Jeremy Bentham in like manner disposed of his hours of labor and repose, so that not a moment should be lost, the arrangement being determined on the principle that it is a calamity to lose the smallest portion of time. He lived and worked habitually under the practical consciousness that man's days are numbered, and that the night cometh when no man can work.

What a solemn and striking admonition to 'youth is that inscribed on the dial at All Souls, Oxford, England, "Periunt et imputantur," the hours perish and are laid to our charge. For time, like life, can never be recalled. Melanchton noted down the time lost by him," that he might thereby reanimate his industry, and not lose an hour. An Italian scholar put over his door an inscription intimating that whosoever remained there should join in his labors. "We are afraid," said some visitors to Baxter, "that we break in upon your time." "To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt divine. Time was the estate out of which these great workers, and all other workers, carved a rich inheritance of thoughts and deeds for their successors.

Sir Walter Scott found spare moments for self-improvement in every pursuit, and turned even accidents to account. Thus it was in the discharge of his func tions as a writer's apprentice that he first penetrated into the Highlands, and formed those friendships among the surviving heroes of 1745 which served to lay the foundation for a large class of his works. Later in life, when employed as quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Cavalry, he was accidentally disabled by th

kick of a horse, and confined for sometime to his house; but Scott was a sworn enemy to idleness, and he forthwith set his mind to work, and in three days composed the first canto of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," his first great original work.

Let not, then, the young man sit with folded hands, calling on Hercules. Thine own arm is the demi-god. It was given thee to help thyself. Go forth into the world trustful, but fearless. Exalt thine adopted calling or profession. Look on labor as honorable, and dignify the task before thee, whether it be in the study, office, counting-room, work-shop, or furrowed field. There is an equality in all, and the resolute will and pure heart may ennoble either.

Books.

NO MAN has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them. Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading, and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge in a young mind is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

A little library, growing larger every year, is an honorable part of a young man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. It is not like a dead city of

stones, yearly crumbling, and needing repair; but like a spiritual tree. There it stands and yields its precious fruit from year to year and from age to age.

Carlyle saw the influence of books many years ago. “I say, of all the priesthoods, aristocracies-governing classes at present extant in the world-there is no class comparable for importance to priesthood of the writers of books."

The art of writing and of printing, which is a sequence to it, is really the most wonderful thing in the world. Books are the soul of actions, the only audible, articulate voice of the accomplished facts of the past. The men of antiquity are dead; their fleets and armies have disappeared; their cities are ruins; their temples are dust; yet all these exist in magic preservation in the books they have bequeathed us, and their manners and their deeds are as familiar to us as the events of yesterday. And these papers and books, the mass of printed matter which we call literature, are really the teacher, guide and law-giver of the world to-day.

The influence of books upon man is remarkable; they make the man. You may judge a man more truly by the books and papers which he reads than by the company which he keeps, for his associates are often, in a manner, imposed upon him; but his reading is the result of choice, and the man who chooses a certain class of books and papers unconsciously becomes more colored in their views, more rooted in their opinions, and the mind becomes fettered to their views.

All the life and feeling of a young girl fascinated by some glowing love romance, is colored and shaped by

the page she reads. If it is false, and weak, and foolish, she will be false, and weak, and foolish, too; but if it is true, and tender, and inspiring, then something of its truth, and tenderness, and inspiration will grow into her soul and will become a part of her very self. The boy who reads deeds of manliness, of bravery and noble daring, feels the spirit of emulation grow within him, and the seed is planted which will bring forth fruit of heroic endeavor and exalted life.

A good book is the most appropriate gift that friendship can make. It never changes, it never grows unfashionable or old. It is soured by no neglect, is jealous of no rival; but always its clean, clear pages are ready to amuse, interest and instruct. The voice that speaks the thought may change or grow still forever, the heart that prompted the kindly and cheering word may grow cold and forgetful; but the page that mirrors it is changeless, faithful, immortal. The book that records the incarnation of divine love, is God's best gift to man, and the books which are filled with kindly thought and generous sympathy, are the 'best gifts of friend to friend.

Every family ought to be well supplied with a choice supply of books for reading. This may be seen from the consequences of its neglect and abuse on the one hand, and from its value and importance on the other. Parents should furnish their children the necessary means, opportunities and direction of a Christian education. Give them proper books. "Without books," says the quaint Bartholin, "God is silent, justice dormant, science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb,

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and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness." Bring them up to the habit of properly reading and studying these books. "A reading people will soon become a thinking people, and a thinking people must soon become a great people." Every book you furnish your child, and which it reads with reflection is "like a cast of the weaver's shuttle, adding another thread to the indestructible web of existence." It will be worth more to him than all your hoarded gold and silver.

Dear reader, be independent and make up your mind what it is best for you to read, and read it. Master a few good books. Life is short, and books are many. Instead of having your mind a garret crowded with rubbish, make it a parlor with rich furniture, beautifully arranged, in which you would not be ashamed to have the whole world enter. "Readers," says Addison, "who are in the flower of their youth should labor at those accomplishments which may set off their persons when their bloom is gone, and to lay in timely provisions for manhood and old age." Says Dr. Watts: "A line of the golden verses of the Pythagoreans recurring in the memory hath often tempted youth to frown on temptation to vice." No less worthy is the following: "There are many silver books, and a few golden books; but I have one book worth more than all, called the Bible, and that is a book of bank notes." The parent who lives for his children's souls will often consider what other books are most likely to prepare his little ones for prizing aright that Book of Books, and make that object the pole star of his endeavors.