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Sen. Your early youth, Epictetus, has been I will not say neglected, but cultivated with rude instruments and unskillful hands.

Ep. I thank God for it. Those rude instruments have left the turf lying yet toward the sun; and those unskillful hands have plucked out the docks.

Sen. We hope and believe that we have attained a vein of eloquence, brighter and more varied than has been hitherto laid open to the world.

Ep. Than any in the Greek?

Sen. We trust so.

Ep. Than your Cicero's ?1

Sen. If the declaration may be made without an offence to modesty. Surely you can not estimate or value the eloquence of that noble pleader.

Ep. Imperfectly; not being born in Italy; and the noble pleader is a much less man with me than the noble philosopher. I regret that, having farms and villas, he would not keep his distance from the pumping up of foul words, against thieves, cutthroats, and other rogues; and that he lied, sweated, and thumped his head and thighs, in behalf of those who were no better. Sen. Senators must have clients, and must protect them. Ep. Innocent or guilty?

Sen. Doubtless.

Ep. If it becomes a philosopher to regret at all, and if I regret what is, and might not be, I may regret mōre what bōth is and must be. However, it is an amiable thing, and no small merit in the wealthy, even to trifle and play at their leisure hours with philosophy. It can not be expected that such a personage should espouse her, or should recommend her as an inseparable mate to his heir.

Sen. I would.

Ep. Yes, Seneca, but thou hast no son to make the match for; and thy recommendation, I suspect, would be given him before he could consummate the marriage. Every man wishes his sons to be philosophers while they are young; but takes

1 Marcus Tullius Cicero, consul of Rome, a distinguished orator, writer, rhetorician, and philosopher,

was born of an equestrian family at Arpinum, Jan. 3, 106 B. C., and assassinated Dec. 7, 43 B. C.

especial care, as they grow older, to teach them its insufficiency and unfitness for their intercourse with mankind. The paternal voice says, "You must not be particular: you are about to have a profession to live by: follow those who have thriven the best in it." Now among these, whatever be the profession, canst thou point out to me one single philosopher?

Sen. Not just now, nor, upon reflection, do I think it feasible. Ep. Thou, indeed, mayest live much to thy ease and satisfaction with philosophy, having (they say) two thousand talents. Sen. And a trifle to spare-pressed upon me by that godlike youth, my pupil Nero.'

Ep. Seneca! Where God hath placed a mine, he hath placed the materials for an earthquake.

Sen. A true philosopher is beyond the reach of Fortune.

Ep. The false one thinks himself so. Fortune cares little about philosophers; but she remembers where she hath set a rich man, and she laughs to see the Destinies at his door.

LANDOR.

WALTER SAVAGE Landor was born in Warwick, England, on the 30th of January, 1775, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. He first resided at Swansea, in Wales, dependent on his father for a small income, where he commenced his "Imaginary Conversations," a work which alone establishes his fame. His first publication was a small volume of poems, dated 1793. On succeeding to the family estate he became entirely independent, and was enabled to indulge to the fullest his propensity to literature. He left England in 1806, married in 1814, and, the following year, went to Italy, which he made his chief residence. His collected works, of prose and verse, were published in 1846, in two large volumes. Mr. Landor was a poet of great originality and power. But he is most favorably known now, as he will be by posterity, for his prose productions, which, written in pure nervous English, are full of thoughts that fasten themselves on the mind, and are 66 a joy forever." His "Imaginary Conversations," from which the preceding dialogue was selected, is a very valuable work. It is rich in scholarship; full of imagination, wit, and humor; correct, concise, and pure in style; various in interest, and universal in sympathy. He died at Florence, Sept. 17, 1864.

N

IV.

73. ARTS OF EXPRESSION.

ATURE teaches and enforces many things for human development and instruction; the ordinary occupations of life assist the same design; but this is not all. Men are possessed of great and divine ideas and sentiments; and to paint them,

1 Nē'ro, though at first noted for clemency and justice, probably the most infamous of the Roman empe

rors, whose original name was Lucius Domitius, was born Dec. 15, 37, and died by his own hands in 68.

sculpture them, build them in architecture, sing them in music, utter them in eloquent speech, write them in books, in essays, sermons, poems, dramas, fictions, philosophies, histories-this is an irresistible propensity of human nature.

2. Art, inspiration, power, in these forms, naturally places itself at the head of the human influences by which the world is cultivated and carried forward. The greatest thing in the world doubtless is a sacred life; the greatest power, a pure example; but this is the end of all, and we do not here contěm'plate it as a means. As means, art is greatest. A beautiful thought, a great idēä, made to quicken the intellect, to touch the heart, to penetrate the life-this is the grandèst office that can be committed to human hands. Every faithful artist of every grade, belongs to this magnificent Institute for the instruction of the world.

3. There is one grand mistake often made in the appreciation of art, arising from the honor and fame that attend it. I suspect that it is quite a common notion that men study, write, speak, paint, build, for fame. Totally and infinitely otherwise is the fact with all true men. They live for an ideä-live to develop, embody, express it; and all extraneous considerations only hinder and hurt their work.

4. But this is often misunderstood. Believe me, the effluence of genius can no more be bought or sold than the light that streams from the fountain of day. It is the light of the world; and it is not man's purchase, but God's gift; it is God's light shining through the soul. It shines into the artist's studio and philosopher's laboratory; it falls upon the still places of deep meditation; the pen that writes immortal song, immortal thought in any form, is a rod that conveys the lightning from heaven. to earth; and the breath of eloquent speech is an afflatus that comes from far above windy currents of human applause.

5. It concerns my purpose here, to insist on this mission of all true intellectual labor, and to remind every worker in this field, however high or however humble, of his reäl vocation. "I am not distinguished," one may say; "the world, Europe, England, does not know me-will never know me." What then? Do what thou canst. Somebody will know it. No true word or work is ever lost. Stand thou in thy lot; do thy work; for the great Being that framed the world assuredly meant that somebody

should do it-that men and women of various gifts should do it, as they are able.

6. Why can we not look at the goodly band of human occupations and arts as it is; and depreciate no trade that is necessary, no art that is useful, no ministration that springs from the bosom of nature, and is thus clearly ordained of Heaven? If there be abuses of such ministration, let them be remedied; but rejection and scorn of any one thing that God has made to be or to be done, is not lawful, nor reverent to Heaven.

7. Let this whole system of nature and life appear as it is; as it stands in the great order and design of Providence. Let nature, let the solid world, be mōre than a material world-even the area on which a grand moral structure is to be built up; itself helping the ultimate design in many ways. Let the works of man take their proper place-the place assigned them in the plan of Heaven. Let agriculture lay the basis of the worldbuilding. Let mechanism and manufacture rear and adorn the vast abode of life. Let trade and commerce replenish it with their treasures. Let the liberal and learned professions stand as stately pillars in the edifice of society.

8. But when all this is done, still there are wants to be supplied. There is a thought in the bosom of humanity that longs to be uttered. The heart of the world would break, if there were no voice to give it relief-to give it utterance. There is, too, a slumber upon the world which needs that voice. There are dim corners and dark caverns, that want light. There is weariness to be cheered, and pain to be soothed, and the dull routine of toil to be relieved, and the dry, dead matter of fact to be invested with hues of imagination, and the mystery of life to be cleared up, and a great, dread, blank destitution that needs resource and refreshment needs inspiring beauty and melody to breathe life into it.

9. Then let the artist men come and do their work. Let statues stand in many a niche and recess, and pictures hang upon the wall, that shall fill the surrounding air with their sublimity and loveliness. Let essays and histories, let written speech and printed books, be ranged in unending alcoves, to pōur instruction upon the world. Let poetry and fiction lift up the heavy cur'tains of sense and materialism, and unfold visions of

beauty, like the flushes of morning, or of parting day behind the dark mountains. Let music wave its wings of light and air through the world, and sweep the chords that are strung in the human heart with its entrancing melodies. Let lofty and commanding eloquence thunder in the ears of men the words of truth and justice, or, in strains as sweet as angels use, whisper peace. Let majestic philosophy touch the dark secret of life, and turn its bright side as a living light upon the paths of men.

10. I believe in a better day that is coming. Improved agriculture, manufacture and mechanism, less labor and more result, more leisure, better culture, high philosophy, beautiful art, inspiring music, resources that will not need the base appliances of sense, will come; and with them truth, purity, and virtue; reverent piety building its altar in all human abodes; and the worship that is gentleness and disinʼterestedness, and holy love, hallowing all the scene; and human life will go fōrth, amidst the beautiful earth and beneath the blessed heavens, in harmony with their spirit, in fulfilment of their high teaching and intent, and in communion with the all-surrounding light and loveliness. Adapted from ORVILLE DEWEY.

SECTION XVII.

I.

74. THE DRAMA OF HISTORY.

WHAT, it is a voice forever sounding across the centuries

HAT is the use of history? and what are its lessons?

the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

2. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last: not always by the chief offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways.

3. That is one lesson of history. Another is, that we should

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