YOURSELF. The higher virtues must remain unknown to him who is a stranger to self-denial. WALTER SCOTT. You may be very steady, very diligent, and very clever. Your friends may think highly of you, and you may think highly of yourself. You may have done great things; you may be doing greater; and, for aught I know, you may intend to do the greatest of all. In short, I will take it for granted that you are a very surprising young man, and that, however much you may it is your inten have astonished all around you, it is tion to astonish them still more. And now, let me ask you, not what you have done, but what you have withheld yourself from doing? for sure I am, that all the good qualities and high attainments that fall to the lot of the most favoured son of Adam, will never enable any one to be what he ought to be, unless he possess the virtue of self-denial. It is easy to ascend Mont Blanc, and to descend the grotto of Antiparos; to storm a battery, and to swim across the Hellespont; to measure the Pyramids, and to thunder in the senate. It is easy to do any, and all of these things, and a thousand others, when you fancy the whole world is looking on, or about to be informed of your wonderful achievements: but have you ever intentionally, willingly, cheerfully, debarred yourself, in the unheeded hours of private life, from what inclination was clamorous to attain? Have you ever made a real sacrifice for the benefit of another, unseen, unknown, and unsuspected? If you have not, a fig for your good qualities and high attainments! You are a mere puppet, the strings of which are pulled by vanity, whose slave you are, and whose commands you obsequiously obey. Every deed you do has a price fixed to it. It is labelled worldly applause! Nine-tenths of the astounding exploits at which men lift up their hands, and elevate their eyes, and which they inscribe with a perishable immortality, are done through the love of fame— the quenchless thirst of human praise. Many are the statues which have been erected, the temples which have been built, the inscriptions of gold which have been written to perpetuate the renown of great men who have done wonderful deeds; but where shall we look for statues, and temples, and inscriptions raised in honour of the greater men, who have debarred themselves from doing what vanity and selfishness prompted; repressed their passions; made a sacrifice of their inclinations, and sought not their own welfare, but the welfare of their kind? Have you ever made a real sacrifice? Let the question be put by yourself to yourself: for he who can rise hungry from his dinner to give it to a famished beggar, restrain his desire to do an evil deed when it is in his power to effect it, and willingly assist others in attaining a reputation which he might himself secure, is more worthy of estimation than the hero who sits enthroned as a demigod for conquering half the world. YOUTH. To the haunts of his childhood, the scenes of his sport, The magic of life's early vision to court, And the sweetest of joys from remembrance to borrow. P. M. JAMES. No! It will not, it cannot come again! The sun may shine, the spring may return; the sky may be as brightly blue, the flowers as fragrant and beautiful, and the bird may warble as wildly as he did in the days of our youth, but our youth will not again return. The same scenes produce not the same emotions. When our brows become furrowed with years, our hearts are furrowed with cares; and if we smile |