'N every man's mind some images, words, and facts remain, without effort on his part to imprint them, which others forget, and afterwards these illustrate to him important laws. All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules. What you have aggregated in a natural manner surprises and delights when produced. For we cannot oversee each other's secret. And hence the difference between men in their natural endowment are insignificant in comparison with their common wealth. Do you think the porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonder, for you? Everybody knows as much as the servants. The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in the degree in which he has wit and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed concerning the modes of living and thinking of other men, and especially those classes whose minds have not been subdued by the drill of school education.

This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but becomes richer and more frequent in its information through all stages of culture. At last comes the era of reflection, when we not only observe, but take pains to observe; when we of set purpose sit down to consider an abstract truth; when we keep the mind's eye open, whilst we converse, whist we read, whilst we act, intent to learn the secret of law of some class of facts.

What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye of an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and that. I seem to know what he meant, who said, "No man can see God face to face, and live." For example, a man explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. His best heed long time avails him nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say, I will walk abroad, and the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and composed attitude of the library, to seize the thought. But we come in, and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment, and unannounced, the truth appears. A certain wandering light appears, and is the distinction, the principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes, because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect resembles that law of nature by which we now inspire, now expire, the breath by which the heart now draws in, now hurls out the blood: the law of undulation. So now you must labor with your brains, and now you must forbear your activity, and see what the great soul showeth.

GNOSIS.

Touling deeper than all thought;

HOUGHT is deeper than all speech,

Souls to souls can never teach

What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in vails;

Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen. Heart to heart was never known,

Mind with mind did never meet; We are columns left alone,

Of a temple once complete. Like the stars that gem the sky, Far apart, though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company

But a babbling summer stream? What our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love

Melts the scattered stars of thought; Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught;

Only when our souls are fed

By the Fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain

Swelling till they meet and run,

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Shall be all absorbed again,

Melting, flowing into one.

H

CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.

THE HAPPY LIFE.
JOW happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!
Whose passions not his masters are,

Whose soul is still prepared for death;
Not tied unto the world with care

Of public fame or private breath;
Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by
praise;

Nor rules of state, but rules of good;
Who hath his life from rumors freed,
Whose conscience is his strong re-