“What,” said he, “makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same bodily necessities with myself; he is hungry and crops the grass, he is thirsty and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased, he is satisfied and sleeps; he rises again and is hungry; he is again fed and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty, like him; but when thirst and hunger cease, I am not at rest; I am, like him, pained with want; but am not, like him, satisfied with fullness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry, that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise can call the lutanist and singer, but the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow more wearisome to-morrow. I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely has some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy.” After this he lifted up his head, and, seeing the moon rising, walked toward the palace. As he passed through the fields and saw the animals around him, “Ye,” said he, “are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity, for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from which ye are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.” With observations like these the prince amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life from consciousness of the delicacy with which he bewailed them. He mingled cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find that his heart was lightened. _From “Rasselas.”_ TRUE HEROISM. LET others write of battles fought, Of bloody, ghastly fields, Where honor greets the man who wins, And death the man who yields; But I will write of him who fights And vanquishes his sins, Who struggles on through weary years Against himself, and wins. He is a hero stanch and brave Who fights an unseen foe, And puts at last beneath his feet His passions base and low; Who stands erect in manhood’s might, Undaunted, undismayed,-- The bravest man who drew a sword In foray or in raid.