kindness and valorous deed all lie far behind us: what is there left to the soul but some stray recollections, a gain of some consciousness, and a feeling that helps us to look on our place in the world with more knowledge and less apprehension--a feeling blent with some wisdom, from the numberless things it has learned? When the hour for rest has sounded--as it must sound every night and at every moment of solitude--when the gaudy vestments of love, and glory, and power fall helplessly round us; what is it we can take with us as we seek refuge within ourselves, where the happiness of each day is measured by the knowledge the day has brought us, by the thoughts and the confidence it has helped us to acquire? Is our true destiny to be found in the things which take place about us, or in that which abides in our soul? "Be a man's power or glory never so great," said a philosopher, "his soul soon learns how to value the feelings that spring from external events; and as he perceives that no increase has come to his physical faculties, that these remain wholly unchanged, neither altered nor added to, then does the sense of his nothingness burst full upon him. The king who should govern the world must still, like the rest of his brothers, revolve in a limited circle, whose every law must be obeyed; and on his impressions and thoughts must his happiness wholly depend." The impressions his memory retains, we might add, because they have chastened his mind; for the souls that we deal with here will retain such impressions only as have quickened their sense of goodness, as have made them a little more noble. Is it impossible to find--it matters not where, nor how great be the silence--the same undlssolvable matter that lurks in the cup of the noblest external existence? and seeing that nothing is truly our own till it faithfully follow us into the darkness and silence, why should the thing that has sprung to life there be less faithful in silence and darkness? But we will pursue this no farther, for it leads to a wisdom of over-much theory. For all that a brilliant exterior destiny is not indispensable, still should we always regard it as wholly desirable, and pursue it as keenly as though we valued it highly. It behoves the sage to knock at the door of every temple of glory, of every dwelling where happiness, love, and activity are to be found. And if his strenuous effort and long expectation remain unrewarded, if no door fly open, still may he find, perhaps, in the mere expectation and effort an equivalent for all the emotions and light that he sought. "To act," says Barres, "is to annex to our thoughts vaster fields of experience." It is also, perhaps, to think more quickly than thought, as more completely; for we no longer think with the brain alone, but with every atom of life. It is to wrap round with dream the profoundest sources of thought, and then to confront them with fact. But to act is not always to conquer. To attempt, to be