in our way remaining apparently as great as at first. And were we to sum up the condensed result of our experience in two brief words of advice, it would amount simply to this, "Never despair." We are told of Commodore Anson--a man whose sense and courage ultimately triumphed over a series of perhaps the most appalling disasters man ever encountered, and who won for himself, by his magnanimity, sagacity, and cool resolution, the applauses of even his enemies, so that Rousseau and Voltaire eulogized him, the one in history, the other in romance,--we are told, we say, of this Anson, that when raised to the British peerage, he was permitted to select his own motto, and that he chose an eminently characteristic one--"_Nil Desperandum_." By all means let it be your motto also--not as a thing to be paraded on some heraldic label, but to be engraved upon your hearts. We wish that, amid the elegancies of this hall, we could bring up before you some of the scenes of our past life. They would form a curious panorama, and might serve to teach that in no circumstances, however apparently desperate, should men lose hope. Never forget that it is not necessary, in order to overcome gigantic difficulties, that one's strength should be gigantic. Persevering exertion is much more than strength. We owe to shovels and wheelbarrows, and human muscles of the average size and vigour, the great railway which connects the capitals of the two kingdoms. And the difficulties which encompass the young man of humble circumstances and imperfect education, must be regarded as coming under the same category as difficulties of the purely physical kind. Interrupted or insulated efforts, however vigorous, will be found to be but of little avail. It is to the element of continuity that you must trust. There is a world of sense in Sir Walter Scott's favourite proverb, "_Time_ and I, gentlemen, against any two." But though it be unnecessary, in order to secure success, that one's efforts in the contest with gigantic difficulties should be themselves gigantic, it is essentially necessary that they should employ one's whole strength. Half efforts never accomplish anything. "No man ever did anything well," says Johnson, "to which he did not apply the whole bent of his mind." And unless a man keep his head cool, and his faculties undissipated, he need not expect that his efforts can ever be other than half efforts, or other than of a desultory, fitful, non-productive kind. We do not stand here in the character of a modern Rechabite. But this we must say: Let no young man ever beguile himself with the hope that he is to make a figure in society, or rise in the world, unless, as the apostle expresses it, he be "temperate in all things." Scotland has produced not a few distinguished men who were unfortunately _not_ temperate; but it is well known that of one of the greatest of them all--perhaps one of the most vigorous-minded men our country ever produced--the intemperate