Ah! the great and the gifted cannot help us much, for they are chief among the victims. Where is our Christ of deliverance? The churches preach despair, the governments legislate despair, the courts award it; and for once the people are law-abiding, and good churchmen. Here, I know a score of honest merchants, and not one of them believes in the possibility of honest trade; a dozen physicians all agreeing that the world is past cure; a dozen scholars, cankerous and disgusted; artists painting fools and shadows; Reverend wreckers, stretching out their feeble hands over the hopeless ruin of God's earthly plan; sublime pedagogues pointing to glory and reward as the chief end of life. Yes, everywhere, on all our streets, snuffling in our pulpits and galleries, degrading our politics, curdling by the fireside, darkening the sick-chamber, slatting about in our kitchens, desolating the farm-life, poisoning the school-room air, thus persistently does the old demon, Hyp, exhibit his ugly, gloating phiz. His progeny out-number the sands on the sea-shore. If each little devil must have a whole one to himself, not all the swine on this round globe will furnish the accommodations for a general exorcism. But our part is the dislodging of the imps; theirs the finding of a future habitation.

I have no elaborate plan to propose. I merely cry out to my brother commoners, "Danger!" I say, while the philosophers are flying their kites, and the gifted hypoes are colporteuring the gospel of despair, we, laborers for our daily bread, must find our children some post of observation, from which life shall appear something better than a furious jest. If, in the attainment of this end, it becomes necessary to

We

Fortuna favet fortibus. Resist the devil (blue ones and all) and he will flee from you. Away with these sour, melancholy faces. Purify the fountains of belief. Show men the fruits of an absolute faith-one that is not spasmodic and timorous. Cast out old Hypo from the community. have heard enough of his case already. We judge him guilty of corrupting the morals of the people, and sentence him to perpetual limbo. Henceforward we will have a test oath at the gateway to our forum. If any man would speak to us, let him swear in the sunlight that he has received no taint of hypo. Better keep out the whole train-Phillips and Sumner, Greeley, Miss Anthony and all,-than that our youth lose faith in the life that is and is to be. Rather blot out the entire record of Jesus than make his melancholy a theme of emulation. hour with Lucretia Mott were worth all the owl-bodings of all the ages.

One

Oh! for a school of teachers, teaching lessons of hope; showing how mental states are subject to physical conditions; how the will may be kept healthy and supreme; that true reform is a timely step forward, not a convulsion of despair; that God is Love, and all is well.

"Yet I doubt not through the ages one in

creasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

BONCŒUR.

THE

HERE is a virtue in simplicity; beauty when unadorned is often adorned the most. There is a feeling of respect, engendered by severe straightness of line and plainness of color. But there is also awakened in many, a feeling of repulsion, or at least of indifference. The value of logical and scientific accuracy, of straightforwardness and integrity, of the closest adherence to truth and purity, is beyond all estimation.

Yet the aesthetic principle in our nature is an important one, allied in some degree to all the finer and more spiritual qualities of our being. It demands, and rightly demands, gratification. It is true that it may become so seared and blunted by exposure to improper instruction, or the adverse sweep of fortune, that its sensitiveness is lost or its influence misdirected. Then is it certainly not to be trusted as a guide. Let us see that we exercise sufficient care, to provide in the beginning the culture which it requires.

This is not a trifling matter. The tendency of thought where it has been most deep, has been to clothe itself in ascetic garb. We see, among thinkers, that a feeling of suspicion attaches to imposing form, or color, or sound, -and rightly. These, in their time, have covered great abuses, and made them dear to the common heart. But for the very reason that these abuses have received such strong support from the grace which has been thrown around them,-for that same reason should followers of the modern iconoclast, not unmindful of the lessons of experience, accept the same means to make the truth attractive to the world.

The forerunners of thought have a plain work to do. They must divest philosophy and science and art, aye, and religion, of all the accumulated

gloss, and color, and grace of form, which the lapse of ages may have clothed them with; must clear away the luxuriant moss which makes, mayhap, a crumbling ruin most pleasing to the eye; must break the shell, which possibly covers naught but a Dead-sea apple;-that they may find sure ground upon which they may build anew a house for the human understanding to dwell in, and find also, fruit to nourish it to a manly strength.

But these, in their cold, hard, scholastic labors, find few to applaud, and fewer devoted disciples. The necessities of their task require that they should allow little of ornament to creep into their speculations. The foundation must be laid firm and deep, its material must be impregnable. Enough for them, to know that in the coming years, by the natural laws of growth, all their work shall be clothed with transcendant beauty.

Enough, indeed, for them, but not enough for the world, and for life. The superstructure which grows upon this rock, is not for the advanced guard alone. Its portal must be wide enough for the world to enter, its capacity such as to accommodate a diversity of character, great as the population of the globe multiplied by uncounted generations.

Man, clothed with the divine form, must enter it, and feel his nature not dwindle, but expand. All the wide possibilities of his being, must have their opportunity. Cramp only one

of these, and you injure the whole man. But let his mind receive all good influences as they are sent, let him drink deep draughts of truth and beauty, and virtue and love and holiness, and he will become indeed a

man.

I think a popular teacher has said, "Why give the devil all the best

tools?" Why, indeed! Why grant to the influences which would work a man's destruction, the lever which we might use for his salvation? Shall we drape our virtue and our holiness with such forbidden austerity, as to drive from us to glowing, beautiful evil, all the thousands whose hearts yearn for warmth and color, and light and joy? Not so; but let us rather, finding ourselves on firm and solid ground, draw around us all forms of beauty and grace, of delight and holy cheer, with

which the great and glorious Father of us all has hallowed the last born of his creation.

In so doing, we may bring the most powerful weapons of the adversary into our service for the redeeming of the nations, while with full hearts each may say ;—

"I thank thee, O my God! who made
The earth so bright,

So full of splendor and of joy,
Beauty and light;
So many glorious things are here,
Noble and right!"

I

CALLED on my friend Mrs. B. the other morning, and found her in her nursery in a perfect whirlpool of work, children and toys. Seeing that she looked discouraged and a little fretted, I said: "I hope you will excuse me if I use a little plain language, for I see you are in trouble, and I would like to help you out. The sooner you and I and all who imagine themselves helpless, gain sufficient independence to master circumstances, the better it will be for us and for our children."

My friend looked up from her sewing with rather a mischievous expression, saying, "That sounds rather strong minded,' considering from whom it comes."

"Thank you for the reflection on my intellect," retorted I; "but don't be afraid that I am primed with a woman's rights lecture, for I come of a family where there has been a regular code on the duties of women handed down from mother to daughter for generations, and I am as much shocked at the term 'woman's rights' as you are. But I do believe in woman's spending her time and strength to the best advantage, and if that is 'strong minded,' it still accords better with old-time teaching than the highpressure living of to-day."

Here we were interrupted by a

grand catastrophe. The baby had been pulling the kitten's tail, and to get out of his way Kitty jumped into a chair, which unfortunately was previously occupied by a work-basket. Down came poor puss half buried in the ruins, while the spools betook themselves hurriedly towards the four corners of the room, to the immense delight of baby, who crept after them as fast as he could, tangling his little feet in a perfect snare of silks and thread. It took some time to repair damages, release and whip the kitten, extricate the baby, and establish him in another corner with a fresh supply of playthings.

Meanwhile I picked up Mrs. B.'s

work. She was embroidering some flannel skirts for the little irrepressible who had been the cause of the late disaster. I held them up with a somewhat deprecating look, when she said apologetically, "You know I can't afford to buy or hire embroidering, but this costs me little or nothing."

"Have you reckoned the time, the labor, the eye-sight, the nervous strain which this work demands, when you do it as now at a disadvantage, all of which powers should be hoarded for better use or greater need?"

"Perhaps not fully," was the reply, "but a mother does so delight to deck

her child with beautiful things expressive of her love."

"Even at the expense of comfort, I fear sometimes, for I should not be surprised to know that the warmth of these garments is already needed, and would be quite as acceptable if they were entirely plain."

My friend colored a little. "I do not want to wound you," I said quickly, "for I know you are overwhelmed with work, and are not strong. Shall I tell you where you and I and most other women waste much precious strength? We carry a weight of clothes, unwieldy and cumbersome, that would be a heavy burden for broader backs, and I appeal to you to strengthen me, that one day we may be womanly enough to find a dress that is better suited to our needs."

A thoughtful pause succeeded when suddenly Mrs. B. exclaimed, “Do you know my husband has promised me a sewing machine for a Christmas present; I feel as if that would lift a mountain of care."

"Now, may I tell you one of your secret thoughts? I know your choice will be a Grover & Baker machine, and you have planned an extravagant amount of braiding and ornamentation for your children's winter out-fit, all to be accomplished with the help of that machine. The faster it works the more you will do, unless you set your face resolutely against the temptation."

"I believe," said Mrs. B. with a puzzled smile, "you have divined my

thought almost before I was conscious of its existence; perhaps with this timely warning I may nip it in the bud."

"Pray don't disarm me by imagining me perfect in these matters myself, for if I did not know, whereof I speak, by painful experience, I should strive to hold my peace. He is always the best preacher who preaches from clear knowledge of trial and of sin. As my brother M. said once, the best temperance lecture he ever heard was from a man so intoxicated as to be most realizingly conscious of the evils of drunkenness."

We are apt to forget that there is economy in the choice of work as well as in the manner of doing it; that it never pays to do little things at the expense of great ones.

I have heard women say that they were entirely ignorant of politics and should not know which way to vote if they had the privilege. Well, few will have time for these things, until they brush out some of the extra braids and crimpings of their hair, and think more of the convolutions of their brains.

After all the greatest power for doing anything, lies in the belief of its possibility. When I have the blues, which unfortunately visit me too often, I am inclined to think it is too late for effort; but when the sunshine of cheerfulness illumines my soul, I am ready to say,

"We always may be what we might have been."

VENICE is free! "A bas l'Eglise!" "Viva Vittore Emanuele!" "Viva Italia!" These unwonted shouts came from a delivered people. What now has the mystic future in store for them? We cannot tell. We only know it can never be again as it was. How many long years has it been, through which, when we thought of Venice, our thought was of the Bridge of Sighs,- -a palace and a prison, on each hand! We have known a Venice in chains; we can look back, and see the Queen of the Adriatic full of pomp and magnificence and the wildness of passion, with an undercurrent of tragedy, so deep that none could fathom it. But the Venice of the future can never be as the Venice of the past.

There was a strange mingling of the old and the new, on that gala-day, the seventh of November, when the King of Italy,—of Italy at last free "from the Alps to the Adriatic,' passed in the stately barge which had been prepared for him, along the Grand Canal, and to the Cathedral of St. Mark. The great buildings which for centuries have had their place in history, the sluggish water-paths between, covered with flitting gondolas, and these in their turn manned by swarthy natives, shouting exultantly in their newly-found freedom, and tricked out with an old-time variety and profusion of ornament,-these all brought the city of the past vividly before the imagination.

But listen,-"Viva Garibaldi !" "Down with the priests!" The people are not the same people, and the presence among them of Kossuth and Browning, and Story, and of men who for four years had borne the heat of the great convulsion in the New World, is significant of a different era.

But progress is slow. Rather say, progress has been slow; for the newspaper cried to-day in the streets of Venice tells us

that old things are passing away, and all shall become new, and prophesies that upon this crumbling past shall be built a future, grander and nobler than any of of which Venetia ever dreamed.

ROME too. The Atlantic Cable brings us a despatch dated Dec. 11th, evening: "The French flag was hauled down at the Castle of St. Angelo to-day, and the Papal colors hoisted in its place. The remaining French troops were embarking at Civita Vecchia." No! progress is not so slow just now. The world is growing young again, and can afford to take longer steps than it did awhile back And if it stumble occasionally, in such a headlong pace, what of it? The lessons of a dearly-bought experience are well remembered.

CONGRESS meets, this session, under a grave responsibility. Much is to be done to resist the encroachments of Executive power, and also much, to give us the stable peace for which the people long. But where, as in the present case, a party finds itself in such an overwhelming majority, especial care is requisite to prevent measures from being hastily passed to overcome a present difficulty, which may in the future become the occasion of grave trouble.

The history of all governments, is full of cases of over-legislation, and it behooves men who profess to be actuated by principle, to avoid the establishment of precedents by which evil men may profit when their turn comes, as come it must.

The session has opened well: the passage of the District Suffrage Bill is a good beginning. May members be governed throughout their deliberations, only by a desire to advance the cause of truth and justice.