no pleasure from books which equalled that of reading over for the hundredth time great productions which he almost knew by heart; and what he said of books might doubtless be said by other persons of music, scenery, and many other sources of enjoyment. But how is fastidium to be avoided by those who are conscious of a tendency to the disease? Henri-Frédéric Amiel has answered the question: "By shutting our eyes to the general uniformity, by laying stress upon the small differences which exist, and then by learning to enjoy repetition. What to the intellect is old and worn out is perennially young and fresh to the heart; curiosity is insatiable, but love is never tired. preservative against satiety, too, is work. may weary others; but the personal effort is, at least, useful to its author. Where every one works, the general life is sure to possess charm and savor, even though it repeat forever the same song, the same aspirations, the same prejudices, and the same sighs."

The natural

What we do

A better antidote than this of the half-Christian agnostic to the satiety which "mocks the tired worldling" is, when his

"pleasures cloy,

To fill the languid pause with finer joy;"

to substitute for such luxuries one that has never been known to pall," the luxury of doing good." Of this cup of pleasure he can drink with no fear of surfeit; on the contrary, the appetite "grows by what it feeds on," and the delight yielded by its gratification is the most exquisite which the true epicure can know.

"My Poor

ONE of the most foolish complaints a man Memory." can make, is that of having a poor memory.

Why is a man's memory weak? Simply because of his lack of painstaking, - of attention. If your memory seems treacherous, and like a bag with holes lets everything slip through which you put into it, it is simply because you do not care to remember, or are too lazy to take the necessary steps to do it. So far from being treacherous, the memory is one of the most faithful of all our faculties. No other one is more surely or rapidly strengthened by exercise. It is doubtful if anything once lodged in the memory is ever forgotten. Knowledge, it has been beautifully said, may slumber there, but it never dies; it is like the dormouse in its home in the ivied tower, that sleeps while winter lasts, but wakes with the warm breath of spring.

In acquiring knowledge, time is a most important fact. There must be an incessant iteration of the newly-acquired ideas, till they are linked to the old by suggesting chains. The new knowledge must be brooded over, meditated upon, and turned over and over in the mind, till it is not only added to the old, but interpenetrates it. Lawyers understand this, and hence their "damnable iteration" of important principles and testimony in addressing juries. Porson, who had a prodigious memory, and declared that he could learn by heart a copy of the London "Morning Chronicle" in a week, said that he had acquired his quickness and tenacity of memory only by intense labor. "Sometimes," he added, "in order to impress a thing upon my memory, I have read it a dozen times, and transcribed it six." Dickens had a marvellous power of recollection; but why? Because his powers of attention and observation were marvellous. Don't say, therefore, that you would acquire this or that art or science, a knowledge of history or of literature, etc., but for your "wretched

memory; but confess that while you would like to possess these laudable accomplishments, you do not covet them earnestly enough to pay the price. All you care for is the empty applause, not the substantial accomplishment.

Marvellous Of course, memories differ naturally in Memories. tenacity and readiness. Seneca, it is said, could repeat two thousand names in the exact order in which they had been rehearsed to him. Scaliger could repeat a hundred lines after one reading. He learned Homer in twelve days, and all the Greek poets in four months. Justus Leipsius had all Tacitus by heart, and pledged himself to repeat word by word any passage called for, allowing a dagger to be thrust into his body if he made a single slip or false repetition. Mozart, whose musical compositions, however long, "stood," as he said, "almost completely finished in his mind, so that he could survey them, like fine pictures or beautiful statues, at a glance," wrote out his matchless opera of "Don Giovanni" from memory in two hours on the morning preceding the evening of its first performance. Hardly a whit less marvellous than these feats of memory were those of a Boston boy (we call him such, for he was born in Boston), Lord Lyndhurst. In speaking at the bar, on the bench, or in the House of Lords, he never used notes. In the case of "Small vs. Atwood," which lasted twenty-one days, the judgment he pronounced was entirely oral; and, without referring to a note, he spent a long day in reciting complicated facts, in making complicated calculations, and in correcting the misrepresentations of counsel on both sides. Never once did he falter or hesitate, and never once was he mistaken touching a name, a figure, or a date. Evidently, had his

lordship been a teacher he would not have found the slightest difficulty in complying with Juvenal's test,namely, that he should be able, if questioned at hazard on his way to the baths of Phoebus, to tell instantly the name of Anchises' nurse, the name and native land of the stepmother of Anchemolus, and how many flagons of wine the Sicilian king gave to the Phrygians. A memory so phenomenal must have been naturally tenacious, but by what enormous painstaking must it have been brought to its final perfection!

Self-Confidence DR. JOHNSON, in speaking of the complaint and Success. that a man of merit is often neglected by the world, declares that the sentiment is unjust: "It is generally by his own fault that he fails of success. A man may hide his head in a hole." That this is a frequent cause of failure, who can doubt? It is a wise saying of Bacon, that to enter, the kingdom of knowledge "we must put on the spirit of little children," that is, we must submit to be taught by any one who can teach us; but to enter the kingdom of wealth or celebrity, a manly, selfreliant spirit is necessary. Of what use are the most brilliant abilities if they are continually hidden in a napkin,

secreted from observation and unused, instead of being made known to the arbiters of place and honor? We all dislike what is called "forwardness" in a young man; yet it is far preferable to excessive timidity, as superfluity is preferable to penury. Time will correct the one, but it is exceedingly doubtful if it will ever infuse life and spirit. into the other. "My own experience of life," says Sir James Stephen, "has taught me, that, much and frequently as the faults of self-confidence and self-conceit are denounced

by our teachers, they are faults far less widely diffused, and far less dangerous in their tendency, than a timid self-distrust and a craven self-depreciation."

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There is no doubt that a great deal of ability is lost to the world for want of a little courage and self-confidence. Every day sends to their graves obscure men who have been obscure only because their self-distrust has prevented them from making a beginning, from ascertaining their strength by a fair trial. There was a time, in his early life, when even Daniel Webster, with all his transcendent abilities, was disposed to think meanly of himself. "My abilities," he wrote to a friend, are small, very small.' Had he continued to indulge this self-distrust, he would never have risen to be one of the greatest lawyers and statesmen in America, or to make that reply to Hayne which is the highwater mark of eloquence since Demosthenes. "The pious and just honoring of ourselves," says John Milton, "is the radical moisture and fountain-head from whence every laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth." True as this was in the great Puritan's day, the lapse of two centuries has made it truer still. We live in an age of intense competition and loud, noisy selfassertion; and the timid, sensitive man, who cannot cast aside his shyness and squeamishness and do a little violence to his feelings, who cannot say that he wants anything, or cannot say it with sufficient loudness and pertinacity, must expect not only to be outstripped in life's race, but knocked down and trampled under foot in the rush and roar of this nineteenth century.

In spite of all the praises of modest merit, it is plain that the thick-skinned, loud-voiced, pushing man will always have an advantage over the diffident, retiring one in the