has led to a shocking slander upon human nature. It is a vile philosophy which teaches that the spring of all human action is selfishness. Refine the notion as you may, analyze motive and conduct as subtly as you can, state the proposition ever so delicately and elegantly, it is an insulting philosophic lie that makes a honest man start. If we were bound before doing anything to reason, and consider elaborately all that might be urged for and against what we were proposing, there would be more similitude of truth in the lie; since selfishness is calculating, and charity impulsive: yet still it would be a gross libel. Happily there is a good deal of true benevolence in the world, despite all the cynicism that delights to undermine it. To say there is not is to call earth a Hell, for bate itself is not so devilish as pure selfishness.

Selfishness is the cause of more misery in the world than anything else except death. What most often dashes the cup of joy from the lips when Chance (which is a literary synonym of Providence) offers the sparkling

draught? If it is not death, it is selfishness. Hatred is frightful, conceit is contemptible, scorn is vexing, selfishness is petrifying. You may love a passionate person, you may love a proud person, but it is easier to love a malicious person than a selfish one. Every selfish man is at heart a rogue. Generosity would cure half the evils to which the human race is liable. Were all mankind generous, it would be difficult to persuade men that there is a happier life to come. I would walk a hundred miles to serve a thoroughly generoushearted man without his knowledge; I'd walk at least fifty to frustrate the selfish schemes of a thoroughly selfish man.

THE FORCE OF CHARACTER.

The force of character is the most powerful force in nature. No one can live isolate: each fibre, each thought, is linked by silken threads of influence, curiously interwoven, to some others. Every act lives in the issues, and to philosophy death is a fiction. The influences of mind form a system of spiritual gravitation: there is a centripetal and a centrifugal

force in character, and those forces form social clubs and revolutions.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN THE HUMAN FACE.

The human face is a chart on which the spirit traces her course over the sea of life. The chart you look at to-day will five years hence be marked by many new lines and dots and shadings. Countenances that you knew a quarter of a century ago have since then become covered with the scrawled story of trouble and sin, or bear the illuminated track of a happy voyage. If men did but know how much their neighbours can tell about them by looking in their faces, there would be a trifle less impudence in the world.

HONOUR.

There are many kinds of honour (considered as a feature of character), but, strictly speak. ing, no degrees. A man really actuated by motives of honour is as honourable in little things as in great. Honour and dishonour are the affirmative and the negative. By adding an oath to "Yes" you do not make

the affirmation more positive-you only make it more emphatic. The thief who takes twenty pounds is not more dishonest than him who takes but one, he is only more mischievous.

THE GROWTH OF THE MIND.

Nothing is calculated to humble a man more than the perusal of the written record of his own thoughts and feelings many years ago. How few sentences of all that we wrote ten years ago seem to us now to have been worth preserving! How differently we view life now to what we did then! A copiouslywritten journal is an admirable thing to test the growth of the mind by. Looking back on the forgotten tale of our hopes and sentiments before we had a glimmering of the light or the shadow which covers our path to-day, what a number of mistakes and foolish and strange notions we appear to have entertained at one time! The man must have got far beyond middle age, and far out of the reach of reason and counsel, whose eye paints for him to-day the world and himself in the same

hues they wore when they were ten years younger. Happy he who can trace in his conduct so far back the workings of one principle he can still recognise as supremely right and good.

INFLUENCE.

Independence is impossible, for the whole From every

earth teems with influence.

salient point in mind and matter the electric fluid streams, with a mission to remodel the face of nature. Man floats like the nautilus on the water, between two oceans of influence, physical and spiritual,-tossed by every passing wave, swayed by every transient breath.

APPEARANCES.

The value of reputation depends upon the fact that the social world is entirely composed of people who are worse than they seem and people who are better than they seem. Men who have taken the principles of their philosophy from the trickery of business form the most distinguished section of the first class. Every one who tries to live a useful and noble