content to be envied, but envy not. Emulation may be plausible, and indignation allowable, but admit no treaty with that passion which no circumstance can make good. A displacency at the good of others because they enjoy it, though not unworthy of it, is an absurd depravity, sticking fast unto corrupted nature, and often too hard for humility and charity, the great suppressors of envy. This surely is a lion not to be strangled but by Hercules himself, or the highest stress of our minds, and an atom of that power which subdueth all things unto itself.

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Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others; and let the world be deceived in thee, as they are in the lights of heaven. Hang early plummets upon the heels of pride, and let ambition have but an epicycle" and narrowing circuit in thee. Measure 15 not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave; and reckon thyself above the earth by the line thou must be contented with under it. Think not that mankind liveth but for a few, and that the rest are born but to serve those ambitions which make but 20 flies of men and wildernesses of whole nations. Swell not into vehement actions which embroil and confound the earth; but be one of those violent ones which force the kingdom of heaven." If thou must needs rule, be Zeno's king," and enjoy that empire which every man 25 gives himself. He who is thus his own monarch contentedly sways the sceptre of himself, not envying the glory of crowned heads and elohim" of the earth. Could the world unite in the practice of that despised train of virtues, which the divine ethics of our Saviour hath sO 30 inculcated upon us, the furious face of things must disappear; Eden would be yet to be found, and the angels might look down, not with pity, but joy upon us.

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XIII.

MY LIBRARY AND MY GARDEN.

BY ALEXANDER SMITH.'

Most men seek solitude from wounded vanity, from disappointed ambition, from a miscarriage in the passions; but some others from native instinct, as a duckling seeks water. I have taken to my solitude, such as it is, from an indolent turn of mind; and this solitudes I sweeten by an imaginative sympathy which recreates the past for me-the past of the world, as well as the past which belongs to me as an individual-and which makes me independent of the passing moment. I see every one struggling after the unattainable, but I strug-10 gle not, and so spare myself the pangs of disappointment and disgust. I have no ventures at sea,' and, consequently, do not fear the arrival of evil tidings. I have no desire to act any prominent part in the world, but I am devoured by an unappeasable curiosity as to the men who do act. I am not an actor, I am a spectator only. My sole occupation is sight-seeing. In a certain imperial idleness I amuse myself with the world. Ambition! What do I care for ambition? The oyster with much pain produces its pearl. I take the pearl. 20 Why should I produce one after this miserable, painful fashion? It would be but a flawed one at best. These pearls I can pick up by the dozen. The production of them is going on all around me, and there will be a nice crop for the solitary man of the next century. Look at 25 a certain silent emperor, for instance; a hundred years

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hence his pearl will be handed about from hand to hand; will be curiously scrutinized and valued; will be set in its place in the world's cabinet. I confess I should like to see the completion of that filmy orb. Will it be pure in color? Will its purity be marred by an ominous 5 bloody streak? Of this I am certain, that in the cabinet in which the world keeps these peculiar treasures no one will be looked at more frequently, or will provoke a greater variety of opinions as to its intrinsic worth.

Why should I be ambitious? Shall I write verses? I am not likely to surpass Mr. Tennyson or Mr. Browning in that walk. Shall I be a musician? The blackbird singing this moment somewhere in my garden shrubbery puts me to instant shame. Shall I paint? 15 The intensest scarlet on an artist's palette is but ochre to that I saw this morning at sunrise. No, no; let me enjoy Mr. Tennyson's verse, and the blackbird's song, and the colors of sunrise, but do not let me emulate them. I am happier as it is. I do not need to make 20 history-there are plenty of people willing to save me trouble on that score. The cook makes dinner, the guest eats it, and the last, not without reason, is considered the happier man.

In my garden I spend my days; in my library I 25 spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book I am in the past. I gɔ into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of 30 Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander; I feel the ground

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shake beneath the march of Cambyses. I sit as in a theatre*—the stage is time, the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp, what processions file past, what cities burn to heaven, what crowds of captives are dragged at the chariot-5 wheels of conquerors! I hear or cry "Bravo!" when the great actors come on shaking the stage. I am a Roman emperor when I look at a Roman coin. I lift Homer, and I shout with Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syrian plains, the outcomings 10 and ingoings of the patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at even-tide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral procession-all these things I find within the boards of my Old Testament. What a1s silence in those books as of a half-peopled world—what bleating of flocks-what green pastoral rest-what indubitable human existence! Across brawling centuries of blood and war I hear the bleating of Abraham's flocks, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah's camels. O 20 men and women, so far separated yet so near, so strange yet so well known, by what miraculous power do I know ye all? Books are the true Elysian' fields where the spirits of the dead converse, and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can 25 boast such company? What school of philosophy such wisdom? The wit of the ancient world is glancing and flashing there. There is Pan's pipe, there are the songs of Apollo. Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited 30 by a strange sense of the supernatural. They are not collections of printed pages, they are ghosts. I take one down and it speaks with me in a tongue not now heard on earth, and of men and things of which it alone pos

sesses knowledge. I call myself a solitary, but sometimes I think I misapply the term. No man sees more company than I do. I travel with mightier cohorts around me than ever did Timour' or Genghis Khan on their fiery marches. I am a sovereign in my libra- 5 ry, but it is the dead, not the living that attend my levees.

The house I dwell in stands apart from the little town, and relates itself to the houses as I do to the inhabitants. It sees everything, but is itself unseen, or at all events 10 unregarded. Around my house is an old-fashioned rambling garden, with close-shaven grassy plots, and fantastically clipped yews, which have gathered their darkness from a hundred summers and winters; and sun-dials, in which the sun is constantly telling his age; 15 and statues, green with neglect and the stains of the weather. The garden I love more than any place on earth; it is a better study than the room inside the house which is dignified by that name. I like to pace its gravelled walks, to sit in the moss-house, which is warm 20 and cosey as a bird's-nest, and wherein twilight dwells at noonday; to enjoy the feast of color spread for me in the curiously shaped floral spaces. My garden, with its silence and the pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care 25 stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars. Among my flowers and trees, Nature takes me into her own hands, and I breathe freely as the first It is curious, pathetic almost, I sometimes think, how deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for 30 gardens and gardening. The sickly seamstress in the narrow city lane tends her box of sicklier mignonette. The retired merchant is as fond of tulips as ever was Dutchman during the famous mania. The author finds

man.