PRIDE. Though Pride may show some nobleness When Honour's its ally, Yet there is such a thing on earth, As holding heads too high ! The sweetest bird builds near the ground, Like water that encrusts the rose, So Pride encases human hearts Until they feel no more. Shut up within themselves they live, And selfishly they end A life, that never kindness did To kindred, or to friend! Whilst Virtue, like the dew of heaven And draws its hidden sweetness out, Which renders victory sure! The humblest being born, is great, His virtue illustrates his fate, Whatever that may be!- For not the eagle, but the Dove, MAY. DIAMOND DUST. Ir sometimes happens, that men who make the most dangerous deviations from the laws of society and the principles of virtue, owe their crimes, in a great measure, to the very benevolence of their hearts; and that in the midst of all their guilt, we find a dignity of soul, which commands our admiration. NATURE is an Eolian harp, a musical instrument whose tones are keys to higher strings in us. IT is the Poetical principle through which we commune with all that is lovely and grand in the universe. If this precious gift were annihilated amid the common-place and the actual, we should lose the interest of life. The office of this Divine Spirit is to throw a redeeming grace around the objects and the scenes of being. It is the breeze that lifts the weed on the highway of time, and brings to view the violets beneath. It is the mystic harp, upon whose strings the confused murmur of toil, gladness, and grief, loses itself in music. EXPERIENCE, though the most valuable, is the most despised product of human labour. PREJUDICE is opinion without judgment. A MAN'S mind may be compared to a book, of which the body is the binding: sometimes in calf, but gilt; sometimes in plain boards. Of this volume, the title-page is the face; the epistle dedicatory, the profession; the table of contents, the characteristics and principles; the correct passages, are the virtues; the errata and corrigenda, the faults; it is much to be regretted that, owing to a bad impression, these last occupy the larger portion. So much depends upon the "getting up" ("the education") for the final success of the work, that we often see productions of first-rate talent spoiled by inferior finish; and others not worth reading, universally admired for the excellence of the paper and the beauty of the type. ONE of the difficulties of life,-talking to a deaf person in an omnibus. ONE of the pleasures of life,-taking off new boots, and putting on old slippers. —a woman thoroughly satis ONE of the rarities of life,- A TRULY good memory is only forgetful of injuries. DELICACY and respect are the fruits not so much of intellect as sensibility. We are considerate towards others, in proportion as our own consciousness gives us universal insight; and sympathies are the best teachers of politeness. WHOEVER looks for a friend without imperfections will never find what he wants. We love ourselves with all our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner. MAY! lovely May! "the sweet season," "the savour- NATURE abounds with those fitnesses which harmonize with the mental constitution in a state of health. Christianity, as being a restorative system, abounds in fitnesses IT has been asked, why Poetry, being so unnecessary to the world, occupies so high a rank among the fine arts? The same question may be asked with regard to music; poetry is the music of the soul, and above all, of great and feeling souls. One merit of poetry few persons will deny;-it says more, in fewer words, than prose. Horace says, there can be no great poetry without great wisdom. LOVE is the embroidery of imagination on the stuff of nature. Printed and Published for the Proprietor, by J. O. CLARKE, (of If we Society only reflects individual conditions. are bad as men, we are also bad as society; and if we are good as men, so will society be good in the same degree. We say again then, that the reform and elevation of society is to be accomplished by the reform and elevation of individuals; and if men would really advance society, they may begin at once-with themselves. We fear that most men are readier to begin with their neighbours; while some are particularly anxious about persons, communities, and tribes, very much further off. Let us reiterate the maxim-that the first thing for the zealous reformer to do is, to resolve well as to his own improvement, and then perform resolutely what he has so resolved. PROVIDENCE AND SELF-HELP. THOUGH many of the ills of life are the result of circumstances, over which in lividuals have little control, many also are caused by the want of proper reflection, care, foresight, and economy on the part of those who suffer. We are all too much disposed to blame others rather than ourselves. We blame, above all things, Government, forgetting how very small a part of the ills of life Government can either cause or cure. A Government cannot make a drunken man sober, a thoughtless man prudent, a wasteful man thrifty. It cannot make him moral, virtuous, or religious. The highest sources of human happiness and improvement lie altogether beyond its reach. These are within the power of the people them- The first thing which a man so resolved has to do, is, selves, and they, as individuals, can bring improved cir- to practice self-denial. "Ah," says some one, "I have cumstances to bear upon their own social condition and enough of that already!" Well, perhaps this one is well-being; for, each man has within himself the capa- right; but there are others, many others, among the bility of free will and of free action to a large extent-working classes, who have yet to learn what self-denial to a much larger extent than most men are disposed means. Think of the millions of pounds sterling spent to admit, or at least to act upon; and the fact is proved by the multitude of men who have successfully battled with and overcome the adverse circumstances of life in which they have been placed, and who have risen from out the lowest depth of poverty and social abasement, as if to prove what energetic man, resolute of purpose, can do for his own elevation and advancement. Now, we would not ignore the abuses and oppressions of Government-far from it; but to discuss such matters in these columns would be out of place. Our object at present is, to point out what individual men can and ought to do for themselves. And the greatest of all reforms the reform of a nation-must be effected through individuals,-through individual improvement, individual reform, individual elevation. Nations are made up of persons; and as the individuals are, so will the mass be. Every man's first duty is, to improve, educate, and elevate himself in the social scale, helping forward his brethren at the same time by all reasonable means. Let him resolve and determine that he will advance, and the first step of advancement is already aken. The first step is half the battle; and in the very fact of advancing himself, he is in the most effectual possible way advancing others. He is giving them the most eloquent of all lessons-that of example; which always teaches far more emphatically than words can do. He is doing what others are by imitation incited to do. Beginning with himself, he is in the most emphatic manner teaching the duty of self-reform and of self-improvement; and if the majority of men acted as he did, how much wiser, how much happier, how much more prosperous as a whole, would society soon become. For, society being made up of units, will be happy and prosperous, or the reverse, exactly in the same degree that the individuals which compose it are. by the working class every year in drink and tobacco, and how very far this means, so wasted, would go towards enabling individuals to improve themselves, and to lay the basis of independence and comfort for life. We know of several institutions, in one large town in the manufacturing districts, where, for three shillings a year, or one shilling a quarter, working men may secure admission to excellent lectures, a library, a news-room, and mutual improvement classes. A shilling a quarter is less than half a farthing a day; and yet all these benefits are given for so small a sum. Such are the advantages of co-operation for a noble object. Why, an ounce of tobacco, or a glass of beer weekly, costs four times more than the admission to all the high and intellectual advantages just named. If you take the intrinsic value, they are worth one hundred times the sum charged for them. If we look also at the excellent Mechanics' Institutions throughout the country-and there is now scarcely a town or village in which such institutions are not now founded - we find that advantages of the same kind are given at not much higher charges. The admirable institutions of Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds offer advantages superior to those of many of the best colleges of the olden times; and they are open to the working classes, at rates, the highest of them, not above threepence a week! The excellent Mechanics' Institution at Leeds, containing a library of 7,000 volumes, supplied with the leading periodicals of the day, with its varied lectures and classes, is open to the use of working men for less than threepence a week, or less than the cost of a pint and a half of beer! Then arithmetic, algebra, mathematics, and mensuration, are taught for a penny a week extra, in the evening classes, or for less than the cost of half an ounce of tobacco! Grammar, and composition, geography, and history, are also taught for a penny a week; and so on with other branches of knowledge. Nearly the same advantages are now offered by other first class Mechanics' Institutions throughout the country. working man in all the vicissitudes of life, and, on the failure of his strength, in its decline. Are of course, as a fund for misfortune, sickness, or old age. And those who have not observed, would be astonished to find what a few pence set apart weekly will do towards Now, to have access to these branches of education-establishing the perfect and noble independence of the to have a free admission to the mighty store of knowledge that lies in books-to hold communion with the great spirits of this and of past ages-to cultivate the mind under We would speak of this as a duty of the most binding the direction of competent instructors,-is it not a very kind-that of economizing and husbanding surplus means, small sacrifice to ask of a working man, that he should-in order to provide against the day of death, the time give up one glass of beer daily, or say three glasses of sickness, and the period of adversity. Does not a weekly, when, by so doing, he can accomplish objects so man incur a responsibility of the most serious kind great, so truly elevating and ennobling? What will he lose when he marries and becomes the father of children? by giving up the one indulgence, and how much will he These helpless ones plead to him most eloquently. gain by entering on his new pursuits? He will lose head- they, in event of his early death, to be left to buffet aches, but he will gain self-respect. He will deny his with the rude world unaided? The hand of charity is throat some unnecessary moisture, but he will elevate his cold, the gifts of charity are valueless, compared with calling, and improve his character by the cultivation of his the gains of industry, and the honest savings of frugal mind and the acquisition of knowledge. And let a man be labour, which carry with them blessings and comforts, once well educated, and he cannot be deprived of its con- without inflicting any wound upon the feeling heart. Let sequent advantages. He must rise, as an individual; and any man who can, therefore, endeavour to economise and let all working men become so educated, and they, in like to save-not to hoard without an object, but to nurse his manner, cannot fail to rise as a class. An enlightened little savings, for the sake of promoting the welfare and people must be an advancing people; a people possessing happiness of himself while here, and of others when he intelligence must be superior to any other power, and has departed. their progress and advancement cannot be withstood. Another important point for working men to aim at, is, to place themselves in a position above the accidents and ills of life-above poverty, and all the misery and evil that it produces. It must be admitted, that men of all classes are, as yet, too little influenced by this consideration. We are all apt to live beyond our incomes-at all events, to live up to them. The upper classes live too much for display; they must keep up their "position in society "-they must have fine houses, horses, and carriages-give good dinners, and drink rich wines-their ladies must wear costly and gay dresses; and thus the march of improvidence goes forward, over broken hearts, ruined hopes, and wasted ambitions. The vice descends in society, the middle classes struggle to ape the patrician orders; they flourish crests, liveries, and hammercloths; their daughters must learn "accomplishments"must see "society "play at cards-frequent operas and theatres. Display is the rage-ambition rivalling ambition--and so the vicious folly rolls on like a tide. The vice still descends; the working classes, too, live up to their means, much smaller means it is true, but even when they are able, they are not sufficiently careful to provide against the evil day; and then only the poorhouse offers its scanty aid to defend them against total want. A saving of sixpence a week will amount to forty pounds in twenty years, and to seventy pounds in thirty years. By prudence and economy, it would not be difficult for many working men to save that sum, or double, or treble that sum; and such a sum, as a capital, would add to his self-respect, to his dignity and independence, and remove the evil day far from him, or keep it away altogether. There is a dignity in the very effort to save with a worthy purpose, even though the attempt should not be crowned with eventual success. It produces a well-regulated mind; it gives prudence a triumph over extravagance; it gives virtue the mastery over vice. It puts the passions under control; it drives away care; it secures comfort. Saved money, however little, will serve to dry up many a tear-will ward off many sorrows and heart-burnings, which otherwise would prey upon us. Possessed of a little store of capital, a man walks with a lighter step-his heart beats more cheerily. The face of nature will assume, in his eyes, a more joyous character; the fields will appear more green; the groves more vocal. When interruption of work or adversity comes, he can meet them; he can recline on his capital, which will either break his fall, or prevent it altogether. By such prudential economy, we can thus realize the dignity of man, life will be a blessing, and old age an honour. We can ultimately, under a kind Providence, surrender life, conscious that we have been no burden on society, but rather, perhaps, an acquisition and ornament to it; conscious, also, that as we have been independent, our children after us, by following our example, and availing themselves of the means we have left behind us, will walk in like manner through the world, in independence and happiness. Now, we are not blind to the numerous instances of working men acting the part of prudent and far-seeing economists. If we look to the Savings' Banks, to the Building Societies, to the Benefit Societies of the Odd Fellows Order, we indeed find the most cheering examples of provident economy on the part of working men. But we say it advisedly, and it will be confessed to be true, that a very large proportion of the working classes Abundant opportunities present themselves now-a-days allow their means to run to waste; and that a very large to the working classes, for the economizing of their small number of them, who, by frugality and careful economy, gains. There are now established, in almost all the large might lay up a store of savings, which might secure for towns, Land and Building Societies. There are also the themselves an honourable independence for their old age, Savings' Banks. The Benefit Societies of the working waste their means, often spending them on drink; and, classes are also instruments for the same object; they when their years of health and strength have passed afford the opportunity of a saving fund, available in time away, they are left stranded on the stern shores of of sickness. There are also the available methods of Life poverty and want, destitute and desolate. The gains Assurances and Deferred Annuities, by which, in the first reaped in times of prosperity, are not garnered up, but case, a considerable sum can be secured for a widow, or spent; nothing is saved, and what is the consequence? a family, on the death of a subscriber; or, in the second Frightful misery in the time of need. Instead of its case, by which he can secure for himself an annuity, on being one of the first thoughts, when a man marries, and which he can subsist comfortably after reaching a certain involves others in his fate, it is one of the last-that he age-say fifty-five or sixty-by the payment of a comshould make such a provision for these other beings de-paratively small sum monthly or quarterly. To these pendant on him for their subsistence, as his means will methods of economising, we may yet take an opportunity fairly allow. From the very first earnings of every man, of directing the attention of our readers. a small portion should at once be set apart, as a matter "NIL DESPERANDUM." ELIZA COOK'S JOURNAL. A WORD in season, how good it is! and right good and seasonable are those old maxims, which, with emphatic brevity, give courage to the desponding, and new vigour to the weary, when homilies and exhortations are power less. We could readily enumerate a hundred or more such "Jewels five words long, That on the stretched forefinger of old Time Perhaps, not one of them, excellent though the others may be, has so much virtue and efficacy as this hopeful ejaculation-Nil desperandum. The lot of man is disappointment, but his worst enemy is despair. Resolute confidence, when all other means fail, may often avert danger, and overcome difficulty; nay, more, it may convert the bane into a blessing. We learn this in our infancy. What says the Nursery Rhyme ?— "Tender-handed touch a nettle, And it stings you for your pains: Bulwer has truthfully observed, that the most valuable characteristic of fame, is the laborious and long-continued struggle which it almost invariably imposes upon its votaries. Similarly excellent is the discipline of disappointment. If life were exempt from trial, the sterner virtues fortitude, patience, courage, and perseverance, would be uncalled for. Sybarite ease might abound, but Roman excellence would be wanting; life might be luxurious, but men would be worthless. It is a bitter truth, perhaps, but sorrow and suffering are a man's best teachers, and to render their teaching efficacious, they must be encountered by steady, enduring resolution. presumption of that gipsy-tinker who, while repairing the Then, faint not, drooping hearts! all you now suffer, To give up is to lose. The battle of life resembles the There are, it must be admitted (and the admission should cover us all with the blush of shame), there are many impediments thrown in the path of the struggling and the poor, by the faulty constitutions of society, and by the sins of individuals. Not in our lauded England is a fair day's wages always the meed of a fair day's work. Nevertheless, to every individual yielding to despair, we say, "Hope on a little longer, brave heart! Three days more and land may be in view!" Moreover, the fortitude and the resolution necessary to bear the storm, will go more than half-way towards surmounting it. Corneille says, "To conquer without peril is to Humbled, but not conquered,-disappointed, but not dismayed, we must bend before the blast, only to rise triumph without glory." But with all due deference for Nil desperandum must be the the opinion of Corneille, we should rather say that, withagain with new energy. watchword cherished in our hearts, even when its utter-out peril is no triumph at all. ance would sound like mockery. "In the sweat of thy face, thou shalt eat bread." "The richest crown-pearls in a nation the wheel, and cry, Nil desperandum. Look at history-and history is a teacher, second only to experience. Who are the men great in their own generation, and honoured by the homage of posterity? Who are the men at whose histories our hearts burn, and our eyes glisten? The men who were ignorant of the word despair. Was that baleful influence felt by the Genoese, whose untiring faith won a world from the unknown? Nil desperandum was the motto of Columbus, as with weary feet, but undrooping heart, he travelled from court to court, vainly soliciting aid for the discovery of a new hemisphere; and in that most anxious hour when defeat All honour to the earnest-hearted ones who, amid the seemed imminent in the moment of victory, when the hard struggles of a toiling life, still put their shoulder to perils of the voyage were surmounted, and the land of America, all but within sight, the sailors' courage failed, and declaring the project a delusion, they insisted upon abandoning the mighty enterprise, Nil desperandum! exclaimed Columbus. His life was menaced by the mutiGive me three neers, but hope still urged him on. days," he cried; and before three days had passed, he had, with "a grand step," trod the shores of the New World. When the armed thouAll ages tell the same tale. sands of Xerxes threatened the annihilation of Greece, Nil desperandum! cried Leonidas, although the cry seemed madness, and with three hundred followers he encountered the Persian hosts. The dead bodies of the Grecian heroes strewed the battle-plain of Thermopyla; but, the Persian host retreated, and the salvation of Greece was achieved. 66 Volumes might be filled with similar examples of perseverance, and difficulty, and hope, in the jaws of destruction; for the history of these virtues is the history of all the great and good that has ever been accomplished. It is easier to say what a man may do than what he may not, if he put his shoulder to the wheel with a hopeful resolution. Who, for example, would not have ridiculed the ON THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH IN THE YOUNG man has his treasures in memory, and wishes that he had of our lives is a contested question; but there can be no How beautiful is that law of playfulness, which governs the youth of all created animals! How glorious that short-lived era of the blood, when school-boys, and puppies, and kittens, caper and dance, by a sort of instinct, or necessity! This irresistible gaiety is not the result of superior health and strength; it is the exulting spirit of mere life in the newly born-an elementary joyousness, which requires no aid from without, which is not excited in them, but is a part of them. The child, in proof of its being, might say, in the spirit of the philosopher-I rejoice therefore, I am. This triumphant sense of life has different degrees of duration, according to varieties in moral and constitutional temperament; it may give way, before its natural period, to the shocks of accident; sometimes it is prolonged almost to that term which we call our years of discretion; and sometimes it bursts out in brief transports, through the gloom and the cares of perfect reason and melancholy maturity. Once in a way, in a spring morning, perhaps, a gentleman of sober habits feels himself, on the first taste of the air, very unaccountably disposed. If he be in the country, he falls incontinently to rolling in the grass, or takes to kicking his heels, or tries a short run with a jump at the end of it, with other caprices of motion, which have nothing at all to do with getting on, and for which, very likely, he heartily despises himself. He is soon relieved. His habitual feelings, and numberless little circumstances of his daily experience, are at hand to quell his romping vivacity at a moment's notice. He feels a twinge of the rheumatism, or recollects a bad bargain, and we see no more of his jumps. Oh! for the secret of commanding such a spirit at all times; the noble art of going through life with a hop and a skip! How grievous it is that we cannot always be boys; that we cannot grow from three feet to six, without an absolute change of nature! Lady Mary Wortley observes, with her usual liveliness, "It is a maxim with me, to be as young as long as one can. There is nothing can pay one for that valuable ignorance which is the companion of youth; those sanguine, groundless hopes, and that lively vanity, which make up all the happiness of life. To my extreme mortification, I find myself growing wiser and wiser every day."""Tis folly to be wise," is not a mere conceit. But we can't help it. The most limited experience of life is sufficient to dispel the charming illusions of ignorance. Every day, from the hour of our birth, takes from us some happy error, never to return. The fugitive enchantments of our swadding clothes are superseded by the frail wonders of short coats; these again we are soon taught to despise; and so, as we live, we are reasoned or ridiculed out of all our jocund mistakes, till the full-grown man sees things as they are, and is just wise enough to be miserable. Ah! a Jack-a-lantern! At this hour of my sad maturity, I remember the throb of heart with which I used to welcome this metaphysical stranger; how I chuckled and crowed, as my dazzled eye followed him through the changeful figures of his fantastical harlequinade. What it was, or how it came, it never occured to me to inquire; it was regarded simply as one of the delicious accidents of life. sent on purpose to puzzle and to please. Soon, however, a tender instructor broke in upon my senseless delight, and explained to me the cause of phenomenon. From that moment the sprightly meteor danced and gambolled unheeded before my eyes. Who remembers, without regret, the extinction of his thrilling belief on the subject of that grim couple in Guildhall-Gog and Magog? "And do they really come down?" Who cares for Punch, when he is nearly certain that he is not alive? and what do we go to a play for, after the time when we turned to mamma to beg her not to let the man stab the lady? And then the Man in the Moon!-not to mention the precision with which you absolutely made out his face! Can we forget that such things were, and can we forgive ourselves that they cease to be? produce in the sights and sounds of the physical world, as The school-boy looks forward with rapture to the time " No pity for simple nature, straight-forward will, and I have known one individual of this description, and only one; a joyous baby of threescore, with whom I once went a bird-nesting in company with his grand-children. It was in a spring morning, early, when the dew still sparkled on the grass, and all nature was an image of youth and freshness. The grey head of my companion might be considered a little out of season; but his cheerful eye, his lively talk, and ready laugh, were in perfect But if we regret the changes which time and knowledge keeping with the general scene. Time had set his mark |