CV.-BATTLE OF LIFE.

YES, it is very true. Life is a battle, or rather a succession of battles; a long, continuous warfare, for which we are drilled, or ought to be drilled all skillfully and carefully in our early youth, on which we enter when the school is exchanged for the house of business, and the light-hearted pastimes of boyhood for the carnest pursuits of men, and from which thêre is no discharge but death. Some, indeed, there are who do not find life a very hard struggle, who meet with few difficulties, and who, not having formed a true conception of the objects of existence, do not feel that our motto is what we assert it to be, a faithful description of the lot of mortals; but there are others, and they are not few, to whom life is stern and stormful and grim, who are compelled to dare, to do, to suffer, to wait, to watch, to wrestle, to encounter one evil after another, and, at last, it may be in agony and death that they win their crown.

Do you ask-why is it thus? why is life so hard? why must men strive and struggle on this fearful wise? why should we be exposed to such imminent and pressing dangers, surrounded by such devouring elements? why should our energies be kept continually upon the stretch to secure an existence in this world and to prepare ourselves for another? Now, I do most earnestly believe that it is our glory to occupy this very position. I am so much of an optimist as to believe that it is most decidedly for our good that we are necessitated to struggle thus. What should we be without this tremendous discipline? What poor, puny, powerless, and, I fear, worthless and vicious creatures we should become if it were not for this warfare? It is the making of a man, it is the making of society, that this battle must be fought.

What are all the inventions of art but results of this great struggle -the weapons by means of which men, obliged to exercise their wits, and driven almost, but not altogether, to their wit's end, contrived to fight the battle of life themselves, and by means of which millions are fighting that battle now? Much of our best literature, too, is the outcome of efforts made in this great struggle, for many of those who have done so much to charm and to teach the world, had they been nursed on the lap of luxury, would have lived a life of pointless indolence and inglorious ease.

Many, very many, of our noblest songs also are passionate expressions of truth, wrung from the human heart in the excitement and the agony of the battle of life. Deprive us of all that in art, in science, in literature, we owe to the stern necessity which has compelled men to exercise their physical and intellectual powers to the uttermost limits of endurance, and you will all but beggar us. Go to the lands

in which men have not to contend with an unkindly soil and an inclement climate, where nature is most lavish of her bounties, and the munificent carth yields, almost spontaneously, fruits sufficient to appease the cravings of hunger, and do you envy the inhabitants of those countries? Is their physical, mental, moral, social, political development at all promoted by the fact that the conditions of their existence are not quite so hard as those which nature dictates to us? On the contrary, man is a far nobler creature-I will not say amid the snows of Greenland and the arctic dreariness of Nova Zembla, but in those parts of the world where he is at least compelled to labor: where the wintry blast says to him, "Work, or I'll chill thee to the bone;" where the rugged earth says to him, "Work, or thou shalt have no bread;" where all the elements of nature exclaim, with apparent harshness but with real kindness, "Work or die,"―thêre man is greatest, mightiest, and best.

Do not complain, young man, that the terms of existence in this world are so hard; that life is in so many cases, and in your case, an incessant struggle against forces which, unopposed, would starve your body, enfeeble your understanding, and destroy your soul. The terms of your existence are precisely those most favorable to your culture as a man, an intelligent, emotional, and morally responsible crcature. It is in mercy, not in wrath, that you are compelled to eat your bread in the sweat of your face. If man had never sinned, still he must have worked; and if he had not worked, he would very soon have sinned. Adam was placed in the garden of Eden, not to bask in its sunshine and sleep in its shade, but to dress the garden and to keep it; and one great article in the charter which made him the tenant of the earth was this—that he should subdue it; that by the diligent exercise of his physical and intellectual powers, he should obtain the mastery over all its elements, harness them to his chariot of progress, compel them to minister to his service, and all for the glory of his Creator.

REV. HUGH STOWELL.

CVI.-LOCHIEL'S WARNING.

WIZARD. Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array;
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of °Culloden are scattered in fight;
They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown;
Woe, woe to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.

But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
'Tis thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await
Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning: no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led!
Oh weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead;
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.

LOCHIEL. Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling 'seer! Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,

Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight,
This mantle to cover the phantoms of fright.

WIZARD. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?
Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn!
Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth

From his home, in the dark-rolling clouds of the north?
Lo! the death-shot of foemen outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad.;

But down let him stoop from his havoc on high !
Ah! home let him speed-for the spoiler is nigh.
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast,
Those embers like stars from the firmament cast?
'Tis the fire shower of ruin, all dreadfully driven
From his eyry, that beacons the darkness of heaven.
O crested Lochiel! the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlement's height,
Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn;
Return to thy dwelling! all lonely, return!
For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.

LOCHIEL. False Wizard, °avaunt! I have marshaled my clan:
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And like reapers descend to the harvest of death.
Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock!
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock!
But woe to his kindred, and woe to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws;
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,
Clanranald the dauntless, and Moray the proud;
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array-

WIZARD. Lochiel! Lochiel! beware of the day!
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal;
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the blood-hounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wräth,
Behold, where he flies on his desolate path!

Now, in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:
Rise! rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!
'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors;
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores:

But where is the iron-bound prisoner? Where?
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.

Say, mounts he the ocean wave, banished, forlorn,

Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah no! for a darker departure is near;

The war-drum is muffled and black is the biēr,
His death-bell is tolling; oh! mercy, dispel

Yon sight that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims;
Accursed be the faggots, that blaze at his feet,

Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale-

LOCHIEL. Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale:
For never shall Albin a destiny meet

So black with dishonor, so foul with retreat.

Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore,
Like ocean weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,

Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,

While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,

Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,

With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe!

And leaving in battle no blot on his name,

Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

CVII. DEMOSTHENES.

Demosthenes was born at Athens, in the fourth year of the 98th *Olympiad, B. c. 385 years. He lost his father, who was a wealthy citizen of Athens, at the early age of seven years. He was now left

to the care of his mother. The guardians to whom his father committed the administration of a large property, wasted a great portion of it, thus depriving the youth of the advantages of early education. But there were other obstacles in the way of his literary and oratorical success. From his earliest years, his constitution was feeble, and his health delicate.

There was, notwithstanding, a germ in his bosom which the misfortunes of life could not extirpate; a spark of eloquence which was one day to burst forth in splendor. Sixteen years had scarcely passed when an opportunity occurred to excite the young Athenian. The ambition of Demosthenes to become a public speaker was first inflamed while he was attending a trial, in which Callistratus, a celebrated orator, won an important cause. When he saw the success of the orator, and heard the acclamations of the people, he determined to devote himself forthwith to the careful study of eloquence.

He chose Isæus as his preceptor, and from °Plato, it is said, that he imbibed much of the richness and grandeur with which the writings of that philosopher are adorned. At the age of seventeen years we find Demosthenes before the public tribunals, arguing his own cause against his faithless guardians. In this contest the young orator came off triumphantly. His orations were crowned with complete success. He next attempted to speak before the people; but, in his first address, was ridiculed and interrupted by the clamors of the audience. His feeble and stammering voice, his want of breath, his ungraceful gestures, and his confused sentences, rendered it difficult for him to be understood, and brought upon him general derision.

After one of his unsuccessful attempts at public speaking, he was met, while returning home in the greatest distress, by the actor Satyrus, who requested him to recite some passage from Euripides or Sophocles. Satyrus then repeated the same passage, so correctly, so gracefully, and with such animation, that it appeared to the young student quite different. Demosthenes now saw how far action and enunciation go to form the orator. He also perceived in what his own defects lay, and resolved by the use of all possible means to overcome them. By untiring perseverance he at length accomplished his object, and became the prince of orators. To cure himself of stammering he spoke with small pebbles in his mouth. It is also related that he removed the distortion of features, which accompanied his utterance, by watching the movements of his countenance in a mirror; and a naked sword was suspended over his left shoulder while he was declaiming in private, to prevent its rising above the level of the right. That his enunciation might be loud and full of emphasis, he frequently ran up the steepest and most uneven walks, an exercise by which his voice acquired both force and energy; and on the sea-shore, when the waves were violently agitated, he declaimed