The Duke of Wellington.

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factured articles to which he was entitled for his gold, he could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him. Hence his life was often an example of the ancient and melancholy struggle of genius with the difficulties of existence.

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The tying-up thoughts corresponds with Fuller's aphorism, Marshall thy thoughts into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and perched up in bundles, than when it lies untoward, flapping and hanging about his shoulders. Things orderly fardled up under heads are most portable." This is the plan adopted by lawyers upon their tables. The Duke of Wellington had a table upon which his papers were thus arranged; and, during his absence for any length of time, a sort of lid was placed upon the table and locked, so as to secure the papers without disturbing their arrangement.

The Duke of Wellington is also known to have been an early riser; the advantages of which were illustrated throughout his long life. His service of the Sovereigns and the public of this country for more than half a century,-in diplomatic situations and in councils, as well as in the army,—has scarcely a parallel in British history. His Despatches are the best evidence of his well-regulated mind in education. No letters could ever be more temperately or more perspicuously expressed than those famous documents. They show what immense results in the aggregate were obtained by the Duke, solely in virtue of habits which he had sedulously cultivated from his boyhood— early rising, strict attention to details, taking nothing ascertainable for granted, unflagging industry, and silence, except when speech was necessary, or certainly harmless. His early habit of punctuality is pleasingly illustrated in the following anecdote: “I will take care to be punctual at five to-morrow morning," said the engineer of New London Bridge, in acceptance of the Duke's request that he would meet him at that hour the following morning. "Say a quarter before five," replied the Duke, with a quiet smile; "I owe all I have achieved to being ready a quarter of an hour before it was deemed necessary to be so; and I learned that lesson when a boy."

Whoever has seen "the Duke's bedroom" at Apsley

house, and its plain appointments, will not regard it as a chamber of indolence. It was, a few years since, narrow, shapeless, and ill-lighted; the bedstead small, provided only with a mattress and bolster, and scantily curtained with green silk; the only ornaments of the walls were an unfinished sketch, two cheap prints of military men, and a small portrait in oil: yet here slept the Great Duke, whose "eightieth year was by." In the grounds and shrubbery he took daily walking exercise, where with the garden-engine he was wont to enjoy exertion; reminding one of General Bonaparte at St. Helena, " amusing himself with the pipe of the fire-engine, spouting water on the trees and flowers in his favourite garden."

TIME AND ETERNITY.

Sir Thomas More, when a youth, painted for his father's house in London a hanging with nine pageants, with verses over each. There were Childhood, Manhood, Venus and Cupid, Age, Death, and Fame. In the sixth pageant was painted the image of Time, and under his feet was lying the picture of Fame that was in the sixth pageant. And over this seventh pageant was (spelling modernised):

TIME.

I whom thou seest with horologe in hand
Am named Time, the lord of every hour:
I shall in space destroy both sea and land.
O simple Fame, how darest thou man honour,
Promising of his name an endless flower!
Who may in the world have a name eternal,

When I shall in process destroy the world and all?

In the eighth pageant was pictured the image of Lady Eternity, sitting in a chair under a sumptuous cloth of state, crowned with an imperial crown. And under her feet lay the picture of Time that was in the seventh pageant. And above this eighth pageant was written as follows:

ETERNITY.

Me needeth not to boast: I am Eternity,

The very name signifieth well

That mine empire infinite shall be.

Thou mortal Time, every man can tell,

Art nothing else but the mobility

Of sun and moon changing in every degree;

When they shall leave their course, thou shalt be brought,
For all thy pride and boasting, unto naught.

Life, and Length of Days.

LIFE-A RIVER.

PLINY has compared a River to Human Life; and Sir Humphry Davy was a hundred times struck with the analogy, particularly among mountain scenery. A full and clear River is the most poetical object in nature; and contemplating this, Davy wrote: "The river, small and clear in its origin, gushes forth from rocks, falls into deep glens, and wantons and meanders through a wild and picturesque country, nourishing only the uncultivated tree or flower by its dew or spray. In this, its state of infancy and youth, it may be compared to the human mind, in which fancy and strength of imagination are predominant; it is more beautiful than useful. When the different rills or torrents join, and descend into the plain, it becomes slow and stately in its motions; it is applied to move machinery, to irrigate meadows, and to bear upon its bosom the stately barge;in this mature state, it is deep, strong, and useful. As it flows on towards the sea, it loses its force and its motion; and at last, as it were, becomes lost and mingled with the mighty abyss of waters."

Again, Life is often compared to a River, because one year follows another, and vanishes like the ripples on its surface. A flood, without ebb, bears us onward: 66 we can never cast anchor in the river of life," as Bernardin de St. Pierre finely and profoundly observes.

But the comparison can be still further developed. "It is taking a false idea of life," says Cuvier, "to consider it as a single link, which binds the elements of the living body together, since, on the contrary, it is a power which moves and sustains them unceasingly. These elements," he adds, "do not for an instant preserve the same relations and con

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nexions; or, in other words, the living body does not for an instant keep the same state and composition."

But this is only the new enunciation of a very old idea in science. Long before Cuvier, Leibnitz said, “ Our body is in a perpetual flux, like a river; particles enter and leave it continually." And long before Leibnitz, physiologists had compared the human body to the famous ship of Theseus, which was always the same ship, although, from having been so often repaired, it had not a single piece with which it was originally constructed. The truth is, that the idea of the continued renovation of our organs* has always existed in science; but it is also true that it has always been disputed.

M. Flourens has proved by direct experiment that the mechanism of the development of the bones consists essentially in a continual irritation of all the parts composing them. But it is the change of material; for its form changes very little. Cuvier has further developed this fine idea:

In living bodies no molecule remains in its place; all enter and leave it successively: life is a continued whirlpool, the direction of which, complicated as it is, remains always constant, as well as the species of molecules which are drawn into it, but not the individual molecules themselves; on the contrary, the actual material of the living body will soon be no longer in it; and yet it is the depository of the force which will constrain the future material in the same direction as itself. So that the form of these bodies is more essential to them than the material, since this latter changes unceasingly, while the other is maintained.

THE SPRING-TIME OF LIFE.

The Spring-time of Life,—the meeting-point of the child and the man,—the brief interval which separates restraint from liberty, has a warmth of life, which Dr. Temple thus pictures with glowing eloquence. "To almost all men this period is a bright spot to which the memory ever afterwards loves to recur; and even those who can remember nothing but folly, folly, of which they have repented, and relinquished, yet find a nameless charm in recalling such folly as that. For indeed even folly at that age is sometimes the

One may well say of a given individual, that he lives and is the same, and is spoken of as an identical being from his earliest infancy to old age, without reflecting that he does not contain the same particles, which are produced and renewed unceasingly, and die also in the old state, in the hair and in the flesh, in the bone and in the blood,-in a word, in the whole body.-Plato; The Banquet.

The First Twenty Years of Life.

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cup out of which men quaff the richest blessings of our nature, simplicity, generosity, affection. This is the seedtime of the soul's harvest, and contains the promise of the year. It is the time for love and marriage, the time for forming life-long friendships. The after-life may be more contented, but can rarely be so glad and joyous. Two things we need to crown its blessings,-one is, that the friends whom we then learn to love, and the opinions which we then learn to cherish, may stand the test of time, and deserve the esteem and approval of calmer thoughts and wider experience; the other, that our hearts may have depth enough to drink largely of that which God is holding to our lips, and never again to lose the fire and spirit of the draught. There is nothing more beautiful than a manhood surrounded by the friends, upholding the principles, and filled with the energy of the spring-time of life. But even if these highest blessings be denied, if we have been compelled to change opinions and to give up friends, and the cold experience of the world has extinguished the heat of youth, still the heart will instinctively recur to that happy time, to explain to itself what is meant by love and what by happiness."*

THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS OF LIFE.

It is a saying of Southey's, "that, live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back to them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them."

But in how strong a light has this been placed by the American teacher, Jacob Abbott, whose writings have obtained so wide a circulation in England. "Life," he says,

if you understand by it the season of preparation for eternity, is more than half gone; life, so far as it presents opportunities and facilities for penitence and pardon,—so far as it bears on the formation of character, and is to be considered as a period of probation,-is unquestionably more than half gone to those who are between fifteen and twenty.

*Education of the World.