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sionless greatness, when the world would drag us down into its own tumult; but I insist again, that there is a wide difference between artistic contemplation, and the moral problem which every man should propose to himself. To say that great minds are

not subject to the universal moral law; that they, as darlings of the Godhead, are emancipated at the outset; that they carry the measure by which they are to be judged exclusively within themselves; that they are their own law; in a word, that they are not amenable to the law of God and the divine order; this is making gods of men. And let it be observed that this rage for deifying men is found especially there where pantheism has destroyed the belief in the true and living God. When man worships and adores, he cannot content himself with a vague and general idea; he must adore something personal; and when he has lost the personality of the Creator, he transfers his homage to the creature. There is One who lived as man among men, in whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and of him it was said, that he was made subject to the law; that he became obedient and fulfilled all righteousness; and therefore even has God exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, consequently, above the highest and most renowned; and only that which harmonizes and adjusts itself with this order, is counted valid in the kingdom of God. The grandeur of the name does not therefore perish. It shines on undimmed, like a star in the great star-picture, unconfined and untroubled, like an emerald in the throne of the Eternal. This let us hold fast in reference to Goethe.

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The fairest and noblest of Goethe has already been considered in this connexion; and as the apostle says, all things are yours,' so Christianity, in the strong consciousness of this right, has availed itself of Goethe also. 'Every productiveness of the highest kind,' says he, every important aperçu, every invention, every great thought which bears fruit and has consequences, is in no man's power; it is exalted above all earthly might. These things are to be regarded as unlooked-for gifts from above; as pure children of God; they are to be received and honoured with grateful joy. Such utterances we occasionally meet in the life of this wonderful man. Out of the seemingly cold rock-breast, there flashes often a surprising flame of the deepest religious freedom. Although we cannot allow that Goethe is to be judged by a moral standard different from that which we apply to other men, we will gladly acknowledge that the ways by which God leads such men are often hidden from us. Remarkable in this connexion is an intimation of Goethe himself to Lavater My God, to whom I have remained true, has richly blessed me in secret; for my fate is wholly concealed from men; they can see and hear nothing of it; but so much of it as may be made manifest, I hasten to deposit in your heart.' In conclusion, one passage from his last Conversations with Eckermann: Let intellectual culture continue to advance; let the natural sciences grow in ever increasing extension and depth, and the human mind expand as it will; it will never advance beyond the elevation and the moral culture of Christianity, as it shines and gleams in the gospels.'

For the Young.

THE ONLY SIXPENCE; OR, THE CHILD'S OFFERING. A TALE FOR BOYS.

It was a very jubilee evening with Nature: you never heard anything so fresh and joyous as the songs of the midsummer birds. They seemed to be wild with delight. They sang, and chirped, and answered one another from their green bowers with untiring vivacity; and so far from leaving off their tuneful conversation when a party of school-boys entered the wood, they sang louder still, as though in emulation of the lads' glee. And that roguish blue-eyed little fellow, with the imitative faculty, who could whistle birds' notes to admiration at home, here found himself quite thrown in the background. Blackbird and thrush, tomtit and linnet, seemed to laugh at him, and as they trilled forth the sweetest songs from their tiny throats, they almost seemed to say, There! imitate us if you can.'

So the boys went on with their own music. They did not sing much that I remember, but the voices of the young are always full of melody to hearts that are not quite world-spoiled. If one must live in

a noise, commend me to the noise of the young. Forest minstrelsy is very beautiful and soothing for an hour or so in the day, but the minstrelsy of intelligent beings, the mirth of the young, is worth it all. Indeed, there is music and poetry, too, in the innocent merriment of untried, unworn souls. It comes across old autumn-seared hearts as a kindly breath of spring, or as the softer air of the far-famed Indian summer. God, who made man to be young but once, never meant his heart to be aged in spring. He made it light and merry; and we have no sympathy with that philosophy which would lay one burden on it ere the time.

And now the boys were fairly in the wood; but they were not going to stay there. Oh, no! Did you never notice how that love of wood scenery grows on us with age and gravity? We love the shade now, but in childhood we were ever for the heath or the hill-side, the breezy common or the towering cliff. We could scarcely climb too high, or breathe too much of the summer air. Hot suns! dusty roads! what cared we for these? We liked space, scope. Oh, no! the lads would not stay in the wood. The masters, or ushers, as I believe the undermasters are technically called in large schools, looked longingly at a mossy bank, and at their tempting books, but the lads were so pleading for the hills! the hills! that they could not say nay, and thus they passed through the grove, much to the satisfaction of the performers in the concert there, no doubt. The hills did not tempt the ushers, and so, calling to a fine tall boy of fifteen, one of the elder pupils and the leader of the school, with a few warnings as to time, keeping within bounds, &c., they allowed the young ones to troop off on their own

business, whilst they lay down on the hill-side, to talk, to read, and to sleep.

The boys were soon out of sight. The hill was nothing to them to climb, and having arrived at a kind of hollow on the summit, which the country people say was Julius Caesar's camp, the whistler before alluded to sent forth one of his shrillest and most commanding performances, and in five minutes the thirty boys were collected.

Fine, manly, noble fellows they were, true specimens of what schoolboys should be; not beaten, and starved, and goaded into sullen indifference or savage revenge, but led and wooed up the difficult path of knowledge, and tenderly guided through the manifold intricacies of young life. The schoolmaster was a Christian philosopher. He had not undertaken the charge of these thirty boys, with their infinite varieties of temperament, and education, and disposition, in order to grow rich out of their parents. He did not look on them as many a schoolmaster besides the caricature Yorkshireman of Dickens has done, as so many pounds a year,' to be turned over, and ground, and pinched out of, but he saw in each being there a soul to be saved or to be lost a soul of such incalculable price in the good man's eyes that he had been often heard to say, Money! money! cannot pay educators. If we train them well, train them for heaven with God's help, who can pay that training? If we are careless, and one be lost through our indolence or misrule, what reparation can we make?'

Ah, true-hearted, faithful servant, the recording angel hath much written of thee, and of those like thee; and in the day when the Treasurer shall make up his jewels, think what a crown will adorn thy brow, thou patient, gentle schoolmaster! Thou hast ofttimes sown in tears, but thou shalt reap in joy as thou enterest thy Master's presence, meekly saying, 'Behold, here am I, with the children whom thou hast given me.'

Just as we have glided from the gay to the grave, so it was with the boys. A grave matter was pending, and it was to consult on this that the whistler had collected the stray ones together; and this being done, Cecil, the leader before referred to, was formally called to the chair,' and the business of the meeting commenced. The chair' was a little grassy knoll, and if Julius Cæsar ever did encamp in this pleasant spot, all we have to say is, that he showed his taste.

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Caps off in a public meeting!' said the merry whistler, Will the Whistler,' as he was called, with one of his feats at ventriloquism. Order at a public meeting!' called out Barry the Sage,' who had not his name for nothing.

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'My boys,' said Cecil, the leader-he was the leader, par excellence, into all good and truth, and straightforward justice. My boys, this

day fortnight is the last Saturday before the holidays.'

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Always the way at public meetings,' said Hugh the Joker, with his arm round Will the Whistler's neck; isn't it, Will? Truisms are the order of the day.'

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Chair, chair! Order, order!' sounded in the little group, and the speaker continued.

'We have known some jolly breakings-up, boys; but this is not quite so jovial a time as some. You all know why. Our good master has been in sorrow. We can't give him back his daughter that he has lost, nor call his son from the blue sea; but we can show our love to him, and if I know your hearts, I may say, we will show our love to him, and so, by obedience and duty, try to console him for the lost and the absent. But two or three of us have been thinking, that we should like to make him some little acknowledgment of his goodness to us. I don't mean to say that we can repay him, but let us give him some appropriate testimonial of our esteem-our gratitude. It may sometimes recall us, when we have left school, to his mind; and who would not wish for a place in the memory of Dr. Sternchutz? A thought is so sure to be a prayer in his heart.'

This little burst of school-boy eloquence having received due applause, a second speaker arose (they forgot all about moving resolutions, which, I believe, they intended), and said, that the idea was a glorious one; and, indeed, he launched out into such rapturous eulogies of the Doctor, as to tire out a few of the merry and practical ones. However, the general feeling of the meeting was the entire approval of the chairman's proposition, and one or two of the worst boys were warmest in the cause.

There were boys far from good there of course, for Dr. Sternchutz did not pretend to change hearts, nor to make school-boys into angels. Yet, even the worst, the idlest, and the most viciously inclined there, declared that he loved Dr. Sternchutz as well as any of them did, though they might not think it; and so he ought, he added parenthetically, for he had given him the most trouble, and the Doctor had told him in confidence, that he was the only boy he had ever felt tempted to flog in his life. A favour,' continued the lad, jocosely, for which I am so deeply indebted, that I feel quite disposed to lay down something handsome to the subscription fund.'

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But now

Cecil shook his head. Indeed you ought. You can never repay the Doctor for the pain it must have given him to be severe. to business; what shall we give him?'

The banker's son suggested a purse filled with thirty sovereigns. The son of the member for having been greatly excited by the presentation of a piece of plate to his father by his constituents, suggested a similar gift to the Doctor. The studious boy would buy a set of books. One, much given to creature comforts, proposed a study chair-but the plate seemed to be the popular notion. Two or three, the Council of Wisdom,' as they were usually called, said nothing; and one little quiet lad, who sate very close to Cecil, his protector, was seen to be shedding tears, as he looked down upon the soft grass.

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Come, now,' said the Whistler, Mr. Chairman, I know you've something in your head; out with it, if you please.'

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Two or three of us think' (the Council,' said Willy, by way of explanation); two or three of us think that the Doctor would care but little for any, or all of these presents in themselves. The 30%. would

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all come back to us in fêtes and indulgences before the year was out. The plate, I don't know,' said Cecil, the plate seems beneath a scholar like Dr. Sternchutz.'

'Much obliged,' said the member's son.

'Now, what think you of giving him a picture of his son-his sailor son-our dear old schoolfellow, Gerhard?

Think! said more than one voice. Think! Why, that you should have thought of it before the sailor was at the rather inconvenient distance for obtaining a correct portrait, to wit, on his way to Adelaide.'

Cecil smiled. Now we have taken a great liberty, but we are prepared to abide the consequences. Mr. L., who, as you know, has lately been staying at Dover, painted Gerhard Sternchutz on speculation, before he sailed. He is a friend of my father's; and although, he said, he had no time to idle in speculative portraits, yet he would gladly paint the Doctor's son only for the Doctor's sake; and if we don't wish to have it, he will keep it as a fine model of a noble, manly youth, and the son of a good man. We are to pay less than he usually charges for portraits, but it is a pretty stiff price for schoolboys, to say nothing of the frame. Still, among thirty, surely we can manage that, and have it sent home by this day week.'

There was not a dissentient voice, and yet more than one schoolboy looked thoughtful, for his pocket-money was very low. And many mental calculations were made, as to the amount of subscriptions to be expected, for there was to be strict secrecy observed as to the amount given by each lad. Every one was to give what he could, and the money was to be put in a box, and counted the day before breaking-up. No subscription was to be asked from parent or friend. The present was to be their own, and would demand some sacrifice on the part of every boy. But they had not lived so long with Dr. Sternchutz, without having learned that the splendid gift which cost no self-denial, is worth infinitely less in the eyes of all the true hearted, than a wreath of wild flowers gathered with a pure loving motive, and a real desire to please. Self-denial, my children,' the Doctor used to say, is the root of all true generosity. There is no generosity without it.'

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The delicacy of feeling which prompted the Council of Three' to ask no questions as to the amount which each boy should give, was highly commendable. To some of us,' said Cecil, five shillings will be more than fifty shillings will be to others, so "honour bright," boys; no consultations about what will be expected, and what will be given. It is supposed, of course, that all will subscribe, and supposed, too, that each will give what he can.'

A low sob was heard from the boy by Cecil's side, and when all hands were lifted up, his head was yet low upon the grass. Poor little lad!

And now the meeting broke up, and the boys dispersed. The time to return home was nearly come, and the Doctor, who met them at supper, said they had brought a waft of summer with them, they all looked so happy. He did not see those large tearful eyes, for the

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