I am going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosom'd in yon green hills alone-
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies plann'd;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod

A spot that is sacred to thought and God.
Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretch'd beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet!

JACOB ABBOTT.

JACOB ABBOTT was born in Hallowell, Maine, in 1803, and, at the age of twelve, entered Bowdoin College. After graduating, he studied theology at Andover, and, on completing his three years' course there, was appointed tutor, and afterwards Professor of Mathematics, in Amherst College, which station he filled with great success. Thence he was called to the pastoral charge of the Elliot Street Congregational Church, Boston.

His first important literary work-The Young Christian-appeared in Boston in 1825; since which time he has written many works, mostly intended for the instruction of the young, in which branch of literature he has been remarkably successful. The Young Christian series (comprising The Young Christian, CornerStone, Way to do Good, Hoary Head, and Mc Donner) has enjoyed not only a wide circulation in this country, but numerous editions have been issued in England, Scotland, France, and Germany.

Besides his literary works, Mr. Abbott was very successful as a teacher in his well-known Mount Vernon School for Young Ladies, in Boston; and at a later period, when associated with his brother, John S. C. Abbott, in the Houston and Bleecker Street schools, in New York. During the last eight or ten years he has devoted his time entirely to writing,' and now resides in New York City.

INTELLECTUAL IMPROVEMENT.

The great mass of mankind consider the intellectual powers as susceptible of a certain degree of development in childhood, to

His works have been very numerous,-more than sixty volumes in all,-including a series of biographies of distinguished characters; and the Rollo Books. More interesting and instructive works, especially for the young, can hardly elsewhere be found.

prepare the individual for the active duties of life. This degree of progress they suppose to be made before the age of twenty is attained, and hence they talk of an education being finished! Now, if a parent wishes to convey the idea that his daughter has closed her studies at school, or that his son has finished his preparatory professional course and is ready to commence practice, there is perhaps no strong objection to his using the common phrase that the education is finished; but in any general or proper use of language, there is no such thing as a finished education. The most successful student that ever left a school, or took his degree at college, never arrived at a good place to stop in his intellectual course. In fact, the farther he goes the more desirous will he feel to go on; and if you wish to find an instance of the greatest eagerness and interest with which the pursuit of knowledge is prosecuted, you will find it undoubtedly in the case of the most accomplished and thorough scholar which the country can furnish, who has spent a long life in study, and who finds that the farther he goes the more and more widely does the boundless field of intelligence open before him.

Give up, then, at once, all idea of finishing your education. The sole object of the course of discipline at any literary institution in our land is not to finish, but just to show you how to begin; to give you an impulse and a direction upon that course which you ought to pursue with unabated and uninterrupted ardor as long as you have being. ***

The objects of study are of several kinds: one is,—to increase our intellectual powers. Every one knows that there is a difference of ability in different minds; but it is not so distinctly understood that every one's abilities may be increased or strengthened by a kind of culture adapted expressly to this purpose,-I mean a culture which is intended not to add to the stock of knowledge, but only to increase intellectual power. Scholars very often ask, when pursuing some difficult study, "What good will it do me to know this?" But that is not the question. They ought to ask, "What good will it do me to learn it? What effect upon my habits of thinking, and upon my intellectual powers, will be produced by the efforts to examine and to conquer these difficulties?" Do not shrink, then, from difficult work in your efforts at intellectual improvement. You ought, if you wish to secure the greatest advantage, to have some difficult work, that you may acquire habits of patient research, and increase and strengthen your intellectual powers.

Another object of study is, the acquisition of knowledge; and a moment's reflection will convince any one that the acquisition of knowledge is the duty of all. If there is any thing clearly manifest of God's intentions in regard to employment for man, it

is that he should spend a very considerable portion of his time upon earth in acquiring knowledge,-knowledge, in all the extent and variety in which it is offered to human powers. The whole economy of nature is such as to allure man to the investigation of it, and the whole structure of his mind is so framed as to qualify him exactly for the work. If now a person begins in early life, and even as late as twenty, and makes it a part of his constant aim to acquire knowledge, endeavoring every day to learn something which he did not know before, or to fix something in the mind which was before not familiar,-he will make an almost insensible but a most rapid and important progress. The field of his intellectual vision will widen and extend every year. His powers of mind as well as his attainments will be increased; and as he can see more extensively, so he can act more effectually every month than he could in the preceding. He thus goes on through life, growing in knowledge and in intellectual and moral power; and if his spiritual progress keeps pace, as it ought to, with his intellectual advancement, he is, with the divine assistance and blessing, exalting himself higher and higher in the scale of being, and preparing himself for a loftier and wider field of service in the world Young Christian.

to come.

THE THING ESSENTIAL TO HAPPINESS.

There is one point in connection with the subject of the management of worldly affairs which ought not to be passed by, and which is yet an indispensable condition of human happiness. I mean the duty of every man to bring his expenses and his pecuniary liabilities fairly within his control. There are some cases of a peculiar character, and some occasional emergencies, perhaps, in the life of every man, which constitute exceptions; but this is the general rule.

The plentifulness of money depends upon its relation to our expenditures. An English nobleman, with an annual income of fifty thousand pounds sterling, may be pressed for money, and be harassed by it to such a degree as to make life a burden; while an Irish laborer on a railroad in New England, with eighty cents a day, in the dead of winter, may have a plentiful supply. Reduce, then, your expenditures, and your style of living, and your business too, so far below your pecuniary means, that you may have money in plenty. There is, perhaps, nothing which so grinds the human soul, and produces such an insupportable burden of wretchedness and despondency, as pecuniary pressure. Nothing more frequently drives men to suicide. And there is, perhaps, no danger to which men in an active and enterprising community are more exposed. Almost all are eagerly reaching

forward to a station in life a little above what they can well afford, or struggling to do a business a little more extensive than they have capital or steady credit for; and thus they keep, all through life, just above their means; and just above, no matter by how small an excess, is inevitable misery.

Be sure, then, if your aim is happiness, to bring down, at all hazards, your style of living and your responsibilities of business to such a point that you shall easily be able to reach it. Do this, I say, at all hazards. If you cannot have money enough for your purposes in a house with two rooms, take a house with one. It is your only chance for happiness. For there is such a thing as happiness in a single room, with plain furniture and simple fare; but there is no such thing as happiness with responsibilities which cannot be met, and debts increasing without any prospect of their discharge. Way to do Good.

HORACE BUSHNELL.

HORACE BUSHNELL, D.D., was born in Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut, in 1804, and was graduated at Yale College in 1827. After leaving college, he became the literary editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, and in 1829 was appointed tutor in Yale College. In May, 1838, he was called to be the pastor of the North Congregational Church in Hartford, which position he still retains. Dr. Bushnell is a profound and therefore an independent thinker, and has consequently been arraigned by some of his clerical brethren as not soundly "orthodox," because he does not choose to adopt all the old phraseology. Those who have attacked him, however, on this ground, have had abundant reason to repent of their rashness; for he has vindicated his faith in a manner that has completely silenced his opponents. His writings have been mainly on the subject of theology, though he has occasionally stepped aside into the paths of literature. In 1837 he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa oration at New Haven, On the Principles of National Greatness; in 1848, before the same society, at Cambridge, an oration entitled Work and Play; and in 1849 he addressed the New England Society of New York On The Fathers of New England. His chief theological works are entitled God in Christ;- Views of Christian Nurture;—and Christ in Theology. He has also contributed largely to the "New Englander," and published several occasional sermons, entitled Unconscious Influence,―The Day of Roads, tracing the progress of civilization by the character and condition of the great highways,-Barbarism the First Danger, in allusion to emigration; Religious Music; and Politics under the Law of God.

His latest published work-Nature and the Supernatural as together constituting the One System of God-is one of profound thought, and will arrest the attention of all thinking minds. Its starting-point of discussion, its definitions and modes of statement, the breadth of its view, the terseness of its language, and the vigor of its logic, give it a grasp and power over the main issue which no work on kindred

themes has shown since Butler wrote his "Analogy." Besides, too, since the "Analogy" was written, the ground in dispute has changed; and Dr. Bushnell goes beyond Butler, in proving not only an ANALOGY of Natural and Revealed religion, but the UNITY of Nature and the Supernatural in the one system of God.

WORK AND PLAY.

The drama, as a product of genius, is, within a certain narrow limit, the realization of play. But far less effectively, or more faintly, when it is acted. Then the counterfeit, as it is more remote, is more feeble. In the reading we invent our own sceneries, clothe into form and expression each one of the characters, and play out our own liberty in them as freely, and sometimes as divinely, as they. Whatever reader, therefore, has a soul of true life and fire within him, finds all expectation balked when he becomes an auditor and spectator. The scenery is tawdry and flat, the characters, definitely measured, have lost their infinity, so to speak, and thus their freedom, and what before was play descends to nothing better or more inspired than work. It is called going to the play, but it should rather be called going to the work, that is, to see a play worked, (yes, an opera! that is it!)-men and women inspired through their memory, and acting their inspirations by rote, panting into love, pumping at the fountains of grief, whipping out the passions into fury, and dying to fulfil the contract of the evening, by a forced holding of the breath. And yet this feeble counterfeit of play, which some of us would call only "very tragical mirth," has a power to the multitude. They are moved, thrilled it may be, with a strange delight. It is as if a something in their nature, higher than they themselves know, were quickened into power,-namely, that divine instinct of play, in which the summit of our nature is most clearly revealed.

In like manner, the passion of our race for war, and the eager admiration yielded to warlike exploits, are resolvable principally into the same fundamental cause. Mere ends and uses do not satisfy us. We must get above prudence and economy, into something that partakes of inspiration, be the cost what it may. Hence war, another and yet more magnificent counterfeit of play. Thus there is a great and lofty virtue that we call courage, (cour-age,) taking our name from the heart. It is the greatness of a great heart, the repose and confidence of a man whose soul is rested in truth and principle. Such a man has no ends ulterior to his duty, -duty itself is his end. He is in it therefore as in play, lives it as an inspiration. Lifted thus out of mere prudence and contrivance, he is also lifted above fear. Life to him is the outgoing