he who uses it to cover himself in one place, uncovers himself in another.Rochefoucauld.

To know how to dissemble is the knowledge of kings.-Richelieu.

Artifice is weak; it is the work of mere man, in the imbecility and self distrust of his mimic understanding.-Hare.

ASCETICISM.-Three forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world.-Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake, as supposed, of religion; seen chiefly in the middle ages.-Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester-Ruskin.

I recommend no sour ascetic life. I believe not only in the thorns on the rosebush, but in the roses which the thorns defend. Asceticism is the child of sensuality and superstition. She is the secret mother of many a secret sin. God, when he made man's body, did not give us a fibre too much, nor a passion too many-Theodore Parker.

ASKING. I am prejudiced in favor of him who, without impudence, can ask boldly. He has faith in humanity, and faith in himself.-No one who is not accustomed to give grandly can ask nobly and with boldness.-Lavater. ASPIRATION. — (See AIMS," and "AMBITION.")

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.-Southey.

'Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do!-Browning.

There is not a heart but has its moments of longing, yearning for something better, nobler, holier than it knows now. -H. W. Beecher.

Man ought always to have something that he prefers to life; otherwise life itself will seem to him tiresome and void.-Seume.

They build too low who build beneath the skies.-Young.

Be always displeased with what thou art if thou desire to attain to what thou art not, for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest.-Quarles.

There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that--to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.-George Eliot.

The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it.-Quarles.

We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends.-A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to rise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more.-H. W. Beecher.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.-George Eliot.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realises itself.Mrs. Jameson.

God has never ceased to be the one true aim of all right human aspirations. -Vinet.

Aspirations after the holy-the only aspirations in which the soul can be assured it will never meet with disappointment.-Maria McIntosh.

The desires and longings of man are vast as eternity, and they point him to it.-Tryon Edwards.

There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves.-A. P. Stanley.

ASSERTIONS.-Weigh not so much what men assert, as what they prove.Truth is simple and naked, and needs not invention to apparel her comeliness. -Sir P. Sidney.

Assertion, unsupported by fact, is

Tell me with whom thou art found, and I will tell thee who thou art.Goethe.

If you wish to be held in esteem, you must associate only with those who are estimable.-Bruyere.

Evil communications corrupt good

manners.-Menander.

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves: we encourage each other in mediocrity-I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.-Lamb.

You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good, and whose enemies are decidedly bad-Lavater.

When one associates with vice, it is but one step from companionship to slavery.

Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shalt enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To be the best in the company is the way to grow worse; the best means to grow better is to be the worst there.-Quarles.

No company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is more contagious than health. -Colton.

Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it; that is the right and true pride.-Chesterfield.

No man can be provident of his time, who is not prudent in the choice of his company. Jeremy Taylor.

A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze. Diogenes.

Company, villainous company hath been the ruin of me.-Shakespeare.

It is best to be with those in time,

that we hope to be with in eternity.Fuller.

It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take heed of their company.Shakespeare.

Frequent intercourse and intimate connection between two persons, make them so alike, that not only their dispositions are moulded like each other, but their very faces and tones of voice contract a similarity.-Lavater.

It is no small happiness to attend those from whom we may receive precepts and examples of virtue.-Bp. Hall.

When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily their victims or their disciples; on the contrary, when we associate with the virtuous we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or at least lose, every day, something of our faults.-Agapet.

In all societies it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest; not that they are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can always descend; but if we begin with the lowest to ascend is impossible.-Colton.

It is only when men associate with the wicked with the desire and purpose of doing them good, that they can rely upon the protection of God to preserve them from contamination.-C. Hodge.

It is meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes; for who so firm that cannot be seduced.-Shakespeare.

People will in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you by that they have of your friends, as, says the Spanish proverb, "Tell me with whom you live and I will tell you who you are."

Those unacquainted with the world take pleasure in intimacy with great men; those who are wiser fear the consequences.-Horace.

ASSOCIATION.-I have only to take up this or that to flood my soul with memories.-Madame Deluzy.

There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes, or airs, or books, and who does not feel their beauty or sublimity enhanced to him by such connections.Alison.

That man is little to be envied whose

patriotism would not gain force on the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid the ruins of Iona.-Johnson.

He whose heart is not excited on the spot which a martyr has sanctified by his sufferings, or at the grave of one who has greatly benefited mankind, must be more inferior to the multitude in his moral, than he possibly can be above them in his intellectual nature. Southey.

ASTRONOMY.-Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.-H. Mann.

No one can contemplate the great facts of astronomy without feeling his own littleness and the wonderful sweep of the power and providence of God.Tryon Edwards.

An undevout astronomer is mad.Young.

The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he comes down to human affairs.-Cicero.

ATHEISM.-The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are health, wealth, and power-Colton.

Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man.-Bacon.

To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny-Addison.

Atheism, if it exists, is the result of ignorance and pride, of strong sense and feeble reason, of good eating and ill living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of morals, and the underminer of property.-Jeremy Collier.

If a man of sober habits, moderate, chaste, and just in all his dealings should assert there is no God, he would at least speak without interested motives; but such a man is not to be found.—Bruyere.

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with

goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread.-Mrs. Stowe.

Atheism is the death of hope, the suicide of the soul.

The footprint of the savage in the sand is sufficient to prove the presence of man to the atheist who will not recognize God though his hand is impressed on the entire universe.-Hugh Miller.

Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to the acknowledgment of a divine power-Plato.

A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further.But when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.-Bacon.

Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph, make atheists of mankind.-Dryden.

Atheism is the folly of the metaphysician, not the folly of human nature.George Bancroft.

In agony or danger, no nature is atheist. The mind that knows not what to fly to, flies to God.-H. More.

The atheist is one who fain would pull God from his throne, and in the place of heaven's eternal king set up the phantom chance.-Glynn.

Plato was right in calling atheism a disease. The human intellect in its healthy action, holds it for certain that there is a Great Being over us, invisible, infinite, ineffable, but of real, solid personality, who made and governs us, and who made and governs all things.-R. D. Hitchcock.

An irreligious man, a speculative or a practical atheist, is as a sovereign, who voluntarily takes off his crown and declares himself unworthy to reign.Blackie.

Atheism is never the error of society, in any stage or circumstance whatever. -In the belief of a Deity savage and sage have alike agreed.-The great error has been, not the denial of one God, but the belief of many; but polytheism has been a popular and poetical, rather than a philosophical error.-Henry Fergus.

Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it becomes an error of the understanding.-Plato.

God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because His ordinary works convince it.-Bacon.

There are innumerable souls that would resent the charge of the fool's atheism, yet daily deny God in very deed.

The atheist is one of the most daring beings in creation-a contemner of God who explodes his laws by denying his existence-John Foster.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause; a motion, without a mover; a circle, without a centre; a time, without an eternity; a second, without a first: these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it; and that which is made, is, while that which made it is not! This folly is infinite.-Jeremy Taylor.

A traveller amid the scenery of the Alps, surrounded by the sublimest demonstrations of God's power, had the hardihood to write against his name, in an album kept for visitors, "An atheist." Another who followed, shocked and indignant at the inscription, wrote beneath it, "If an atheist, a fool; if not, a liar!"-G. B. Cheever.

Atheists put on a false courage in the midst of their darkness and misapprehensions, like children who when they fear to go in the dark, will sing or whistle to keep up their courage.-Pope.

Whoever considers the study of anatomy can never be an atheist.-Lord Herbert.

ATTENTION.-The power of applying attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of a superior genius.-Chesterfield.

Few things are impracticable in themselves: and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail of success.-Rochefoucauld.

Attention makes the genius; all learning, fancy, science, and skill depend

upon it.-Newton traced his great discoveries to it.-It builds bridges, opens new worlds, heals diseases, carries on the business of the world.-Without it taste is useless, and the beauties of literature unobserved.-Willmott.

If I have made any improvement in the sciences, it is owing more to patient attention than to anything beside.-Sir 1. Newton.

If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides. -Reid.

It is attention, more than any difference between minds and men.-In this is the source of poetic genius, and of the genius of discovery in science. It was this that led Newton to the invention of fluxions, and the discovery of gravitation, and Harvey to find out the circulation of the blood, and Davy to those views which laid the foundation of modern chemistry-Brodie.

AUTHORITY.-(See "OFFICE.")

Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion. -Addison.

Nothing sooner overthrows a weak head than opinion of authority; like too strong liquor for a frail glass.-Sir P. Sidney.

Nothing more impairs authority than a too frequent or indiscreet use of it. If thunder itself was to be continual, it would excite no more terror than the noise of a mill.

Man, proud man! dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.-Shakespeare.

They that govern make least noise, as they that row the barge do work and puff and sweat, while he that governs sits quietly at the stern, and scarce is seen to stir.-Selden.

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft. -J. R. Lowell.

AUTHORSHIP.-Authorship, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, is an infancy, a pastime, a labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, or a virtue.Schlegel.

The two most engaging powers of an author, are, to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.-Johnson.

It is quite as much of a trade to make a book, as to make a clock.-It requires more than mere genius to be an author. -Bruyere.

No author is so poor that he cannot be of some service, if only as a witness of his time.-Fauchet.

To write well is to think well, to feel well, and to render well; it is to possess at once intellect, soul, and taste.—Buffon. He who purposes to be an author, should first be a student.-Dryden.

Never write on a subject without first having read yourself full on it; and never read on a subject till you have thought yourself hungry on it.-Richter.

Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid scem the most profound.-Landor.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.-Cervantes.

The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.Goethe.

The chief glory of a country, says Johnson, arises from its authors.-But this is only when they are oracles of wisdom.-Unless they teach virtue they are more worthy of a halter than of the laurel.-Jane Porter.

Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read. -Chesterfield.

There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing-to find honest men to publish itand to get sensible men to read it.Colton.

Talent alone cannot make a writer; there must be a man behind the book.Emerson.

Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.-Goethe.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.-Bulwer.

A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.-Macaulay.

Satire lies about men of letters during their lives, and eulogy after their death. -Voltaire.

It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Palev, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility.-Colton.

Authorship is a royal priesthood; but woe to him who rashly lays unhallowed hands on the ark or altar, professing a zeal for the welfare of the race, only to secure his own selfish ends.-Horace Greeley.

AUTUMN. The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year.-Bryant. A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes.-The flowers fading like our hopes, the leaves falling like our years, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives-all bear secret relations to our destinies.-Chateaubriand.

Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness.-Keats.

The Sabbath of the year.-Logan.

Magnificent autumn! He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds; not like a hermit, clad in gray; but like a warrior with the stain of blood on his brazen mail.-His crimson scarf is rent; his scarlet banner dripping with gore; his step like a flail on the threshing floor-Longfellow.

The leaves in autumn do not change color from the blighting touch of frost, but from the process of natural decay. -They fall when the fruit is ripened, and their work is done.-And their splendid coloring is but their graceful and beautiful surrender of life when they have finished their summer offering of service to God and man. And one of the great lessons the fall of the leaf teaches, is this: Do your work well, and then be ready to depart when God shall call-Tryon Edwards.

The tints of autumn-a mighty flower garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.—Whittier.

Who at this season does not feel im