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.

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 I. Newton.

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

It is attention, more than any difference in native powers that makes the wide difference between minds and men.-In this is the source of poetic genius, and of the genins 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 seem 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 be cause 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 it—and 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 Paley, 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 warrio

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 impressed with a sentiment of melancholy ?Or who is able to resist the current of thought, which, from the appearances of decay, so naturally leads to the solemn imagination of that inevitable fate which is to bring on alike the decay of life, of empire, and of nature itself?-A. Alison.

AVARICE.-Avarice is the vice of declining years.-Bancroft.

The lust of avarice has so totally seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them, than they to possess their wealth.-Pliny.

We are but stewards of what we falsely call our own; yet avarice is so insatiable that it is not in the power of abundance to content it.-Seneca.

How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object.—Shakespeare.

Poverty wants some things, luxury many, avarice all things.- Cowley.

It is one of the worst effects of prosperity that it makes a man a vortex instead of a fountain, so that instead of throwing out, be learns only to draw in.-H. W. Beecher.

Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children, and like Priam survives them all. -It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.- Colton.

As objects close to the eye shut out larger objects on the horizon, so man sometimes covers up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust.-E. H. Chapin. Avarice increases with the increasing pile of gold.-Juvenal.

Worse poison to men's souls, doing more

murders in this loathsome world than any mortal drug.-Shakespeare.

Avarice is to the intellect and heart, what sensuality is to the morals.-Mrs. Jameson. The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless, the last corruption of degenerate man. -Johnson.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.Johnson.

Study rather to fill your mind than your coffers; knowing that gold and silver were originally mingled with dirt, until avarice or ambition parted them.-Seneca.

The avaricious man 18 like the barren sandy ground of the desert which sucks in all the rain and dew with greediness, but yields no fruitful herbs or plants for the benefit of others.-Zeno.

All the good things of the world are no further good to us than as they are of use; and of all we may heap up we enjoy only as much as we can use, and no more.-De Foe.

O cursed lust of gold! when for thy sake the fool throws up his interest in both worlds, first starved in this, then damned in that to come.-. -Blair.

Avarice, in old age, is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we ap. proach to our journey's end?— Cicero.

How vilely has he lost himself who has become a slave to his servant, and exalts him to the dignity of his Maker! Gold is the friend, the wife, the god of the moneymonger of the world.-Penn.

Avarice reigns most in those who have but few good qualities to commend them: it is a weed that will grow only in a barren soil.-Hughes.

Some men are thought sagacious merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.Shenstone.

The avarice of the miser is the grand sepulchre of all his other passions as they successively decay; but unlike other tombs it is enlarged by reflection and strengthened by age.-Collon.

Avarice is always poor, but poor by its own fault. Johnson.

Because men believe not in providence, therefore they do so greedily scrape and hoard. They do not believe in any reward

for charity, and therefore they will part with nothing.-Barrow.

AWKWARDNESS.-Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be: it often occasions ridicule, and always lessens dignity.-Chesterfield.

An awkward man never does justice to himself; to his intelligence, to his intentions, or to his actual merit.-A fine person, or a beauteous face are in vain without the grace of deportment.- Churchill.

B.

BABBLERS.-(See "GOSSIP.")

They always talk who never think.Prior.

Fire and sword are but slow engines of destruction in comparison with the babbler.-Steele.

Talkers are no good doers, be assured.We go to use our hands and not our tongues.-Shakespeare.

BABE. Of all the joys that lighten suffering earth, what joy is welcomed like a new-born child?-Mrs. Norton.

A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men.-Tupper.

A sweet new blossom of humanity, fresh fallen from God's own home, to flower on earth.-Massey.

Some wonder that children should be given to young mothers. -But what instruction does the babe bring to the mother!— She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong so that she holds the dear burden longer than the father can.-T. W. Higginson.

Living jewels, dropped unstained from heaven.-Pollok.

A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.- Byron.

The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth.-Every stroke he strikes is for his child.-New social aims, and new moral motives come vaguely up to him.-T. W. Higginson.

Good Christian people, here is for you an inestimable loan. Take all heed thereof, and in all carefulness employ it.-With high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.-Carlyle.

Could we understand half what mothers say and do to us when infants, we should be filled with such conceit of our Own

importance as would make us insupportable through life.-Happy the child whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.-Hare.

BACHELOR.-I have no wife or chil dren, good or bad, to provide for; a mere spectator of other men's fortune's and adventures, and how they play their parts; which, methinks, are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre or scene.-Burton.

Because I will not do the wrong to mis trust any, I will do myself the right to trus none; I will live a bachelor.-Shakespeare.

A man unattached, and without a wife, if he have any genius at all, may raise himself above his original position, may mingle with the world of fashion, and hold himself on a level with the highest; but this is less easy for him who is engaged.-It seems as if marriage put the whole world in their proper rank.-Bruyere.

A bachelor's life is a splendid breakfast; a tolerably flat dinner; and a most miserable supper.

BALLADS.-Ballads are the vocal portraits of the national mind.—Lamb.

Ballads are the gipsy children of song, born under green hedge-rows, in the leafy lanes and by-paths of literature, in the genial summer time.-Longfellow.

Let me write the ballads of a nation, and I care not who may make its laws.-Fletcher of Saltoun.

A well composed song or ballad strikes the mind, and softens the feelings, and produces a greater effect than a moral work, which convinces our reason but does not warm our feelings or effect the slightest alteration of our habits.-Napoleon.

Ballads and popular songs are both the cause and effect of general morals; they are first formed, and then re-act.-In both points of view they are an index of public morals.-H. Martineau.

BARGAIN.--I will give thrice so much land to any well-deserving friend; but in the way of bargain, mark me, I will cavil on the ninth part of a hair.-Shakespeare.

A dear bargain is always disagreeable, particularly as it is a reflection on the buyer's judgment.

Whenever you buy or sell, let or hire, make a definite bargain, and never trust to the flattering lie, "We shan't disagree about trifles."

There are many things in which one gains

and the other loses; but if it is essential to any transaction that only one side shall gain, the thing is not of God.-G. Macdonald.

BASENESS.-Every base occupation makes one sharp in its practice, and dull in every other.-Sir P. Sidney.

There is a law of forces which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness the deeper we get the easier the sinking.-J. R. Lowell.

Baseness of character or conduct not only sears the conscience, but deranges the intellect.-Right conduct is connected with right views of truth.- Colton.

BASHFULNESS.-There are two kinds of bashfulness: one, the awkwardness of the booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; the other, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove.-Mackenzie.

Bashfulness is more frequently connected with good sense than with over-assurance; and impudence, on the other hand, is often the effect of downright stupidity.-Shen

stone.

Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man, both in uttering his sentiments and in understanding what is proposed to him; it is therefore good to press forward with discretion, both in discourse and company of the better sort.-Bacon.

Conceit not so high an opinion of any one as to be bashful and impotent in their presence.-Fuller.

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.-Aristotle.

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.— -Johnson.

We do not accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.-A. B. Alcott.

We must prune it with care, so as only to remove the redundant branches, and not injure the stem, which has its root in a generous sensitiveness to shame.-Plutarch.

BEARD. He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath noue is less than a man.-Shakespeare,

Beard was never the true standard of brains.-Fuller.

BEAUTY. Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Aristotle, that it was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that it was a glorious gift of nature, and Ovid, that it was a favor bestowed by the gods.

The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber.

If virtue accompanies beauty it is the heart's paradise; if vice be associate with it, it is the soul's purgatory.-It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fool's furnace.-Quarles.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.-Bacon.

Beauty hath so many charms one knows not how to speak against it; and when a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul-when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, it raises our thoughts up to the great Creator; but after all, beauty, like truth, is never so glorious as when it goes the plainest.-Sterne.

The beauty seen, is partly in him who sees it.-Bovee.

After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without; and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty.- Washington Irving.

There is no more potent antidote to low sensuality than the adoration of beauty.All the higher arts of design are essentially chaste. They purify the thoughts, as tragedy, according to Aristotle, purifies the passions.-Schlegel.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

Even virtue is more fair when it appears in a beautiful person. Virgil.

Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite.-Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.-Bancroft.

That which is striking and beautiful is not always good; but that which is good is always beautiful.-Ninon de l'Enclos.

If either man or woman would realize the full power of personal beauty, it must be by cherishing noble thoughts and hopes apd