Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1880-04-16

ache read 80 pages Cuvier's Theory of the
Earth, Ga pages French and did II hours
forging. Tuesday" and this day he seems to
have been free from headache Tread Gj lines
of Hebrew, 80 pages French, 10 pages of
Cuyiers Theory, 5 lines of Syriac, 10 Dan
ish, 10 Bohemian, 10 Polish, learned IL
names of stars and did 10 hours forging"
There have been men who have done their
work and died before the average youth has
fairly sown his wild oats and there have
been men who have waited until the average
man is in his dotage before their opportunity
has come. Alexander the Great was only %
when he overran the Persian empire. Gas.
ton de Folk % at Ravenna and the great Condo
the same at Rocroix. Napoleon was scarcely
30 at the victory of Marengo. Duns Scotus
died at 81, leaving twelve folio volumes of
his writings. Shelly died at 80, Julian the
Apostate at 80, Prof. Clifford at "a, Burns and
Robertson of Brighton at 81, Gustavus
Adolphus at 3s, and Pascal at 80. But the
Duke Of Marlboro the hero of Blenheim, was
~ years old before he ever held an important
command and then, STANCE to say, his move
ments were always characterized by the bold
ness and dash of youth. Arkwright at so
sat down TO learn English grammar. Guizot
at - learned Spanish. William of Orange
was over so when he won the battle of the
Boyne; and Motke, born in the year 1900,
may be even now, for ought we know, filing
away in his pigeon holes the details of his
most successful campaign; while if we may
believe Irving in his somewhat apocryphal
history of the conquest of Grenada, one of
the most renowned of Moorish captains won
his greatest victory in his Goth year.
A connecting link between the old and the
young has been furnished in our own coun-
tryman, William Cullen Bryant, who wrote
his Thanatopsis in his 18th year, and when
past the age of so was to be seen climbing
like a boy his eleven flights of stairs to his
regular work in the Office of a city daily
But, you may say, these were men of gen
ius. Possibly. but after all the only genius
that wins is the genius for hard work
From barren soils come richest grapes and
on severe and rocky slopes are found the
trees of toughest fibre" One of the cleverest
members Of the French Academy was so stu
pid in youth that the masters of the College
Stanislas declared they could do nothing with
him. and some of Englands most successful
statesmen, from Walpole down through Cob.
den to Disraei, made failures in their first at
tempt in public. Richter at the close of life
said that he had made the utmost possible out
of the stuff that was in him, and no man
could do more. No no man could do more,
aud no man. with the weight of the uni
verse resting upon him TO keep him in his
place" ought ever to do less
There is another phase of my subject which
| must leave without illustration. 1t is rest
in work. The type of idleness is seen in the
stagnant pool, with its death and decay. The
type of rest is seen in the calmly flowing riv-
er with its life aud health. And thus it is
that we are to pass from these finite activi-
ties that are permitted us here, with their fore
taste of rest, to what De Quincy calls the in
finite activities and the infinite repose"
The words of Goethe well might hang
above every desk in the study and every
bench in the shop:
Rest is not quitting
The busy career,
Rest is the fitting
OF self to ones sphere.
"'Tis loving and serving
The highest aud best,
Ts onward, answering,
And this is true rest"
In consciousness of work done and to be
done, is there found one of the surest pledges
of immortality. 'Sirs," said Victor Hugo at
a literary dinner in Paris not long ago, II
perceive that shall live forever, because
know what | hare done | perceive that l
shall never die because I know what have
not yet completed"
1t will be noticed that the illustrations l
have used might have been drawn from
Western literature and Western civilization,
and present one of its distinctive characters
tics. May not l say rather a Christian cicHi-
zdti0H =: Auerbach asks the question, why
has no religion this command above all 9TH
ers, Thou shalt work 2" Does the great
novelist mean to imply that no religion has
this command, that this command is not in
fact to be read between the lines of that
faith which has given a name ana charac-
ter to our Western civilization? Only few
weeks ago missionary on the shores of
Lake Nyanza, in Central Africa, sent back
word that he could make little progress
against the two great evils of slavery and po-
lygamy until the popular ideas respecting la
Dor were revoutionized. So long as a man
could not work with his hands and retain his
CASTE he could not well be kept from turning
his capital into slaves and wives. According
ly as a first lesson in Christian civilization,
last Christmas season year ago, in the pres
ence of a select company called together by
King Mtesa, he spent the time in showing
how the Christ, whose birthday they were
then celebrating came from the humble
home of an artisan, and how this being,
whom Christian nations hold in reverence
worked with his own hands in the quiet OBJ
security of despised village, until thirty years
OF age. Now human nature is much the same
in Central Africa that it is on the eastern and
western slopes of the Rocky Mountains; and
possibly a solution of two of the great prob
lens which confront our nation, the future of
the Indian race and the pOlygamy of Utah,
may be found by return to these first prin-
ciples of a Christian civilization. We may
class together the "Unspeakable Turk" of
the Eastern palace, the glowing African of
the tropical uplands and the unwashed Indian
of the Western plains, and set them forth as
types of an oriental civilization, a civilization
characterized by scorn of manual labor con-
tempt of honest trade, and stoical indiffsr- |
ence to the marvellous and the new. Oh, |
yes here you have your perfect aristoerat |
Look at him from a distance, on the wind |
ward side, while. you hold your nose poem
or a picture will serve him better than close |
inspection. Viewed through the haze of |
poetry or of romance, there is sort of regal.
magnifcence in the stately seclusion of his |
selfshness, there is a sort of high and mighty |
sublimity in the coolness of his stocism but |
bring him near into the noon day light of this
nineteenth century and see for Yourselves