Gems for the Fireside

LIVING THOUGHTS OF GREAT THINKERS.

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more.

(Barry Cornwall. Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea. (Montgomery. The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! (Barry Cornwall. The sea is flowing ever, The land retains it never. (Goethe.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.

(Byron. (Herbert.

Praise the sea, but keep on land.
The sea is silent, the sea is discreet,
Deep it lies at thy very feet. (Longfellow.
Mystery of waters,-never slumbering sea!
(Montgomery.

Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.

(Christina G. Rosetti. Love the sea? I dote upon it-from the beach. (Douglas Jerrold. The ocean's surfy, slow, deep, mellow voice, full of mystery and awe, moaning over the dead it holds in its bosom, or lulling them to unbroken slumbers in the chambers of its vasty depths.

PATRIOTISM.

(Haliburton.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!

(Scott.

America half-brother of the world! With something good and bad of every land! (Bailey.

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Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right! but our country, right or wrong.

(Stephen Decatur. Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great! (Byron.

We join ourselves to no party that does not
carry the flag and keep step to the music
of the Union.
(Rufus Choate

Wake in our breasts the living fires,
The holy faith that warmed our sires;
hand hath made our Nation free;
Thy
To die for her is serving Thee.
The patriot boasts, where'er he roam,
His first, best country, ever is at home.

(Holmes.

(Goldsmith.

Sweet the memory is to me Of a land beyond the sea, Where the waves and mountains meet (Longfellow. Our country-whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurements more or less;-still our country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands.

(Robt. C. Winthrop. National enthusiasm is the great nursery of genius. (Tuckerman.

Had I a dozen sons,-each in my love alike, -I had rather have eleven die nobly for their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action. (Shakespeare.

Be England what she will, With all her faults she is my country still. (Churchill.

I was born in America; I live an American; I shall die an American.

(Daniel Webster

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GEMS FOR THE FIRESIDE.

My dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heav'n is

sent!

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet

content.

(Burns.
America is a fortunate country. She grows
by the follies of our European nations.
(Napoleon.

Thus, too, sail on, O ship of State !
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

(Longfellow.
Let our object be, our country, our whole
country, and nothing but our country.
(Daniel Webster.

My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,—
Of thee I sing:

Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrim's pride,
From every mountain's side
Let freedom ring. (Saml. F. Smith.

The combat deepens. On ye brave,
Who rush to glory or the grave!
Wave Munich! all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry.

(Campbell.

What though the field be lost!
All is not lost-the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome.

(Milton.
'Tis a principle of war that when you can use
the lightning, 'tis better than cannon.
(Napoleon.
Peace is the happy, natural state of man; war
his corruption, his disgrace. (Thomson.
I am a man of peace. God knows how I love
peace. But I hope I shall never be such
a coward as to mistake oppression for
peace.
(Kossuth

All delays are dangerous in war. (Dryden.
To be prepared for war is one of the most
effectual ways of preserving peace.
(George Washington.
Nothing except a battle lost can be half so
melancholy as a battle won.

(Duke of Wellington.
One to destroy, is murder by the law;
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands, takes a specious name,
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame.

As on the sea of Galilee,
The Christ is whispering "Peace."

(Young.

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Poesy is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pour

"Give me a theme," a little poet cried,

And I will do my part,"

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'Tis not a theme you need," the world re

plied;

"You need a heart."

(Gilder.

There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.

(Swinburne.

Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd,
The next, in majesty, in both, the last.
The force of nature could no further go:
To make a third, she join'd the former two.

(Dryden.

Next to being a great poet is the power of understanding one.

Never did Poesy appear

(Longfellow.

So full of heaven to me, as when

ing out of one language into another it I saw how it would pierce through pride and

will evaporate.

(Denham.

Poetry is something to make us wiser and

fear

To the lives of coarsest men.

(Lowell. better, by continually revealing those I do loves poetry, sir, 'specially the sacred. types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men's souls.

For there be summut in it
which smooths a man's heart
like a clothes brush, wipes away the dust
and dirt, and sets all the nap right.
(Bulwer-Lytton.

All that is best in the great poets of all coun-
tries is not what is national in them, but
what is universal.
(Longfellow.
Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipt' me in ink, my parents' or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
(Pope.

PRAYER.

Father of life and light! Thou Good Supreme!
Save me from folly, vanity and vice,
From every low pursuit! and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue

pure;

Poetry is the music of the soul, and above Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss! all of great and feeling souls. (Voltaire.

(Thomson.

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GEMS FOR THE FIRESIDE.

(Buddha. Prayer moves the hand which moves the
world.
(John Aikman Wallace.

The greatest prayer is patience.
Let prayer be the key of the morning, and
the bolt of the evening.(Matthew Henry.
Every wish

Is like a prayer-with God. (E. B. Browning.

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,

The motion of a hidden fire

That trembles in the breast.

(Montgomery.

Ah! a seraph may pray for a sinner,
But a sinner must pray for himself.

(Charles M. Dickinson.

More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them
friend?

For so the whole round world is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

(Tennyson.

Be not afraid to pray-to pray is right.
Pray, if thou canst, with hope; but ever

pray,

Though hope be weak or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. (Hartley Coleridge. They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright! (Burns.

So have I dreamed!-Oh, may the dream be true!

That praying souls are purged from mortal hue,

And grow as pure as He to whom they pray. (Hartley Coleridge.

He prayeth best who loveth best
All creatures great and small,
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

READING.

'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else, and unmistakably meant for his ear.

(Emerson. The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought and of elevated opinions. (Dawson.

We should accustom the mind to keep the best company by introducing it only to the best books. (Sydney Smith. Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

(Horace Mann, Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

(Bacon.

(Coleridge.

LIVING THOUGHTS OF GREAT THINKERS.

825

All the glory and beauty of Christ are mani- The body of all true religion consists, to be

fested within, and there he delights to dwell; his visits there are frequent, his condescension amazing, his conversations sweet, his comforts refreshing; and the peace that he brings passeth all understanding.

sure, in obedience to the will of the
Sovereign of the world, in a confidence
in His declarations, and in imitation of
His perfections.
(Burke.
Who best

(Thomas à Kempis. Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best.

The consciousness of faith, of sins forgiven,
Of wrath appeased, of heavy guilt thrown off,
Sheds on my breast its long forgotten peace,
And shining steadfast as the noonday sun,
Lights me along the path that duty marks.
(L. J. Hall.
Who falls for love of God, shall rise a star.

His state

Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest. They also serve who only stand and wait. (Milton. Who builds a church to God, and not to Fame (Ben Jonson. Will never mark the marble with his Name. (Pope. She (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.

A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
(Madame de Stael.
Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal
I serv'd my king, he would not in my age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.

(Shakespeare.

Man always worships something; always he

sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any finite thing, once tempt him well to keep his eyes thereon. (Carlyle. What greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship. (Emerson. Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion. (Sir Thomas Browne. Religious contention is the devil's harvest. (La Fontaine.

If men are so wicked with religion, what God never gave man a thing to do concern.

(Franklin.

would they be without it? Religion rests on its own majesty. (Goethe. Christians have burned each other, quite per

ing which it were irreverent to ponder how the Son of God would have done it. (George MacDonald.

A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

(Bacon. Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning,-an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

(Longfellow.

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