which keeps the soul from sinking in despair.  Hope is the sun, which as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.  Dr. Johnson has well and truly said that the flights of the human mind are not from enjoyment to enjoyment, but from hope to hope.  It is a strange frailty of human nature that we part more willingly with what we really possess than with our expectations of what we wish for.  The man who curbs this tendency is known as a man of wisdom.  What a beautiful poem is

CAMPBELL’S “PLEASURES OF HOPE!”

How the changes ring upon the beauties of “Hope, the charmer,” until, at last, we see her smiling at the general conflagration, we see her lighting her torch at nature’s funeral pile!  And yet what an ingenious device was that of the ancient, who, knowing the powerful allurements of Hope, put on the front of the magic shield “Be bold!  Be bold!” and on the other side “Be not too bold!” There is a development of hope known as audacity.  A touch of audacity is generally considered necessary to get along in the world.  Be careful that your audacity is never called “cheek.”  When you have rights to retrieve, you cannot be too audacious; when you expect something for nothing, and demand instead of appealing, you are “cheeky.”  It does not pay in the long run.  It is the sign and seal of a greedy nature.

WHEN POOR FRANCE

trembled in the nightmare of the Revolution, and the Kings of Europe had agreed to conquer and dismember her, there arose a dark-faced man in the tribune of the French Congress.  He was a man of terrible personal power and magnetism.  Hope must have cradled him in his babyhood.  He hurled a defiance at Europe that fairly shook France to a delirium of patriotism, and as he was drawing to a close he thundered; “What needs France to vanquish her enemies, to terrify them?  Naught but audacity!—­still more audacity!—­always! audacity!” Fourteen republican armies sprang forth full armed, as though Danton’s words had been the fabulous dragon’s teeth sown ages before in the bright fields of mythology.

FRANCE WAS RIGHT,

therefore God inspired her.  Be sure, when your flights are bold, that you have the right.  “Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just.”  Hope has been defamed more than any other of the joys of life, just as the most charitable become the target of the greater portion of the malignity of fault-finding fellow-creatures.  Treat Hope fairly, my young friend, and she will never desert you, neither will she poison your expectations, as did the hags who prophesied to Macbeth.

BE CORRECT.

     Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
     A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
     Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
     And now a bubble burst, and now a world.—­Pope.