NOTES.

"OUR work," says Montaigne, "is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a body by itself alone, but to train a man ; and in man soul and body can never be divided." The right care of the body includes some daily work or exercise; abstinence from sensuality and intemperance; regularity in eating and sleeping; cleanliness; training of the eye and hand; the acquirement of physical skill in our particular trade or craft, if we follow one, and the harmonious development of all the bodily powers. Books of instruction in physical virtue are nowadays very plentiful, and it is not necessary to single out any here for special mention. "The first duty of every man is to be a good animal.”

"Intellectual virtue " brings up the vast subject of education in general, - that which schools give us and that which we give ourselves. The care of the mind is more apt to be neglected by good people than it should be. Much bad temper is due to ill-advised bodily habits; so also much wrong proceeds from carelessness in finding out the truth, the mental indolence which is satisfied with good intentions, when sound thoughts are needed almost as much to bring about welfare. Self-culture, in the sense of continual progress in knowledge and in the power of reasoning well, is within the reach of all in this age of books. "Pegging away" at one's own mental deficiencies will produce astonishing results. If only an hour or a half-hour a day is spent on some really great book, instead of being nearly wasted on the newspaper, the result of a few months' perseverance is most encouraging. It is in the direction of self-education (the best kind of all) that biographies help us greatly. To get the utmost profit from them, one should make a personal application to himself of the example of virtue set by the man or woman whose actual career is portrayed, and ask if there is not something especially adapted to himself in the methods of self-discipline described. Advice that we give ourselves, incited by the record of a true man's life, comes with tenfold power; it is the best of all counsel.

The allusion in the last paragraph of this chapter is to the following words of Rev. F. H. Hedge, D. D. :–

"There are two things which all men reverence who are capable of reverence, strictly speaking, only two: the one is

beauty, the other power, - power and beauty; man is so constituted that he must reverence these so far and so fast as he can apprehend them. And so far and so fast as human culture advances, men will see that holiness is beauty, and goodness, power."

CHAPTER XII.

OUR COUNTRY.

I. Patriotism. We have spoken of the duties that we owe to the family, the school, and society in general. The family is a small society into which we are born and in which we grow up: its obligations are the strongest, even as the ties it makes between human beings are the closest. In other associations of men, each having a special object, as when we make part of a school, of a business firm, or of a society for the advancement of some reform, we have special duties according to the end and aim of the association. But there is a larger kind of association of men than the family or the school, or business partnership or the reform society, — to name no others. It is the natural grouping of great bodies of human beings, according to their race or their country, into Nations or States. These may include millions of people, living under one common law, enjoying the benefits of the same government, and bound together by the same great duties to it.

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Here in the United States of America, as the name shows, we use the word "State" in a special sense to mean Massachusetts or Pennsylvania or California, for instance, all the different States being united in what is called a federal government to make the Nation. The distinction is very important politically in our country between the State government and the National government. But it is a distinction made for practical convenience, and it does not affect the fundamental notion of the State as the association of men under one government. When we speak of the State here then, we may

intend sometimes a particular State of the Union in which we live and sometimes the Nation, the United States; but we always mean a great association of human beings for political ends. Whatever name it may bear, the State, large or small, is the supreme earthly power over each and every person in it. Usually, it is an association of multitudes of people of the same race in one particular land, their native country, with the French in France or the Italians in Italy. In our own land we are a people made up of many races; but we are still one people, living in one country and subject to one government.

as

We Americans cannot be patriots after the manner of men who live in a small country with a king over them to whom they owe loyalty, and whose will is largely law to them. Our country is very great in size, and each one of us is part of the power that rules it all. As the Italian is loyal to the king, or the German to the emperor, we have to be loyal to the people. For the great American idea is that "The people rule." Government is here of the people, by the people, for the people, as Theodore Parker and Abraham Lincoln have said. This is the democratic principle which is carried out in a republican form of government. The Ameri can patriot is one who is loyal to this great principle of equal rights and equal duties, and will give his life, if need be, to aid the government which stands to defend it. Our country has a right to anything we can give : nothing that we can give her is equal to all that she secures to us, our life, our liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So when our country is in danger, from a foreign foe or from civil war, it is the simplest, plainest and foremost of all duties for each and every citizen to be ready to take up arms in her defence. For her defence means the defence of all that we hold dear, family, home, friends, our great institutions, our high principles, our inspiring ideas of human brotherhood.

We will not say "Our Country, right or wrong!" in dealing with foreign nations, but Our Country forever; we will keep it safe and hold it right! In time of war our native land must first be defended against every assault: in time of peace it must be made the home of justice. When we see the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic marching through the city streets, some of them bearing the tattered flags which once they carried through the smoke and fiery hail of battle, we loudly cheer these standards, and our blood thrills, for the flag is the sign of Our Country, and we feel that, like those war-stained men, we, too, would follow the flag to save the State. In great love for man, for the cause of our fatherland, we, too, would dare everything.

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'Though Love repine and Reason chafe,

There comes a voice without reply: 'Tis man's perdition to be safe,

When for the Truth he ought to die."

Happily, in our peaceful land, the call for such supreme devotion rarely comes. Whenever it has come, it has always been heeded by the great mass of men, who show how natural and right, how sweet and beautiful it is to die for their country. Rare, indeed, is the man, 66 With soul so dead,

Who never to himself has said

'This is my own, my native land." "

And when we say it, we feel that our country has a supreme claim upon us. It is the largest part of the whole human race the thought of which moves any but great and exceptional natures to self-sacrifice. We may be sure, too, that he will love all mankind best who loves his country best, and by his devotion makes it the strongest helper of all the sons of earth.

Men are more wont to feel deeply patriotic in time of war than in time of peace. The thought of our whole country as above party and creed, above North or South