Boswell says, "I doubted whether Dr. Johnson would be present at a Presbyterian prayer. I told Mr. Macaulay so, and said the Dr. might sit in the library while we were at family worship. Mr. Macaulay said he would omit it rather than give Dr. Johnson offence; but I would by no means agree that an excess of politeness, even to so great a man, should prevent what I esteem as one of the best pious regulations.

.. I mentioned to Dr. Johnson the over-delicate scrupulosity of our host; he said he had no objection to hear the prayer. This was a surprise to me, for he refused to go and hear Principal Robertson preach. 'I will hear him,' said he, 'if he will get up into a tree and preach, but I

will not give a sanction by my presence to a Presbyterian assembly.'" -Journal of a of a Tour in the Hebrides.

XXXII.

EVERY man and every woman

who can read at all should adopt some definite purpose in their reading--should take something for the main stem and trunk of their culture, whence branches might grow out in all directions seeking air and light for the parent tree, which it is hoped might end in becoming something useful and ornamental, and which at any rate, all along, will have had life and growth in it.-Sir A. HELPS (Friends in Council)

XXXIII.

MANY, if not most, truths have

a dark side, a side by which

they are connected with mysteries too high for us ;-nay, I think it is commonly but a poor and miserable truth which the human mind can walk all round; but at all events they have one side by which we can lay hold of them. J. RUSKIN (Modern Painters).

XXXIV.

WE often live under a cloud;

and it is well for us that we should do so. Uninterrupted sunshine would parch our hearts: we want shade and rain to cool and refresh them. Only it behoves us to

take care that, whatever cloud may be spread over us, it should be a cloud of witnesses. And every cloud may be such, if we can only look through to the sunshine that broods behind it.-Guesses at Truth.

XXXV.

THE birds have nests in lofty trees, and the stag his refuge in the thick coverts, where he can shelter from the sun's burning heat; and just so our hearts ought daily to choose some resting-place, either Mount Calvary, or the Sacred Wounds, or some other spot close to Christ, where they can retire at will to seek rest and refreshment amid toil, and to be as in a fortress, protected from temptation. Blessed in

deed is the soul which can truly say, "Thou, Lord, art my Refuge, my Castle, my Stay, my Shelter in the storm and in the heat of the day."— S. FRANCIS De Sales.

XXXVI.

THINK that though there is very little downright hypocrisy in the world, I do think there is a great deal of cant-cant religious, cant political, cant literary. Though few people have the face to set up for the very thing they in their hearts despise, we almost all want to be thought better than we are, and affect a greater admiration or abhorrence of certain things that we really feel. There is a cant of humanity, of patriotism and loyalty - not that