grow up a generation, who would help to banish war from the earth?

Avoid contention with your companions. Use no offensive words, and when you see others disagree, strive to reconcile them. Repress every revengeful feeling. If any one has injured you, do not injure them. Try to set them a better example. If any speak unfavourably of you, it is well to do them some good office. Perhaps you can lend them an interesting, instructive book, whose perusal would lead them to kinder dispositions.

To render evil for evil, would make perpetual discord in society. Try, therefore, to be gentle and patient to those who seem to dislike you. Their cold treatment may often proceed from some trifle, which your pleasant manners may reconcile. And it is a pity, to lose for any trifle, the benefits of friendly intercourse.

When in company with your associates, do not insist always on having your own way. If you are in the habit of cheerfully consulting their wishes, they will seek your society, and enjoy it. Thus you will acquire influence over them, and this influence should be exerted for their good.

You know that he who does good to another, uniformly, and from a right principle, promotes his own happiness. It is indeed, easy to love those who love us, but to be kind to those, who are unkind to us is not as easy, though it is a nobler virtue.

"Do not suffer yourself to hate even your enemies, said Plutarch, for in doing so, you contract a vicious habit of mind, which will by degrees break out, even upon your friends, or those who are indif.

ferent to you." This is the advice of a heathen philosopher. But more definite and sublime are the words of our Redeemer, "Love your enemies, that ye may be the children of your Father in Heaven, who doeth good unto the evil and unthankful.”

By preserving peaceful dispositions, and persuading those who are at variance, to be reconciled, you will be serene and happy. You will be pursuing an education which will fit you for the society of angels. Have we not read of a country, where there is no war?-where peace and love reign in the bosom of all its inhabitants?

That country is Heaven. We hope to dwell there when we die. We would strive to cultivate its spirit while on earth. How else can we be permitted to remain there? The scorpion cannot abide in the nest of the turtle-dove, nor the leopard slumber in the lamb's fold. Neither can the haters of peace find a home in those blissful regions.

That holy Book, which is the rule of our conduct -the basis of our hope, has promised no reward to those who delight in the shedding of blood. But our Saviour, when his dwelling was in tents of clay, —when he taught the listening multitude what they must do, to inherit eternal life, said, "Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God."

THE GREY COTTAGE.

THERE was a labouring man, who built a cottage for himself and wife. A dark grey rock over-hung it, and helped to keep it from the winds. When the cottage was finished, he thought he would paint it grey, like the rock. And so exactly did he get the same shade of colour, that it looked almost as if the little dwelling sprang from the bosom of the rock that sheltered it.

After a while the cottager became able to purchase a cow. In the summer she picked up most of her own living very well. But in the winter, she needed to be fed and kept from the cold. So he built a barn for her. It was so small that it looked more like a shed than a barn. But it was quite warm and comfortable.

When it was done, a neighbour came, and said, "what colour will you paint your barn?” “I had not thought of that," said the cottager. "Then I advise you by all means, to paint it black; and here is a pot of black paint, which I have brought on purpose to give you."

Soon, after another neighbour praised his neat shed, and expressed a wish to help him a little about his building. "White, is by far the most genteel colour," he added, "and here is a pot of white paint, of which I make you a present."

While he was in doubt, which of the gifts to use, the oldest and wisest man in the village came to

visit him. His hair was entirely white, and every body loved him, for he was good as well as wise.

When the cottager had told him the story of the pots of paint, the old man said "he who gave you the black paint, is one who dislikes you, and wishes you to do a foolish thing. He who gave you the white paint, is a partial friend, and desires you to make more show than is wise.

"Neither of their opinions should you follow. If the shed is either black or white, it will disagree with the colour of your house. Moreover, the black will draw the sun, and cause the edges of your boards to curl and split; and the white will look well for a little while and then become soiled, and need painting anew.

"Now, take my advice, and mix the black and white together." So the cottager poured one pot into the other, and mixed them up with his brushes, and it made the very grey colour, which he liked, and had used before, upon his house.

He had in one corner of his small piece of ground a hop-vine, whose ripe clusters he carefully gathersed. It was always twined around two poles, which he had fastened to the earth, to give it support. But the cottager was fond of building, and he made a little arbour for it to run upon, and cluster about.

He painted the arbour grey. So the rock and the cottage, and the shed, and the arbour, were all of the same grey colour. And every thing around looked neat and comfortable, though it was small and poor.

When the cottager and his wife grew old, they were sitting together, in their arbour, at the sunset of a summer's day. A stranger who seemed to be

looking at the country, stopped and inquired, how every thing around that small habitation happened to be the same shade of grey.

"It is very well it is so," said the cottager, "for my wife and I, you see, are grey also. And we have lived so long, that the world itself looks old and grey to us now."

Then he told him the story of the black and white paint, and how the advice of an aged man prevented him from making his little estate ridiculous when he was young.

"I have thought of this circumstance, so often that it has given me instruction. He who gave me the black paint, proved to be an enemy; and he who urged me to use the white, was a friend. The advice of neither was good.

"Those who love us too well, are blind to our faults; and those who dislike us, are not willing to see our virtues. One would make us all white; the other all black. But neither of them are right. For we are of a mixed nature, good and evil, like the grey paint, made of opposite qualities.

"If then, neither the counsel of our foes, nor of our partial friends, is safe to be taken, we should cultivate a correct judgment, which, like the grey paint, mixing both together, may avoid the evil and secure the good."