and affect a plain and poor exterior.  In the Norse legend of our ancestors, Odin dwells in a fisher’s hut, and patches a boat.  In the Hindoo legends, Hari dwells a peasant among peasants.  In the Greek legend, Apollo lodges with the shepherds of Admetus; and Jove liked to rusticate among the poor Ethiopians.  So, in our history, Jesus is born in a barn, and his twelve peers are fishermen.  ’T is the very principle of science that Nature shows herself best in leasts; ’t was the maxim of Aristotle and Lucretius; and, in modern times, of Swedenborg and of Hahnemann.  The order of changes in the egg determines the age of fossil strata.  So it was the rule of our poets, in the legends of fairy lore, that the fairies largest in power were the least in size.

In the Christian graces, humility stands highest of all, in the form of the Madonna; and in life, this is the secret of the wise.  We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of gypsies and peddlers.  In daily life, what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.  “A general,” said Bonaparte, “always has troops enough, if he only knows how to employ those he has, and bivouacs with them.”  Do not refuse the employment which the hour brings you, for one more ambitious.  The highest heaven of wisdom is alike near from every point, and thou must find it, if at all, by methods native to thyself alone.

Notes.—­The Brahmanic religion teaches a Trinity, of which Vishnu is the savior of mankind.

Thebes, the ancient capital of Upper Egypt, was at its most flourishing period about 1500 B. C. Byzantium was an important Greek city during the second and third centuries B. C.

Niebuhr (b. 1776, d. 1831), Muller (b. 1797, d. 1840), and Layard (b. 1817, d. 1894), are celebrated archaeologists.  The first two were Germans, and the last an Englishman.

CXXXIV.  HAPPINESS. (451)

Alexander Pope, 1688-1744, was the shining literary light of the so-called Augustan reign of Queen Anne, the poetry of which was distinguished by the highest degree of polish and elegance.  Pope was the son of a retired linen draper, who lived in a pleasant country house near the Windsor Forest.  He was so badly deformed that his life was “one long disease;” he was remarkably precocious, and had a most intelligent face, with great, flaming, tender eyes.  In disposition Pope was the reverse of admirable.  He was extremely sensitive, petulant, and supercilious; fierce and even coarse in his attacks on opponents; boastful of his self-acquired wealth and of his intimacy with the nobility.  The great redeeming feature of his character was his tender devotion to his aged parents.