The most unhappy of all men is the man that cannot tell what he is going to do, that has got no work cut out for him in the world, and does not go into it.  For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind—­honest work, which you intend getting done.  If you are in a strait, a very good indication as to choice—­perhaps the best you could get—­is a book you have a great curiosity about.  You are then in the readiest and best of all possible conditions to improve by that book.  It is analogous to what doctors tell us about the physical health and appetites of the patient.  You must learn to distinguish between false appetite and real.  There is such a thing as a false appetite, which will lead a man into vagaries with regard to diet, will tempt him to eat spicy things which he should not eat at all, and would not but that it is toothsome, and for the moment in baseness of mind.  A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for—­what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general.  And so with books.  As applicable to almost all of you, I will say that it is highly expedient to go into history—­to inquire into what has passed before you in the families of men.  The history of the Romans and Greeks will first of all concern you; and you will find that all the knowledge you have got will be extremely applicable to elucidate that.  There you have the most remarkable race of men in the world set before you, to say nothing of the languages, which your professors can better explain, and which, I believe, are admitted to be the most perfect orders of speech we have yet found to exist among men.  And you will find, if you read well, a pair of extremely remarkable nations shining in the records left by themselves as a kind of pillar to light up life in the darkness of the past ages; and it will be well worth your while if you can get into the understanding of what these people were and what they did.  You will find a great deal of hearsay, as I have found, that does not touch on the matter; but perhaps some of you will get to see a Roman face to face; you will know in some measure how they contrived to exist, and to perform these feats in the world; I believe, also, you will find a thing not much noted, that there was a very great deal of deep religion in its form in both nations.  That is noted by the wisest of historians, and particularly by Ferguson, who is particularly well worth reading on Roman history; and I believe he was an alumnus in our own University.  His book is a very creditable book.  He points out the profoundly religious nature of the Roman people, notwithstanding the wildness and ferociousness of their nature.  They believed that Jupiter Optimus—­Jupiter Maximus—­was lord of the universe, and that he had appointed the Romans to become the chief of men, provided they followed his commands—­to brave all difficulty, and to stand up with an invincible front—­to be ready to do and die; and also to have the same sacred regard to veracity, to promise, to integrity, and all the virtues that surround that noblest quality of men—­courage—­to which the Romans gave the name of virtue, manhood, as the one thing ennobling for a man.