ults from a skilful shuffling of political
cards, rather than from strength and steadiness of head and an
upright gait.

If we ask for freedom from care, and leisure to enjoy life--until we
have learned, through the discipline of labour and care, how to
appreciate and use leisure--we might as well petition from
government a grant of prairie land for Egyptian mummies to run races
upon.

If one might get himself appointed to the general overseership of
the solar system, still, what would his occupation be but a regular
pacing to and fro from the sun to the outermost limits of Le
Verrier's calculations, and perhaps a little farther? A succession
of rather longish strides he would have to take, to be sure; now
burning his soles in the fires of Mercury; now hitting his corns
against some of the pebbly Asteroids, and now slipping upon the icy
rim of Neptune. Still, if he made drudgery of his work by keeping
his soul out of it, he would only have his treadmill life over
again, on a large scale.

The monotony of our three-score years and ten is wearisome to us;
what can we think then of the poor planets, doomed to the same
diurnal spinning, the same annual path, for six thousand years, to
our certain knowledge? And, if telescopes tell us the truth, the
universe is an ever-widening series of similar monotonies.

Yet space is ample enough to give all systems variety of place.
While each planet moves steadily along on the edge of its plane, the
whole solar equipage is going forward to open a new track on the
vast highway of the heavens.

We too, moving in our several spheres with honest endeavours and
aspirations, are, by the stability of our motions, lifting and being
lifted, with the whole compact human brotherhood, into a higher
elevation, a brighter revelation of the Infinite, the Universe of
Wisdom and Love.

And in this view, though our efforts be humble and our toil hard,
life can never be a treadmill.

ARTHUR LELAND.

ARTHUR LELAND was a young lawyer of some twenty-seven years of age.
His office stood a stone's throw from the court-house, in a thriving
town in the West. Arthur had taken a full course in a Northern
college, both in the collegiate and law department, and with some
honour. During his course he had managed to read an amazing amount
of English literature, and no man was readier or had a keener taste
in such things than he. He had a pleasing personal appearance, a
fluent and persuasive manne