r's crown of thorns.

_Two Years Ago_, chap. vii. 1856.

One Anchor. October 27.

In such a world as this, with such ugly possibilities hanging over us
all, there is but one anchor which will hold, and that is utter trust in
God; let us keep that, and we may yet get to our graves without _misery_
though not without _sorrow_.

_Letters and Memories_. 1871.

Self-Control. October 28.

Settle it in your minds, young people, that the first and the last of all
virtues and graces which God can give is Self-Control, as necessary for
the saint and the sage lest they become fanatics and pedants, as for the
young in the hey-day of youth and health.

_Sermons on David_. 1866.

Nature's Permanence. October 29.

We abolish many things, good and evil, wisely and foolishly, in these
fast-going times; but, happily for us, we cannot abolish the blue sky,
and the green sea, and the white foam, and the everlasting hills, and the
rivers which flow out of their bosoms. They will abolish themselves when
their work is done, but not before. And we, who, with all our boasted
scientific mastery over Nature, are, from a merely mechanical and carnal
point of view, no more than a race of minute parasitic animals burrowing
in the fair Earth's skin, had better, instead of boasting of our empire
over Nature, take care lest we become too troublesome to Nature, by
creating, in our haste and greed, too many great black countries, and too
many great dirty warrens of houses, miscalled cities, peopled with
savages and imps of our own mis-creation; in which case Nature, so far
from allowing us to abolish her, will by her inexorable laws abolish us.

_MS. Presidential Address_. 1871.

The Only Refuge. October 30.

Prayer is the only refuge against the Walpurgis-dance of the witches and
the fiends, which at hapless moments whirl unbidden through a mortal
brain.

_Two Years Ago_, chap. xix. 1856.

England's Forgotten Worthies. October 31.

Among the higher-hearted of the early voyagers, the grandeur and glory
around them had attuned their spirits to itself and kept them in a lofty,
heroical, reverent frame of mind; while they knew as little about what
they saw in an "artistic" or "critical" point of view as in a scientific
one. . . . They gave God thanks and were not astonished. God was great:
but that they had discovered long before they came into the tropics.

Noble old child-hearted heroes, with