"I can bear that," was the reply; "so you but enable me to see."

The surgeon operated upon him, and was gradually successful; first there were faint glimmerings of light, then more distinct vision. The blind father was handed a rose; he had smelt one before, but had never seen one; then he looked upon the face of his wife, who had been so true and faithful to him; and then his children were brought, whom he had so often fondled, and whose charming prattle had so frequently fallen upon his ears.

He then exclaimed: "O, why have I seen all these before inquiring for the man by whose skill I have been enabled to behold them! Show me the doctor." And when he was pointed out to him, he embraced him, with tears of gratitude and joy.

So, when we reach heaven, and with unclouded eyes look upon its glories, we shall not be content with a view of these. No, we shall say, "Where is Christ? He to whom I am indebted for what heaven is; show me Him, that with all my soul I may adore and praise Him through endless ages." Christian at Work.

Victor Hugo.

BY THE EDITOR.

Severe brain work seems, in many cases, to be conducive to health and long life. Many of the great authors of this century, men of great brains, have been meu of strong and vigorous bodies. Goethe, the Humboldts, Ritter the geographer, our own Bryant, and many other Americans of note, reached an old age of unabated vigor. Unlike Sydney Smith, who, as he himself had foretold. began to die at the top, his brain giving way first, these well-preserved fathers in letters stand amid the storms of life, like the stately oak in the forest, lifting its tall and tough top far above its fading fellows, having gathered enduring strength from its battles with

the cold and raging storms through the many varying seasons. One secret of their enduring strength lay in their manly training and temperate habits. From early boyhood they were inured to bodily hardships. Not one of them roasted himself over a hot stove on cold wintry days. They were trained to breast the storm and breathe the open pure air. They were taught moderation in eating and drinking, and to accustom themselves to out-door exercise. To his old age John Quincy Adams used to rise between four and six o'clock according to the season, and either take a ride on horseback or walk to the Potomac River, where he bathed, remaining in the water for an hour or more in the summer. Returning to the White House, he read two chapters of Scott's Bible and the corresponding commentary of Hewlett, and then glanced over the morning papers and the budgets sent from the departments until nine, when he breakfasted. From ten until four he remained in the Executive Office, presiding over cabinet meetings, receiving visitors, or considering questiers of state. Then after a long walk or a short ride on horseback, he would sit down to dine at half past five, and after dinner resume his public duties.

Not one of these grand old men learned his habits in the ill-ventilated, pernicious atmosphere of drinking saloons and ball rooms.

We have no great opinion of some things Victor Hugo, the noted French author, has done and written. Still, as a writer and as a man, the world can learn useful lessons from him. A great part of his life has been spent in fighting what he deemed wrongs. He fought Louis Napoleon all through his French domination. For this he was driven from his country, and from principle he refused to return when the French Government offered an amnesty to political exiles. Hugo is a hale man of 84 years of age. The infirmities and marks of old age he bears and improves with cheerful grace. Strong, straight and well built, his presence would attract your eye among a thousand other men. He is a man of plain, simple habits, a great favorite of the common people. During his exile at Guernsey, he did his own marketing, and had many kind

"When Victor Hugo rose to speak the five years of added age fell easily off his shoulders. He stood straight and square. The eyes which had been half masked beneath drooping lids began to dilate and glow. The fires which you thought extinguished, blazed up; the Hugo who stood before you was the Hugo of "Hernani," of "Les Orientales," fresh, vigorous, alert, in all the imperishable youthfulness of genius. The first word he uttered rang through the vast amphitheatre, grave, sonorous, and powerful. There was not a trace of effort. From beginning to end the note first struck was maintained, but never monotonous. I called him an orator just now, but orator he is not, in the large sense of a word too often and too carelessly used. His speech was written, every word, and read from a manuscript; and what a manuscript! Sheets of paper two feet square, covered with writing so large and free that you could almost read it from the balcony, fifty feet off; full of corrections, of erasures done as if with a painter's brush, or with the pen of a giant, as he is. Two candelabra, each of six lights, stood on either side of him. He put them together on his right, added two large lamps from the table in front, and fi nally sent to borrow a third from the secretary, who sat hard by, and thenceforward was in darkness. He held his manuscript close under this cluster of lights. When he wished to use his right hand for a gesture, he dropped the paper on the table, or transferred it to his left. He never parted company with it for two sentences in succession."

Hugo's writings, like those of most French authors, are brilliant-splendid in a certain sense; a sort of literary fireworks, flashing with light without infusing permanent life. Many of his sentences are maxims. He abounds in epigrammatic sayings. Some of these require close and patient study to get at

our young readers may not have any of Hugo's works at hand, we will give them skimmings of his Les Miserables, gath

"Place your hopes in the man to whom it is impossible to succeed." "Let us look at the road by which the fault passed."

"Not the man who commits sin, but he who produces darkness is guilty." [Both are guilty.-ED. G.]

"Bishop Myriel often sat in darkness with the bereaved."

"The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. They chastise the human race, but it moves onward."

"Frances de Sales says: Every bishop has followers many-sucking priests. How easily ambition calls itself a profession-in priests.'

"The resemblance of success to merit deceives men."

"In character as in a rock there may be water holes."

"Abstruse speculations contain vertigo.'

"Geniuses, situated above dogma, propose their ideas to God; their prayer offers a discussion; their adoration interrogates." [So much the worse for the geniuses, then.-Ed. G.]

"In certain cases instruction and education may serve as allies to evil. "Civilization is a prodigious pyramid." Valjean's comfortable bed spoiled his sleep ;"

"To see a thousand different objects for the first and last time, is most melancholy. Traveling is birth and death at every moment."

"Death has a way of its own of harassing victory; and it causes pestilence to follow glory."

"Had it not rained on the night between the 17th and 18th of June, 1815, the future of Europe would have been changed. A few drops of rain at the battle of Waterloo made Napoleon waver."

"In battle the soul hardens, changing the soldier into a statue, and all flesh becomes granite. An army that disbands is like a thaw."

"At the battle of Waterloo Marshall Ney madly cried, 'I should like all these English cannon-balls to enter my chest.'

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Only barbarous nations grow suddenly after a victory. The drummer is silent and reason speaks."

"At the battle of Inkerman a sergeant saved the British army. But as none below the rank of an officer could be mentioned in a dispatch, Lord Raglan could not report his glorious deed." "Wars are carried on by humanity against humanity in spite of humanity."

"Nothing contracts the heart like symmetry, because symmetry is ennui." "A certain skillful ignorance is strength."

When Gymnasoras emerged from his prison with his head full of dilemmas and syllogisms, he harangued the first tree he met, and made great efforts to convince it."

"The strides of halting men are like the glances of squinters, they do not reach their point very rapidly."

"No one can keep a secret like a child."

"No eye examines like that of a drooping nun."

"All the crimes of the man begin with the vagabondage of the boy."

"Horace was terrified by the hiccough of Priapus."

"Instruction and learning are the saviours of society." [Alas! no.-ED. G.]

"A reason fasting for knowledge grows thin. We must nurse minds that do not eat as much as stomachs."

'History is full of the shipwrecks of peoples and empires."

"The civilizations of India, Chaldea, Persia, Abyssinia and Egypt have passed away. [Have they not been absorbed and assimilated by later civilizations? Are they not living in newer and better forms in those of the present day?-Ed. G.]

Genius attracts insult, and great men are all more or less barked at.'

"The Amphictyons held two sessions of their Council a year: one at Delphi the place of the gods; the other at Thermopylæ, the place of souls."

Daring is the price paid for pro

gress."

"The sand you tread under foot, when cast into and melted in a furnace becomes splendid crystal with which Galileo and Newton discovered planets."

"An old soldier and an old priest are at bottom the same."

"There are moments when the soul is kneeling, no matter what the posture of the body may be."

"Attach locomotives to ideas, and it is all right; but do not take or mistake. the horse for the rider."

"Language being breath, the rustling of intellects resembles the rustling of leaves."

"An excess of sacrifice is a strengthening."

"To embark on death is at times the means of escaping shipwreck, and the cover of a coffin becomes a plank of salvation."

"Such is the superiority of Christ over Napoleon."

"An eastern fable says that the rose was made white by God, but that Adam, looking at it for a moment when it opened it felt ashamed and turned pink."

"Chinese wheat yields one hundred and twenty fold."

"Even a parody may be parodied." For a man of his age, Hugo is a marvel of vigor. His hardihood, as we may well suppose, was not acquired amid the effeminate luxuries of royalty, of which he has always had a supreme hatred. He has always been very temperate in eating and drinking, simple in his habits, and fond of out-door life. It is still said of him that he can be out in all weathers without a great-coat. Instead of riding in a comfortable coach or cab, he is partial to the omnibus, and prefers the top of it to an inside seat. It is his custom of an afternoon to perch himself on the top of this cumbrous vehicle, and in this elevated position, commanding a view of the busy life of Paris, he jots down his ideas, and when he reaches home, throws them into shape. It is said that he has written volumes on the knife-boards of omnibuses.

Some summers ago a correspondent wrote to a Boston paper:

"I saw Victor Hugo riding in the Bois the other day, and was surprised to notice the extreme heartiness of his look. The old poet seems good for ten or fifteen years of life yet. He had on a straw hat, although it was a cold day; and he was riding unconcernedly in a hired cab, which was decidedly the worse for wear. His face is quite red, and is set in a frame of white beard. He always wears his hair cut quite short, and in the park a stranger might readily have fancied him a merchant or a bourgeoise retired from business. But when his face is lighted up by strong emotion-when he is speaking on some topic in which he is interested-the expression becomes exceptionally fine. He continues to go out in all weathers, and never complains of being ill, which is pretty good for a man who was already a celebrity in 1826."

He is the idol of the democratic or liberal classes of France. When he returned to Paris from his exile, the enthusiasm of the Parisian masses was intense. It is said that by reason of the frequent interruptions of his numerous admirers, who left him but little

time for study, he has of late years made his home in one of the remoter and more obscure suburbs of the city, where his house is less easy of access. He still holds his evening receptions, where his friends often drop in and enjoy his brilliant company. He is said to be very familiar and frank towards his guests, passes from one to the other, greets them by name and has an apt and kind word for each one.

He is the literary mouthpiece of Red Republicanism in France; and like all men of this stripe, is an outspoken enemy to Christianity in the Bible sense of the term. His religion is Pariswhich he holds to be not only France, as many of his countrymen have held, but that it is the ceiling of the human race. Religiously he is the opposite of Guizot and John Quincy Adams, a polished pagan. His brilliant flashes of light remind one of the glitter and glow of fire-bugs, and of glow-worms of a dark summer night, whose light although conspicuously seen is of no benefit to the benighted wanderer. cannot help him to read his guidebook, to examine his chart or to see and follow the right and safe way. one can safely lead others through the darkness of our fallen state into the light which our souls need and long for, unless he lights his lamp at the torch of Him who says: "He that followeth after me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

It

"A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man.”

Comfort.

If the night is dreary,

It leads to the day; If the heart is weary,

It learns to pray. If, standing lonely,

The tears fall fast, We know it is only Till life is past.

'Tis all in the measure

Of each day's share-
The pain and the pleasure,
The joy and despair.
We lose on the morrow
The ache of to-day:
The sweet and the bitter
Must both pass away.

-Elizabeth August.