he
hour of death. "And the most miserable or most painful of deaths," said
Henry Marten, the Commonwealth man, who died in prison, "is as nothing
compared with the memory of a well-spent life; and great alone is he
who has earned the glorious privilege of bequeathing such a lesson and
example to his successors!"

CHAPTER IV.--WORK.

"Arise therefore, and be doing, and the Lord be with thee."
--l CHRONICLES xxii. 16.

"Work as if thou hadst to live for aye;
Worship as if thou wert to die to-day."--TUSCAN PROVERB.

"C'est par le travail qu'on regne."--LOUIS XIV

"Blest work! if ever thou wert curse of God,
What must His blessing be!"--J. B. SELKIRK.

"Let every man be OCCUPIED, and occupied in the highest
employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the
consciousness that he has done his best"--Sydney Smith.

WORK is one of the best educators of practical character. It evokes
and disciplines obedience, self-control, attention, application, and
perseverance; giving a man deftness and skill in his special calling,
and aptitude and dexterity in dealing with the affairs of ordinary life.

Work is the law of our being--the living principle that carries men and
nations onward. The greater number of men have to work with their hands,
as a matter of necessity, in order to live; but all must work in one way
or another, if they would enjoy life as it ought to be enjoyed.

Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and
a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished. All that is great in
man comes through work; and civilisation is its product. Were labour
abolished, the race of Adam were at once stricken by moral death.

It is idleness that is the curse of man--not labour. Idleness eats the
heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.
When Alexander conquered the Persians, and had an opportunity of
observing their manners, he remarked that they did not seem conscious
that there could be anything more servile than a life of pleasure, or
more princely than a life of toil.

When the Emperor Severus lay on his deathbed at York, whither he
had been borne on a litter from the foot of the Grampians, his final
watchword to his soldiers was, "LABOREMUS" [we must work]; and nothing
but constant toil maintained the power and extended the authority of the
Roman generals.

In describing the earli