ell as of joy. As we proceed through life, many dark
vistas open upon us--of toil, suffering, difficulty, perhaps misfortune
and failure. Happy they who can pass through and amidst such trials with
a firm mind and pure heart, encountering trials with cheerfulness, and
standing erect beneath even the heaviest burden!

A little youthful ardour is a great help in life, and is useful as an
energetic motive power. It is gradually cooled down by Time, no matter
how glowing it has been, while it is trained and subdued by experience.
But it is a healthy and hopeful indication of character,--to be
encouraged in a right direction, and not to be sneered down and
repressed. It is a sign of a vigorous unselfish nature, as egotism is
of a narrow and selfish one; and to begin life with egotism and
self-sufficiency is fatal to all breadth and vigour of character. Life,
in such a case, would be like a year in which there was no spring.
Without a generous seedtime, there will be an unflowering summer and an
unproductive harvest. And youth is the springtime of life, in which, if
there be not a fair share of enthusiasm, little will be attempted,
and still less done. It also considerably helps the working quality,
inspiring confidence and hope, and carrying one through the dry details
of business and duty with cheerfulness and joy.

"It is the due admixture of romance and reality," said Sir Henry
Lawrence, "that best carries a man through life... The quality of
romance or enthusiasm is to be valued as an energy imparted to the human
mind to prompt and sustain its noblest efforts." Sir Henry always urged
upon young men, not that they should repress enthusiasm, but sedulously
cultivate and direct the feeling, as one implanted for wise and noble
purposes. "When the two faculties of romance and reality," he said, "are
duly blended, reality pursues a straight rough path to a desirable and
practicable result; while romance beguiles the road by pointing out its
beauties--by bestowing a deep and practical conviction that, even in
this dark and material existence, there may be found a joy with which a
stranger intermeddleth not--a light that shineth more and more unto the
perfect day." [211]

It was characteristic of Joseph Lancaster, when a boy of only fourteen
years of age, after reading 'Clarkson on the Slave Trade,' to form the
resolution of leaving his home and going out to the West Indies to teach
the poor blacks to read the Bible. And he ac