FOWELL BUXTON'S MOTTO.

"THE longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is ENERGY-INVINCIBLE DETERMINATION-a purpose once fixed, and then DEATH or VICTORY. That quality will do any thing that can be done in this world :-and NO TALENTS, NO CIRCUMSTANCES, NO OPPORTUNITIES, WILL MAKE A TWO-LEGGED CREATURE A MAN WITHOUT IT." There! write that upon your souls, young men. Let it be text on which you may preach to yourselves; and take care to pay the preacher the best compliment that preachers can receive,-let your conduct, by embodying the text, do credit to the sermon.

SELF-RELIANCE.

INSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half-possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the man who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If any body will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much, or dare too much. There is at this moment, there is for me an utterance bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all these. Not possible will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, with thousandcloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if I can hear what these patriarchs say, surely I can reply in the same pitch of voice for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Dwell up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey the heart, and thou shalt reproduce the foreworld again.

THE TRUE MAN OF BUSINESS.

"As a nail sticketh fast between the joinings of the stones," says Ecclesiasticus, "so doth sin between buyer and seller." The writer does not mean to assert this as an unvarying fact, but to indicate a general tendency. There is temptation, there is peril to integrity, in the position and attitude of a trader; and this danger should be pointed out so that it may be avoided. It is a fearful thing to stand face to face with the fact that, if I were able to buy such a one's property, or sell him mine, before he could receive the news brought from Europe by the last steam-ship, my fortune would be made.

It must be hard for a merchant to know that, if to-day's telegraphic despatches would only embody the news, even though false, of a killing frost throughout the cotton-growing region, or the conflagration of all the mercantile quarter of New Orleans, he would be solvent and wealthy; while in the absence of such tidings he must inevitably suspend payment. Mercantile integrity is subjected to trials of which the farmer or artisan lives and dies in happy unconsciousness-trials none the less real that we all know how false and fleeting is the success or deliverance achieved through wrong-doing. For ages, for centuries, men have repeated, parrot-like, the axiom that "Honesty is the best policy;" yet how many profoundly realize its truth? How many really believe that a man in pecuniary difficulty, who might extricate himself by a night of fortunate gaming, would be most unwise in consenting to do so? It is so easy to be superficially honest, in the absence of any strong temptation to knavery, that a great many who are ingrained rascals have never yet suspected the fact.

A youth launches gaily and hopefully on the sea of active life, and sails smoothly on its placid bosom, impelled by gentlefavouring gales, unthinking of peril, and unsuspecting the reighbourhood of adversity-what can he learn from such a toyage? In the absence of danger, what is proved by his freedom from fear? Blest with abundance and ease, what merit is there in his refraining from deception and robbery? And thus it chances that very much which passes current of honesty is only undeveloped or undetected knavery.

Integrity is the corner-stone of the character of the true man of business, in whose absence the whole edifice topples to its ruin. It is quite possible-nay, it is notorious—that dishonest men have acquired wealth by traffic; but they are exceptions to the general rule, and their success, hollow and unreal at best, was a consequence of some good quality they possessed, and not of their lack of the best quality of all. If twenty have succeeded out of one hundred merchants who have traded in any county, or in any particular block in some city, at least fifteen of them would prove, on a careful scrutiny, to have been more upright and conscientious than the great mass of their less fortunate rivals. Vainly shall a man hope to live and thrive by buying and selling after his neighbours, his customers have learned by sad experience that his word is not reliable-that his representations of the cost or quality of his wares are not to be trusted. Of two persons of equal capacity who have been ten years in trade, one having acquired therein only experience, with the decided confidence of his neighbours, and a fair circle of dealers and customers, while the other has amassed some twenty thousand dollars, but at the cost of a reputation for slipperiness and dishonesty, the latter is this day the poorer man, as time will clearly establish. Nothing is more common or more fatal than the grasping of an advantage at the cost of ten times its value; and he who has traded out his neighbours' good opinion is pretty certain to die a poor man, however high the price for which he sold it.

But integrity, though indispensable, is not all-sufficient as a basis of the true mercantile character. The true merchant must be impelled to his vocation by a conviction that therein can he best serve God by blessing mankind. The merchant is an intermediate, an electric wire, a channel of intercourse, between producers in different sections, climes, or countries. Since it is certain that the heat of the tropics germinates and ripens many useful plants which could never mature under the skies of the temperate zone, while even the polar regions contribute many things to the sustenance and comfort of man which could not be advantageously produced elsewhere, the honest and capable exchanger of the diverse products of these varying latitudes is a common benefactor. Though not literally a producer, he is essentially and practically so, by enabling each customer to satisfy his legitimate

wants more cheaply and thoroughly than he otherwise could do, and thereby inciting to greater activity and efficiency in production. Without commerce, many who now earn and enjoy the material comforts of civilization, would rest contented with the few, rude, and scanty devices and satisfactions of barbarism. Commerce increases both the impulses toward and facilities for perpetual progress in the useful arts, whereof intellectual progress is the natural counterpart and concomitant. The merchant, therefore, whose sole attachment to his calling is a sordid lust of gain, coupled with a belief that he can acquire property faster or easier by exchanging other's products than by directly producing himself, is most unlikely to honour his vocation, or even to be eminently successful in the ranks of its votaries.

Assuming, then, that integrity, with an earnest conviction that this is for him the path of duty and of philanthropy, should form the bases of the character and career of a true merchant, let me proceed to indicate some of the qualities and capabilities for which he should be distinguished :

I. He should be methodical and exact in his calculations and dealings. His promises, however casual their origin or trivial their subject, should be performed to the letter; and he should insist on the like good faith from others, under penalty of never confiding a second time in one who has forfeited his word. The property or interest immediately involved may be of trifling value; but truth is no trifle. The merchant should, as early as practicable, separate his customers and others with whom he deals into two classesthose whose word is to be implicitly relied on, and the other sort and thenceforth treat each class according to their respective merits. To the latter he should say frankly, whenever the proper opportunity presents itself, "I cannot again confide in your word, because you have shewn me that you either cannot or will not redeem it. I do not judge you; but, if I trust at all, it must be some one who fulfils his promises, at whatever inconvenience or sacrifice." By this course, he will perpetually and strongly inculcate the advantages of probity and fidelity, and thus conduce to their increase and diffusion.

II. He should inflexibly set his face against any system of loose general credit on goods purchased for consumption. Credit is an excellent, a most beneficial device; but, like