MORAL COURAGE.—In an address, entitled Human Happiness—see book notices—we find the following very straightforward definition and advice:—
"What do I mean by moral courage? I mean the energy and spirit to say and do what is right and true, in a respectful and proper manner, though it be unpalatable to some, or apparently against our own interest. I do not intend you to suppose that I am advising you needlessly to tell all you know concerning either yourselves or others, but that you should avoid, as much as in you lies, doing or saying anything which you would be ashamed to acknowledge, if necessary to do so; and then when you have committed errors and faults towards others, should not hesitate to own and correct them. Young ladies, this would be moral courage. Do not, I beseech you, forget what it is, and do not hesitate to practise it, for it is a beautiful quality; it will always promote your comfort, respectability, and happiness, and very often your immediate and best interests."
FLOWERS AND THEIR INFLUENCE.—The people of France pay much attention to flowers, and thus one of their best writers on Education, M. Aimé Martin, describes the effect of this taste:—
"In all countries women love flowers, in all countries they form nosegays of them; but it is only in the bosom of plenty that they conceive the idea of embellishing their dwellings with them. The cultivation of flowers among the peasantry indicates a revolution in all their feelings. It is a delicate pleasure, which makes its way through coarse organs; it is a creature, whose eyes are opened; it is the sense of the beautiful, a faculty of the soul which is awakened. Man, then, understands that there is in the gifts of nature a something more than is necessary for existence; color, forms, odors, are perceived for the first time, and these charming objects have at last spectators. Those who have travelled in the country can testify, that a rose-tree under the window, a honeysuckle around the door of a cottage, are always a good omen to the tired traveller. The hand which cultivates flowers is not closed against the supplications of the poor, or the wants of the stranger."
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS OF YOUNG MEN.—These are becoming the rule in our cities. We have before us the "First Annual Report" of one formed in Boston a year or two ago. Why might not similar associations be formed among the young women? Many a girl from the country has been lost, who might have lived virtuously, happily, and usefully, had she, when coming to the city, known friends of her own sex to whom she might have gone for counsel in her loneliness and sorrows. But these efforts to save young men will gladden the hearts of mothers and sisters, whose brothers and sons are gone from the domestic roof out into the dangers and temptations of the world. We subjoin the opening remarks, or reasons for the association:—
"The wise and good men of Boston have, in times past, mourned over many a youth of promise who, fresh from his rural home, has yielded to the temptations of the city life, whose dangers he knew not of, and perished. Individual benevolence has done much to avert the evil; but no adequate remedy was found till Christian young men were banded together to receive their young brethren from the country and guard them with Christlike sympathy until they could securely walk amid the dangers of the city. Such a band is our association."