the profoundest and acutest of living theologians is fain to have recourse, in the case of this saddest of all sad thoughts, to the same relief which I have counselled for life's little worries - oh how little when we think of this! Archbishop Whately, in treating of this great difficulty, suggests the idea that in a higher state the soul may have the power of as decidedly turning the thoughts away from a painful subject as we now have of turning the eyes away from a disagreeable sight.

I thought of these things this afternoon in a gay and stirring scene. It was a frozen lake of considerable extent, lying in a beautiful valley, at the foot of a majestic hill. The lake was covered with people, all in a state of high enjoyment: scores of skaters were flying about, and there was a roaring of curling-stones like the distant thunder that was heard by Rip van Winkle. The sky was blue and sunshiny; the air crisp and clear; the cliffs, slopes, and fields around were fair with untrodden snow; but still one could not quite exclude the recollection that this brisk frost, so bracing and exhilarating to us, is the cause of great suffering to multitudes. The frost causes most outdoor work to cease. No building, no fieldwork, can go forward, and so the rost cuts off the bread from many hungry mouths; and fireless rooms and thin garments are no defence against this bitter chill. Well, you would never be cheerful at all but for the pressed gift of occasional forgetfulness! Those who have seen things too accurately as they are, have always been sorrowful even when unsoured men. Here, you man (one of six or seven eager parties with chairs and gimlets), put on my skates. Don't bore that hole in the heel of the boot too deep; you may penetrate to something

more sensitive than leather. Screw in; buckle the straps, but not too tight and now we are on our feet, with the delightful sense of freedom to fly about in any direction with almost the smooth swiftness of a bird. Come, my friend, let us be off round the lake, with long strokes, steadily, and not too fast. We may not be quite like Sidney's Arcadian shepherd-boy, piping as if he never would grow old; yet let us be like kindly skaters, forgetting, in the exhilarating exercise that quickens the pulse and flushes the cheek, that there are such things as evil and worry in this world!

CHAPTER XI.

CONCERNING GIVING UP AND COMING DOWN.

OT so very much depends upon a beginning after all. The inexperienced writer racks his brain for something striking to set out with. He is anxious to make a good impression at first. He fancies that unless you hook your reader by your first sentence, your reader will break away; making up his mind that what you have got to say is not worth the reading. Now it cannot be doubted that a preacher, who is desirous of keeping his congregation in that dead silence and fixedness of attention which one sometimes sees in church, must, as a general rule, produce that audible hush by his first sentence if he is to produce it at all. If people in church are permitted for even one minute at the beginning of the sermon to settle themselves, bodily and mentally, into the attitude of inattention, and of thinking of something other than the preacher's words, the preacher will hardly catch them up again. He will hardly, by any amount of earnestness, eloquence, pointedness, or oddity, gain that universal and sympathetic interest of which he flung away his chance by some long, involved, indirect, and dull sentence at starting. But the writer is not tried by so exacting a standard. Most readers will glance over the first few pages of a book before throwing it aside as stupid. The writer may

overcome the evil effect of a first sentence, or even a first paragraph, which may have been awkward, ugly, dull. yea silly. I could name several very popular works which set out in a most unpromising way. I particularly dislike the first sentence of Adam Bede, but it is redeemed by hundreds of noble ones. It is not certain that the express train which is to devour the four hundred miles between London and Edinburgh in ten hours, shall run its first hundred yards much faster than the lagging parliamentary. There can be no question that the man whom all first visitants of the House of Commons are most eager to see and hear is Mr. Disraeli. He is the lord of debate; not unrivalled perhaps, but certainly unsurpassed. Yet everybody knows he made a very poor beginning. In short, my reader, if something that is really good is to follow, a bad outset may be excused. One readily believes what one wishes to believe; and I wish to hold by this principle. For I have accumulated many thoughts Concerning Giving Up and Coming Down; and I have got them lying upon this table, noted down on six long slips of paper. I vainly fancy that I have certain true and useful things to say; but I have experienced extraordinary difficulty in deciding how I should begin to say them. I have sat this morning by the fireside for an hour, looking intently at the glowing coals; but though I could think of many things to say about the middle of my essay, I could think of nothing satisfactory with which to begin it. But comfort came as the thought gradually developed itself, that it really mattered very little how the essay might be begun, provided it went on; and, above all, ended. A dull beginning will probably be excused to the essayist more readily than to the writer whose sole purpose is to amuse. The essayist

pleases himself with the belief that his readers are by several degrees more intelligent and thoughtful than the ordinary readers of ordinary novels; and that many of them, if they find thoughts which are just and practical, will regard as a secondary matter the order in which these thoughts come. The sheep's head of northern cookery has not, at the first glance, an attractive aspect: nor is the nutriment it affords very symmetrically arranged but still, as Dr. John Brown has beautifully remarked, it supplies a deal of fine confused feeding. I look at my six pieces of paper, closely written over in a very small hand. They seem to me as the sheep's head. There is feeding there, albeit somewhat confused. It matters not much where we shall begin. Come, my friendly reader, and partake of the homely fare.

The great lesson which the wise and true man is learning through life, is, how to COME DOWN without GIVING UP. Reckless and foolish people confuse these two things. It is far easier to give up than to come down, it is far less repugnant to our natural self-conceit. It befits much better our natural laziness. It enables us to fancy ourselves heroic, when in truth we are vain, slothful, and fretful. I have not words to express my belief on this matter so strongly as I feel it. Oh! I venerate the man who with a heart unsoured has come down, and come down far, but who never will give up!

I fancy my reader wondering at my excitement, and doubtful of my meaning. Let me explain my terms. What is meant by giving up: what by coming down?

By coming down I understand this: Learning from the many mortifications, disappointments, and rebuffs which we must all meet as we go on through life, to think more humbly of ourselves, intellectually, morally,