shade, at the same twilight, or the same dawn, with the rest of his generation. A truly great man has true and boundless sympathy with the masses, and manifests it hourly by a manly simplicity. He is a real flesh and blood man; his hyperthropic heart beats with benevolence toward all; his aspirations breathe continually peace and good-will to all sections and conditions.

The late Dr. Arnold and Dr. Channing are two of the best specimens; and come up fully to our ideal of great men. The buffeting of the world and the friction of opposition strengthened and polished both their understandings. They possessed the greatest moral lever that can be wielded, namely, Love. Life is doubtless much embittered by the stings and arrows of our own pointing. No ill is possible to him who has no seed of mischief within himself. Man, as a general rule, may avoid pain if he wills it; for it is now well known pain is only a warning voice, intimating to us that we have got into a false position, that we have been doing something we ought not to do, and leaving undone something we ought to do. Man, if he would be content to be what nature made him, need scarely know what pain is. We resemble (as Dr. Edward Johnson observes) Rabelias's wooden pegs; we are like square men that have got thrust into round holes. No wonder we are uneasy and suffer pain :-we don't fit our position-the cogs, and the vacant places for them in their revolution, do not correspond; it is discord versus harmony-slavery versus liberty; not very intelligible, perhaps, to him who finds whistling easier than right thinking.

The case of Tantalus, in the region of poetic punishment, is somewhat to be pitied, because the fruits that hung around him retired from his hand: but what tenderness can be claimed by those who, though they suffer the agonies of Tantalus, will never lift a hand for their own relief? Happiness, we repeat, depends on the health of the body and the sanity of the mind; and these blessings are in the power of most persons to obtain, by the simple means of exercising the moral and intellectual attributes. Misery, on the contrary, is the sure doom of every individual who is abandoned to his animal propensities.

But if education were guided by the physiological laws, reasoning man would blush to own that he had not in every instance a moral control over his actions. The query has been put-When will wisdom begin her gentle reign? The reply is obvious;—when peace and love to all men will rule paramount; when we attend to God's word more, and less to fallible men's human creeds; not till then. Neither peace nor happiness can ever be experienced in a sectarian world. The first great work to be done, is the reconciliation of conflicting sects. If this is impossible, then every thing else is impossible; and no reformation can give satisfaction. Popery will always stop free discussion when it can. Free Protestant sects will always object to the education of children in common; and therefore a harmonious system of juvenile training is impeded. Human laws originating in these conflicting sentiments, will also baffle and thwart one another. The Divine law alone harmonises all opinions; and that is to be revealed, or discovered,-not enacted.

It is likewise well-known that the greatest obstruction to the spread of Christianity in heathen countries, is the palpable and undeniable depravity of Christian nations. True, they are unable to read our books, but they can read our lives. Nevertheless, Atheists have no right to confound Christianity with its professors. Common candour requires that we should judge of it, as it came from its founder. We discern in Him great earnestness, but conjoined with entire self-control. True religion disclaims connection with the usurpers of its name. When the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, says the inspired writer -who shall prepare himself for the battle?

In Hartley Coleridge's notes on Shakspere, the last sentiment of the work, one of the most pregnant in it all, we have the following hint :-" It is high time for the Church to cast away everything that is merely formal, non-essential, or dubious, and take a firm stand on the vital points of Christianity," and not one of the least vital points is the music of silence. Here are a thousand variations. Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man. The public is a body very much like that which assembles round a dinner table, and the wise host will cater for all.

Merit is no match for mammon and tact. Set up a golden calf, and there is no lack of worshippers. There is, however, more merit due to good health, than some of our guides have ever dreamt of. Still, the least important matters take the strongest hold of the mind. In a publication called The World, there is an amusing paper

giving an account of an odd gentleman who apportioned his regards amongst his fellow-creatures according as they were hale or vigorous; and certainly those are the most useful members of society, and command our esteem, who exercise the most self-denial; as by temperance and regularity in all things, we not only better our own physical and moral condition, but are in a more fitting state to ameliorate that of our neighbour. There is, indeed, a deep moral under the old gentleman's whimsicalities. Health being the primary ordination of nature, disease and infirmities only exist by reason of violations of that degree. There is, therefore, a presumption in favour of the man who is healthy, that he has acted a wise and rational part: whence, of course, arises merit, and praise is due accordingly. When we hear of a man complaining of his headache, dyspepsia, &c., and know that his ailments are the unavoidable results of his inordinate attention to business, which application is for no better object than to enable him to live in a fine house, and make a great dash in the world,-is sympathy truly due to him? Is not his loss of health, on the contrary, the very measure of his moral delinquencies, and a reason for putting upon him the stigma of covetousness and mean ambition? When a lady, not properly educated, tells us, by the words of her mouth, and the paleness of her cheeks, the tightness of her waist (sometimes, not always, arising from malformation), that she is entirely out of health, is she truly entitled to pity, if we know the evil is solely owing to the artificial and erroneous way in which she persists in living and dressing, contrary to all good

advice on the subject? It appears to us, that she incurs a just penalty, as one guilty of a kind of daily suicide. Can an elderly man, bankrupt in bodily power, and full of vexing ailments in consequence of his acting the gay votary of pleasure in youth, with any face demand such compassion as we feel to be due to an unforeseen misfortune? Are not his troubles rather the simple exponent of his vices, and a ground for something like that disrespect in which the vicar held the sportsman? Some are weakly in consequence of hereditary qualities. But if we may be proud of an ancestry for its rank, wealth, or unvarying good conduct, may we not also take some pride in one which has sent us a good constitution, and a natural stock of health? And is it not, on the other hand, a discredit to be il-legitimately born of people who have, by their transgressions of every physical law, or neglect, incurred unsoundness, whether mentally or bodily? Even those diseases which, being endemic, may befall any of us-is there not a demerit connected with them, though of a more general nature, seeing that they come from a traditionary virus or miasma, which only expresses some horrible error of life in former generations of our race? May not the soil that once nourished the tree of life, yet yield us fruits able to restore our lost immortality? A paradise on earth where there would be no struggling, no effort needed to gain the port; rest would be no paradise at all. The secret springs-the waters which shall be able to heal all our maladies, lie in putting a curb upon "our unbitted wills." The disturber of our peace is within us; the worm that preys upon our happi