prove your habits of observation. To know how to observe, and to distinguish what you do know into the degrees of knowing, is a rare faculty, which is all the more rare from its not being attempted sufficiently early, or not being prosecuted; and this usually from discouragement at the first attempt. It is a faculty, like many others, which is given to us all in various degrees of power; but the weakest has enough of it to repay cultivation, and in the strongest it is all the stronger for early and constant exercise.

As all self-culture, however, is imperfect, which is without reference to conduct in life, a parting word on practical action and its teaching will not be out of place here. Do what you can, when you can, as well as you can; and let every act be your teacher in future doing, which it will be if properly challenged, not else. If you look on it complacently it will smile back upon you complacent and empty; but, to earnest asking, your best and most prosperous action will be eloquent of something amiss, something in your mode of working that is peculiar, not to this act, but to all your action; some besetment of your own, or something in others that you had not sufficiently taken into account. Trace these, the weeds, it may be, that just come to the surface of life, or duck under, according to the strength of the current; trace them to their roots, which are always there firm and flourishing at the bottom. A few acts, well analyzed, may yield more experience— that golden experience which is so large a part of the wisdom of this nether world-than half a life of action where everything is left to make what impression it can of itself, wholly unchallenged.

In classifying your conclusions, use caution as for your very life; for your life's guidance, and the lower wisdom, that is to rudder it, is indeed as your life. Accept no inference but after anxiously weighing the pro and con. It

will not be tedious, but, on the contrary, if you are fitted for the work, it will be amusing as well as profitable— quite as amusing as chess, and as great, or greater, exercise of all your powers, with the advantage of the results remaining, and not being swept with the pieces from the board.

Your conclusions, as fast as you make them, may, with their objects, be classed under one or other of the following heads:-1st, Unknown—i. e. objects about which you have yet come to no opinion either way; 2nd, Doubtful; 3rd, Probable; 4th, Almost certain; which fourth head it should be your aim to get as full as you conscientiously can, but be very cautious, however full, of pushing the contents on to the fifth head, Certain; which, with the wise, will always be the least tenanted, and, with fools, the

most.

XXV.

ERROR AND SELF-DECEPTION.

ORALISTS of all ages have lamented the liability of our race to error-how men rush here, rush there, in pursuit of phantoms, blown about

by the wind of every doctrine. All this is very true, but he that has to do with his fellows, or is meditating upon the history of mankind, and would account to himself for much that is done, and much that is undone, by our erring race, would do well to bear one thing in mind, which, if I mistake not, will serve to explain many seeming contradictions, viz. that, after all, it is a very hard thing to deceive men, but an easy thing, comparatively, to help them deceive themselves. In this lies the success of imposture; it was previously palatable to the deceived,

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something they were yearning for, or at least expecting, or for which, at least, they had aptitudes, that, at the approach of the dear deceit, threw open their conviction, and in it entered.

This will account for great popular errors, and for much individual aberration; for the throngs that have been deceived, from the days of John of Leyden to those of Brothers and Johanna Southcote, and for easy victims of every variety of delusion, whether of trade-speculation, witchcraft, or the isms. Surely nothing short of the eagerness to realize their own yearnings could have retained the confidence of their followers, after repeated failure, in some who have prophesied the world's end at a fixed time. If a man predict a matter in which we are indifferent, as what weather it will be this day month, failure will destroy his credit; but not so if it be a matter we ardently wish for or expect, and the possibility of its happening remains. He may colour his failure with any plausibility, and his credulous hearers will help him in doing so, and hang their faith anew on each fresh prediction of what they are desirous of happening.

Persuasion prospers

The principle runs through life. chiefly where our convictions rush out, and see themselves in it. It is often a Narcissus-like love of ourselves that grounds our docility. It is the secret of the courtier who sways his prince, of the waiting-maid that gets the length of her mistress's foot, and, in fine, of all undue influence, that puts the simple in the hands of the subtle, or even higher intellects in the hands of the low and ignorant, but who are in unsuspected possession of this key to their superior's weakness. It is the secret also of more amiable and legitimate influence. It is often unconsciously the prosperous element in the lover's suit, bringing it to a fair issue even beyond hope; though, too often, the result be not hopeful, as when it brings about a union between two

persons who ultimately find themselves not so suited as they had thought, and one of them wakes to the dreary conviction that flattered self-love had too much sway in the matter. The aberrations of multitudes and the bewilderment of a poor maid have this in common, that the delusion prospers less by what it brings than by what it finds.

XXVI.

POETRY AND COMMON-PLACE.

OETRY is power; and genius characteristically shows itself in doing great things with small means, and with ease. Whatever suggests apparatus and effort on the poet's part is, so far, detrimental. A poet appears great when he appears at home among his great thoughts, even to seeming unconsciousness that they are great, and half making the reader of the same mind, they flash upon his conviction so clear and familiar. But if the poet appear struggling with a great idea, and wrestling, as it were, coram oculis, to fix its expression, the effect is rather painful than sublime; and one thing we clearly feel, that our teacher hath not mastered his subject, and we cannot, therefore, yield our convictions to him on what is alien to his own. It is evidently an unexamined bale under which he is staggering, and whether its contents be of value or worthless he knows not as yet, but pitches it down before us to examine for ourselves. 'Tis well if it prove worth the pains; for it often happens that there is much writhing and contortion in delivering very empty packages in this way. Readers in their horror of commonplace, very much paraded now-a-days, put poets who will

pander to it, to much posture-making. With some persons everything is common-place of which they have often heard, although they have no definite ideas upon the matter. Truths presented to persons of this temper, are common-place because they have often heard the matter put in problem, though on which side the truth lies they have no notion. They dismiss the conclusion because the topic is familiar. These people are ever longing to be startled, and it is hard to startle one who having but heard of a thing, thenceforth sets it down, without more, among stale matters. The unimproving result for such is this, that, novelty being the price of his attention, his temper will turn him from each object successively long before he is properly acquainted with it; for knowledge grows but as the novelty wears off.

That, truly, which is thoroughly familiar and known to us, should alone be set down as common-place, and so dispense with being handled for itself. There are many truths, which, except for grounding other truths, it were tedious to be always insisting on. They form, indeed, the veritable and choice treasure of the human race, and accumulate slowly, but surely, with the progress of thought. But of these, be they few or many, that, as single thoughts, have grown so familiar to the conviction of mankind, as to be justly called common-place, I question much if the sequence of any three be so settled in the minds of ten in a hundred, as to deserve that name. The possession of single thoughts too rarely leads to knowledge of their connection. We float on life's surface among great truths, and move from one to the other, and see not how they be but peaks thrust up above the waters, but rooting downwards with enlarging base, and interjoining below.