own aim. Let us take an example. Suppose it to be told that a boat's crew land on an island, and that one of them, wandering from the rest, comes upon a spring, at which he would fain refresh himself, but is hindered by a chief of the country, who insists on his fighting him first with fists, that the fight takes place, and the chief is conquered. This story may be told, and clearly told, by naming the parties and the place, without any details of the fight, or aught else beyond bare mention of the facts. This might be history, but could not be poetry-no more poetry than naming a lady would be giving her picture. But if, instead of bare mention of the island, the particular spot in it, where the incident took place, with its fountain, trees, and grass, be vividly brought before you; and the chief and the newly-arrived stranger seem as if you knew and saw them, and the details of the fight and the bearing of the combatants be touched so picturesquely that you seem to be present at it. This, too, might be History, for she often loves to snatch her sister's pencil; but, without question, it would be poetry. And you have it in the 22nd Idyll of Theocritus, on the boxing bout between Pollux and Amycus.

XXIX.

ON THE UNSEEN.

URIOSITY about the unseen is not only natural, but the utter want of it argues a defective temperament. Impatient curiosity, however, and undue yearning, like all excess, 18 unwise, and illogical, and at variance with other convictions of the same person. None, surely, is there so unreasonable as to ask omniscience for a finite creature; and, if there must be limit, we should not quarrel with the placing

it, unless we can show where it could be better placed. In its effect of irritating the curiosity it checks, any limit anywhere would be the same, and the impatience that urges that irritation as a ground of removing the barrier is an argument against its removal. It is its quality of barrier, and not the space it encloses, that we quarrel with. To that barrier we dart in a straight line, and demand to look on the other side, without the shadow of a pretext that we have exhausted the unknown on this.

Restraint is ever irksome to human nature, and the sense of it is relative. The captive, fastened to the wall by a two-foot chain, would think it comparative freedom to move about his cell; admitted to the range of his cell the prison were a boon; free of the prison-yard, could he but roam the town; admitted to this, then for the range of the province; and the heaven of freedom were the full range of the kingdom. This obtained, he feels a ne exeat regno to be a galling restraint, although the land be his country, and that country England. And the feeling would be, not only natural, but free from blame; but not so free if he suspend activity of thought and action within the realm, and keep maundering of what he would like to know and do beyond it.

It is so with our race. God hath placed us here, on this earth, in the visible, with a ne exeat regno into the invisible. Occasional yearning for what is beyond, so it hinder nothing we should do or think here, is natural and just, and, within limits, healthful; but, beyond them, the reverse. To be much puzzled with what is out of sight and baffles inspection is the silliest thing possible next to the invention of plausibilities to lull an idle curiosity. It may be called philosophy, inasmuch as the many are too busy to meddle with it, but its wisdom is on a par with letting one's own dinner cool while speculating on what the man in the moon may be having for his.

XXX.

OUR DUTY TO SOCIETY.

UCH may be said on this subject, and much has been said, some of it excellent, but much of it trifling. After all, one thing is clear,

that, of what lies in a man's option to give or refuse, how much he should yield to society is a question for him to determine. Take counsel with his friends he should, perhaps, in some cases, and, if weak, he probably will; for some minds, yea, many, that have a bloom and a growth about them very taking to the eye, have the quality of flourishing ivy, that requires support and a something to grow to. And, for that matter, if you crave advice, without needing help also, you shall never want for advisers, ay, and peremptory ones, who will lay out

your time for you in a very satisfactory manner, especially

if they be too busy to lay out their own in the same way. An idle man with these is an abomination, at bottom rather envied, but not the less an abomination. And the definition of an idle man, if not always drawn out in words, is yet pretty well agreed upon among them, and means one who is not employed from morning to night in bread-getting or money-making. These look upon him as a recreant traitor to the claims of his country, who, not being necessitated to work for the sustentation of his body, sets seriously about the cultivation of his mind and character, or other the like toy or frivolity. If you employ your whole time in making more of what you already consider enough they have not a word to say. Active life, like

that, benefits your country, although your prosecution of it be only keeping out some one else that would transact the same business quite as well, if not better.

It is, however, to yourself that you are in the first place responsible a responsibility cast on every living soul from above. If you like work, and feel it your duty, do it; but, if your conviction be the other way, be not laughed, or sneered, or cajoled, into doing what, in the long run, will not avail you or others. Social action is a duty, and sometimes, remember, a stern one, and, if conscientiously discharged, does honour to the man-i. e. it makes him deserving of all honour, though, too often, without his attaining it, but, on the contrary, encountering bitterness and disappointment; but still, if you act like a man, it is well, and worth it, perhaps.

But if you sit sniggering, and simpering, and bowing, and agreeing to everything that is going on, while this job is being carried out, and that rascality slurred over, or this interest thrust aside that you were sent to defend; then, though your busy men, who mix in these things with a very definite object, though they do not always care to say what, may extol you as a very gentlemanly and proper personage that understands things, and move you votes of thanks for your public spirit, &c. you must feel in your heart, if it be not turned to leather or paper, that you are a mere plausibility, and, for any good that you are, the veriest idleness, push-pin, or pulling straws, had been better.

Live, not as

What, then, is a man to live as he likes-emancipate from shackle and restraint? By no means. He cannot, if he would, and he should not, if he could. you like, but as you ought, and you will not live without curb. Restraint is indispensable to progress; all power is the growth of it. Without it the stream of our life could not channel itself a course, but, like a river without banks,

would spread abroad, and lose itself in a lazy marsh. Obstruction, indeed, may be fatal, if stronger than the force it generates for its removal, but restraint is not obstruction. And note well that this restraint must not be to the quenching of our individuality, but only accumulated obstacles, narrowing, it may be, the sphere of its action, but, within that sphere, leaving us free. A man in a prison, but with his limbs unshackled, and free to attempt to get out if he can, is more at liberty than if he had fields to roam in, but loaded with infrangible fetters, which last is, at best, the condition of him who foregoes his right of private judgment, and puts his conscience in the keeping of another. The abnegation of private judgment, which some preach up, is but a moral Hindooism, and, roundly considered, more pernicious. The poor wretch who cast himself under the Juggernaut wheels, attested his sincerity, and was crushed clean out of life in so doing, while the votaries of our moral Juggernaut still live, and try for that significance and influence which they persuade themselves they forego. Many, who have quenched private judgment in themselves, preach the doctrine all the more eagerly to others. It is the old story of the fox who had lost his tail, and thereupon harangued his brethren on the inutility of a brush. His audience laughed at his logic, and kept their tails. So may Englishmen keep to the sacred right of private judgment, which lies at the bottom of all that is of worth and value in business or morals, politics or religion, in this world or the next.

Wants occur in cycles. The one great want of modern times is individuality. Social action has reached a pitch that threatens to destroy that which has so long impeded its progress, and without which, nevertheless, further progress and permanent security are alike impossible. As long as the tendency of too intense an individuality was to multiply points of repulsion, which the social spirit had to