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from France, Germany, Turkey, and other countries, may legitimately be more tolerant than others.

But, referring again to my immediate subject, the Indian moiety of the House that Scott Built, I would observe that it was pleasantly remarked to me the other day, that if smoking should become permissible among the servants of Mr. Company's successors, it would be in accordance with Mr. Philosopher Square's fitness of things, recorded in that pleasant work in which Mr. Henry Fielding recites the humourous adventures of Thomas Jones, to use only the "hookah" in the upper classes of the service, and the "hubble-bubble" in the lower. At the same time it was suggested that the quadrangle, in which the entertainment was given to the Grand Turk, might be formed into a sumptuous Divan, in which Oriental princes and potentates might be received by the Minister and his chief officers, seated on low cushions, each with a hookah in his mouth, the fumes of that description of pipe being, I am told, of a pleasantly odoriferous character. I am given to understand that there is already a project for roofing it over with glass, so as not to exclude Heaven's light, together with the rain and the wind; and truly if it should be warmed with occult hot-water pipes, and decorated with choice exotics of tropical growth, it would be a reception-room wherein might be welcomed even the Great Mogul himself, if that once magnificent race of emperors had not snuffed itself out at Delhi.

There are other reception-rooms, too, in different parts of the building -or waiting-rooms, as they are officially called-which do great credit to the taste of Mr. Digby Wyatt, and will add much to the respectability of the establishment; for it was a sorry sight to see, in the temporary Victorian lodgings, great generals or high civil functionaries from the Indies, or the turbaned ambassadors of mighty Indian chiefs, hanging about in the obscure passages or caged in the messengers' cupboards, whilst they were waiting for official interviews, or seeking to pay friendly visits to the ministers of the departments. I am all for a becoming respectability of appearance, solid and substantial, and free from gauds; and I think that in the new House all the conditions of a first-rate public office have been fulfilled, under the judicious auspices of Mr. Wyatt. Accustomed to the sombre simplicity of the House that John Built, I could have dispensed with some of the ornamentation, but as the useful has not been sacrificed to the ornamental, I am content with the gross result; and I wish all my friends many years of health, and happiness, and useful work in the HOUSE THAT SCOTT BUILT.

Time.

THE looseness of idea which is traceable in many of our semi-philosophic phrases and opinions offers a curious subject for reflection. Habitually, partly from mental indolence probably, partly from inherent unscientific carelessness of mind, we are satisfied with approaches to an idea about, or an explanation of, the phenomena which catch our attention,-with what Dr. Chalmers used to call "the inkling of an idea,"—not so much Iwith half an idea as with the raw materials of an idea. We are content with feeling that a conception, and probably a true conception, lurks under the expressions we hear and repeat; and under cover of this inarticulate sentiment (for it is usually nothing more) we absolve ourselves from the exertion of analysing the conception, embodying it in appropriate language, or even carrying it so far as distinct and expressible notions. We use a phrase, and then fancy we have done a thing,-have elucidated a fact or given utterance to an idea. We employ words not to express thought, nor (as Talleyrand suggested) to conceal it; but to hide its absence and to escape its toil.

No word has been oftener made to do duty in this way than TIME. We constantly say-speaking of material things-that "Time" destroys buildings, effaces inscriptions, removes landmarks, and the like. In the same way-speaking of higher matters appertaining to men and nations, to moral and intellectual phenomena-we are accustomed to say that "Time" obliterates impressions, cures faults, solaces grief, heals wounds, extinguishes animosities ;-as well as that under its influence empires decay, people grow enlightened, errors get trodden out, brute natures become humanised, and so on,-that the world "makes progress," in short. Now what do we mean when we speak thus; or do most of us mean anything? What are the mighty and resistless agencies hidden under those four letters, and embodied in, or implied by, that little word?

Sir Humphry Davy, in those Consolations in Travel which worthily solaced the last days of a philosopher," endeavoured to answer this question as regards mere physical phenomena. He analyses the several causes which, in the course of ages, contribute and combine to produce the ruins which cover the surface of the earth, and most of which are more lovely in their decay than ever in their pristine freshness. Putting aside all results traceable to the hand of man, to the outrages of barbarian invaders, or the greed of native depredators,-leaving out of view, too, the destruction wrought from time to time by lightning, the tempest, and the earthquake,—he shows that the principal among those elements of destruction, which operate slowly and surely, generation after generation, are traceable to heat and gravitation. More precisely, they may be classed under two heads, the chemical and the mechanical, usually acting

in combination, and the former much the most powerful of the two. The contraction and expansion of the materials of which all buildings are composed, due to changes of temperature, operate to loosen their cohesion, especially where wood or iron enters largely into their composition; and in northern climates, wherever water penetrates among the stones, its peculiarity of sudden and great expansion when freezing, renders it one of the most effective agencies of disintegration known. The rain that falls year by year, independent of its ceaseless mechanical effect in carrying off minute fragments of all perishable materials, is usually, and especialy near cities, more or less charged with carbonic acid, the action of which upon the carbonate of lime, which forms so large an element in most stones, is sometimes portentously rapid, as indeed we see every day around us. The air, again, through the instrumentality of the oxygen which is one of its component parts, is about the most powerful agency of destruction furnished by the whole armoury of nature it corrodes the iron by which the stones are clamped together; it causes the gradual decay of the timber of which the roofs of buildings are usually constructed, so that we seldom find any traces of them in the more ancient remains which have come down to us. Thus the great principle of organic life becomes also, in its inevitable and eternal action, the great principle also of decay and dissolution. Then follows what we may term the unintentional or accidental agencies of living things. As soon as the walls and pediments and columns of a statue or a temple have lost their polished surface through the operation of the chemical influences we have enumerated, the seeds of lichens and mosses and other parasitic plants, which are constantly floating in the atmosphere, settle in the roughnesses, grow, decay, and decompose, form soil, attract moisture, and are followed by other and stronger plants, whose roots force their way into the crevices thus formed by "Time," and end by wrenching asunder the damaged and disintegrated blocks of marble. The animal creation succeeds the vegetable and aids its destructive operations; the fox burrows, the insect bores, the ant saps the foundations of the building; and thus by a series of causes, all of them in the ordinary and undying course of nature, the most magnificent edifices ever raised by the genius, the piety, and the industry of man are brought to an end, as by a fixed and irreversible decree. And this is "Time," so far as its physical agencies are concerned.

When we turn from the influence of Time on the work of man's hands to consider its influence on the man himself, we find a very different mode of operation. "Time" with individuals acts partly through the medium of our capacities and powers, but more, probably, through our defects and the feebleness and imperfection of our nature. It ought not, perhaps, to be so, but it is so. Time heals our wounds and brings comfort to our sorrows, but how? "It is beneath the dignity of thinking beings (says Bolingbroke) to trust to time and distraction as the only cure for grief— to wait to be happy till we can forget that we are miserable, and owe to the weakness of our faculties a result for which we ought to be indebted to their strength." Yet it is precisely thus that "thinking beings" gene

rally act, or find that "Time acts with them. Half the healing influence of Time depends solely upon the decay of memory. It is a law of nature --and like all nature's laws, in the aggregate of its effects a beneficent one-that, while the active powers strengthen with exercise, passive impressions fade and grow feeble with repetition. The physical blow or prick inflicted on a spot already sore with previous injuries is doubly felt; the second moral stroke falls upon a part which has become partially benumbed and deadened by the first. Then new impressions, often far feebler, often far less worthy of attention, pass like a wave over the older ones, cover them, cicatrise them, push them quietly into the background. We could not retain our griefs in their first freshness, even if we would. As Mr. Arnold says:

This is the curse of life: that not

A nobler, calmer, train

Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot
Our passions from our brain.

But each day brings its petty dust,
Our soon choked souls to fill;
And we forget because we must,

And not because we will.

In a word, we do not overcome our sorrow we only overlive it. It is succeeded-not subdued; covered up, mossed over, like the temples of Egypt or the tombs of the Campagna-not conquered.

It is the same, too, usually, with our faults. "Time" cures them, we say. It would be more correct to say that it removes the temptation to them. Sometimes it is only that pleasures cease to please; we grow wise and good through mere satiety,-if wisdom and goodness that come to us through such an operation of "Time" be not a most fallacious and cynical misnomer. The passions that led our youth astray die out with age from the slow changes in our animal frame, from purely physical modifications of our constitution; the appetites and desires that spring from the hot blood and abounding vigour of our early years no longer torment the languid pulse and phlegmatic temperament of after life; the world and the devil, not the flesh, are then the tempters to be prayed against. The frailties of

cheerful creatures whose most sinful deeds Were but the overbeating of the heart,

come easily and naturally to an end when from the dulled emotions and impaired vitality of advancing age we feel nothing vividly and desire nothing strongly. Time does not so much cure our faults as kill them.

Sometimes—often, indeed, we would hope-Time brings experience in its train. We learn that vice "does not pay." We discover by degrees that the sin is far less sweet than we fancied, and that it costs much dearer than we had bargained for. We grow better calculators than we were; we reflect more profoundly; we measure and weigh more accurately. Occasionally, no doubt, "Time" operates through a nobler class of influences. The observation of life shows us the extensive misery wrought by all wrong-doing; we find those around us whom we love better than

ourselves; and affection and philanthropy gradually initiate us into virtue and self-denial. Growing sense aids the operations of dulled sensibility;we become less passionate and fierce as our nerves become less irritable ; we drop our animosities as failing memory ceases to remind us of the offences which aroused them, and as a calmer judgment enables us to measure those offences more justly; we are less willing to commit crimes or neglect duties or incur condemnation for the sake of worldly advancement, as we discover how little happiness that advancement brings us, and as we reflect for how short a period we can hope to enjoy it. But, through all and to the last, the physical influence of "Time" upon our bodily frame is the best ally of its moral influence on our character and our intelligence. Time brings mellowness to man much as it brings beauty to ruins-by the operation of decay. We melt and fade into the gentle and the good, just as palaces and temples crumble into the picturesque.

When we come to speak of nations, and of national progress, the idea of "Time" embraces a far wider range of influences, both as to number and duration, which we can only glance at. Time, as it operates on empires and on peoples, on their grandeur and their decadence, includes the aggregate of the efforts, separate or combined, of every individual among them, through a long succession of decades and of centuries. Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the least sound of his many sagacious and suggestive writings his inconsiderate attack upon Colenso-speaks much of the Zeit-geist, the Spirit of the Age, and urges us to trust to its slow and irresistible influence, and not to seek to hasten it, that is, as far as we could understand him, to abstain from all those acts and efforts of which its influence is made up. Mr. Leckie, again, in his admirable and philosophical work, The History of Rationalism, especially in the chapter on magic and witchcraft, writes as if the decay of superstition, which he chronicles so well, were owing to a sort of natural spontaneous growth of the human mind, and its added knowledge, and not to any distinct process of reasoning, or to the effects of the teaching of any particular men, out of which alone in truth such growth could come. But Time," in reality, when used in speaking of nations means nothing but the sum of all the influences which, in the course of time, individual labourers in the field of discovery, invention, reasoning, and administration, have brought to bear upon the world. In the work of religious truth and freedom "Time" means the blood of many martyrs, the toil of many brains, slow steps made good through infinite research, small heights and spots of vantage ground won from the retiring forces of ignorance and prejudice by generations of stern struggle and still sterner patience, gleams of light, and moments of inspiration interspersed amid years of darkness and despondency, thousands of combatants falling on the field, thousands of labourers dying at the plough, with here and there a Moses mounting the heights of Pisgah to survey, through the mist of tears and with the eye of faith, the promised land which his followers may reach at last. In material progress, in those acts of life which in their aggregate make up the frame-work and oil the wheels of our complicated civilization, "Time" signifies the hard-won

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