firstfruits; for it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible, is its goal to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow.

Do you, reader, actually love life, health, and comfort, honour, security, the society of friends? and do actually dislike death, sickness, pain, poverty, disgrace, separation from those to whom you are attached? Then work whilst it is called to-day. It would be easy to multiply illustrations on the vantage-ground a man has who labours. Read our favourite orators, poets, and philosophers again and again; and when you are saturated with sublime, beautiful, and matchless compositions, you will be enabled to know the difference between the philosophy of thorns and the philosophy of fruits,-between the philosophy of words and the philosophy of works.

One patent fact we must transcribe from Macaulay's profound and brilliant "Essays," which if attended to, would save a world of pain and needless anxiety. "He would have been as ready as Zeno himself to maintain that no bodily comfort which could be devised by the skill and labour of a hundred generations, would give happiness to a man whose mind was under the tyranny of licentious appetite, of envy, hatred, and of fear." All ailments may be found in the antecedents that have been operating upon us. Bacon, who has been compared to Moses standing on Mount Pisgah, has this wise saw:- Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them." But such is the constitution of man, that labour may be styled its own reward. Nor will any external incitements

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be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body. Time lost-money lost. Montaigne set down in his book of expenses-"Item. For a fit of idleness, £1000.

The dance of spirits, the bound of vigour, readiness of enterprise, and defiance of fatigue, are reserved for him who braces his nerves, and hardens his fibres, and keeps his limbs pliant with motion, and by frequent exposure fortifies his frame against the common accidents of cold and heat. Locke, in his System of Education, urges the necessity of trade to men of all ranks and professions; that when the mind is weary with its proper task, it may be relaxed by a slighter attention to some mechanical operation. It is enough to know-to be idle is to be vicious. Conceive a great machine, of which the idea resides in a single mind, and of which the difficult pieces are confided to different workmen, who are scattered, and are strangers to one another; none of them knowing the work as a whole, or the definitive and general result to which it concerns; yet each executing with intelligence and liberty, by rational and voluntary acts, what he has the charge of such is the plan of Providence upon the world, executed by the hand of mankind.

Doubtless the mere animal that has to pass six days of the week in hard labour, benefits greatly by a seventh day of mere animal rest and enjoyment; the repose, according to its nature, proves of signal use to it, just because it is a repose according to its nature. But man is not a mere animal. We likewise coincide with the author of England

and its People, that the pulpit addresses of the day have a tendency to concentrate and strengthen, not scatter and weaken the faculties. The one day in the seven sometimes strikes the tone for the other six,-providing they have not been mesmerised by the icy ones. Chesterfield, with his cold and courtly maxims and little discrimination, would have blighted all the budding romance of the sanguine and nervous temperament. Hugh Miller, speaking of the brain of Shakspere, inquires-"Could it have been some four pounds weight of convoluted matter, divided into two hemispheres, that after originating these buoyant immaterialities, projected them upon the broad current of time, and bade them to sail onward and forward for ever? I cannot believe it. The sparks of a sky rocket survive the rocket itself but a very few seconds. I cannot believe that these thoughts of Shakspere that 'wander through eternity,' are the mere sparks of an exploded rocket, the mere scintillations of a little galvanic battery made of fibre and albumen, like that of the torpedo, and whose ashes would now lie in the corner of a snuff-box."

Let our liberal friend, the author of the Sublimity of Nature, listen to the soul-kindling words of the late Sidney Smith, who was less shackled by party connections than most. "Nature speaks to the mind of man immediately in beautiful and sublime language: she astonishes him with magnitude, appals him with darkness, cheers him with splendour, soothes him with harmony, captivates him with emotion, enchants him with fame. She never intended man to walk among her flowers, and her fields, and her streams, unmoved; nor did she rear the strength of

the hills in vain, or mean that we should look with a stupid heart on the wild glory of the torrent, bursting from the darkness of the forest, and dashing over the crumbling rock. I would as soon deny hardness, or softness, or figure, to be qualities of matter, as I would beauty or sublimity to its qualities."

May we humbly ask-Why should not our workhouses, infirmaries, asylums, &c., be self-supporting? The produce from the land, and the produce from the factories, are the wealth which supplies all wants; directly by consumption, and indirectly by exchange for other articles. Why not purchase land, and annex it to every workhouse, &c., and keep the able-bodied inmates healthily employed? When will this rational and glorious work be begun? What means this repugnance to the science of external circumstances? Who says it will damp all exertion? who now asks if men were once to take up the notion that they were the creatures of circumstances, they would yield themselves, in a blind and passive manner, to outward agencies, and would soon lapse into a state of primitive barbarism? May we be allowed to look, per contra, on the other side of the same truism-and, as we think, the more vital side-that men are also the creators of circumstances. We have read, and have been told again and again, that the heroes and illustrious individuals of past times, have been those who by the creating energies of their natures, signally modified the periods in which they lived; and such in all times to come will be the characteristics of the leaders of their race. Every human being, in various degrees, modifies external circumstances, and is modified by

them. Need we instance Bonaparte's career? True, we improve slowly: there are no perceptible signs of a millenium; we do not expect any sudden or unprecedented bound; step by step we shall and must march. Have not nations up to the present period moulded their institutions to accord with their altered dispositions? Evidently, therefore, men must have attained a certain degree of purity, and unselfish state of mind, before they are capable of upholding pure and unselfish social institutions. How vain, then, to expect that mankind, as at present disposed, is fit for scientific organisation of the social elements! It's putting the cart before the horse. You must improve men, and they will improve the influences that surround them. Moral and intellectual beings will spontaneously evolve moral and intellectual modes of association; but no artificial forcing process can render immortal and intellectual beings in consonance with such modes. "Each for all, and all for each," is our cardinal motto. Truth is a Divine law, and would exist whether we willed it or not. We believe half the mad theories which have agitated the world, have been caused by the rhapsody of heated imaginations, by parties in a morbid physical condition, but not aware of it. Hence superficial theorists and externals are put prominently forwards, and the deep-rooted evils are never touched. Bacon แ says, "Truth is fruitful, and falsehood is barren." Nevertheless, counterfeits, in a worldly sense, carry the day. Men know that what contradicts GOD's Word, is intrinsically false; yet they have not moral heroism to walk in the straight paths. It is easy to say -Look at things in the gross, and reduce them to order;