think yourself, and use other people's thoughts, giving them utterance only, you will never know what you are capable of. At first your ideas may come in lumpshomely and shapeless; but no matter, time and perseverance will arrange and refine them. Learn to think, and you will learn to write. The more you think, the better you will express your ideas. But, we reiterate, unless your cask is perfectly clean, whatever you pour into it turns sour. It is no more possible for an idle man to keep together a certain stock of knowledge, than it is possible to keep together a stock of ice exposed to the meridian. Every day destroys a fact, a relation, or an influence; and the only method of preserving the bulk and value of the pile, is by constantly adding to it. Nevertheless, after all our precautionary measures, we shall have our eclipses: but don't be discouraged, my young readers, for the sun itself has eclipses-but it is still there, and will re-appear in all its original brilliancy.

Boudaline opened his fine funeral oration on the Grand Conde in this way :-"There is no luminary in the heavens which does not sometimes suffer eclipses; and the sun, which is the most splendid of all, suffers the greatest and most remarkable. Two circumstances deserve our consideration; one, that in these eclipses the sun suffers no substantial loss of light, and pursues his regular course; and the other, that during the time of the eclipse, the Universe contemplates it with the most interest, and watches its variation with the most attention." Instruction through a wrong medium, is like the rays of the sun concentrated, and transmitted through a burning-glass,

the effect of which is to unite and consume, not to enlighten.

Sir W. Marsh accounts for corporeal luminosities as follows:-"The light evolved is electric, marking the preponderance of the nervous over the muscular system" (or intense psychic action in a debilitated bodily frame). The evolution of light from decayed bodies is also an electrical phenomenon; and death itself is but the destruction of the balance between the corporeal and psychic powers. The soul, says Norvalis, is the surest and deadliest of poisons, and sooner or later brings about the death of the body. Life is a process of decomposition-the very intensity and excess of vital force. Over-animation kills. Nicolamus, Peter of Alcantara, and others, went about half their lives in dead bodies-the fleshy in them slain by the spiritual. Their life was a slow spontaneous combustion.

That is, indeed, a deep and wide saying, that no miracle can be wrought without faith (not always even by our Great Exemplar); without the worker's faith in himself, as well as the recipient's faith in him. But in all large souls, the physical has been developed above the average. We read that the walls of Jericho fell down before the sound of trumpets; but nowhere we learn the trumpets were hoarse and feeble. The author of these pages, in the meridian of life, at times thought himself strong, physically and mentally. O! this morbid sensibility, what a mocker! Nature often gives us the opinion but not the sensation. Our conversation and musings would be less bald and disjointed, if the physique took

the precedence. Still, carry out the organic laws, and the physiology of study, &c., as you may, mental work by no means conduces to blandness of temper. The laws of eloquence must have a sound body in a sound mind, or the orator will fall far below mediocrity. These laws, like those of poetry, are never better observed than by those who are not thinking of them. It is one of the highest characteristics of genius, to observe rules without knowing them;—or at least, without having endeavoured to explain them to itself. In like manner, this truism is applicable to the poetry of motion. Let any one try to be graceful and dignified, the voluntary muscular volitions become angular, and the reverse takes place of what he intended. The swan is graceful in its own element; but the reverse out of it.

CHAPTER XIV.

MIDDLE-CLASS EDUCATION.-SCIENCE THE HANDMAID OF RELIGION. INDOLENCE RE-CONSIDERED.-OPPOSITION USEFUL.

Courageous thoughts will not pay your baker's bill; and fortitude is nowhere a legal tender for beef."

"What is to be feared, is not so much the immorality of the great, as the immorality leading to greatness."-TOCQUEVILLE's Democracy.

"What reason weaves, by passion is undone."

Ir ought to humble a man's pride, and make him very cautious of excess, when he reflects how much of his virtue and moderation depends simply on the diet he makes use of. Behold this man talking calmly and sagely of the shamefulness of vice and passion. See him enter a tavern, and after a few draughts of wine, become the victim of those very passions which he a few moments before condemned. See the coward and craven spirit converted into a hero, a la Sheridan, not by moral arguments, but by a draught of brandy, or as among the Turks (and, to be a little Irish, not a few English Turks), a dose of opium. The Brahmins and Hindoos are the mildest of men, not from any original superiority in the structure of their minds or passions over their motions, but merely because their diet is vegetable. Propose a manly or daring deed to a man feeble in body, delicate in his manner of living, or after a course of purgatives or depletion, and he will shrink in apathy from the enterprise. The

same results may be occasioned by a fit of dyspepsia after a steak or chop half-masticated, perhaps badly cooked; and whilst devouring it, instead of its being tender and succulent, you cannot help thinking it more like gutta percha, and you become hard-hearted and revengeful.

Science ever has been, and ever must be, the handmaid of religion; and unless you teach children thrift or economic science, as well as the science of life and living, cleanliness, the advantages of work long sustained, when there is physical stamina to bear it (and where it is not, the vital force must be brought out gradually); without these, and other pre-named preliminaries, the public may plant schools and churches as thick as our mill chimneys, or as the trees of the forest, without avail. Omit these effectual allies, and vain and hopeless will be all your efforts at regeneration and emancipation. We fully accord with the sentiment of the Apostle-He that will not work should not eat. If children are really impressed with the dignity of labour and its glorious and manifold results, great will be the harvest in after-life. What says Solomon?-"The destruction of the poor is their poverty." Our readers whose mental cataracts have been couched, will see the connection between desperate circumstances and dissipated habits: if there was no excess-if life was not in a state of morbid force-there would be no poor. It is better to pay for the education of the boy, than pay for the punishment of the man; the prevention of crime is of greater consequence than its punishment. Nothing so cheap as charity; but not the sectarian blindfold charity of exclusives, nor the indis