to betray the too-confident body. Persons are ignorant of the patent fact that luxury is artificial poverty. Let the body be unguarded for an instant, and the spirit shoots forth its morbid impulses; and if the body be not very alert, over it goes into the sea, upon the house tops, or into the streets, asylums, and jails. As in most wars, the country where the fighting takes place suffers most, -in this case, in the battle ground, he must and will suffer, so long as mind and matter, spirit and body, do not co-operate amicably, so long as they fight together, and are foes. Fortunately, the remedy can be seen. If the body do not aggress, the spirit will not seek revenge. If you prevent the body from irritating, perturbing, and stultifying the mind, through its vitiated bile, its indigestion, its brain, the mind will most certainly never injure or kill the body by its mischievous monkey tricks or tactics, by its little, active, imp-like agents, morbid impulses. The mind becomes præternaturally heated, too, by constant friction at a single point. The longer it is perplexed and harassed by a recurrence of the same question, the more incapable it becomes of returning a healthy answer. We thus find there is a deep truth in utilitarianism,—after all the rose-coloured romancings of chameleon writers.

It is only at rare intervals that our eyes are unfilmed to discern truth, to be conscious of individuality, to see whereabouts we stand and what we are; and those intervals of right hallucination are the leaps in our spiritual life. To make a man a clear, judging member of society, doing wise actions in the present moment, and saying

wise and beautiful things for all time, a great indispensable is to see that the house his spirit has received to dwell in, be worthy of the wants and capabilities of its noble occupants. This brings us to the same conclusion, the alpha and omega condensed into one sentence,—the self-renunciation virtues must be developed ere man can yield a wise obedience to the laws of his moral nature.

Troubles spring from idleness, and grievous toils from needless ease. Many without labour would live by their wits only; but they break for want of stock. Another query we have to put to our indulgent readers-What is man's first vocation? Every rational being will have a ready response-his calling is to be a man and nothing else. A sincere, truthful, and reasonable being, working in unison with supreme intelligence, for ends answerable to the aims of creation. As before stated, he should know the end for which he is alive; that thing which most intimately concerns him is the maintenance of a discerning and upright spirit. Not in pleasure, not in ease, not in solitude,* not in any outward appliances of affluence or

*

In

Solitude, except as an occasional exception to the common current of life, is not to be recommended either for man or woman. this state, one is almost sure to become the victim of certain fixed ideas, approaching to the character of insanity. Prejudices which if approaching to the sun of social life, would melt into air, fix themselves down as with riveted screw-bolts. Confident dogmatic conclusions, which could not walk the open streets a day without being knocked down like bullies for their insolence, are cherished and nursed until they become the very tyrants of the mind which has engendered them. In this unnatural state, the feelings become equally vitiated.

Charity, so difficult to imitate, and which in most minds is a flower

conventional repute, not in the ranks of public glory or advantage-not in any of these things will he find his welfare, but only in a free and perfect development of his natural and his especial character. Thus alone can he fulfil his proper destiny, and adequately justify his appearance in the world. The body, battered and mauled as it is, assuredly holds an important place in the life of man, yet it is not the principle of life. Life circulates within it, but emanates not from it. "The mind is the standard of the man,"—and we trust we have proved demonstrably to every candid inquirer, that the latter will work well or ill according to the care taken of the former. The mind is the sovereign, the body is the subject; then let us take care (if we would perform our mission well and prevent cumulative penalties), the latter is kept in strict subjection. Impulsive goodness originating in frames and feelings, we estimate very low, and still less a piece of human petrefaction or a fossil. A man's virtues should not be measured by his occasional exertions, but

the slowest to blossom, and the earliest to decay, can never be in the nature of things a predominant feature with the solitaire. The priceless luxury of solitude is well satirised by Æsop Smith:-" ÆsopÆsop, I'm afraid all this is very selfish; and that you, wrapped in your separate autocracy, may be much like that old newspaper frog one periodically reads of, as 'just discovered by a quarry man in a solid lump of limestone.' The cold, monastic, self-complacent bachelor eremite! The dull unpleasant reptile, useless, and by no means ornamental! The wonder of gregarious men, suspected and detested by the shrewd among them. Hop out, old Æsop; expand and mingle with others: the more we see of our kind, the better we like them. Remember the lesson taught you by that lazy, selfish, disagreeable frog."

by his ordinary doings. All improvement is a victory won by struggles.

We annex the following as a preventive of whining sensibility and morbid impulses, including those who oversharpen their mental axes; being the best calisthenic antibilious panaceas we have met with, and more particularly applicable to prosaic mystics and all sedentary persons:

"A spade! a rake! a hoe!

A pick-axe, or a bill!

A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,

A flail, or what ye will!—

And here's a ready hand

To ply the needful tool,

And skill'd enough, by lessons rough,
In labour's rugged school.”—HOOD.

"The toil-worn cotter from his labour goes;
This night his weekly moil is at an end;
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary o'er the moors his course does home-
-BURNS.

ward bend."

CHAPTER XXII.

PLACES ARE MADE FOR MEN, NOT MEN FOR PLACES.-WHY TALENTED MEN ARE PERSECUTED.-ANDERSON'S INDUSTRY AND ENTERPRISE.-SOCRATES: HIS DISINTERESTEDNESS.

IDEAS ON TEACHING.

PESTALOZZI'S

WHAT unnatural sights are seen in this fair and beautiful world of ours! What heartless and artificial manners, that make civilisation so tame and uninteresting! Are there not many, more like puppets danced by wires, than beings who have nerves, brain, and a human soul associated with these, to regulate their movements, and guide them in the interpretation of their corporeal and mental sensations? We have a happy guest within us; the germs or principles wrapped up in the soul; their rudiments only want kindling into life. Let us not, then, put enemies in our mouths to steal away our brains. The real meaning of misfortune is but another word for the follies, blunders, and vices which we ignorantly attribute to the blind goddess, to the fates, to the stars, to any one, in short, but ourselves. Our own head and heart are the heaven and earth which we excuse, and make responsible for all our calamities. The divine truth cannot be too often inculcated, that happiness is experienced by men in proportion as they obey the laws of their Creator. Man is wounded by the arrows of his own pointing. The qua

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