cled by Act of Parliament to the earth's staples of beliefs of man's device. Not till these stumbling-blocks are abolished, and ministers of religion become free souls speaking to the free, filled with the fulness of the life, precepts, and example of CHRIST,-not till then, believe it or not, will any real progress be possible in the moral attainments of the British people. We may add by way of rider to this dictum, the axiom of Rochefoucault, that "great names dishonour rather than elevate those who do not know how to bear them with propriety."

It is a Spanish proverb-"What a fool does in the end the wise man does in the beginning." The question still is, not whether a man belongs to the same country, but whether he belongs to the same sect.

We eschew intemperate temperance; yet would warn the moderate man-so called-there is no indisposition with regard to health which does not tell; and those not unfrequently suffer most eventually, who do not appear to suffer directly from every individual act of imprudence. The work of decay is constantly advancing, although it never indicates its advance by any forcible impression upon the senses. While the building up, and as constantly pulling down of old materials is going on, do not presume on your vigorous constitution. A person possessing a feeble stamina is in general more flexible than a vigorous one; from yielding more readily, it is not so soon broken by the repeated assaults of indiscretions. A disorder is violent in proportion to the stamina of the subject which it attacks.

Strong men, it is well known, have energetic maladies: the feeble one seems to suffer less injury from indisposition, in consequence of the nerves and fibres having less resistance, and of course more pliancy and malleability; and habit, being more used to it, is not to be overlooked. His lingering and scarcely more than semi-vital existence is often protracted beyond that of the more active, vivacious, and robust. But the debauchee must recollect that each attack of casual or periodical distemper, deducts something from the strength and structure of his frame; some leaves fall from the tree of life each time that its trunk is shook. It may thus be disrobed of its beauty, and made to betray its dreary nakedness of a far advanced autumn long before that season could in the regular course of nature ever have commenced. We concur with a great writer (R. Hall), by multiplying the mental resources, which have a tendency to exalt the character, and in some measure to correct and subdue the taste for gross sensuality, the possessor is enabled to beguile his leisure moments in an innocent, at least, if not in a useful The poor man who can read, and who possesses a taste for reading, can find entertainment at home, without being tempted to repair to the public-house for that purpose. His mind can find him employment when his body is at rest. He does not lie prostrate and afloat on the currents of incidents, liable to be carried whithersoever the impulse of appetite may direct. There is in the mind of such a man an intellectual spring urging him to the pursuit of mental good; and if the minds of his family also are cultivated, conversation becomes more

manner.

interesting, and the sphere of domestic enjoyment, the seminary of social affections, is enlarged.

When you have given youth a habit of thinking, you have conferred on them a much greater favour than by the gift of a large sum of money; since you have put them in possession of the principle of all legitimate prosperity. The same high-souled thinker well says"That the extreme profligacy, improvidence, and misery, so prevalent among the labouring classes, are chiefly ascribable to the want of education." Compare Ireland with Scotland; the meanness and servility of the Jews—they are what oppression, not what nature has made them. It is horrible for those to talk of villainy and corruption of human nature, who have done and continually do all in their power to make it corrupt; nothing more common than to blame what we ourselves have produced.

There is a time in the lives of all of us when the errors we have committed rise in array against us, and we learn, perhaps when it is too late, that duty and happiness are different names for the same thing. Let us never forget every hand adds to the happiness or misery of mankind; far too many in their spring salad days—“green in judgment"-lag, as Falstaff terms it, in "the rearward of fashion;" and more still want the quick eye for the redeeming parts of a character, and a large toleration for the infirmities of men exposed to strong temptations. Let us have firmness where principles are in question, but be full of charity towards individuals. Who can say—“I have a soul that like an ample shield can take in all, and verge enough for more?"

"I'm nothing if not critical."

Here is the character of a sot, graphically painted by S. Butler, unique in its way :-"A sot has found a way to renew not only his youth, but his childhood, by being stewed like Æson in liquor; much better than the virtuoso's method of making old dogs young again, for he is a child again at second-hand, never the worse for the wearing, but as purely fresh, simple, and weak, as he was at first. He has stupified his senses by living in a moist climate; he measures his time by glasses of wine, as the ancients did by water-glasses; he is like a statue placed in moist air, all the lineaments of humanity are mouldered away, and there is nothing left of him but the rude lump in the shape of a man, and no part entire. He has drowned himself in a butt of wine, as the Duke of Clarence was served by his brother; he has swallowed his humanity, and drunk himself into a beast. He is like a spring-tide, when he has drunk to his high-water mark, he swells and looks big, runs against the stream, and overflows everything that stands in his way; but when the drink within him is at ebb, he shrinks within his banks, and falls so low and shallow, that cattle pass over him!"

"Cunning differs from wisdom, as twilight from open day." If common-sense were very common, if the palate and belly had ears, if physicians (like customs) were despots, the gout arising from repletion would be easy of cure, and surplus food might be sent from Grosvenor Place to the surplus population of St. Giles's. But since the facts are otherwise, the gout, combated but not exterminated by colchicum, &c., must continue to dwell in gilded

chambers, and the poor must console themselves with their perfect immunity from one of the most painful diseases incident to humanity. Gout arising from excess of study, or an over-refinement of the intellect, is another matter, and of course must be met by an avoidance of the exciting cause. Don't tell me (said some philosopher) by whom you were bred, but by whom you were fed. But such are the conceits of speculatists, who strain their faculties to find in a mine what lies upon the surface. Socrates was a sculptor in the early part of his life: he was in the habit of saying-How strange is it that we should take so much pains to fashion an insensible stone into the likeness of ourselves, and so little to prevent ourselves from resembling an insensible stone!

Here is a sample from our cabinet of mental portraits. It was a beautiful sentiment of one whom her lord proposed to put away :-"Give me back, then," said she, "that which I brought you :" and the man answered, in his vulgar coarseness of soul-"Your fortune shall be returned to you." "I thought not of fortune," said the lady: "give me back my beauty and my youth; give me back my virginity of soul, give me back the cheerful mind, and the heart that had never been disappointed."

Intemperance and improvidence are the two grand sources of crime. But be not inconsolable, my poor friends; for even your most abject and adverse circumstances, your bodily tortures, are comparatively light to those of the indolent affluent, who having no affection for benevolent deeds, and from lack of good motives, set no limits to their insatiable appetites and passions; and who