carbon and hydrogen, which is entirely foreign to its vitality? Disease, with all its concomitants, must needs make its ravages; the stomach suffering first, the function of assimilation destroyed; the brain from continued narcotism, softens, breaks, and the creature dies. My patient, I learned, drank New England rum in large doses often repeated.

There is no severer or more unfit judge of a man of genius, than what is called a "man of the world." Peculiarities floating over the surface of character, they are ready to see; what lies beneath, they have no disposition to search for, or value if detected. No matter how amiable or commendable, simplicity is very wide of the conventional standard. Yet rough and inbred simplicity can be great on great occasions; nor do these artless characters lack true courage. Apropos, as to this virtue,—if a man be as meek as Moses, the popular idea is, that such a man is timid: return good for evil, and the Sepoys misconstrue it, and designate it cowardice. It would be well for the million to know that it is a popular error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Put a hero on board a ship,—or at a five-barred gate, if he is not used to hunting,—and he will turn pale. Put a foxhunter at the brink of one of the chasms across which the Swiss mountaineer springs like a roe, and his knees will knock under him. People are brave in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or in practice. The bravest of all the brave, however, are those good men and true who in despite of the world's opinion, are not conformists to the hypercritical usages of the world they live in ;-"doers of the word," earnest and honest in their vocation, really wishful to re-create souls

out of the ribs of death; anxious for all to be free, useful, and happy, in defiance of the frowns and rebuffs of a godless and frigid world,-so dead to great truths are a certain clique of phlegmatics. Alas! poor creatures— who are neither to be kicked nor coaxed into vitality; like superannuated port wine, all flavour and body would seem to be lost; every nerve as paralytic and benumbed as though they had been immured in an ice-house for a month. Such hopeless frosty souls require more than an ordinary moral lever to evoke the little latent heat-the small germs there may be left of good seed which had possibly been sown in early life, but which, the "schoolmaster being abroad," had never ripened into maturity.

It is undeniable that schools divorced from religion, are soulless; but what the world practises as religion, we call moonshine. £250,000 per annum is willingly given to the priests to support acknowledged error; and, mirabile dictu! the Times sees no impropriety in this! Warlike subjects carry the day, and indicate the ministerial bearings: brimstone and gunpowder are suffocatingly exhaled, to the ignoring of bullion matters. The Queen's Speech (1857) strikes the key-note for the following session. No honest discriminating man can look forward with any pleasure to the time: anything and every common thing dish'd up in the language of mediocrity, which of course, like scum and froth, rises to the top. No marvel the supply keeps pace with the demand. Si vult decipi, decipiatur. Better face truth at once, in all its transparency, and even bareness, than be swaddled up for ever in the folds of a silken falsehood.

Ah! say not these are the days of scepticism. What implicit, what devout, what child-like confidence we place in the veriest shams-the grossest impostures-the most palpable untruths! Sceptics!-we pin our faith on a wig; we swear by two square inches of gold lace; we fall down prostrate before a name in a book bound in red leather; we believe even in a cocked hat:—and yet we boggle at bullion truths!

It has been long ago laid down as an axiom, that every impostor may at once obtain a body of disciples large enough to form the nucleus of a sect, provided he be endowed with sufficient impudence. This is true, not only of your religious empirics, Joe Smith and Co., but of all speculators upon human credulity. What quack ever failed to sell his pills, if he mixed them with the proper quantity of mendacity? The spirit-rapper, and the extravaganzas of some of the phrenologists,-each attracts his clique of believers. All this is only an illustration of the Hudibrastic maxim

"Because the pleasure is as great,

In being cheated, as to cheat."

Few classes have a very clear apprehension of the intrinsic worth of education. The constant habit of adapting means to ends,-quite legitimate in the business walks of life,-imports itself into the higher. Education is regarded as an instrument for getting on in the world, rather than as a discipline for the mind, without which the man himself is an eternal loser. The idea of culture for its own sake, as necessary to form a perfect being, is almost absolutely foreign to our English modes of thought.

Maudlin trash and humbug is the order of the day; the world is still a trimming calculator. Giant minds may lift aloft the lamp of learning, but such is the majesty of the people, they choose to grovel in darkness. They prefer the ledger to Herodotus; snub Virgil for Wright's Circular; place cotton and woollens before philosophy, and small wares before logic:-and, to crown all, after submerging in the mire the pearls we have flung before them, they turn round and give you evil for good. When people will not weed their own minds, they are very apt to be overrun with nettles.

Man's best happiness is virtuous energy. Nay (say the million), give us sparkling bits of tinsel, warranted to have copper gilt woven in the web, and we are satisfied. With such all is gold that glitters. Nothing is easier than to become rich: we annex the recipe-Every time you spend a crown, earn ten shillings; and when you have obtained a fortune, your friends will discover in you qualities of the most superlative brilliancy, which in your moments of intoxicated vanity you never suspected before. Some say you cannot get anything without money; but this is not true, for without money you can get into debt. This necessary evil aside, we wind up this chapter by warning our juvenile readers to let not one single passion take possession of the mind, for it binds it down, narrows it, keeps it in ignorance, destroys its moral power by substituting one usurping affection for that whole variety of feelings which are proper to the human soul-which are its excellence and its happiness. Truly every virtue has its bordering vice.

CHAPTER XXX.

MORALISINGS UPON EPICURUS'S IDEAL OF HAPPINESS. GOD MADE MAN, BUT MAN RE-CREATES HIMSELF.-HOW TO BANISH SIN OUT OF THE WORLD.-CONCLUSION.

"O Liberty! Thou choicest treasure,

Seat of virtue-source of pleasure."

THE object towards which mankind have always directed their aim, and in the acquisition of which every system, both of religion and philosophy, proposes to aid their endeavours is the summum bonum, the greatest possible degree of attainable happiness; but in what this chief good consists, has not been universally agreed upon, and this variety of opinion constitutes the essential difference between the ancient sects of philosophy. Happiness depends not on external circumstances, but always on a principle within us. You think yourself happy because you are wise, said a philosopher to a pedant: I think myself wise because I am happy. Youth beholds happiness gleaming in the prospect. Age looks back on the happiness of youth, and instead of hopes, seeks its enjoyment in the recollections of hopes. Thus, happiness ever resides in the imagination.

How many are made unhappy by injuries? Here is the best recipe to treat them :-If a bee stings you, will you go to the hive and destroy it? would not a thousand come upon you? If you receive a trifling injury, do not go