lion are not yet ripe enough for such important truths. Ah! custom's idiot sway of erecting the superstructure before the foundation is laid, must have the pre-eminence. Perish such thoughts! Why are not the people educated? The world lacks unity, and is broken in heaps, because man is inimical to himself. Well may we have such a crumbling state of society, broken into lax fragments and sectional asperities, irritating the social fabric, go where you may. Well may we have such a curious mosaic of heterogeneous and unchemical compounds in every direction: well may the common weal be common-a rope of sand! We appeal to our readers-Is there any cement, any cohesion, or indeed any community, amid the general conglomeration of elements? Sects living apart, as antisocial, as though they formed no fraction of the body corporate; and yet we call ourselves Christians. The world lacks unity. Why? Because there is no community-no universality-no catholicity: deep calls unto deep, but in actual life the marriage is not celebrated.

It is very easy to say such a man is a bad man; but if he be a poor man, do we strive to make him better? do we pay him domiciliary visits-try to inculcate better morals-root out his pet sin, the vice that so easily besets him-and plant flowers where nothing but weeds grew before? Ah! this rooting out vices and planting virtues in their places as part of our code of ethics, is easily said --but who does it? Every human action, we are told, has three aspects-its moral aspect, or that of its right and wrong; its æsthetic aspect; and its sympathetic action. The first addresses itself to our reason and conscience;

the second to our imagination: and the third to our human fellow-feeling. We are sadly lacking of this last one.

It sometimes happens that men who make dangerous deviations from the laws of society and the principles of virtue, owe their crimes in a great measure to the very benevolence of their hearts; and that in the midst of all their guilt, we find a dignity of soul which commands our admiration. It is humiliating to think that we are of the same species with disgusting objects that now and then cross our path. If we judge from practice, it is but too evident that most men called Christians consider the Mosaic command to "kill and spare not," as more binding than the later precept "love one another." They ignore the Divine precepts of the New Testament, which speak in the plainest and most affecting manner of the duty of forgiveness, and the holiness of humility (not love of aggrandisement and dominion), and cling to those of Moses, which demand an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

The world (and more particularly the temperate, who enjoy almost uninterrupted health) is not so unjust or unkind as it is peevishly represented. Those who deserve well, seldom fail to receive from others such services as they can perform: but few have much in their power, or are so stationed as to have great leisure from their own affairs; and kindness is often nothing more than the exuberance of content. The wretched have seldom any compassion: they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

The moral perception of poverty shuts out much good. In this state it may be said more particularly—

“The way of man is not in himself," "It is not in man to direct his steps."

"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the subject of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity,-fools by heavenly compulsion,-knaves, thiefs, and treacherous by spherical predominance,-drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on."—Lear.

No one dreams of attributing his opacity of intellect to a defecated and turbid state of the blood arising from repletion, and other sins of omission and commission. Let no man expect happiness who has not paid fully his contribution towards promoting the happiness of the world. We some of us may have it to say from experience, that man is our enemy. Well, never care, if the public good is an overruling consideration.

Education has ever been with us a subject of thrilling interest. All other subjects, in comparison, appear to the author insignificant: and could we see the people of this country once impressed with a due sense of its importance, we should then have no fear as to our future. One half of the vigour and manliness of the British character is lost by living in little circles, and petty coteries. Crossing the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, tasting a little open boating in a white squall or a gale, as Byron would say"how it would enliven and introduce them to a few of the sensations!" We do not want to be any leader of any section, but the president of the whole. Is not moral cowar

Where are your

dice the characteristic of our times? true-hearted non-conformists? As a refresher, shew us the gentleman who dare stalk through the market-place in a shabby russet coat, or a villainous bad hat; or be seen talking to a person so dressed. Being clothed with humility is one thing-losing caste every thing. Who will be pleased or instructed in the mansions of poverty? Who prefers going to the house of mourning, rather than the house of feasting? Verily, to be human is to be frail. A pursy millionaire, with poverty of intellect, is known and acknowledged everywhere. At his presence, the most rigid flexibility of muscles gives way. Thus it is everthe wisdom of the intellect fills us with precepts which it is the wisdom of action to despise.

Plutarch says truly-"Fear is the most sanguinary principle a tyrant can act from; courage, on the contrary, is merciful, mild, and unsuspicious. Thus the most timorous animals are the hardest to be tamed; but the more generous, having less suspicion, because they have less fear, fly not the caresses and society of men." Order is an admirable thing, perfect in all its limbs; but unfortunately it squints, or can see only on that side which tells for itself. "Delicacy I have the utmost wish to preserve; but delicacy, though a being of perfect symmetry, is only a subsidiary virtue, and ought always to give way to truth when the case is such that the truth is infinitely of more importance than the delicacy."-Burke.

But so long as sectarian differences and the private interests that thrive upon division in the way of all improvement continue, and parties are content to annihilate

their own wills and individualism, and exist as mere instrumental members of others, so long will its march be impeded. Ignorance of everything appears better than a creed differing from their own. These people appear to forget that morality among the various sects of England. is the same; and that a man may be honest, and a good citizen, no matter to what sect he belongs. But the fact is, it is not so much religious belief that stands in our way, as human pride. What is feared is the loss of power, not error in belief. The cry is still-"Who's to be greatest?" But whatever may be the cause of the opposition itself, to all attempts at legislative aid in support of education, it is at the present time so formidable, as really to be an insuperable barrier.

We may be pardoned here, perhaps, for stepping out of our circumscribed orbit, to give Girolamo Savonarola's clear-sighted and lofty ideas on an important subject. Believe it or not, he was truly a reasonable and religious man, wishing well to all parties. He wanted what many noble minds wanted-a Theocracy on earth; like, but better than that which the Jews had once; a polity in which there shall be no separation between law and religionbetween sacred and secular; in which all citizens shall be in one sense priests, and all dominion in one sense founded upon grace. Not a republic, such as gentile and modern nations have shewn us, in which all comes of the people's will, and no man is anything but what his fellow-men make him no-not this, but rather a community organised on a Divine law, in which every man shall be what GOD has fitted him for. This was the aim of Savonarola.