I hope you but do me justice. I trust, that spiritus intus alit; and that those opinions manent altâ mente reposta; as little affected, by a curl upon my lip, as the depths of Ocean are by the ripple, that may play upon its surface. Now, this being the case, is there harm in letting it be seen, that a religious Mind can be cheerful, even to playfulness, instead of being repulsively gloomy and morose?

Provided no viciously incongruous levity intrude, I see no objection, (but the contrary,) to rendering the aspect of Religion winning to gaiety and youth. What has Milton said?

How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose;

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.*

Less than he has said of Philosophy, I would not, nor would he, say of Religion. But let us remember, that sunt certi fines: that where facetiæ too much abound, the seasoning is too high. Verb: sap.

* Comus.

Nay, in my character of Sapiens, I recoil from Verb. It might steal us into politics.

Where lurks the danger? What do you smile at? and what are you about?

Possibly about provoking you again. But does not a verb supply the politician's every mood?-Are not the Ins, for example, imperative and potential? The Outs optative and indicative of every error of their rivals? The inferior adherents, are they not subjunctive?

You will have your way. But what do you do with the Infinitive?

Leave it to inordinate Demagogues, and the exorbitance of their mob-suite.

*

And what do you say to Dandy Statesmen? I wish to have nothing to say to such popinjays, at all. Their superficial flippancy does mischief. I am no friend to party-men, even where party means soirée; nor am I, in every case, an admirer of club-law.

But to return to your Fleur d' Orange. Alas! what a commentary upon its poetical text, the last few years have been supplying!

* See first part of Henry IV. Act 1, Sc. 3.

But the principles which I there asserted, if conciliatory, were also sound; and if they have not been permitted beneficially to apply, I cast the responsibility upon those, whoever they may be, that have impeded this salutary application: that have ungratefully traduced, and endeavoured (and almost successfully endeavoured) to destroy those who supported, through evil report, and to the injury of their own prospects, those principles, that conferred upon their traducers a power and influence, which. they have abused.

You were lately avoiding the Scylla of politics, with great care; but now appear to me to be approaching their Charybdis. Beware, and tack in time. This length, however, I am prepared to go. I will admit that a defamatory is the worst species of amatory course. And, à propos of defamation, have you arraigned the motive of Lord Brougham, for inquiring as to, and maintaining the immateriality of soul?

On the contrary, I have assumed his motive to be a good one. I but suggested that his argument seems divisible into branches; of which one maintains the immateriality of Mind,

and the other insists upon immortality, as a mere consequence of its being thus immaterial;

as a consequence, which the premiss, of immateriality, is indispensably necessary to produce. The force, or at least the object, of my suggestion, was this: that if his lordship's arguments for immateriality failed to convince, and if he succeeded in persuading his readers that material could not be immortal, such failure, and such success, between them, might lay the axe to the root of our hopes of eternal life. But why did you ask the question which I have just answered ?

With reference to a criticism in the Freeman's Journal of the 18th of November, which is eminently kind to us, Metaphysic Ramblers, and our promenades.

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Yes; the article is what you have called it, eminently kind ;" and withal, contains matter, perhaps corrective matter, well deserving of our attention. For example, the parallel between the attempts of Paley and Lord Brougham, is argumentative and just, and arrested my attention. But has the success of the former writer been unqualified and universal? On the con

trary, Jobert, in his "two words," assures us, that-ab ovo usque ad mala—the attempt is a weak and empty sophism; that the old story told in Genesis, of Creation, is not yet proved to be more authentic than a nursery tale. That, accordingly, whether there be a Creator, we can by no means tell. That the carnal Deity, announced by Revelation, is a monstrous One. And it further seems contended, unless I misinterpret, that the being of a God, if indeed a God exist, it remains for some member of the British Association to detect; while there does not appear to be ground for sanguine hope, that Lord Brougham will accomplish that, which Doctor Paley and the Bible have so miserably failed to do.

The Critic asserts truly, that to be audible is to be material; but conceives that something different has been affirmed by me. But, on the contrary, I shall be found to have repeatedly declared, that to that to be perceptible to any sense, is to be material. Neither have I, on the other hand, presumptuously insinuated that the Divine Substance is perceptibly material. On the contrary, my intimation was,