God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider

be better forced into the service of virtue, than by such a comment on the present paragraph, as would be afforded by a selection from the sentimental correspondence produced in courts of justice within the last thirty years, fairly translated into the true meaning of the words, and the actual object and purpose of the infamous writers. Do you in good earnest aim at dignity of character? By all the treasures of a peaceful mind, by all the charms of an open countenance, I conjure you, O youth! turn away from those who live in the twilight between vice and virtue. Are not reason, discrimination, law, and deliberate choice, the distinguishing characters of humanity? can aught then worthy of a human being proceed from a habit of soul, which would exclude all these and (to borrow a metaphor from Paganism) prefer the den of Trophonius to the temple and oracles of the God of light? can any thing manly, I say, proceed from those, who for law and light would substitute shapeless feelings, sentiments, impulses, which as far as they differ from the vital workings in the brute animals own the difference of their former connection with the proper virtues of humanity; as Dendrites derive the outlines, that constitute their value above other clay-stones, from the casual neighbourhood and pressure of the plants, the names of which they assume; Remember, that love itself in its highest earthly bearing, as the ground of the marriage union, becomes love by an inward fiat of the will, by a completing and sealing act of moral election, and lays claim to permanence only under the form of duty."

Do we not differ chiefly in our sensibility, and may not sensibility be thus contemplated?

1. Rightly directed, or virtue.

2. Wrongly directed, or vice.

3. Sentimentality, or vice under the guise of virtue.

Oft he bends

His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck,

Fawning, and licks the ground.

worketh his web, then it is endless and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.

LOGICAL AND MATHEMATICAL PARTS
OF MIND.

THE logical part of men's minds is often good; but the mathematical part nothing worth; that is, they can judge well of the mode of attaining any end: but cannot estimate the value of the end itself.*

There is the very same sentiment expressed by Hobbs in his Introduction to the Leviathan. Hobbs was the friend of Lord Bacon; Aubrey says of him, “The Lord Chancellor Bacon loved to converse with him. His lordship was a very contemplative person, and was wont to contemplate in his delicious walks at Gorhambury and dictate to Mr. Bushell, or some other of his gentlemen, that attended him with paper ready to set down presently his thoughts. His lordship would often say that he better liked Mr. Hobbs taking his thoughts than any of the others, because he understood what he wrote, which the others not understanding my lord would many times have a hard task to make sense of what they writ." The following is the passage:

"For the similitude of the thoughts, and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever seeketh unto himself and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, &c. and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts and passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of passions, which are the same in all men, desire, fear, hope, &c. not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared, hoped, &c. for these the constitution, individual, and parti

ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION.

"THAT will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and strongly conjoined and united together, than

cular education do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man's heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts."

Give e'en a fool the employment he desires,
And he soon finds the talent it requires.-COOPER.
Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue;

How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears

So well designed, so luckily begun,

But, when we have our wish, we wish undone.

DRYDEN.

The architect of his own fortune should rightly use his rule; that is, he should form his mind to judge of the value of things, and to prosecute the same substantially not superficially.

"Virtue walks not in the high way, though she go per alta, this is the strength and the blood to virtue, to contemn things that be desired, and to neglect that which is feared. Why should man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?"-BACON.

As a man thou hast nothing to commend thee to thyself, but that only by which thou art a man, that is by what thou choosest and refusest.-BISHOP TAYLOR.

Men are most busy about that which is most remote, and neglect that which is nearest and most essential to them; for the goods of the body neglecting those of the mind; and for the goods of fortune neglecting those of the body. They will forfeit their conscience to please and serve their body, and

they have been; a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter the planet of civil society and action; for no man can be so straitened and oppressed with business and an active course of life, but may have many vacant times of leisure whilst he expects the returns and tides of business. It remaineth therefore to be inquired, how these spaces and times of leisure should be filled up and spent, whether in pleasures or study; sensuality or contemplation; as was well answered by Demosthenes to Eschines, a man given to pleasure, who, when he was told by way of reproach that his oratory did smell of the lamp, Indeed,' said Demosthenes,' there is a great difference between the things that you and I do by lamp-light.'"*

hazard their body to get and preserve the goods of fortune, whereas they should follow a clean contrary order, hazarding and neglecting their body, if need be, for the good of the mind, and the goods of fortune for both.-DU MOULin.

Un philosophe regarde ce qu'on appelle un état dans le monde, comme les Tartares regardent les villes, c'est à dire, comme un prison. C'est un cercle où les idées se resserrent, se concentrent en ôtant à l'ame et à l'esprit leur étendue et leur dévélopement. L'homme sans état est le seul homme libre.

Alas! said an Indian, lamenting over his companion, he was fed with train oil, and the bone of a bird ten inches long hung through the gristle of his nose; what could he want more?

This house is turned upside down, since Robin the ostler died. Poor fellow never joyed since the price of oats rose, it was the death of him.-Henry the IVth, Act 2, Scene 4. "There are," says Dr. Chalmers, "perhaps no two

GOODNESS OF NATURE.

NEITHER is there only a habit of goodness directed by right reason: but there is in some men, even in nature, a disposition towards it; as on the other side there is a natural malignity. For there be that in their nature do not affect the good of others. The lighter sort of malignity turneth but to crossness, or frowardness, or aptness to oppose, or difficileness, or the like; but the deeper sort to envy and mere mischief. Such men, in other men's calamities, are as it were in season, and are ever on the loading part; not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus' sores, but like flies that are still buzzing upon any thing that is raw; Misanthropi, that make it their practice to bring men to the bough, and yet have never a tree for the purpose in their garden, as Timon had. Such dispositions are the very errors of human nature, and yet they are the fittest timber to make great

sets of human beings, who comprehend less the movements, and enter less into the cares and concerns of each other, than the wide and busy public on the one hand; and, on the other, those men of close and studious retirement, whom the world never hears of save when, from their thoughtful solitude, there issues forth some splendid discovery to set the world on the gaze of admiration."

Pragmatical men should know, that learning is not like some small bird, as the lark, that can mount and sing and please herself, and nothing else: but that she holds as well of the hawk, that can soar aloft, and after that, when she sees her time, can stoop and seize upon her prey.-BACON.