or unpleasant feeling. We, like the Hampstead Society, pay twopence weekly, which more than covers our regular expenses; thus showing that working-men can support such societies without assistance. There is a peculiarity in this society that we have not noticed in any other. According to our rules, each chairman is expected to enter in a book, provided for the purpose, a journal of the proceedings of the society during the week he is in office. We find this plan productive of good, not only because we are able to refer to any part of the society's past history, but also because of the improvement in writing, no one liking to write in the society's book unless it be in a fair hand. We have hitherto had quarterly tea-meetings, which we have found exceedingly beneficial in promoting the interests of the society, as it brings all the members together, and gives a warmer tone to the proceedings; and it would not be egotistical on our part to say, that we have some tolerable speaking on such occasions from persons who could not, six months ago, stand up and say twenty connected words in the shape of a speech. We consider this improvement is owing to our conversation meetings, as all who join in the conversation are expected to do so standing."

THE INTIMATE CONNEXION BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.

By dwarfing and deforming the body, you mutilate no less the inward than the outward man. Physical education ought to be the foundation of all other education: and, if neglected or thwarted, it is vain to expect any grandeur or harmony of moral and intellectual develop

ment.

The Greeks attained their marvellous superiority in all that makes a people truly great, in no ordinary measure, from the natural life that they led from the admiration that they cherished for physical symmetry and grace-from the attention that they devoted to the culture of the physical powers, so as to make the body the perfect and most flexile instrument of the mind-from existing almost entirely in the open air and from encouraging and practising every game and exercise that could confer on even the humblest among them something of the vigour of their Hercules, of the dexterity of their Mercury, of the beauty of their Apollo, of the majesty of their Jupiter. So long as the governments of Europe are content to treat the physical education of their subjects as of no importance, so long will these remain immoral and ignorant, even though colleges and schools should cram every corner of the land. A people physically stunted, will be spiritually depraved, even though you make every second man a preacher or a schoolmaster. One principal cause of crime among the excessively indigent classes is, not merely the numerous temptations to which they are exposed, but, in an equal degree, the utter prostration of their corporeal capacities through a long exposure to want, cold, pain, and privation of every kind, which renders them

almost unfit for moral and intellectual progress, even if the worst temptations to which they are liable were withdrawn.

It is notable, also, my friends, that many of the most illustrious men in our own and other countries, have been remarkable for their physical beauty and for their physical strength and accomplishments. How striking are the features, even to him who knows nothing of their works or their history, of the four great Italian poets, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso. That there was as much meaning and poetry in Shakspeare's face as in one of his dramas, I need not inform you, for you all are familiar with its lineaments. His frame also, by its manly energy and its goodly proportions, seems not to have been unworthy of his mind. Milton in his youth was eminent for his beauty, and ex. celled in fencing and in all the accomplishments which were thought to become a gentleman two hundred years ago. Byron likewise was famous as well for his noble countenance, as for his skill in swimming and in other athletic exercises. Goethe, the most celebrated author that Germany has produced, was surpassingly beautiful, with a vigorous constitution, as is proved by the fact that when he died, rather more than a dozen years ago, he had reached the venerable age of eighty-three. The poet Campbell, when a young man, was renowned as much for the attractions of his person as for his "Pleasures of Hope." Burns, though without pretensions to beauty in the ordinary sense of the word, yet had features that flashed forth all the fire of his soul, and his muscular strength was extraordinary. Walter Scott was tall, strongly formed, and delighted in field sports in which he braced alike his body and his mind. John Wilson, the author of the "Isle of Palms," one of the most remarkable men of our time, but who is not so much known as he deserves, whom, however, posterity will compensate for contemporary neglect,-is, whether as to face or form, one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen. And ere age had stiffened his sinews-for I do think it has chilled his blood-there was not a single game, or exercise, or sport, in which he did not surpass every competitor that came before him. In one of Hazlitt's interesting works, it is stated that the distinguished painter, West, who was formerly president of the Royal Academy, remarked, after seeing Napoleon, that he was the best-made man he had ever beheld. How strikingly, how classically beautiful, Buonaparte's features, you all know. I could easily swell my catalogue, my friends, especially if I were to go back to Greece and Rome; but the examples I have given suffice, I think, to establish that there is so close a connexion between the physical development and the moral and intellectual progress of the individual, that the physical education cannot be neglected without perilling the whole man;-that, consequently, however good the seed you may be disposed to sow in the heart of those who suffer from protracted labour, you have already trampled the soil into utter barrenness by the pertinacious infliction of those numerous physical wrongs which never fail to accompany long hours of business.-Macall's Lecture on the Evils of Protracted Labour.

John Hasler, Printer, 4, Crane-court, Fleet-street.

THE STUDENT.

ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE MIND.

I LAY it down as a first principle in the cultivation of the mind, that there can be no intellectual progress without studyan earnest, diligent, persevering application of the mental faculties. This is the only effectual means of making the mind powerful in itself. Mere accumulation of knowledge is not the thing most desirable. It is strength of mind: it is discipline more than acquisition. The faculties of the mind bear a close analogy to the powers of the physical frame. The muscles can acquire strength, firmness, and endurance, only on the condition of continual exercise. It is in vain that you nourish the body with the greatest variety of the most luxurious food. Sickness will be produced, not health; weakness, not strength; unless there goes with it powerful action-continual exercise. So mere desultory and miscellaneous reading is more apt to be pernicious than useful. It is more likely to enervate than strengthen the mind. Hence it is, that we often see intellectual and strong-minded men who have scarcely ever read a book. They have read men and things, not books, in this great world. What they have seen and experienced in life has been thoroughly digested by meditation, and been wrought into the very texture of a powerful and vigorous mind. On the presentation of a new subject (which, after all, is the test of a sound education), such a mind grasps it with a firm and tenacious hold. It sees what there is in it; it detects its strong and its weak points; it is able to make up a solid judgment, to decide with promptness, and act with energy. Education is not a holiday dress to be put on only to shine and to dazzle: it is an armour of strong defence and solid weapons,

by which man goes down into the fierce battle of this world, conquering and to conquer. That education I honestly believe is best which mingles books with business, action with meditation, theory with practice, interchanges solitude with society. I consider it, then, young men, propitious rather than unfavourable, in the condition of the most of those who hear me, that you are engaged in active employments. Milton, the greatest master in English literature, was a considerable part of his life a schoolmaster. Newton interchanged his sublime studies with the dry and monotonous duties of Master of the Mint. Our Bowditch, that miracle of self-education, pursued those mathematical studies which afterwards made him the translator of La Place, and the universal guide of navigation through the trackless seas, in the uncongenial employment of a supercargo and a sca captain. And Charles Lamb, that most accomplished of belles lettres scholars and sweetest of prose writers, passed his life at the desk of a common clerk. Roscoe, the historian of Leo the Tenth, was an active and successful merchant at the same time that he was delighting the world with his literary productions. Bacon was one of the most laborious men that ever lived, in the common drudgery of his profession; he was at the same time the deepest of philosophers, and yet he found leisure so to cultivate elegant literature, as to become the most perfect master of mere English composition that the nation has ever produced.*

Look into our own National Legislature. Who are they who place themselves at its head and gain the greatest influence over its deliberations? It is not the mere scholar, nursed up in the effeminacy of literary leisure. It is not he whose knowledge, gained by mere reading, is most extensive. It is more often the man who has been trained up in the school of business; whose mind has been disciplined by action, as well as stored with knowledge; who has united to the common round of employment, habits of thought, study, and investigation. It is the lawyer, who has not confined his attention to the technicalities of forms, or the chicanery of petty disputes, but who has extended his investigations into all branches of collateral science, into history, political economy, statistics, commerce, agriculture, manufactures. It is the merchant who has risen above his class; who has not consumed all his powers in the details of profit and loss; who has read and thought while he has been building himself up a fortune; who has taken pains to inform himself concerning the condition, physical, political, and moral, of the different nations whose products he buys and sells; who has

Chaucer also turned from the drudgery of official life (he was Comptroller of the Customs) to the composition of his exquisite poems.-ED.

investigated and ascertained the causes of commercial changes and revulsions.

This leads me to speak of a point which is very necessary to to be mentioned here, for the encouragement of those who hear me. It is much easier to superinduce the ornament and aid of a cultivated mind upon business habits, than practical efficiency upon a merely scholastic education. The mind must be consolidated by close and vehement application of its powers to things which task its strength to the utmost. Action forms the intellectual constitution to robustness, energy, and strength. Mere scholastic education has no such power. It may give grace and dexterity to action, but cannot confer original and self-sustaining force.

The man who has been exclusively a student has necessarily lost much time in the pursuit of that which is without value, or in the investigation of that which either never can be known, or would be worthless if it were fully understood. The man of business is in no danger of thus misapplying his time and his powers. He acquires in the practical affairs of life a sagacity which teaches him to distinguish almost intuitively the useful from the vain. He learns to know his intellectual wants, and what books or studies best supply them. But I fancy that I hear some of you object-"How is it possible to unite a life of business with intellectual cultivation? Not one moment can be added to the hours of the day, nor can weariness and exhaustion be warded off from the human faculties." There is an answer to this, which is sufficiently satisfactory. Nothing is more true than that if you wish to have anything done promptly and well, you must go to one whose time is already, as it would appear, occupied to the full. He has been forced to learn the great secret of this world's welfare-the economy of time. He accomplishes much, from the very fact that he uses all the precious hours of life. The most idle are the very people who complain most of the want of time, and find it most difficult to bring anything to pass. Let an idle man have anything to do which will occupy but a few hours of the day, and he will inevitably put it off to the latest possible moment; and the surest way to accomplish it seasonably and well would be to fill up the rest of the day with some other employment. But is there any one who hears me, who can honestly say that want of time is the reason why he does not cultivate his mind? Is his time so accurately divided between labour and necessary recreation and repose, that no portion can be snatched for reading and thought? How agrees with this the daily and eternal complaint that business is dull, and there is nothing to do? No! That is not the cause. The true reasons are want of settled conviction of the importance of the thing, and