what is sufficient, and not much more than is sufficient, to prove your conclusion. You affront men's selfesteem and awaken their distrust, by proving the extreme absurdity of thinking differently from yourself: and

in this way, the very clearness and force of the demonstration will, with some minds, have an opposite tendency to the one desired. Labourers who are employed in driving wedges into a block of wood, are careful to use blows of no greater force than is just sufficient. If they strike too hard, the elasticity of the wood will throw out the wedge.-(p. 432.)

On the Essay Of Praise,' Archbishop Whately remarks, with admirable truth, that it is needless to insist, as many do, upon the propriety of not being wholly indifferent to the opinions formed of us; as that tendency of our nature stands more in need of keeping under than of encouraging or vindicating :-

It must be treated like the grass on a lawn which you wish to keep in good order; you neither attempt, nor wish to destroy the grass; but you mow it down from time to time, as close as you possibly can, well trusting that there will be quite enough left, and that it will be sure to grow again.—(p. 491.)

On the Essay Of Youth and Age,' we have many excellent remarks upon the fact to which the experience of most men bears testimony, that great precocity of understanding is rarely followed by superior intellect in after-life; and more especially that there is nothing less promising than, in early youth, a certain full-formed, settled, and, as it may be called, adult character :'

A lad who has, to a degree that excites wonder and admiration, the character and demeanour of an intelligent man of mature

years, will probably be that, and nothing more, all his life, and will cease accordingly to be anything remarkable, because it was the precocity alone that ever made him so. It is remarked by greyhound fanciers that a well-formed, compact-shaped puppy, never makes a fleet dog. They see more promise in the loosejointed, awkward, clumsy ones. And even so, there is a kind of crudity and unsettledness in the minds of those young persons who turn out ultimately the most eminent.—(p. 405.)

How admirably true! We heartily wish that many injudicious parents would lay this to heart. Who is there who does not remember how, at school and college, some cautious, slow-speaking, never-committing-himself lad, whose seeming precocity of judgment was mainly the result of stolidity of understanding and slowness of circulation, was evermore thrust as a grand exemplar before the view of those whose quicker intellect and warmer heart often got them into scrapes from which he kept clear, but promised what he could never attain, till the very name of prudence, discretion, reserve, became hateful and disgusting! And how regularly that pattern boy or lad has proved in after-life the dullard and booby which his young companions, in their more natural frank-heartedness, instinctively knew and felt he was even then!

On the Essay Of Friendship' the Archbishop observes :

It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty, before they were at all acquainted, form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees. (p. 276.)

6

On Bacon's remark, that a man that is young in

years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time,' the Archbishop says :-

And this may be, not only from his having had better opportunities, but also from his understanding better how to learn by experience. Several different men, who have all had equal, or even the very same, experience,—that is, have been witnesses or agents in the same transactions,-will often be found to resemble so many different men looking at the same book. One, perhaps, though he distinctly sees black marks on white paper, has never learned his letters; another can read, but is a stranger to the language in which the book is written; another has an acquaintance with the language, but understands it imperfectly; another is familiar with the language, but is a stranger to the subject of the book, and wants power or previous instruction to enable him fully to take in the author's drift; while another, again, perfectly comprehends the whole.-(p. 400.)

In an annotation on the Essay Of Dispatch,' we find some thoughts on the advantage of knowing when to act with promptitude and when with deliberation, and of being able suitably to meet either case. the Archbishop goes on as follows:

you

Then

If cannot find a counseller who combines these two kinds of qualification (which is a thing not to be calculated on), you should seek for some of each sort; one, to devise and mature measures that will admit of delay; and another, to make prompt guesses, and suggest sudden expedients. A bow, such as is approved by our modern toxophilites, must be backed—that is, made of two slips of wood glued together: one a very elastic, but somewhat brittle wood; the other much less elastic, but very tough. The one gives the requisite spring, the other keeps it from breaking. If you have two such counsellors as are here spoken of, you are provided with a backed bow.-(p. 250.)

Describing the two opposite sorts of men who equally precipitate a country into anarchy, the one sort by

obstinately resisting all innovations, and the other by recklessly hurrying into violent changes without reason, the Archbishop says:

The two kinds of absurdity here adverted to may be compared respectively to the acts of two kinds of irrational animals, a moth, and a horse. The moth rushes into a flame, and is burned: and the horse obstinately stands still in a stable that is on fire, and is burned likewise. One may often meet with persons of opposite dispositions, though equally unwise, who are accordingly prone respectively to these opposite errors, the one partaking more of the character of the moth, and the other of the horse.—(p. 244.)

Lord Macaulay tells us, and experience confirms his statement, that it is not easy to make a simile go on all fours, and incomparably more difficult to attain strict accuracy when an analogy is drawn out to any length. But Archbishop Whately overcomes this difficulty. There is no hitch whatever in the following comparison, though it runs to very minute and exact details:

The effect produced by any writing or speech of an argumentative character, on any subject in which diversity of opinion prevails, may be compared-supposing the argument to be of any weight to the effects of a fire-engine on a conflagration. That portion of the water which falls on solid stone walls, is poured out where it is not needed. That, again, which falls on blazing beams and rafters, is cast off in volumes of hissing steam, and will seldom avail to quench the fire. But that which is poured on woodwork that is just beginning to kindle, may stop the burning; and that which wets the rafters not yet ignited, but in danger, may save them from catching fire. Even so, those who already concur with the writer as to some point, will feel gratified with, and perhaps bestow high commendation on, an able defence of the opinions they already hold; and those, again, who have fully made up their minds on the opposite, side, are more likely

to be displeased than to be convinced. But both of these parties are left nearly in the same mind as before. Those, however, who are in a hesitating and doubtful state, may very likely be decided by forcible arguments. And those who have not hitherto considered the subject, may be induced to adopt the opinions which they find supported by the strongest reasons. But the readiest and warmest approbation a writer meets with, will usually be from those whom he has not convinced, because they were convinced already. And the effect the most important and the most difficult to be produced, he will usually, when he does produce it, hear the least of.—(p. 432.)

We do not know where to find a comparison more correct or more beautiful, than that with which the highly-gifted prelate concludes his remarks on those writers who inculcate morality, with an exclusion of all reference to religious principle. He gives us to understand that the resolute manner in which Miss Edgeworth, in her works, ignored Christianity, was the result of an entire disbelief in its doctrines. But even this sad fact leaves her open to the charge of having falsified poetical truth; inasmuch as it cannot be denied, that Christianity, true or false, does exist, and does exercise a material influence on the feelings and conduct of some of the believers in it. And to represent all sorts of people as involved in all sorts of circumstances, while yet none ever makes the least reference to a religious motive, is artistically unnatural. The graver objection still remains, that the moral excellences described in non-religious fictions as existing, cannot exist, cannot be realised, except by resorting to principles which, in those fictions, are unnoticed. And the young reader should therefore be reminded