THOU hast said in thy heart, I am, and there is none besides me! Prurient, bustling, and revolutionary, this French wisdom has never more than grazed the surfaces of knowledge. It has dearly purchased a few brilliant inventions at the loss of all communion with life and the spirit of nature. As the process, such the result! A heartless frivolity, alternating with a sentimentality as heartless; an ignorant contempt of antiquity; a neglect of moral self-discipline; a deadening of the religious sense, even in the less reflecting forms of natural piety, a scornful reprobation of all consolations and secret refreshings from above; and as the Caput Mortuum of human nature evaporated, a French nature of rapacity, levity, ferocity, and presumption.

COLERIDGE.-Appendix to the Statesman's Manual.

It is a most amazing thing that young people never consider they shall grow old. I would, to young women especially, renew the monition of anticipation every hour of the day. I wish we could make all the cryers, watchmen, balladsingers, and even parrots, repeat to them continually, You will be an old woman, you will, you will.

JOHN FOSTER.

SWEET Spring indeed is there,

In spite of many a rough untoward blast,
Hopeful, and promising with buds and flowers.
But where is glowing Summer's long rich day
That ought to follow, faithfully expressed?

And mellow Autumn, charged with bounteous fruit?
Ah! while the better part is missed, the worse

In man's Autumnal season is set forth,

With a resemblance not to be denied;

The season ended and the greenness gone;

The sheaves not gathered; bowers that hear no more

The voice of gladness, less and less supply

Of outward sunshine and internal warmth;

And with this change, sharp air and falling leaves,

Foretelling total Winter, blank and cold.

WORDSWORTH'S Excursion.

༥༩

CHAPTER XVIII.

Voices of the Summer Continued-Seasons of Visitation-Character of Roger Sherman, and the Lesson for Young Men-The neglect of opportunities is the sowing for a harvest of evils-The proper periods to be regarded-Roots, rather than slips to be rested on.

THE processes of Summer, in connection with the progress of human life, remind us of one of Lord Bacon's profound and germinant aphorisms. "For it is in knowledge," says he, “as it is in plants; if you mean to use the plant, it is no matter for the roots; but if you mean to remove it to grow, then it is more assured to rest upon roots than slips. So the delivery of knowledges, as it is now used, is as of fair trees without the roots; good for the carpenter, but not for the planter. But if you will have sciences grow, it is less matter for the shaft or body of the tree, so you look well to the taking up of the roots."

Good for the carpenter, but not for the planter! There is a volume of meaning in that aphorism. How many books there are, of which this may be said, and how many educational and disciplinary processes there are, fitted rather for the use than the development, of minds that need to be trained. Principles and knowledges need to be rooted in young minds, and set a-growing, not planed, squared, and fashioned, as for the use of young

carpenters. The ground-work of education and discipline is planting and training; you must rest upon roots in this work, for you can have no such assurance of growth by slips. And if this be true even in regard to sciences, in which always there is much for the mere carpenter, bundles of facts for present use, like cords of forest wood cut down for burning or building; how much truer and more important in regard to moral and religious principles and habits, that need to be set and fast rooted, in order to endure and grow. When once rooted, they are not only an inseparable part of the being, but a parental part. They are reproductive; they clothe the summer with a bright, green, refreshing foliage, and they fill the autumn with a rich abundant har

vest.

It is then of infinite importance that the roots be seen to; that our knowledges, principles, courses of active and habitual life, have roots, and that they be not things of a mere expediency, things without life, or taken up and applied to transitory use, even as a man would take a polished piece of dead dry mahogany to make a box withal, but never to set in his garden. Things for cultivation must be things in growth, and in the period of growth must be attended to.

Why, asks John Foster, in a monitory appeal to a young person, "Why do you look with pleasure on the scene of coming life? Does the pleasure spring from a sentiment less noble than the hope of securing, as you go on, those inestimable attainments, which will not decay with declining life, and may consequently set age and time and dissolution at defiance? You gladly now see life before you, but there is a moment which you are destined to meet, when you will have passed across it, and will find yourself at the further edge. Are you perfectly certain,

that at that moment you will be in possession of something that will enable you not to care that life is gone? If you should not, what then?"

The thoughtful mind is here brought to a verge, where all the responsibilities of life rise up before it, and the consequences of our present choices come to a point. The possible negative grows out of the interval between now and then, out of the manner in which the seed-time runs into the summer, and the summer into the autumn. We have dwelt upon the period of seeds; the susceptible and suggestive period; and the germinating and growing period in the formation of character. There is also a spending period, which, in the order of nature and of divine wisdom, should come last; and if not, if God's arrangements be disregarded, and that time be taken for indulgence, which God has given for discipline and trial, eternity, if not the present life, must be full of misery.

One period cannot be changed for another. The harvest cannot come in the Spring-time, and the Spring-time cannot come in the harvest. If the seed-time be neglected in its season, and then attempted after harvest, or at what should have been the harvest, there is nothing but ruin; there is a harvest indeed, for there always will be that, a harvest of evil if not of good; but it is in such a case the harvest of consequences of early heedlessness, neglect, perversion, and waste. A terrible granary will thus be filled; the consequence of neglecting what God has appointed for the seed-time, until the period when God expects the harvest, and will call the soul to its account.

Almost all the evils experienced, even in this world, are the consequence of the neglect of proper seed-periods, offered, and put in one's power. These, and all opportunities, are times of