lessness they either fly from place to place, or seek relief in frivolities or drugs, but always and necessarily in vain. In order that good and honourable wants shall always require a certain amount of exertion to appease them, and thus that our zeal shall be kept burning, all those things which humanity most needs are by a wise and benevolent Providence made the most difficult to procure. The silver is hidden and the gold is buried; every gift of the field requires man's coöperation before he can enjoy it; every truth, even of the most universal interest and the most practical tendency, has to be patiently and perseveringly inquired for. Nothing in the world that is worth having is gratis; everything has to be met half-way between God and ourselves; and the more our experience of Divine Providence enlarges, the more deeply do we feel how beneficent is the ordinance that it should be so;-how inglorious and negative would be our destiny were there nothing left for us to effect as of ourselves. Happiness consists in the search after truth and good, as much as in their attainment; the re-action of man in response to the primary action of God, constitutes the vast blessedness it is to live. Did the Almighty,' says Lessing, holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left Search after Truth, deign to proffer me the one I should prefer; in all humility, but without hesitation, I should request Search after Truth.' The most blessed of men is he who working with his own hands for his daily bread, reaps delight from the exercise of his intelligence upon his toils, and feels a holy harmony between the munificence of God and the duties which pertain to himself. The dream of an existence perennially workful, and yet sweet, free and poetic, such as has visited men in every age, is not so visionary as they have fancied, but it rests with the dreamer to clothe it in reality.

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Without action there can be no cheerfulness, the prime need as well as the mark of a true and happy life. Doubtless there is a native, spontaneous cheerfulness of spirit, but that which keeps cheerfulness alive is nothing else than activity, sedulously addressed to some worthy end. This is a secret worth knowing, for the simple reason that without cheerfulness neither the intellect nor the affections can expand to their full growth, which is for life never to reach its proper altitude; while nothing is more surely fatal to it than gloom, moroseness, and discontent, unless it be the petty envyings, jealousies, and suspicions, the toadstools of the human heart, which sprout from the same foul soil, or indolent inactivity. Who are the people generally given to talking scandal? Those who for want of some enlivening occupation become fretful and impatient, and know little or nothing about cheerfulness;-a class analogous to the sick of ennui, but differenced from them by temperament.

Having nothing to agreeably engage the mind, the temptation to assume the office of censor over their neighbours is too strong to resist, the whole heart becomes tainted and purulent, and the very occupations that make others lively become an eyesore. Every one has noticed the cheerfulness which comes of a little bustle, in which all parties are concerned; how ill-tempers subside, and crossest faces become bland; a result as much more solid and graceful as the instrumentality is nobler, infallibly follows regular and solid devotion of the soul to aims that demand its best imaginings. How inexcusable it is, if not shameful and disgraceful, to have nothing but what is low and transitory to think about, and thus to fall into such a state of dullness, scarcely needs an observation. Were the world empty, were it a silent, barren waste, without a tree or a blade of grass, there might possibly be an excuse; but overflowing as it does, with the most beautiful curiosities, nothing is so utterly indefensible as to let a single waking hour die blank. Even though busily engaged throughout the day in commercial or domestic avocations, the dolce far niente which our poor weariness is so apt to plead in the evening, and which no wise man ever refuses to listen to altogether, is a principle only to be admitted under the protest that the proper rest for man is change of occupation. There are few kinds of business which fatigue both body and mind at once; while one toils, the other almost necessarily reposes; when the one ceases work, nature rules that the other shall be fittest to begin; and that is a rare case indeed where either body or mind is debarred all opportunity of healthful and useful occupation when its turn to work comes on. Man is not so imperfectly constituted, nor is the world so defectively framed, as for him to be constrained to look for pastime and relaxation anywhere but in change from one improving employment to another; it may be questioned whether the sweetness of Home can ever be truly enjoyed, where the leading recreation does not take the shape of some intelligent and pretty pursuit, such as the formation of an herbarium, or the use of the pencil. Boys would not incessantly be in mischief and trouble were they encouraged to study natural history; girls would be far livelier and companionable, and also enjoy better health, were they trained to fixed habits of mental employment. The delight of a single hour of recreation in art or science, outweighs a whole life-time of mere frivolities; before the picture of this delight, could it be brought home to him, the mere trifler would sink in dismay. Employment, therefore, does not mean no amusement; the workers, or those who use their time instead of wasting it, have more holidays than any one else, for every change is a going out to play. When rational and unsophisticated, play, commonly

so called, is still work. No man ever played genially and heartily without gaining something by it, and thus gathering from it a fruition of work. He who refuses to play is but a stately fool; pastime and fun are as great a need as labour; to sport and gambol with children is one of the sweetest lyric songs of life; grown people, however, should remember that as the end of all exertion, even the slightest, should be profit, play should always be based upon an intelligent idea. People may be mirthful without being inane, just as they may be grave without being gloomy. A mind in right order can descend into gaiety and frolics as readily as it can soar into magnificent ideas; for it is the characteristic of well-disciplined intelligence, and purity and earnestness of the affections, that they are universal in their capacity. No person thoroughly enjoys play, or knows what play really is, who cannot spend hours of solitude in comfort.

In the degree that we employ ourselves, we acquire Power. All the potency we ever possess, is referable to our moments of action, or when we are experiencing or effecting Changes; the period of transition is that in which power is developed; to acquire and to wield it, we must be for ever seeking to quit the state we are in, and to rise into a higher one. Power, accordingly, which is only Life under another name, is resolvable, essentially, into constant progression. It never consists in the having been, but always in the becoming; we flourish in proportion to our desire to emerge out of To-day. It is often asked concerning a stranger, Where does he come from? The better question would be, where is he going to? Never mind the antecedents, if he be now in some shining pathway. Other people are continually heard wishing to be 'settled.' It may be useful to be settled as to our physical resources, but to be settled in any other way is the heaviest misfortune that can befall a man, for when settled, he ceases to improve, and is like a ship stranded high and dry upon the sand. Who is the man from whose companionship and conversation we derive soundest pleasure and instruction? Not he who, as it is facetiously said, has completed his education,' but he who, like a bee, is daily wandering over the fields of thought. The privilege of living and associating with a person who knows how to think, and is not afraid to think, is inestimable; and no. where is it felt more profoundly than in the comparative solitude and privacy of wedded life. Rousseau finds in this need a beautiful argument for inspiring one's beloved, during the sweet, plastic days of betrothal, with a taste for the amenities of nature, such as shall provide them a source in after years of lasting and mutual delight. The being afraid to think is the chief reason perhaps why the majority of people

are so disinclined to think,—to think, that is, beyond the little circle of their bodily wants. There can be few who are positively unable to think; otherwise thought and happiness would not bear the close natural relation which they do. Put a grand idea before the generality of people, and it seems to them like looking up a ship's mast from the deck. Yet it is not that they cannot ascend, using the proper means; they let themselves be terrified away, fancying they are unable, when they are merely self-distrustful. Doubtless there is a difference in aptitude, but every one may become stronger if he will; the worst unbelief is unbelief in one's self; it only needs confidence and a start; whatever we may get from others, or from the world, has grown from germs such as we have also in ourselves,-whence it is that in our reading we are so continually coming up with ideas that we feel to be our own; nor is there anything more beautiful in creation than each man's own private soul, when fairly dealt with and elicited. Helen, when she explored nature for a model of a golden cup that she should offer upon the altar of Diana as perfectly beautiful, found nothing more exquisite than her own bosom.

Practically then, for to bring us to some practical conclusion is the sole use of such considerations,—we learn from the great law of Action the spring of Happiness, that to encourage love of work is the first article of sensible Education. In effect, this is the stimulating of the Intellect and the Affections which has already been adverted to under other heads. All action, to be efficacious for good, must rise into a certain intensity; it must also be regular and determinate, and it is only training and culture that can make it so. As in the structure of plants and animals, where any organ is deficient, or there is departure from symmetry, it is uniformly referable to a weakening of the vital energies, or to restraint or diversion of them away from their proper office; so when our experience of life is infelicitous and unrewarding, it is because the natural activity of the soul has either been repressed, or neglected, or turned astray in early youth. The unhappy are those 'who from want of practice cannot manage their thoughts, who have few to select from, and who because of their sloth or weakness do not roll away the heaviest,' and these are precisely the individuals whom observation would perceive to be labouring under imperfect discipline of the spiritual activities, dating from the very commencement of education. Ordinarily, to the young, work is rendered so unattractive, and the idea of pleasure so entirely dissevered from it, that the first wears the semblance of a penalty, and the latter of the true object of existence. This is to completely neutralize the design of work, and to despoil life of its highest luxuries. Pleasure is not bestowed on us to be made a

motive; still less is it to be deemed, as by many, a right of human existence, and its non-arrival an exhibition of Divine injustice. What we ought to let reign in our minds, is primarily, work, which translates itself, in every true soul, into the duty of development. Let the præludia of stem and foliage be made the business, and the flowers will come of their own accord, and fill the air with fragrance. In teaching,' says the good Jean Paul, accustom the boy to regard his future, not as a path from pleasures, though innocent, to other pleasures; nor even as a gleaning, from spring-time to harvest, of flowers and fruits, but as a time in which he must execute some long plan; let him aim at a long course of activity,-not of pleasure.' Then he shows how privileged is such a course:—That man is happy, for instance, who devotes his life to the cultivation of an island, to the discovery of one that is lost, or of the extent of the ocean. I would rather be the court-gardener who watches and protects an aloe for fifteen years, until at last it opens to him the heaven of its blossom, than the prince who is hastily called to look at the opened heaven. The writer of a dictionary rises every morning, like the sun, to move past some little star in his zodiac; a new letter is to him a new year's festival, the conclusion of an old one a harvest-home.' Under proper management, work never becomes irksome. When prematurely fatigued, it is not the action that has tired us, but want of ingenious and orderly methods. Work never killed or hurt any man who knew how to go about it. See what order there is in nature! Along with sublimest activity, what smoothness and ease! How still the growth of the plant, yet how rapid! How peacefully the stars of midnight seem encamped; yet before morning whole armies have disappeared! So much is achieved, because everything is done in order, at the right time, intently, yet deliberately, and the minutes never wasted in indecision. In work, then, consists the true pride of life. Grounded in active employment, though early ardour may abate, it never degenerates into indifference; and age, as we have said before, lives in perennial youth. Life is only a weariness to the idle, or where the soul is empty, and better than to exist thus vacantly, is it for longevity as to birthdays to be denied.

My heart leaps up when I behold

The rainbow in the sky!

So was it when I was a boy;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!