the reverence most, when most alone. Thus exercising your pride for the purpose for which it was bestowed, you will have its services on solid grounds, and will not exhaust the capacities of this useful agent in poor and paltry enterprizes. The real object for which you are working may still be self aggrandizement, but it will be the greatness of a well regulated, peaceful, honourable interior, that you keep constantly in view as the condition in which you hope to sit down, and say with the old song,

66 My mind to me a kingdom is."

It is an inconceivable blessing to understand the true nature of things; for it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that far more than half the misery that desolates the world, arises from the profound ignorance of mankind respecting the intrinsic value of the objects which they covet, and spend their best energies upon.

I do not say that these objects are without certain attractions, or that they may not be very pleasant to possess; but I do say to every body, know them for what they are, and estimate them accordingly; and do not make the fatal mistake of supposing that coronet, or coach and four, or any worldly matter whatever that may be dangling before the mind's eye, has any relation to the mind's peace; though, unhappily, it may have a very potent influence in promoting its poverty, in so far as its genuine worth and nobility are concerned.

CHAPTER II.

T is, I imagine, universal with elderly people to believe that there never was any thing going on in the world in their young days like its doings (and, of course not better doings,) in their old ones; yet, making every allowance for this disposition of advancing life to suppose itself existing under a new and worse phase of affairs, I think I cannot be greatly wrong in designating the present era as certainly the most marked in alterations which are not always for the better, of any that has yet been chronicled in the page of history.

One of the most striking, and to me, one of the most disagreeable of its characteristics, is the tone of dominion and intolerable assumption of superiority with which it seems to inflate certain persons, who, "in my young time," as the ancients say, would have been accounted little of. Now, one can bear pretty well to give place to distinguished merit; but distinguished assurance without the merit, is hard to put up with. Another of

its marked and unpleasing features, is the overpowering hurry that attends it. Every body seems to be out of breath, and the greater part of the community even panting from the chase of something or another which all but themselves consider as the mere phantoms of imagination. Their observers and censurers have no time, however, to stop and set them right; for they are themselves also engaged in hunting, for nothing, probably, more real; but that is as it may be. 66 Only get on," they say, "and get off; and don't block up the way and lose time in talking."

As for the old proverb of " a nine day's wonder," that is extinguished and done with. Nobody spends nine days now in thinking about any thing. All is action, noise, and running about; and the whole world seems to be much under the influence of the same wild impulses and thirst for sensation which beset a parcel of schoolboys just broken loose from their lessons and got out into the play-ground.

A great part of this restlessness and eager desire for enjoyment, is, I think, to be traced to the facility which is given to the indulgence of the will, by the new and extraordinary circumstances in which we are placed by the agency of steam in producing a cheap and rapid mode of transit from place to place, and from object to object. There never was a time in which a little money was so available in procuring a great deal of pleasure, and a great deal of excitement. Cheap postage too!

what a quantity of agitation and eagerness to be "up and doing," has that been the means of stirring up in many a mind, which, without the presence of such a ready facility of following out its impulses, would have been content to fulfil its appointed lot in silence and obscurity.

I am quite aware, and am ready to acknowledge, that cheap travelling and cheap postage are, in many respects, great benefits bestowed upon society; but like everything else, they have a reversed side, and one which, as it strikes me, is too much overlooked. I cannot but think that the danger which attends these advantages in a moral point of view, is almost wholly lost sight of, in the contemplation and pursuit of the pleasure they afford. As I am quite of the opinion of Paley, who, speaking in an excellent common-sense sermon, of the natural disposition of the heart to console itself for its misdoings, by dwelling upon its good actions, proceeds to remark, that we need never spend time in meditating upon our virtues, for they may safely be left to take care of themselves; and that safer and wiser would it be to ponder upon our deficiencies, I think it would conduce more to right and profitable views of things, if we dwelt less upon the advantage which the present age affords in presenting us with facilities for doing as we like, and paused every now and then to consider how far the doing as we like is good for us. I do not seem to myself to be overstating the case when I say that more

persons are made unhappy from possessing the means and ability to please themselves, than from any other cause whatever; and that were it not for the inexorable force of circumstances which keeps the masses (to use a technical term) under the yoke, the world would be scarcely habitable by those who loved and sought for the blessings of peace and reflection. The simple fact is, that if human beings, even in an educated state, and trained by the discipline which intercourse with polished society enforces, are far more indebted for their good behaviour to the influence of artificial and conventional restraints, than to any intrinsically valuable principles of self-control, what can be hoped in the way of moral regeneration by inflating the minds of the multitude who do not know the meaning or the use of saying "NO" to themselves, with notions that the powers of nature, and the universe itself, are fast advancing to a condition of obedience to the human will; and that they themselves are progressing (how I hate that word!) to the throne on which man will find his legitimate resting place as the "monarch of all he surveys."

These thoughts occurred to me this morning, as I was ruminating upon the contents of a little volume of poetry which I had read last night, entitled "Reverberations ;" and which, though containing some sweet and pleasing thoughts, is marked throughout with an aspiring, self-admiring spirit, which, as much as in any treatise of its size I ever