the last. They accompany him amid all the events with which his days are chequered; they re-appear in old age, and revive the recollections of infancy, with still more force than even those of declining life. Lycurgus exhibited a striking example to the Lacedemonians, in two hounds of the same litter, in one of which education had completely triumphed over nature. But still stronger instances might be adduced from among men, in whom early habits sometimes triumphed over ambition,-"the last infirmity of human minds." History contains many of these examples. It is enough to know children are rendered stupid; that the fire and activity natural to their age are repressed by a life melancholy, sedentary, and speculative; which, as Brigham truly says "engrafts on the constitution diseases numberless." But these, after all, are nothing more than languor and physical evils. Vices are inculcated on their youthful minds; they are inspired with inordinate ambition, the enemy of all virtue, under the disguise of emulation. The Scriptures hold a different language, they teach them to be the last; whereas the college urges them to be the first. Virtue commands them to descend; education to rise. The ecclesiastics teach the classics in the morning; and the catechism at night. Truly, every good has its attendant evil. We reap sparingly, because we do not act in concert. lack cement. Doubtless, the education of the people ought not to be the battle-ground of sects or of factions. We have all one common interest; we are bound up in one great social community, which stands at the head of the civilisation of the world, the guardian of its liberties;

We

and leads the van in art and science, and everything that ennobles man. Let us, then, walk worthy of our high status; simulate our continental neighbours in all that is lovely, and of good report; and learn from their manifest errors to improve our own. "I never knew any man," says an old author, "who could bear another's misfortune perfectly like a Christian;" which reminds us of the old lady who thought every calamity that happened to herself a trial; and every one that happened to others a judgment. We are emulous of all that man can do. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, "I know he can toil terribly," is an electric touch; but how many geniuses die prematurely from lacking a good physiological basis. Industry and economy will get rich, while sagacity and intrigue are laying their plans. We have a few brilliant men in our era; talent first-rate, which is power; and more tact, which is momentum; with literary attainments uncommon-political accomplishments most imposing. Granted, but if there be only the brilliancy of the court, not the lustre of the fixed star,-if the rays are serpentine, such only dazzle to betray, and fascinate to mislead; their powers supply reasons why we should discard rather than retain their splendid but disastrous services. May we all soon realise the old couplet

"Man, like the generous vine, supported lives,

The strength he gains is from support he gives."

If God is for us, who can be against us? One of the saddest things about human nature is, that a man may guide others in the path of life, without walking in it

himself; that he may be pilot, and yet a cast-away. "There is," says Wordsworth, "a profligacy, an inhuman sensuality in the works of Goethe, which is utterly revolting." He takes up his ground on the first canto of Wilhelm Meister, and, as the attorney-general of human nature, I there (says Wordsworth) indict him for wantonly outraging the sympathies of humanity. Well, let us gather honey from a thorn-take the good and leave the bad. Theologians tell us what is true of the degraded nature of man. Yet man is essentially a moral agent, and there is that immortal and inextinguishable yearning for something pure and spiritual, which will plead against poetical sensualists as long as man remains as he is. Physical education is lost sight of by our teachers. True, Brigham, Coombe, Caldwell, and a Burrett, have sprinkled their diamond dust; but few, if any, condescend to stoop to gather it. No matter, the Great Teacher having affirmed he had greater truths to inculcate in his era, but that his hearers were not ripe enough to bear them. May we ask, in 1859, are we recipients of weighty bullion truisims? Assuredly there is a great howling through the land upon this important subject. Shallow draughts of knowledge, however, are worse than ignorance. We do not feel that interest so much in the huge cry as we ought, perhaps, because it emanates from interested parties, each having their secular purposes to serve. We look at results. Education is to be measured, not by the extent of surface it covers, but by its kind. If our teachers have small minds, a stunted and feeble crop will be manifested, The distinctions of men vanish before the

light of great truths. The greatest men are buried in obscurity; they are shunned by the petite, and would-be great, and by consequence the giant minds are hemm'd in on every side; comparatively isolated, and in the minority in the midst of their glory. Until self-culture is more encouraged, these results are to be expected. Truth must be sought disinterestedly for its own sake, not for principle, not for power or victory.

On all points partisans are to be mistrusted, as much as the native country of the mystical Phoenix. Nothing is more true than the following remarks from a great writer:-" Public opinion, of which we hear so much, is never anything else than the re-echo of the thoughts of a few great men half a century before." It takes that time for ideas to flow down from the elevated to the inferior level. The great never adopt, they only originate. Their chief efforts are always made in opposition to the prevailing opinions by which they are surrounded: hence it is that a powerful mind is uneasy when it is not in the minority on any subject that excites general attention. The time will come when flattery, gloss, and falsehood, can no longer deceive; and simplicity itself be no longer misled. Our beloved, and gracious, and well-intentioned Queen, looks round for aid, and asks for no advice, but how to gratify the wishes, and increase the happiness of her subjects. Some think good times are come-not coming; to us it is somewhat problematical. Peace and plenty we have had of an ephemeral kind; but the Persian, Chinese, and Indian wars, forebode no good for time future. May the hopes of the sanguine ones not prove

Utopian and delusive. Reckless extravagance, restrictions in all the varied disguises and pretensions, we had hoped, bid fair to have an end; difficulties and dangers likely to be banished from the land: but tempora mutantur et mutatur cum illis. It is no longer a matter of curious speculation to consider, if an honest man was permitted to approach his Sovereign, in what terms, and under what feelings, he would address himself. The subject, with very few exceptions, feels himself animated by the purest, disinterested, and most honourable affections to his Queen and country. The vain impertinence of forms is giving way to the majesty of truth and realities; dignity and firmness, not without respect, are everywhere apparent. The complaints in our streets are strange things; the language of honest truths precedes, and of course, prevents the complaints. Our diagnostics are more piercing; experience has taught us to separate the amiable and good-natured magnates of the land, from the folly and treachery of servants; and the private virtues of the man from the vices of his government.

The English may be light and inconstant as are the British elements; the masses may be impulsive, and sometimes stolid; but Britons seldom complain long, loud, and deep, without a cause. "The people," said Robespierre, "will as soon revolt without oppression, as the ocean will heave in billows without the wind." "True," replied Vergeriand, "but wave after wave will roll on the shore after the fury of the wind is settled." Innovation is not destruction, but it is sudden innovation which brings about the catastrophe; the rapidity of the descent