ions, and prognostications, in which I would not believe;-no, not for the world!

Southey's is a mind at which I must needs admire; he stands upon a vast height, as upon a pinnacle of learning; he commands all around an immense, a boundless prospect over whatever human intellect and capacity has achieved or may achieve; but, from the peculiar construction of his mind, he obstinately looks but one way-back to` the past, to what has been done; if ever he looks to the future, he merely glances at it sideways.

If I might, like Solomon, ask a gift of God, I would profit by his mistake. I would not ask a wise and an understanding heart; for what did his wisdom and his understanding do for him? They brought him to the conclusion, that all under the sun was vanity and vexation of spirit, and that the increase of knowledge was the increase of sorrow, and so the end was epicurism, despair, and idolatry. "O most lame and impotent conclusion!" No! I would ask, were it permitted, for a simple heart, that should not deceive itself or others, but seek truth for its own sake, and, having found truth, find also goodness and happiness, which must follow to complete the moral harmonic chord.

We are so accustomed to the artificial atmosphere round us, that we lose sometimes the power of distinguishing the false from the true, till we call in our natural instincts to do for us what our per verted reason cannot. They say that the Queen of Sheba once presented before Solomon two gar

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GENERAL LIB.

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lands of flowers, and desired him to pronounce which was the natural, which the artificial wreath. The wisdom of this wisest of men did not enable him to do this by the appearance only, so exquisitely had art imitated nature, till on seeing a bee fluttering near, he called it to his aid. The little creature at once settled the question by alighting on the real flowers, and avoiding the false ones.

We have instincts as true as those of the bee to refuse the evil and to choose the good, if we did not smother them up with nonsense and metaphysics.

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How true what Southey says! (the Doctor I mean-I beg his pardon,)—“ We make the greater part of the evil circumstances in which we are placed, and then we fit ourselves for those circumstances by a process of degradation, the effect of which most people see in the classes below them, though they may not be conscious that it is operating in a different manner, but with equal force, upon themselves."

The effect of those preordained evils-if they are such-which we inherit with our mortal state; inevitable death-the separation from those we love-old age with its wants, its feebleness, its helplessness those sufferings which are in the course of nature, are quite sufficient in the infliction, or in the fear of them, to keep the spirit chastened, and the reflecting mind humble before God. But what I do deprecat?, is to hear people

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preaching resignation to social, self-created evils fitting, or trying to fit, their own natures by " process of degradation" to circumstances which they ought to resist, and which they do inwardly resist, keeping up a constant, wearing, impotent strife between the life that is within and the life that is without. How constantly do I read this in the countenances of those I meet in the world!They do not know themselves why there should be this perpetual uneasiness, this jarring and discord. within; but it is the vain struggle of the soul, which God created in his own image, to fit its strong, immortal nature for the society which men have framed after their own devices. A vain struggle it is! succeeding only in appearance, never in reality, so we walk about the world the masks of ourselves, pitying each other. When we meet truth we are as much astonished as I used to be at the carnival, when, in the midst of a crowd of fantastic, lifeless, painted faces, I met with some one who had plucked away his mask and stuck it in his hat, and looked out upon me with the real human smile.

Custom is a mere face, or rather a mere mask; as opinion is a mere voice-or less-the echo of a voice.

The Aurora Borealis is of almost nightly occur rence, but this evening it has been more than

usually resplendent; radiating up from the north, and spreading to the east and west in form like a fan, the lower point of a pale white, then yellow, amber, orange, successively, and the extremities of a glowing crimson, intense, yet most delicate, like the heart of an unblown rose. It shifted its form and hue at every moment, flashing and waving like a banner in the breeze; and through this portentous veil, transparent as light itself, the stars shone out with a calm and steady brightness; and I thought, as I looked upon them, of a character we both know, where, like those fair stars, the intellectual powers shine serenely bright through a veil of passions, fancies, and caprices. It is most awfully beautiful! I have been standing at my winCow watching its evolutions, till it is no longer ight, but morning.

In former times, when people travelled into strange countries, they travelled de bonne foi, really to see and learn what was new to them. Now, when a traveller goes to a foreign country, it is always with a set of preconceived notions concerning it, to which he fits all he sees, and refers all he hears; and this, I suppose, is the reason that the old travellers are still safe guides; while modern travellers may be pleasant reading, but are withal the most unsafe guides any one can have.

I am inclined to distrust the judgment of those persons whom I see occupied by one subject, one idea, one object, and referring all things to that, till it assumes by degrees an undue magnitude and importance, and prevents them from feeling the true relative proportion and value of other objects: yet thus it is, perhaps, that single truths are worked out and perfected. Yet, again, I doubt whether there be separate and single truths-whether it be possible for one to arrive at the truth by any narrow path; or is truth, like heaven, "a palace with many doors," to which we arrive by many paths, each thinking his own the right one; and it is not till we have arrived within the sanctuary that we perceive we are in a central point to which converge a thousand various paths from every point of the compass-every region of thought?

In the Pitti Palace at Florence there is a statue, standing alone in its naked beauty, in the centre of a many-sided saloon, panelled with mirrors, in which it is reflected at once in every different aspect, and in each, though differently, yet truly, as long as the mirror be clear and unwarped-and such is truth. We all look towards it, but each mind beholds it under a different angle of incidence; and unless we were so freed from all earthly bonds as to behold in one and the same moment the statue itself, in its pure unvarying oneness, and all its multiplied and ever-varying reflections imaged around, how shall we presume to settle which of these is the false, and which the true?