to the same intensity day after day, he comes at length upon the extreme verge of danger. The right ventricle of the heart becomes oppressed, in consequence of imperfect action of the lungs, while the general circulation is quickened, and thus dilatation of the heart soon follows, with disordered liver and accumulation of blood in the abdomen, bringing on a long train of morbid sensations, with dread of coming death. Moderate but frequent exercise in the open air, with cheerful society, as it would have prevented this miserable condition, will also still relieve it; but if this duty be neglected, the evil rapidly increases. The patient's heart palpitates excessively, when either the mind or the body is hurried; he is 'tremblingly' alive in every limb, and his nervous system completely fails him. Pallid, weak, timid, and tremulous, he is apt to become too sensitive to endure the anxieties of domestic duty; and, if he be not sustained by high religious or moral principles, he seeks a respite from his wretchedness in the soothing, yet aggravating narcotism of opium or tobacco, or in the insidious excitement of some fermented liquor. Thus he gradually casts himself out from all happy and natural associations, and ends his days either as a hypochondriac at the mercy of quacks, or perchance becomes a maniac by becoming a drunkard. This is not an exaggerated, but alas! a common picture. The evil is aggravated,. in these cases, by the state of the mind and that of the body being equally irritable; they act and react on each other, and the passions of the one, as well as the functions of the other, become so disordered that perfect sleep cannot be obtained, and the persistent exhaustion produces a chronic fever, for which rest, the only remedy, is sought in vain, except in the grave.

The awfully rapid growth of such evils in these days is astounding: it takes root, like sin and death, in the blood and nerves of the dissolute generations rising up

The age

around us, at the demand of show and hurry. is too fast for souls to grow strong in truth. Wherever man's energies are brought to market without sufficient rest and mental breathing-time being afforded, the absorbed and embodied soul succumbs to its slavery, and there a new race is born with the physical style and temper of an over-wrought and irritable humanity, not to be governed but by fear, nor soothed but with the 'bottle,' or some influence equally deadening to the heart and brain. The state of our wills and affections, as expressed in bodily habits, always extends itself to the souls and bodies of our offspring. Our characters are written in us, and transferred to the invisible germ of each new being proceeding from us, to be developed into fulness, and read hereafter, as part of our eternal and inherent portion and possession. As Job says, 'God layeth up a man's iniquity for his children; He rewardeth him, and he shall know it.' (Job xxi. 19.)

The failure of the nervous system, and the fearful recourse to narcotics and stimulants for its relief, are often witnessed where the tyranny of Mammon exacts too long an attention to the mechanical and anxious business of art. There opium-eating and dram-drinking are most prevalent. The results are visible in a frightful degree amongst the operatives of our great manufactories, where the eye must be quick and the hand ever ready for one monotonous action, hour after hour and day after day, with the mathematical precision and rapidity of machinery, even through all that period of life when body and soul most demand a cheerful diversity of object and of action, for they cannot be duly developed but in the gaieties of youth and nature.

But the commercial Moloch demands the perpetual sacrifice of almost the whole bodily and mental being of those who are providentially so poor as to have nothing to sell but themselves. The millions sterling which their

labours have won from many lands, belong to those who employ them; how then shall they be protected? Ceaseless toil is their protection, say some, because it preserves their morals! Alas, then, for the morals of those who neither toil nor spin! This subject, however, is too large for these pages. The great fact which we would observe is, the power of the will over the body, for a man dies from voluntary fatigue, in the determination to employ his muscles, barely to supply his bodily wants, or to enslave himself for the indulgence of his own lusts. Whether he thus exhaust his vital energy in duty, or for the indulgence of his appetites, he still demonstrates the dominance of the will, since he undergoes the extremity of toil to answer his own purpose, under whatever circumstances he may be constrained to exert himself. The will, then, is the master principle, even in a slave, and therefore its moral state must determine every man's moral destiny. It is by the will, in active and fixed attention to outward things, that we place ourselves fully in contact with matter, and subject ourselves to its resistless influences ; and it is by the will, in the abstractions of devout desires and spiritual efforts to rise higher, even to a status in which the will shall be one with love, and therefore indeed free, that we correspond with God, and gather strength to pass the gates of heaven, that open of themselves to all believers.

CHAPTER II.

INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION.

IN mental training the chief difficulty is to cultivate the faculty of attention in such a manner as that the growing mind shall mark the points of likeness and unlikeness in objects and in ideas. Thus nature appeals to reason and instructs the understanding. The social state determines the direction of thought, from the earliest opening of the faculties. But as every human being duly endowed with brain is influenced by a desire of being admired and approved, every child may be soon educated, in an imitative manner, to adopt such ideas as please those who show them love, and whom, of course, they quickly learn to love and love to please. Thus education becomes a happy process, when the sympathy on which it depends is felt and understood. Mothers with clear heads and warm hearts can speedily teach their children to observe things and thoughts with discriminating discernment, and to adopt such ideas as please the parent. Reason is sympathy, and sympathy is soon acquired by children by observing what affectionate teachers enjoy or dislike. Their attention is readily drawn to the same objects and ideas, and when a child can thus attend it begins to reason and form habits of thought in keeping with those of its teacher, provided the teacher teaches in a loving spirit. What is good or bad to the teacher is then good or bad to the taught, and the moral affections and the rational faculties grow together, unless disease interferes.

If the nervous system allowed the mind to attend,

reason would appear in its power as much at six years of age as at sixty. The child does reason then, and that correctly to the extent of its knowledge and power of attending; and it is then as capable of enjoying intellectual truth as in maturer years, provided the faculties be cultivated in an appropriate manner. Perhaps the most beautiful instance of such premature enjoyment is that furnished by Washington Irving, in his memoir of Margaret Davidson, a child, of whom it is stated that, when only in her sixth year, her language was elevated and her mind so filled with poetic imagery and religious thought, that she read with enthusiasm and elegance Thomson's 'Seasons,' the 'Pleasures of Hope,' Cowper's 'Task,' and the writings of Milton, Byron, and Scott. The sacred writings were her daily study; and notwithstanding her poetic temperament, she had a high relish for history, and read with as much interest an abstruse treatise that called forth the reflective powers as she did poetry or works of imagination. Her physical frame was delicately constituted to receive impressions, and her mother was capable of observing and improving the opportunity afforded to instruct her. Nothing was learned by rote, and every object of her thought was discussed in conversation with a mind sympathising with her own. Such a course, however, while it demonstrates the power of the mind, proves also that such premature employment of it is inconsistent with the physiology of the body; for while the spirit revelled in the ecstasies of intellectual excitement, the vital functions of the physical framework were fatally disturbed. She read, she wrote, she danced, she sung, and was the happiest of the happy; but while the soul thus triumphed, the body became more and more delicate, and speedily failed altogether under the successive transports. She died in her fifteenth year, and a year before thus expressed the state of her soul::