thing in the world was the cultivation of W. W. for himself, the next important thing his cultivation for the sake of mankind. Goethe puts quietly on one side that central spirit of the Christian revelation, which makes the dependent affections the highest element in our nature, and places our noblest attainable life in that service which is perfect freedom. He would have us all patent digesters, or rather assimilaters, of knowledge and experience.

Prospective Review.

The whole tone of Goethe's mind during his travels and residence in Italy is most remarkable; but is it not enough to make one weep? To treat a whole nation and a whole country simply as a means of recreation for one's self; to see nothing in the wide world and nature, but the innumerable trappings and decorations of one's own miserable life; to survey all moral and intellectual greatness, all that speaks to the heart, where it still exists, with an air of patronizing superiority; or where it has been crushed and overpowered by folly and corruption, to find amusement in the comic side of the latter, is to me absolutely revolting; — perhaps more so to me personally, than I can reasonably expect it to be to others, but I think it ought to excite sentiments similar in kind, if not in degree, in every breast. I am well aware that I go into the opposite extreme; that my politico-historical turn of mind can find full satisfaction in things for which Goethe has no taste, and that I could live contentedly without feeling the want of art, not only amidst the

glorious scenery of the Tyrol, but on moor or heath, where I was surrounded by a free peasantry who had a history. But truth, though it always lies between two extremes, does not always lie in the middle.

Niebuhr.

Whoever prostituted his temperance, piety, and science, gathered his harvest into a heap and set fire to it.

Sadi.

In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting. Ruskin.

Even if we can extract a sweetness, an added grace to our own character from every root of bitterness, this is cold comfort to a human heart which wishes always to go out of itself. It is an ungenerous view of life.

Those who value religion only as a part of education, and seek virtue as a grace of character, are generally persons in whom the feeling for the beautiful is stronger than the moral sense. They seek the good because it is the beautiful, and it gratifies their taste and their self-love. It may be doubted whether such characters take as strong hold of those who are nearest them as more generous and spontaneous natures.

Sentiment is more attractive than mere homely feeling,

but it does not wear so well, and is more apt to be perverted. It has some juice of feeling in it, but this feeling is controlled by intellectual perceptions. The sap is drawn to the outermost minutest twigs of the tree of life, and the trunk which bears up the whole is left dry.

IV.

VIRTUES AND DUTIES.

SELF-CONTROL AND FAITH BOTH NEEDED.

IF every thought of the mind, every moment of the life, every word of social converse, the temper of every neighbor, the operation of every event, is to be made the distinct object of care and volition, we undertake a control possible only to Omnipotence, and assume an inspection disappointed by the first twinkling of an eye.

Conscientiousness, carried to an anxious stringency, proceeds upon the truth that every soul is intrusted to itself. This truth, however, is balanced by another, that every soul is under the care of God. Whoever is haunted by the impression of the one, lives in the presumption that, if ever the tension of his will is relaxed, all must go wrong. Whoever surrenders himself wholly to the other, fives in the presumption that, unless he falsely interfere to spoil, all will go right. The mingling influence of both can alone do justice to the two powers, human and divine, that dispose of us, recognizing the infirmity of the one, yet remembering the perfect security

of the other. If the life on which we are afloat is not so smooth and fair, that we may leave the currents and the winds to bear us, while we lie stretched in happy contemplation; neither is the stream so terrible, that if once we rest upon the oar, we are caught into the rapids and swept away. Prospective Review.

To have the tongue cut out, and to be seated deaf and dumb in a corner, were preferable to his condition who cannot govern his tongue. Sadi.

The sense of responsibility without willingness to fulfil it, leads to ill humor. The savage and the mere man of the world, are without it, and may be perfectly free from this kind of irritability, but who would thus purchase good humor?

I do not know words that might with more benefit be borne with us, and set in our hearts momentarily against the minor regrets and rebelliousnesses of life, than these simple ones of Dante,

"Tristi fummo

Nel aer dolce, che del sol s'allegra,
Or ci attristiam, nella belletta negra."

"We once were sad

In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun,
Now in these murky settlings are we sad."

Ruskin.