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DISSIMILARITY THE BOND OF UNION.

of sorrowful affection which else we should never reach; it first teaches us what it is to wear this nature of ours, and shows us that we have been men and have not known it. It strips off the thick bandages of self, and the grave clothes of custom; and bids us awake to a life which first reveals to us the death-like insensibility from which we are emerging. Yes; and even if we are unfaithful to our trust, if we have let our negligence have fatal way; if sorrows fall on some poor dependent charge, from which it was our broken purpose to shield his head; still it is good that we have known him, and that his presence has been with us. Had we hurt a superior, we should have expected his punishment; had we offended an equal, we should have looked for his displeasure; and these things once endured, the crisis would have been passed. But to have injured the weak who must be dumb before us, and look up with only the lines of grief which we have traced;

this strikes an awful anguish into our hearts: a cloud of divine Justice broods over us, and we expect from God the punishment which there is no man to give. The rule of heavenly equity gathers closer to us than before; and we that had neglected mercy are brought low to ask it. Thus it is that the weak, the child, the outcast, they that have none to help them, raise up an Infinite protector on their side, and by their very wretchedness sustain the faith of Justice ever on the throne. Martineau.

He who does not raise himself above the breastwork of his order, is no hero within it. An order, as such, makes

only puppets. Be in thine own person more than thine order; and then thou wilt be the first to perceive, to avoid, and to amend its defects. Herder.

In every man who is not an animal, in whom mind is more powerful than circumstances, there is something informing and spiritual that makes him different from all his fellows. Affection, love, grace, tenderness, down to shrewd sense, when native to the character, take forms as special and varied as those of Imagination or Creative Thought. It is found impossible to replace an ordinary friend; there is but one of the kind. Some of the plainest men one knows, made out of the commonest elements, are the most strongly marked with individuality, and defy imitation as much as Genius itself.

Prospective Review.

The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous and evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor any of the emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade from the book of record. It is not his business either to think, to judge, to argue, or to know. The work of his life is to be twofold only; to see, to feel.

The thoughtful man is gone far away to seek; but the perceiving man must sit still, and open his heart to receive. 18

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THE SENTIMENTALIST.

The thoughtful man is knitting and sharpening himself into a two-edged sword, wherewith to pierce. The perceiving man is stretching himself into a four-cornered sheet, wherewith to catch.

And all the breadth to which he can expand himself, and all the white emptiness into which he can blanch himself, will not be enough to receive what God has to give him.

An artist need not be a learned man; in all probability it will be a disadvantage to him to become so; but he ought, if possible, always to be an educated man: that is, one who has understanding of his own uses and duties in the world, and therefore of the general nature of the things done and existing in the world; and who has so trained himself, or been trained, as to turn to the best and most courteous account whatever faculties or knowledge he has. The mind of an educated man is greater than the knowledge it possesses; it is like the vault of heaven, encompassing the earth which lives and flourishes beneath it; but the mind of an uneducated and learned man is like a caoutchouc band, with an everlasting spirit of contraction in it, fastening together papers which it cannot open and keeps others from opening. Ruskin.j

Mrs. Jameson gives this as an analysis of the artistic nature; it is true of one class of men, though not of the highest artists.

"Il ressent une véritable émotion, mais il s'arrange pour la montrer.

66

Beaucoup de gens alors, sont naturellement comédiens ;

EXPRESSION IMPOSSIBLE TO SOME MEN. 267

c'est à dire qu'ils donnent un rôle à leurs passions; ils sentent en dehors, au lieu de sentir en dedans; leurs émotions sont en relief au lieu d'être en profondeur.

St. Marc Girardin.

Come, I will show thee an affliction unnumbered among the world's

sorrows,

Yet real and wearisome, and constant, embittering the cup of life. There be who can think within themselves, and the fire burneth at

their heart,

And eloquence waiteth at their lips, yet they speak not with their

tongue;

The mocking promise of power is once more broken in performance, And they stand impotent of words, travailing with unborn thoughts; And thought, finding not a vent, smouldereth, gnawing at the heart, And the man sinketh in his sphere, for lack of empty sounds.

Tupper.

O thou who art able to write a book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner. Thou, too, art a conqueror and victor, but of the true sort. Carlyle.

A man need but to be to the best of his abilities, and he will occasionally appear to advantage. Goethe.

Cicero attempted a richness of style for which he lacked that heavenly repose of the intellect, which Livy, like

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EVILS OF TOO MUCH EXPRESSION.

Homer, must have possessed and among the moderns, Fenelon and Garve in no common degree.

'Tis a kind of good deed to say well;

And yet words are no deeds.

Niebuhr.

Shakspeare.

Are the deepest feelings ever uttered? or are those who utter their deepest, deep people?

I am sure what a man doth he thinketh; not so always what he speaketh. Bishop Hall.

No one would acknowledge a desire that his powers of expression should be beyond all proportion to what he has to express; yet every one would be pleased to have them adequate to his thoughts, and every one would wish to judge himself of this adequacy. Ideas, which are definitely grasped, probably always find a clear, though not always a forcible expression. It is doubtful whether feelings are so sure of a sufficient expression.

It is pleasant to see the body a fit interpreter of the mind, even if the mind is not of the highest. Some actors, perhaps, owe their fame less to rare conceptions than to a wonderfully obedient body.

Speech is too largely the instrument of the Minister of Religion. The demand for the expression of religious