If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives, is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us !

to an end; but the person must always be included in the end; his interest must always form a part of the object,― a mean to which he, by consent, that is, by his own act, makes himself. We plant a tree, and we`fell it; we breed the sheep, and we shear, or we kill it,—in both cases wholly as means to our ends: for trees and animals are things. The woodcutter and the hind are likewise employed as means; but on agreement, and that too an agreement of reciprocal advantage, which includes them as well as their employer in the end; for they are persons. And the government under which the contrary takes place is not worthy to be called a state, if, as in the kingdom of Dahomey, it be unprogressive; or only by anticipation, whére, in Russia, it is in advance to a better and more manworthy order of things." - Church and State, p. 10.

December 27. 1831.

BEAUTY. - GENIUS.

THE old definition of beauty in the Roman school of painting was, il più nell' uno-multitude in unity; and there is no doubt that such is the principle of beauty. And as one of the most characteristic and infallible criteria of the different ranks of men's intellects, observe the instinctive habit which all superior minds have of endeavouring to bring, and of never resting till they have brought, into unity the scattered facts which occur in conversation, or in the statements of men of business. attempt to argue any great question upon facts only, is absurd; you cannot state any fact before a mixed audience, which an opponent as clever as yourself cannot with ease twist towards another bearing, or at least meet by a contrary fact, as it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called stubborn things: I am sure they have been found

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pliable enough lately in the House of Commons and elsewhere. Facts, you know, are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premisses, but in the nature and parts of premisses. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material.

December 28. 1831.

CHURCH.STATE.

- DISSENTERS.

EVEN to a church, the only pure democracy, because in it persons are alone considered, and one person a priori is equal to another person, even to a church, discipline is an essential condition. But a state. regards classes, and classes as they represent classified property; and to introduce a system of representation which must inevitably render all discipline impossible, what is it but

madness—the madness of ignorant vanity, and reckless obstinacy?

I have known, and still know, many dissenters, who profess to have a zeal for Christianity; and I dare say they have. But I have known very few dissenters indeed, whose hatred to the Church of England was not a much more active principle of action with them than their love for Christianity. The Wesleyans, in uncorrupted parts of the country, are nearly the only exceptions. There never was an age since the days of the apostles, in which the catholic spirit of religion was so dead, and put aside for love of sects and parties, as at present.

January 1. 1832.

GRACEFULNESS OF CHILDREN. - DOGS.

How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!

There seems a sort of sympathy between the more generous dogs and little children. I believe an instance of a little child being attacked by a large dog is very rare indeed.

January 28. 1832.

IDEAL TORY AND WHIG.

THE ideal Tory and the ideal Whig (and some such there have really been), agreed in the necessity and benefit of an exact balance of the three estates: but the Tory was more jealous of the balance being deranged by the people; the Whig, of its being deranged by the Crown. But this was a habit, a jealousy only; they both agreed in the ultimate preservation of the balance; and accordingly they might each, under certain circumstances, without the slightest inconsistency, pass from one side to the other, as the ultimate object required it. This the Tories did at the Re volution, but remained Tories as before.