the wild horse from the bridle.

in short, which he had fancied would come easy to him. I "In undertaking the administratorship of another man's should take measures to discipline his powers of discrimination capabilities, to which I have before alluded, I should use no and concentration. I should find out what amount of time incentive of emulation-no desire for approbation-other it was necessary that he should devote to his business for its than his own consciousness, and the pride, in him, of those full prosperity-and allow that. If it were not indispen- who loved him. The lamp I would kindle should shine sable that he should be at his place of business before only upon the inner walls of his heart, and be visible only eight o'clock, I would compel him to rise with the sun, and to those who stood upon his hearth-stone, or gathered around devote the two morning hours-the clearest-headed hours of his table. To be measured by every man who sets up, bethe day-to the elegant pursuit first selected. And when side you, his hasty and mechanical standard, and puts down he had mastered that-as he would do in a year, or ten your value with slate and pencil, is a necessity to submit years, I would find him another. He should not live, a to-but to know that it is truly done, that you have no price mere fulfiller of the curse of earning his bread. He should beyond his intrusive valuation-that, though you turn out not grow old as a person of no peculiarity. But at any rate, your innermost lining to the sun, you cannot heighten, nor and at whatever cost of incentive, I would make him so inte- deepen, nor question, even to yourself, the superficial estirested in self-accomplishment, that the property he was ac-mate-this, it seems to me, is a humiliation to fly from, like quiring should seem secondary and subsidiary-and that when he had accumulated an independence he would cast off the habit of business with a feeling of relief, and turn gladly and with his whole willing attention to the parallel but more ennobling pursuits of his intellect. His daily and most pleasurable habit would thus glide easily into a full occupation for his old age, and dignify and embellish his decline. Too rare-singularly rare-since we all look forward to old age, is the delightful spectacle of an elegant, accom-imperceptible as it is—each encounter is, to the better man, plished, agreeable old man! But oh, how the harsh prospect of growing old is softened and brightened by such a sight, and how winning and endearing are they who have not become repulsive with becoming old-when the snow upon the head has not frozen the smile of courtesy-and when the voice, though tremulous, still comes welcome from the lips, because freighted with refinement and information. God grant me, prosperity and fame as superfluities which I covet, though I can make life pleasant without them-but I will compromise, with health, to be both poor and obscure-only let me be, in old age, loveable by those around me!

"No two men ever met-no two whose intellectual measure were worth the ink of a record-without an unconscious comparison of moral stature ;-and though they part like birds in the air, and show neither track nor lost feather, they do not part as they met-but are, with inevitable, though, perhaps almst imperceptible triumph and humilia. tion, heightened and diminished-one by the other. But

a grain of sand dropped upon the mountain of self-respect, and from that mountain, in conscious elevation at least, we touch the skirts of the angels above us.

"Few are born, it is true-to be distinguished from their fellow men, and, in an address presented to an assembly of miscellaneous mind, the profit, to be drawn from the sub||ject, should cover, and be available for, all. But there are few-certainly none, likely to be members of a society with the elevated objects of this-who have not, within their being, faculties dormant-faculties uncalled upon in their business-no member of this society, I venture to say, who might not be, if he chose to be, something more than he passes for in the world-something the world might be welcome to find out, at its leisure, and would then overrate (if that were worth anything) for his having never condescended to enlighten them. Did I call this consciousness of superiority a lamp-a thing to be lighted and go outand be found only in solitude and at home! I should rather say it is a radiance, imprisoned in the soul as the sunbeam is locked up in the diamond-shining the same into whatever proximity it passes, and turning all light into rainbow richness, whether it come from the crowded thoroughfare or the household lamp-through a beggar's window, or an oriel pane!

"It is possible that there are those present, to whom it has occurred, while I have been drawing this picture, that the spare time, and energies, of young men, were best employ. ed in the service of philanthropy, patriotism, or religion. These are, certainly, strong claimants on manhood, and they enjoin duties which should be liberally allowed for in all stewardship of human and immortal mind. But, in my opinion-with due deference to those who differ from me-philanthropy is more in lack of liberal and silent givers than of devotees or preachers and patriotism is best served by the least time devoted to politics, and religion is ill-taught || when it crowds the future upon us to the exclusion of the present. God has placed no link of unworthy metal in our golden chain of existence. The present hour is as momentous, and as capable and worthy of being struck with a vibration for angel's to hear, as any link welded, in the life from which we come, or yet to be added in eternity. This hour's eyesight, this hour's hearing, this hour's sensibility to touch and motion-this hour's capabilities of thought-are for this hour and this hour only. Sight does not stop from becoming dim, because we do not use it to advantage, nor-not only for the reasons I have given, and for a more redoes hearing stop from becoming dull, because we do not refine it by music-nor touch from losing its delicacy, nor thought from losing its power-because we have not improved our day's allowance of them. There is no accumu. lation of these gifts till we have made money enough to use them in this world-no storing of them away to be re-opened in the leisure of heaven. The talent is not saved by being buried in the earth; but, whether we have one, or five-the parable teaches us-we must use what is given to us-and use them all."

*

"This some may say-is preaching pride where it is more the custom to preach humility. But pride is a weapon of which it is too much the custom to disarm us--a weapon given us by nature to make room around us, wherein to expand and be free from degrading influences. Humility is an angel's virtue, it is true-but it is a virtue, that, among devils or bad men, the humblest of angels would cover with his shield. I preach, however, no obtrusive pride. I advocate self-elevation by self-cultivation,—as secret as may be

mote reason which I shall presently give-but as an invisible bulwark against life's most mordent pangs and humiliations. Imagine the merchant I have pictured-imagine him, (by studies, sequestered, hour by hour, from the daily occupation of years,) a masterly possessor, for example, of the poetry of many languages, and himself, for his own gratification, in the habit of pouring out his feelings through the medium he had thus mastered. What, to him, beyond the moment only, would be the humiliations' on 'change'— the rebuffs or condescensions of the insolently rich who

classic routine of scholarship is a turnpike in which the fool learns the writing upon the finger-posts, as he would, were he a shoemaker, learn, and learn only, the blemishes in his lap-stone. One original comparison, made by the ploughman over his furrow, and expressed in bad grammar and accent, does more to expand his intellect than would the picking out of volumes of stale Greek with the aid of dictionary and tutor. LEARNING, so called-the learning of what authors have said of authors, and of what erudite triflers have said of erudite trifles,-may indeed be left be. hind with the apparel we die in! The effort of thought, though it be but a beggar's effort to think why he is a beggar,-is, in itself, the step higher toward the level of seraphic intelligence. We can think! We can-over any work,— and in any dress-and with no more food for thought than the Bible gives us-enlarge our minds, if we will, to the utmost stretch of which human mind is capable.

might have him at a disadvantage. His refinement would guard him against the exhibition of this very insolence, were he prosperous, as against its effect upon him were he unfortu. nate. From the thousand unpleasant collisions with men, in religion, in politics, in private relations and in business from the hourly comparisons between himself and othersfrom all that jarred upon him without his doors, he would have a retreat and a door of thought to lock behind him! His study would be a separate world,-where nothing could find him, to afflict him, except grie's entering through his heart --and, even for these, his habit of abstraction would be a ready and effectual oblivion. The luxury of such a world, built apart and passed over-to, at will, by a bridge of habit-the luxury of absence, at will, from the world we live in-is, to my mind, incomparably the greatest this life can give us. We are not out of the way, when there, of any reminder for the exercise of the mercies or charities of life. All that is purely humble-all that is truly Christian-all that is suffer. ing and appealing, belongs to the poetry of life, and follows us into this sphere of separation. If I may speak for myself I would sell, for simply what it would bring, the worldly-ad- || gates-bright gates-to existences of different glory and vantage of genius like Byron's-but I would not barter my span-and our outgoing towards heaven, through the brightown humble, open sesame, of retreat into waking dream. est or palest, were dependent on the rank given to our inland-the retreat I know I possess, in even my small copy-tellects by culture upon earth-it would express the presenhold of poetry, from most of the ills I find myself heir to, timent I feel, that, in perfect consistency with revelation, we not for any price measurable in gold and silver!

*

"The old philosophers, by vague theories and by constant search after analogies in the different kingdoms of nature, endeavoured to give shape to one instinct of the soul that its series of existences was of an ascending gradation. In the finest poem of the most philosophical of poets, the common intimation of an existence previous to this, is beautifully expanded. Says Wordsworth:

'Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The soul that rises in us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar.

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.'

Of something like a memory of a previous life, most men
are conscious. For one, I feel a conviction, that our other.
wise miraculous aptness, in the acquirement of the mysteries
of thought, language, and imagination, is more the recollec.
tion of familiar faculties, elsewhere disciplined, than the be-
ginnings of a new being in childhood. In what worlds,
among the myriad of God's making, our fellow-creatures of
that life are now distributed-or, whether their improve-
ment of the opportunities of that life, influenced their des-
tination to this world, or to a brighter or darker one, we
can only speculate in the dreams of poetry. But the future,
as it is a more important subject of inquiry, seems to me,
placed more within reach of our powers of reasoning and fore-

shadowing. Theology admits the probability of an interme

diate state between this and our final coming into God's direct presence, and the many mansions' promised to the believer may shadow forth the upward progression, world by world, of the different capacities for which these mansions are ordained. It seems not reasonable to me that the

grave should be a leveller of intellect-not reasonable that

"I know not whether I have made myself, on this last topic, understood. But perhaps you will take my meaning when I say, that if the stars, of different magnitude, were

are insensibly choosing, while here, the bright roof of our dwelling hereafter. The possibility of this-the possibility that the use we make of our faculties this hour has a bearing on the scale and scope of our existence beyond the grave, is the incentive I spoke of-an incentive to indefatigable and vigilant self-culture which may well be hid and nurtured in the deepest sanctuary of the soul !"

We delivered the foregoing in a lecture-(our first at. tempt at lecturing)—before one or two societies lately. We give these extracts to our readers because we think there will be some among them who will feel a sympathy with us in what we say, and because others may like the variety, since it is in somewhat a different vein from our usual gos. sip. It will have at least the recommendation of Touchstone's wife-" a poor thing, but mine own."*

WE publish this week a third Extra contain. ing "THE LADY JANE," AND OTHER HUMOROUS POEMS. The former is a poem of two cantos, of one hundred stanzas each, in the verse of Don Juan, and embodies descriptions of one or two very celebrated ladies and their houses, parties, mode of life, etc., in London-more literally true to the life than could be otherwise given, even through the medium of a prose description. It requires poetry, and poetry of a vein half mocking, half passionate, to paint this sphere of society and these Sybarites of fashion, in a life-like tone of colour. Whatever may be the merit of the poem, merely as a poem, we declare that a truer picture of the penetralia, literary and fashionable, of London society is not in print.

sage in a paper edited by a friend of Mr. John Neal :
* We thought so-most religiously-till we saw the following pas-

the fabric of thought, built up by a life-time of study, should be left behind by the dying philosopher, like monuments of brick and mortar ! I do not believe that the wilful clown, or what is scarce better, the exact slave to his dollar and his "He (Willis) had the impudence recently to select one of Neal's prescribed duty, is to go hence, winged for equal flight with topics, and advance some of his peculiar ideas, in a lecture before the Lyceum at Baltimore. By what we can learn, he also endeavoured the man self-disciplined in refinement and cultivation. I reto ape his manners-so far at least as to leave all the audience wonfer now, to no arbitrary aristocracy of intellect-no precé-dering what on earth he stopped for, and why he was so very brief. But his lecture was a decided failure, as was another by him, recently The delivered in Boston."-Portland Tribune.

dence in heaven by the happy chance of education.