character, but it must be harmonized by Humility. Cau tiousness and Prudence, if allowed to become morbid, may almost unfit a man for action.

If, then, we are endeavouring to cultivate ourselves and others, we must see that no one faculty, however good in itself, is developed unduly, or without equal care being bestowed on the growth of a counterbalancing faculty. That only is a true system of education which aims at the development, not of some, but of all the powers of man. In a well-balanced pair of scales, a feather on one side is found to turn the scale just as really as if a ton had been put into it. In the same way, if a man be deficient in one element, a fair development of the opposite quality will show an excess. Some men are exceedingly good; but being de ficient in force and energy of character, they produce upon society very little influence. They are like lemonade with the lemon left out-altogether too sweet and insipid. Some, again, have a predominance of animal propensity, and their tendency of character is toward animal indulgences. Others have moral power, with too little intelligence to guide it. Others are warped and unbalanced by a predominance of social feeling. If they had enough of something else to balance their social sympathies, while people would admire them as the "best fellows in the world," they would not be obliged to regret in their behalf a course of dissipation and folly. Thus it is that even the most admired virtues become vicious, unless they are directed in their exercise by that "sweet reasonableness" which "turns to scorn the falsehood of extremes."

"Faraday was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but, through high self-discipline, he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion."-Tyndall.

"Dost thou love life, then do not squander time (or energy), for that is the stuff life is made of."-Franklin.

LTHOUGH we have not the slightest conception of what life is in itself, and consequently could not define it, we may, for the sake of convenience, think of it as a kind of force.

"In the wonderful story," says Professor Huxley in his "Lay Sermons," "of the Peau de Chagrin, the hero becomes possessed of a magical wild ass's skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire, the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last

handbreadth of the peau de chagrin disappear with the gratification of a last wish. Protoplasm or the physical basis of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light-so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on for ever. But, happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs in its capacity of being repaired and brought back to its full size after every exertion. For example, this present lecture is conceivably expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By and by I shall have recourse to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size."

This explanation may be very philosophical, but it is only a roundabout way of saying that, within reasonable bounds, we can recover the effects of exhaustion by proper food and rest; which, as a fact, people are pretty well acquainted with. The error to be avoided is, in any shape to make such a pull on the constitution as to be beyond the reach of recovery. Life-stuff, or protoplasm, is an inherent quantity not to be heedlessly wasted; and this truth becomes more apparent the older we grow. Why is one man

greater, in the sense of being more powerful, than another? Because he knows how to get out of himself a greater amount of work with less waste of life-stuff.

We see from experience that the more men have to do the more they can do. And this paradox is only reasonable, for it is the necessity of great work that forces upon us systematic habits, and teaches us to economize the power that is in us. With the cares of an empire on their shoulders, Prime Ministers can make time to write poems, novels, Homeric or Biblical studies. It is the busy-idle man who never loses an opportunity of assuring you that "he has not a moment in the day to himself, and that really he has no time to look round him." Of course idle people have no time to spare, because they have never learned how to save the odd minutes of the day, and because their vital energy is expended in fuss rather than in work.

"He hath no leisure," says George Herbert, "who useth it not ;" that is to say, he who does not save time for his work when he can, is always in a hurry. One of the most sublime conceptions of the Deity we can form is that He is never idle, and never in a hurry.

The following words from a newspaper description of the sublime calmness of power manifested by the huge hydraulic crane used to lift a hundred ton gun, we take as our type of the powerful man who knows how to economize his vital force instead of wasting it by fussing: "Is there not something sublime in a hydraulic crane which lifts a Titanic engine of destruction weighing a hundred tons to a considerable height with as noiseless a calm and as much

absence of apparent stress or strain as if it had been a boysoldier's pop-gun? When we further read of the hydraulic monster holding up its terrible burden motionless in midair until it is photographed, and then lowering it gently and quietly on a sort of extemporized cradle without the least appearance of difficulty, one can readily understand that the mental impression produced on the bystanders must have been so solemn as to manifest itself in most eloquent silence." With the same freedom from excitement and difficulty does the strong man, who saves his force for worthy objects, raise up morally and physically depressed nations, take cities, or, what is harder to do still, rule his own spirit. It is the fashion nowadays to say that people are killed or turned into lunatics by overwork, and no doubt there is much truth in the complaint. Nevertheless it would seem that vital force is wasted almost as much by the idle man as by him who overworks himself for the purpose of "getting on." It is indolence which exhausts, by allowing the entrance of fretful thoughts into the mind; not action, in which there is health and pleasure. We never knew a man without a profession who did not seem always to be busy. It may be he was occupied in worrying about the dinner or the place where he should spend his holiday-which he did not work for-in correcting his wife, in inventing pleasures, and abusing them when found, in turning the house upside down by doing little jobs foolishly supposed to be useful. And women, too, when stretched on the rack of a too easy chair, are they not forced to confess that there is as much vital force