moved by it as he would by a living example of the passion or subject before his face; for he cannot fix his attention sufficiently on a subject not interesting to him. His own sympathies will thus be roused, and he will also rouse others almost to the extent of his own enthusiasm, if his power of language correspond with his feeling, which it generally will. This want of actual emotion in the speaker causes the sublimest truths and the most thrilling relations of great facts to fall lifelessly from the lips, so that the sentences uttered come forth like wreaths of sleepy mist, instead of living forms of light.

Those who are most commanding among orators do not appear to be so much addressing their audience as to be contemplating and expressing some subject of vast interest to themselves, and which inspires their very souls and features with language and significance, like those of a Pythoness. It is this kind of inspiration with which an audience is most enthralled, as those can testify who have heard such men as Robert Hall, who often so roused the sympathy of his hearers that, before the end of a discourse, his whole audience stood up like one man, with eyes fixed on his. The force and fervour of the possessing influence must be visible in the countenance, as well as heard in the intonations of the voice. The kindling eye especially must speak.

I have seen a man so powerfully agitated by the preaching of a Welsh clergyman, as to tremble and shed tears, although he knew not a word that was spoken. His imagination put him in sympathy with the speaker. Rather wondering at him, I observed, abruptly-'Why, I thought you did not understand Welsh ! '—'No,' said he; but I felt it.' This feeling explains the marvellous success of St. Bernard among the peasants of Germany. They knew not a word he spoke, (he preached in Latin,)

but the multitude was vastly shaken by his sermons: his soul was seen in them.

The features, when excited, are so nicely expressive of the variations in mental emotion, that by looking on them we at once read the state of the mind in which the individual appears before us, unless, indeed, he artfully conceal himself, but even then constraint will be visible.

The skill of the painter is most highly evinced by his seizing the evanescent play of feeling, which, though unstable as a ray of light upon the trembling water, yet in a moment reveals the emotion of the soul; and it is the exquisite accordancy between this index and the intelligence that moves it, which characterises the man of eloquent features, and imparts, with the addition of appropriate language and utterance, an almost supernatural fascination to the gifted orator. Even without the auxiliaries of living energy, tone, and language, the actions of the muscles of the face and eyes are so marvellously fashioned to respond to the touch of passion on their nerves, and so completely calculated to excite our sympathy, that the features even of a dead man may be automatically played upon by galvanism, so that spectators shall feel their sensibilities uncontrollably disturbed. Dr. Ure relates an instance in which rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expression in the face of a murderer lately executed, in a manner surpassing the wildest representations of a Fuseli or a Kean. So powerful was the effect, that several of the spectators were forced to leave the room from terror, and one gentleman fainted.

The missionary martyr, Williams, gives a good example of the power of acting in exciting sympathy. During the launching of a ship by the natives of Eimeo, an old warrior stood on a little eminence to animate the

men at the ropes. 'His action was most inspiring.

There seemed not a fibre of his frame which he did not exert; and merely from looking at him, I felt as though I was in the very act of pulling.'

Young children are strongly affected by facial expression, and they learn the features of passion long before they learn any other part of its language. Their imitative faculties are so active, and their sympathies so acute, that they unconsciously assume the expression of face which they are accustomed to see and feel. Hence the importance that children be habituated to kindliness, beauty, and intellect, in those with whom they are domesticated. Even their playthings and pictures should be free from depraved meaning and violent expression, if we wish them to be lovely; and all the hideous, grotesque, and ludicrous portraiture, which now vulgarises the public mind, should be excluded from the nursery. As the ancient Huns worshipped the unsightly objects of nature, till they themselves became ugly, so the gothic and superstitious condition of mind. will return with the prevalence of pictorial deformities, and the demand for the unnatural will increase with the continuance of degraded art, for which deforming epidemic there can be no remedy but in familiarising the common mind with nobler objects. Vice speaks eloquently, with the force and feeling of all man's nature, to be counteracted only by the word, and deed, and life of the Christian spirit; for only those who sympathise with heaven can improve earth. The degraded form results from degradation of spirit, but the prevalence of true love will beautify humanity, and make the body itself heavenly in aspect.

Why do we sympathise with each other? Why does the babe, as soon as capable of fixing its attention on the smiling face of its mother, at once respond with smiles? Milton tells us

Smiles from reason flow.

One human spirit manifests itself to another in a manner that proves it to need no instruction to enable it to interpret every visible affection by corresponding feeling, which spontaneously demonstrates that we are qualified for fellowship by the direct operation of Him who bids us love one another. The quick heart of man responds to all the sights and sounds of nature. But we sympathise with God himself when He appeals to our affections through the mysteries of redemption. In the holy agonies of Propitiating Love we catch a glimpse of the grand secret of Divinity, and when enlightened to view it aright, we feel more than repentance, more than worship, more than faith; we feel communion with Immanuel, for Jehovah thus attracts us in our own perfected nature, and we love the voluntary victim more than ourselves. Thus we find our deliverance from degradation in partaking of His spirit who brings us to God by demonstrating the immeasurable greatness of His love towards us. When, seeing Him as He is, we sympathise with the Divine Man, we shall be in process of transformation into His likeness.

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CHAPTER X.

SOLITUDE.

Ir is by sympathy with each other that minds become either corrupted or improved; and however advantageous occasional solitude may be for the purpose of familiarising the mind with its own actings, and however necessary it may be for the arrest of pernicious associations, still it is not by solitude, but by mind acting on mind, through the living medium of sight, sound, and touch, that erroneous humanity is led to right thinking. Where shall it find a pathway out of the mysterious desert of its temptations, while left alone, or without a companion except the tempter? It was in the separation of those whom God had joined together that the serpent beguiler was first able to triumph; and when a human being is alone, that evil spirit still haunts him with the likeliest prospect of conforming the soul to his own purposes.

Without suitable response to his social desires, the mind of fallen man will conjure up a thousand beings to converse with its thoughts, and to give sentiment and language even to inanimate objects. All the world is alive to man's imagination. Hence the solitudes of the wilderness, where the Indian wanders alone, are peopled by him with spirits; and hence, too, haunted places abound in the traditions of thinly populated districts, and among those people whose business requires them to pass much time in solitary walks and watchings