tant farms, cheered in their long walks by thoughts not of this world, to converse for a short hour with patriarchs, saints, and apostles! How did they devour the venerable and wellworn page with tearful eyes, or listen delighted to the voice of one gifted above his fellows, who read aloud the oracles of celestial wisdom! What ideas of the Bible must they have en

the species. Nature is the mightiest and the | such a change as shall make the printed Bible kindliest of teachers. The rocks and unchang-alone the means of regenerating the species. ing hills give to the heart the sense of a dura-"An age of Bibles" may not be an age of tion beyond that of the perishable body. The Christian charity and hope. The word of God flowing stream images to the soul an everlast- may not be revered the more by becoming a ing continuity of tranquil existence. "The common book in every cottage, and a drug in brave o'er-hanging firmament," even to the the shop of every pawnbroker. It was surely most rugged swain, imparts some conscious-neither known nor revered the less when it ness of the universal brotherhood of those over was a rare treasure, when it was proscribed whom it hangs. The affections ask no leave by those who sat in high places, and its torn of the understanding to "glow and spread and leaves and fragments were cherished even kindle," to shoot through all the frame a tre- unto death. In those days, when a single mulous joy, or animate to holiest constancy. copy chained to the desk of the church was We taste the dearest blessedness of earth in alone in extensive parishes, did it diffuse less our childhood, before we have learned to ex-sweetness through rustic hearts than now, press it in mortal language. Life has its uni- when the poor are almost compelled to possess versal lessons far beyond human lore. Kind-it? How then did the villagers flock from disness is as cheering, sorrow as purifying, and the aspect of death as softening to the ignorant in this world's wisdom, as to the scholar. The purest delights grow beneath our feet, and all who will stoop may gather them. While sages lose the idea of the Universal Parent in their subtleties, the lowly "FEEL after Him and find Him." Sentiment precedes reason in point of time, and is a surer guide to the noblest reali-joyed, who came many a joyful pilgrimage to ties. Thus man hopes, loves, reveres, and enjoys, without the aid of writing or of the press to inspire or direct him. Many of his feelings are even heartier and more genuine before he has learned to describe them. He does not perpetually mistake words for things, nor cultivate his faculties and affections for a dis-dearer to them than house, land, or the "ruddy cerning public. His aspirations "are raised, not marked." If he is gifted with divine imagination, he may "walk in glory and in joy beside his plough upon the mountain side," without the chilling idea that he must make the most of his sensations to secure the applause of gay saloons or crowded theatres. The deepest impressions are worn out by the multiplication of their copies. Talking has almost usurped the place of acting and of feeling; and the world of authors seem as though their hearts were but paper scrolls, and ink, instead of blood, were flowing in their veins. "The great events with which old story rings, seem vain and hollow." If all these evils will not be extended by what is falsely termed the Education of the Poor, let us at least be on our guard lest we transform our peasantry from men into critics, teach them scorn instead of humble hope, and leave them nothing to love, to revere, or to enjoy!

hear or to read it! Yet even more precious was the enjoyment of those who, in times of persecution, snatched glances in secret at its pages, and thus entered, as by stealth, into the paradisiacal region, to gather immortal fruits and listen to angel voices. The word of God was

drops which warmed their hearts." Instead of the lamentable weariness and disgust with which the young now too often turn from the perusal of the Scriptures, they heard with mute attention and serious joy the histories of the Old Testament and the parables of the New. They heard with revering sympathy of Abraham receiving seraphs unawares-of Isaac walking out at eventide to meditate, and meeting the holy partner of his days-of Jacob's dream, and of that immortal Syrian Shepherdess, for whose love he served a hard master fourteen years, which seemed to him but a few days-of Joseph the beloved, the exile, the tempted, and the forgiver-of all the wonders of the Jewish story-and of the character and sufferings of the Messiah. These things were to them at once august realities, and surrounded with a dream-like glory from afar. "Heaven lay about them in their infancy." They preserved the purity-the spirit of meek submission-the The Bible Society, founded and supported, patient confiding love of their childhood in no doubt, from the noblest motives, also puts their maturest years. They, in their turn, inforth pretensions which are sickening. Its ad-stilled the sweetness of Christian charity, drop vocates frequently represent it as destined to by drop, into the hearts of their offspring, and change all earth into a paradise. That a com-left their example as a deathless legacy. plete triumph of the principles of the Bible would bring in the happy state which they look for can never be disputed; but the history of our religion affords no ground for anticipating such a result from the unaided perusal of its pages. Deep and extensive impressions of the truths of the gospel have never been made by mere reading, but always by the exertions of living enthusiasm in the holy cause. Providence may, indeed, in its inscrutable wisdom, impart new energy to particular instruments; but there appears no sufficient indication of

Surely this was better than the dignified patronage now courted for the Scriptures, or the pompous eulogies pronounced on them by rival orators! The reports of anniversaries of the Bible Society are often, to me, inexpressibly nauseous. The word of God is praised in the style of eulogy employed on a common book by a friendly reviewer. It is evidently used as a theme to declaim on. But the praise of the Bible is almost overshadowed by the flatteries lavished on the nobleman or county member who has condescended to preside, and

which it is the highest ambition of the speak- from entirely forming an ossified crust about ers ingeniously to introduce and to vary. Happy the soul. We see them too with gentle interest, is he who can give a new turn to the compli- because we have always seen them, and were ment, or invent a new alliteration or antithesis accustomed to relieve them in the spring-time for the occasion! The copious nonsense of the of our days. And if some of them are what successful orators is even more painful than the world calls imposters, and literally" do bethe failures of the novices. After a string of guile us of our tears," and our alms, those false metaphors and poor conceits, applauded tears are not shed, nor those alms given, in to the echo, the meeting are perhaps called on vain. If they have even their occasional reto sympathize with some unhappy debutant, vellings and hidden luxuries, we should rather whose sense of the virtues of the chairman rejoice to believe that happiness has everyproves too vast for his powers of expression; where its nooks and corners which we do not and with Miss Peachum in the Beggars' Opera, see; that there is more gladness in the earth to lament "that so noble a youth should come than meets the politician's gaze; and that forto an untimely end." Alas! these exhibitions tune has her favours, "secret, sweet, and prehave little connection with a deep love of the cious," even for those on whom she seems Bible, or with real pity for the sufferings of man. most bitterly to frown. Well may that divinest Were religious tyranny to render the Scriptures of philosophers, Shakspeare, make Lear reply scarce, and to forbid their circulation, they to his daughters, who had been speaking in the would speedily be better prized and honoured true spirit of modern improvements: than when scattered with gorgeous profusion, and lauded by nobles and princes.

The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity is another boasted institution of these coldhearted days. It would annihilate the race of beggars, and remove from the delicate eye the very form and aspect of misery. Strange infatuation! as if an old class of the great family of man might be cut off without harm! "All are but parts of one stupendous whole," bound together by ties of antique sympathy, of which the lowest and most despised are not without their uses. In striking from society a race whom we have, from childhood, been accustomed to observe, a vast body of old associations and gentle thoughts must necessarily be lost for ever. The poor mendicants whom we would banish from the earth, are the best sinecurists to whose sustenance we contribute. In the great science-the science of humanity -they not rarely are our first teachers: they affectingly remind us of our own state of mutual dependance; bring sorrow palpably before the eyes of the prosperous and the vain; and prevent the hearts of many from utterly "losing their nature." They give, at least, a salutary disturbance to gross selfishness, and hinder it |

"O reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous :
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beasts!"

There are many other painful instances in these times of that "restless wisdom" which "has a broom for ever in its hand to rid the world of nuisances." There are, for example, the plans of Mr. Owen, with his infallible recipes for the formation of character. Virtue is not to be forced in artificial hot-beds, as he proposes. Rather let it spring up where it will from the seed scattered throughout the earth, and rise hardly in sun and shower, while the "free mountain winds have leave to blow against it." But I feel that I have already broken too violently on my habits of dreamy thought, by the asperity into which I now and then have fallen. Let me then break off at once, with the single expression of a hope, that this "bright and breathing world" may not be changed into a Penitentiary by the efforts of modern reformers.

I am, Sir,

Your hearty well-wisher,
FRANCIS OLDAKER.

A CHAPTER ON "TIME."

BEING AN ATTEMPT TO THROW NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD SUBJECT.

[NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.]

"We know what we are," said poor Ophelia, | the past and future in each fragment of the in"but we know not what we may be." Perhaps stant, even as the flavour of every drop of she would have spoken with a nicer accuracy had she said, "we know what we have been." Of our present state we can, strictly speaking, know nothing. The act of meditation on our selves, however quick and subtle, must refer to the past, in which alone we can truly be said to live. Even in the moments of intensest enjoyment, our pleasures are multiplied by the quick-revolving images of thought; we feel

some delicious liquid is heightened and prolonged on the lips. It is the past only which we really enjoy as soon as we become sensible of duration. Each bygone instant of delight becomes rapidly present to us, and "bears a glass which shows us many more." This is the great privilege of a meditative being-never properly to have any sense of the present, but to feel the great realities as they pass away,

death as to a drunken sleep; he parts with existence wantonly, because he knows nothing of its value. Mere men of pleasure are, therefore the most careless of duelists, the gayest of soldiers. To know the true value of being, yet to lay it down for a great cause, is a pitch of heroism which has rarely been attained by man. That mastery of the fear of death which is so common among men of spirit, is nothing but a conquest over the apprehension of dying. It is a mere victory of nerve and muscle. Those whose days have no principle of continuity-who never feel time but in the shape of ennui-may quit the world for sport or for honour. But he who truly lives, who feels the past and future in the instant, whose days are to him a possession of majestic remembrances and golden hopes, ought not to fancy himself bound by such an example. He may be inspired to lay down his life, when truth or virtue shall demand so great a sacrifice; but he will be influenced by mere weakness of resolution, not by courage, if he suffer himself to be shamed, or laughed, or worried out of it!

fortune, or the events which have called forth their affections. Their first parting from home is indelibly impressed on their minds-their school-days seem to them like one sweet April of shower and sunshine-their apprenticeship is a long week of toil;-but then their first love is fresh to them as yesterday, and their marriage, the births of their children, and of their grand-children, are events which mark their course even to old age. They reach their infancy again in thought by an easy process, through a range of remembrances few and simple, but pure, and sometimes holy. Yet happier is the lot of those who have one great aim; who devote their undivided energy to a single pursuit; who have one idea of practical or visionary good, to which they are wedded. There is a harmony, a proportion, in their lives. The Alchemist of old, labouring with undiminished hope, cheering his solitude with dreams of boundless wealth, and yet working on, could not be said to live in vain. His life was continuous-one unbroken struggle-one ardent sigh. There is the same unity of interest in the life of a great verbal scholar, or of a true miser; the same singleness of purpose, which gives solidity to floating minutes, hours, and years.

Besides those who have no proper consciousness of being, there are others even perhaps more pitiable, who are constantly irritated by the knowledge that their life is cut up into melancholy fragments. This is the case of all The great Lawyer deserves an eminent rank the pretending and the vain; those who are among true livers. We do not mean a politiever attempting to seem what they are not, or cal adventurer, who breathes feverishly amidst to do what they cannot; who live in the lying the contests, the intrigues, and petty triumphs breath of contemporary report, and bask out a of party; nor a dabbler in criticism, poetry, sort of occasional holiday in the glimmers of or the drama; nor even a popular nisi-prius public favour. They are always in a feverish advocate, who passes through a succession of struggle, yet they make no progress. There hasty toils and violent excitements to fortune is no dramatic coherence, no unity of action, and to oblivion. But we have respect to the in the tragi-comedy of their lives. They have real dull plodder-to him who has bidden an hits and brilliant passages perhaps, which early "Farewell to his Muse," if he ever had may come on review before them in straggling one: who anticipates years of solitary study, succession; but nothing dignified or massive, and shrinks not back; who proceeds, step by tending to one end of good or evil. Such are step, through the mighty maze with a cheerful self-fancied poets and panting essayists, who heart, and counts on his distant success with live on from volume to volume, or from ma- mathematical precision. His industry and gazine to magazine, who tremble with nervous self-denial are powers as true as fancy or elodelight at a favourable mention, are cast down quence, and he soon learns to take as hearty a by a sly alliteration or satirical play on their pleasure in their exercise. His retrospect is names, and die of an elaborate eulogy" in aro- vast and single-of doubt solved, stoutest books matic pain." They begin life once a quarter, mastered, nicest webs disentangled, and all or once a month, according to the will of their from one intelligible motive which grows old publishers. They dedicate nothing to poste- with him, and, though it "strengthened with rity; but toil on for applause till praise sick- his strength," will not diminish with his deens, and their "life's idle business" grows too cline. It is better in the end to have had the heavy to be borne. They feel their best days pathway of life circumscribed and railed in by passing away without even the effort to build forms and narrow observances, than to have up an enduring fame; and they write an elegy strayed at will about the vast field open to on their own weaknesses! They give their human enterprise, in the freest and most gracethoughts immaturely to the world, and thus ful wanderings; because in the latter case we spoil them for themselves for ever. Their cannot trace our road again, or call it over; own earliest, and deepest, and most sacred while in the first, we see it distinctly to the feelings become at last dull common-places, end, and can linger in thought over all the which they have talked of and written about spots where our feet have trodden. The "old till they are glad to escape from the theme. names" bring back the "old instincts" to our Their days are not "linked each to each by hearts. Instead of faint sympathies with a natural piety," but at best bound together in multitude of things, a kind of small partnerforgotten volumes. Better, far better than this, ship with thousands in certain general dogmas is the lot of those whose characters and pre- and speculations, we have all our own past intensions have little "mark of likelihood"-dividual being as a solid and abiding posseswhose days are filled up by the exercises of honest industry, and who, on looking back, recognise their lives only by the turns of their

sion.

A metaphysician who thinks earnestly and intensely for himself, may truly be said to live

long. He has this great advantage over the | about as reasonable as to say, a man never most felicitous inventor of machinery, or the most acute of scientific inquirers, that all his discoveries have a personal interest; he has his existence for his living study; his own heart is the mighty problem on which he meditates, and the "exceeding great reward" of his victories. In a moment of happy thought he may attain conquests, "compared to which the laurels which a Cæsar reaps are weeds." Years of anxious thought are rewarded by the attainment of one triumphant certainty, which immediately gives a key to the solution of a thousand pregnant doubts and mysteries, and enables him almost to "curdle a long life into an hour." When he has, after long pursued and baffled endeavours, rolled aside some huge difficulty which lay in his path, he will find beneath | it a passage to the bright subtleties of his nature, through which he may range at will, and gather immortal fruits, like Aladdin in the subterranean gardens. He counts his life thus not only by the steps which he has taken, but by the vast prospects which, at every turn of his journey, have recompensed his toils, over which he has diffused his spirit as he went on his way rejoicing. We will conclude this article with the estimate made of life from his own experience by one of the most profound and original of thinkers.

"It is little, it is short, it is not worth having -if we take the last hour, and leave out all that has gone before, which has been one way of looking at the subject. Such calculators seem to say that life is nothing when it is over; and that may, in their sense, be true. If the old rule-Respice finem-were to be made absolute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate till the day of his death, there are few among us whose existence would, upon such conditions, be much to be envied. But this is not a fair view of the case. A man's life is his whole life, not to the last glimmering snuff of the candle; and this I say is considerable, and not a little matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary, from our own superannuated desires of forgetful indifference, is

was young because he has grown old, or never lived because he is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor the last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two-not our exit, nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do feel, and think while there-that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed, it would be easy to show that it is the very extent of human life, the infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the hours, months, years, spent in one fond pursuit after another; that it is, in a word, the length of our common journey, and the quantity of events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing! It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough to hold its striking groups, its endless objects! It is light as vanity; and yet if all its weary moments, if all its head and heartaches were compressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed with the blow! What a huge heap, a 'huge dumb heap,' of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is composed of! How many ideas and trains of sentiment, long, deep, and intense, often pass through the mind in one day's thinking or reading for instance! How many such days are there in a year, how many years in a long life, still occupied with something interesting-still recalling some old impression-still recurring to some difficult question, and making progress in it, every step accompanied with a sense of power, and every moment conscious of 'the high endeavour or the glad success;" for the mind seizes only on that which keeps it employed, and is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excitement by the necessity of its own nature.”—Hazlitt's Table Talk, Essay 6.

ON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR.

[LONDON MAGAZINE.]

THERE is no pursuit in life which appears | the founders of honourable families. If the more captivating at a distance than the profes- young aspirant perceives, even in his hasty sion of the bar, as it is followed and rewarded and sanguine glance, that something depends in English courts of justice. It is the great on fortuitous circumstances, the conviction avenue to political influence and reputation; only renders the pursuit more inviting, by addits honours are among the most splendid ing the fascinations of a game of chance to which can be attained in a free state; and its those of a trial of skill. If he is forced to conemoluments and privileges are exhibited as fess that a sacrifice of principle is occasionally prizes, to be contested freely by all its mem-required of the candidate for its most lucrative bers. Its annals celebrate many individuals who have risen from the lowest ranks of the people, by fortunate coincidence, or by patient labour, to wealth and station, and have become

situations, he glories in the pride of untempted virtue, and pictures himself generously resisting the bribe which would give him riches and authority in exchange for conscious rectitude