has not got any thing the matter with him that takes the taste of this world out?"

In middle age, the organ of the thinking powers has a determinate structure-the consistency of manly development. It is then more abundantly supplied with blood than any other organ in the whole body. It has a strength corresponding in some manner to the strength which the mind has acquired. But suitable and sufficient mental oc

In infancy the brain is little more than a mass of pulp. It is then in a very imperfect state. The operations of the mind, if not precociously intense, tend to give it that motion or exercise which prevents disease. It becomes, at length, the brain of youth. It is then more solid than it was, but less solid than it will be. "Youth," says Rochefoucault, "is continual intoxication. It is the fever of reason." This beautiful fever-the result of the mysterious connection between the growing mind and the growing brain-gradually passes away. Any thing like sad thoughtfulness is unfitting to a boy. We look, in boys, for lightness of spirits. A melancholy lad is a spectacle from which the philosopher turns off his eyes with a sigh. He knows that the little fellow's mind has become too much for his brain. I do not like the fondness for books which is manifested by some children, making them bright-eyed objects of special praise to their fathers and mothers. It is the sadder class of such juvenile thinkers that Mr. Holmes, in one of his breakfast-table papers, likens to "beautiful, blushing, half-grown fruit that falls before its time because its core is gnawed out." A boy is not in his best health unless he has the fever of reason. "Here," says the inimitable Professor, "is a boy that loves to run, swim, kick foot-balls, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, shoot, fire crackers, blow squash 'tooters,' cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, 'stick' knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mouse-traps, chalk door-steps, 'cut behind' any thing on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, 'holler' fire! on slight evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine company, or, in his own words, 'blow for tub No. 11,' or whatever it may be-is not that a pretty nice sort of a boy, though he

of the health of this organ. The limbs of a man will become diseased unless he frequently uses them; and, in respect to exercise, as with a man's limbs, so with his brain. See how heroism became peevish, despondent, and weak on lonely St. Helena island, where it was doomed to remain, having no adequate incentives to mental exertion! Dr. Young relates, that on one occasion, while he was taking a stroll with Dean Swift, the Dean staid behind the company, and was found gazing intently at the top of a lofty elm, the head of which had been blasted by a thunderbolt. "I shall be like that tree," said Swift; "I shall die first at the top." How many men and women have died first at the top! The indolent person can not have a healthy brain, nor can the prisoner. Who ever lived long without scope for mental activity? If Paul, instead of being sentenced to decapitation, had been condemned to close confinement, for the residue of his life, in the Mammertine at Rome, it were unphilosophic to think he would have lived a great while. When the mind either renounces vigorous employment or is deprived of it, then the brain begins to decay. Do you look for instances of extraordinary longevity among the beggars of the world? Do you find the aristocracy that values the cushion of ease more highly than the hard seat of thought, to be physically very tenacious of life? He that has a feeble mind has a feeble brain; and he that has a mighty mind, but does not exert it, is like the gloomy tree to which Swift pointed-he has begun to die in his head!

Many persons, by abruptly and unphilosophically retiring from business, impair their brains and abridge their lives. When a man goes among the roses, saying to himself, "Long time have I worked; henceforth I shall rest," then the roses and the soft wind which caresses them become unfriendly to him. He tires of nature. He lauguishes in the daylight and moans in the darkNow he is fretful, and

ness.

"Now drooping, woeful man like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love."

There is a disease called hypochondriasis. It is sometimes represented as a disorder of the sensibilities. That it is attended by such disorder,

no one can reasonably doubt. Its chief symptom is a woeful despondence. "Sometimes," said one of Richard Cecil's friends, who seems to have been afflicted with this malady-" sometimes such deep depression seizes me, that I can scarcely bear myself; sometimes such irritability, and at others such terror that I feel as if my senses were going."

The sufferer from hypochondriasis can not tell the wretchedness which all day long wastes his spirits and exhausts his desire of 1 In Shakspeare's phrase, "he receives comfort like cold porridge." No words you can say to him in respect to his experience, will afford him the slightest relief. By conversing with him on his melancholy, you feed it. Hence, it was Dr. Johnson's advice to Boswell, who, as well as the Doctor himself, suffered much from morbid dejection, never to speak of it, either to his friends or in company.

It is no trivial part of the misery of the hypochondriac, that he thinks his own case so far from either any match in deplorableness, or any worse instance of painful and gloomy decline. "I have known a father," says Dr. Brigham, "in whom I could discover no disease, regardless of the sickness and approaching death of a child, constantly saying that his own case was more severe and alarming."

I think that the dreadful tenacity of the disease we are considering can be adequately explained only by supposing that the brain itselfthat great center from which issue the telegraphic wires of the will-has, for a considerable period of time, been diseased. This opinion corresponds with the declarations of eminent physicians. "The disease," says Dr. Dunglison, "is unquestionably encephalic, and it is in the encephalon that we ought to look for the morbid appearances."

The cause of the malady may, perhaps, be found in some long-nursed grief, or in some sudden shock received by the finer feelings of the soul. But, in the greater number of instances, it may undoubtedly be found in a defect of mental exercise. It is easy to become a hypochondriac. Say to yourself that you have done work enough, then retire from the scenes amid which you have for years been busy and hale, then try to pasture your everlasting nature on the pleasures of eating, drinking, chatting, loitering, and sleeping, and the awful malady which destroys the love of life will diffuse its poison through your brain. Or, cultivate for a considerable time any one of the sorrows which depress you, and that sorrow will draw evil blood to the seat of your mind, and will impair the battery from which issue the wires of your will. I find on record the instance of a generous and fine Englishman who

once wrested a pistol from the hand of his own brother, while that brother was in the act of shooting him. He found the pistol doubly charged with bullets. So shocked were his sensibilities by what his eyes had beheld, that with horror and disgust he ever afterward kept himself secluded from human society, not allowing even his own children to visit him.*

Every severe affliction necessarily infects the brain, unless it is counteracted by temperament, by resoluteness, or by diversion. The disappointed lover experiences, for a time, the misery of the hypochondriac. But if he timely learns to suffer and be strong, his brain will not become sick from his disheartenment. It is well that when our sensibilities are lacerated, we can, in a measure, prevent those swells of emotion which would keep the wound unhealed. But, alas! how few sufferers from the cause just mentioned are disposed to act the part of physicians to their own torn and bleeding hearts! There are gentle hypochondriacs, deceived young women, who, like Stella and Vanessa, fade, languish, and die, in the forenoon of life. They pass out of the world, softly; and people suppose the cause of their early decline and death to be chiefly physical. But O, what pain of soul wore away the health of those cheerless maidens! How, in the twilight of the sunny day, did each one of them sit or wander, miserable and alone! And how did each one of them sigh amid the flowers which brought to mind the blissful beginnings of her early but ill-fated love, her long-continued but misplaced confidence!

I know I should speak with too much austerity, were I to say that the fair-haired, youthful woman who allows herself to become melancholy and sickly, in consequence of unreturned affection, is weak of intellect. Of what avail to many a fading maiden, deserted by the one on whom she has lavished her wealth of fond feelings, would be the advice to repair, by resoluteness, by diversion, or by some other means, her broken heart? Of what avail to Vanessa was Swift's warning against her determination to seclude herself from the world, and his anxious endeavors to persuade that sorrowing girl to seek society and divert her mind in every way she could? Woman's heart is not like man's.

"You ne'er kept watch Beside him, till the last pale star had set, And morn, all dazzling, as in triumph broke On your dim, weary eye; not yours the face, Which, early faded through fond care for him, Hung o'er his sleep, and duly as heaven's light Was there to greet his wakening! You ne'er smoothed

See Upham's Mental Philosophy.

His couch; ne'er sung him to his rosy rest;
Caught his least whisper, when his voice from yours
Had learned soft utterance; pressed your lip to his,
When fever parched it; hushed his wayward cries,
With patient, vigilant, never-wearied lope!
No! these are woman's tasks!"

Woman finds it the most difficult of all things to wean her faithful passion from its long-cherished and long-trusted object, how fickle soever or how treacherous soever that object may have proved. Ah, what fidelity is hers! What grief is that with which she continues to live over the hours of the doomed attachment which once made her

actions of life; for, if it check once with business, it troubleth men's fortunes, and maketh men that they can no ways be true to their own ends."

I find it meet to close, here, the present article. It is, surely, not without some abruptness that this sequel is made; but I make it with the promise to finish the discussion at some future time.

ТОО НОТ FOR CHURCH.

A STORY FOR CHILDREN.

BY MRS. F. M. ROWE.

tiful!

Of course, I do not mean to include, here, under the name of woman, those butterflies of the gentler sex, who are too vain to be devotedly attached to any object other than self. A great many women are only fashionable ladies. Though they should be disappointed half a score of times in love, they would still be nothing but fashionable ladies. The truth is, one that is merely a lady of fashion is incapable of womanly love. But there are women who are richly capable of a tender and noble passion which can not easily be broken up, and which absence alone has no power to destroy. By an exquisite and inef fable experience of the heart, they realize the truth of Rochefoucault's admirable saying, that "absence destroys small passions, and increases great ones; as the wind extinguishes tapers, and kindles fires." Not many such women allow themselves to become passionate and devoted lovers more than once. One of this class who has been deserted by the object of her fond ardor, or from whom death has separated the manly heart which faithfully reciprocated her feelings, either dies in despair, or throws out her mental faculties in unwonted activity. If she nurses her grief, at the expense of her health and life, who can frigidly pronounce her weak-minded? If, on the contrary, she sternly says to her heart, "Peace, be still!" and with courage resolves to live down her sorrow, and become happy again, who can fail to deem this the wiser course? Certainly, no philosophic counselor, who knows how large a number of beautiful and gentle females depart too early from the world, in consequence of disappointments of the kind I am discussing, would do well to advise grieved lovers to let themselves fade and pass away, so long as it is possible for

them

"To suffer and be strong."

"They do best," says Lord Bacon, "who, if they can not but admit love, yet make it keep quarter, and sever it wholly from their serious affairs and

Howard was, might have discovered a pleasant little breeze, whispering among the leaves of the fine row of elm trees, which shaded the lane through which she was passing. But as we have before hinted, Belle was cross, and so she tugged at her bonnet-strings till she had gotten them into a hard knot, and after dropping her books, and stooping to pick them up a few times, she arrived at her father's gate, with a face something the color of one of the scarlet peonies which grew just inside of it; and with such pouting fips that her brother Joe said "a fellow could almost hang his hat upon them."

"What is the matter, my daughter?" said Mrs. Howard, who, with her husband and son, was just coming out to go to Church, "what have you come home for? and with such a face too?"

"Why, mamma!" exclaimed Belle, pettishly, "it was too hot to stay at Church, and it was hot in Sunday school; I hate them both, in summer-time, and I don't mean to go any more till fall."

"Hush, hush," said her mother, "what nonsense you are saying about what you mean to do, but you are certainly not in a fit humor just now to go into God's house; so take off your things and get cool, and let us have a pleasanter countenance to look upon when we return."

It did not take Belle a very long time to get cool either in body or mind; for after bathing her face and smoothing her tumbled hair, she took her library book and seating herself on the shady piazza, was soon lost in the enjoyment of the pretty story which it contained. A pleasant hour had nearly passed in this way, when a cheerful voice at her side caused her to look up, and with an exclamation of pleasure she discovered her uncle, Dr. Graham, standing beside her.

"Well, Puss, what's the matter? too sick for Church, eh? want some medicine, eh? put out your tongue, let's feel your pulse."

"O, no, no, uncle," said Belle, blushing and laughing together; "I believe it was only a t of ill-humor; I got very warm in Sunday school

paid after school to Mary's cottage, and of the flowers and little delicacies which her kind mother prepared for her to take to her sick friend, but time fails me, and I can only tell you that as Mary ripened for heaven, so did our little Belle seem to grow in grace, and drink deep draughts from the same fountain of love and wisdom which cheered the path of the dying girl. Another hot, Sunday, so hot that the very leaves had ceased to rustle; but Belle Howard thought not of the weather-she was hastening with Mary's library book to read beside her bed; but just beneath the shade of an old elm-tree she met her uncle, who, tenderly putting his arm around her, said,

"Come back, dear Puss, for Mary's name is entered on the Book of Life."

Belle sank upon the bench, and a gush of warm tears came to her relief, then looking up she said, "Now, uncle, tell me when she died."

"This morning, as the bells were ringing for the service she loved so much," replied Dr. Graham. "Her mother told me when they ceased she lay quite still, apparently listening, then with great energy she exclaimed, 'Hark! I hear them; O, how sweet!' Her mother thought she fancied she heard the singing at Church, and said, 'O, my daughter, you can not hear them so far off.' But one glance at Mary's face told the bereaved mother that her child did hear them, that choir of angels which she had gone to join. And now, Belle," continued Dr. Graham, "we have here another instance of how even the humblest of God's creatures can glorify him in their lives; and you and I will cherish among our holiest memories the recollection of Mary Mills, the poor factory girl."

A SUMMER DAY

BY C. E. C. M'KENNEY.

THE summer winds, over the hill-tops sweeping;
The low murmur of the little stream,
Where, 'mid the rocks, its shallow waters creeping
Make pleasant music, 'neath the sun's glad gleam;

The lazy waving of the misty shadows

That hover o'er the outspread grass;

The blushing clover nodding in the meadows;

The swift, white clouds that o'er the blue sky pass;

The silvery outline of the far-off river;

The willow-trees, bowing in the silent air; The stately woodland, where the bird's notes quiver, All these dreamy days, so wondrously fair Have filled my soul with music-filled to overflowing, Crowned my life with beauty, all the summer long, And out toward its Maker my happy spirit going"Praise Him! praise Him ever!" is the burden of

its song.

actions of life; for, if it check once with business, it troubleth men's fortunes, and maketh men that they can no ways be true to their own ends." I find it meet to close, here, the present article. It is, surely, not without some abruptness that this sequel is made; but I make it with the promise to finish the discussion at some future time.

IT

TOO HOT FOR CHURCH.

A STORY FOR CHILDREN.

BY MRS. F. M. ROWE.

T was a very hot morning, certainly, but any one not in such a fretful mood as little Belle Howard was, might have discovered a pleasant little breeze, whispering among the leaves of the fine row of elm trees, which shaded the lane through which she was passing. But as we have before hinted, Belle was cross, and so she tugged at her bonnet-strings till she had gotten them into a hard knot, and after dropping her books, and stooping to pick them up a few times, she arrived at her father's gate, with a face something the color of one of the scarlet peonies which grew just inside of it: end

LITTLE ISADORE

BY NANNIE CLARK CUNNINGHAM.

SWEET as bird-notes in the spring-time
When the winter 's o'er,

Was the voice of one we cherished-
Little Isadore.

In her soul was that mild beauty
Angels might adore,

And she smiled so sweetly on us-
Lovely Isadore.

But her brow grew pale and paler,

And we saw no more

On her cheek its blooming beauty-
Fading Isadore.

Then she talked to us so sweetly

Of a sun-bright shore,

Where the angels waited for her-
Happy Isadore.

Then there came an icy coldness
She ne'er felt before,
And we knew that she was going
Dying Isadore.

Flowers now are brightly blooming,
Brightly blooming o'er
The lone grave where calmly resteth
Sleeping Isadore.

She has gone, but o'er the river

On that better shore

By the throne of God she dwelleth-
Angel Isadore.