IT

117.

T is curious that the memory, most retentive of images, should yet be much more retentive of feelings than of facts: for instance, we remember with such intense vividness a period of suffering, that it seems even to renew itself through the medium of thought; yet, at the same time, we perhaps find difficulty in recalling, with any distinctness, the causes of that pain.

66

118.

RUTH has never manifested itself to me in such

TRUTH

a broad stream of light as seems to be poured upon some minds. Truth has appeared to my mental eye, like a vivid, yet small and trembling star in a storm, now appearing for a moment with a beauty that enraptured, now lost in such clouds, as, had I less faith, might make me suspect that the previous clear sight had been a delusion."-Blanco White.

Very exquisite in the aptness as well as poetry of the comparison ! Some walk by daylight, some

walk by starlight. Those who see the sun do not see the stars; those who see the stars do not see the

sun.

He says in another place: —

"I am averse to too much activity of the imagination on the future life. I hope to die full of confidence that no evil awaits me: but any picture of a future life distresses me. I feel as if an eternity of existence were already an insupportable burden on my soul."

How characteristic of that lassitude of the soul and sickness of the heart which "asks not happiness, but longs for rest!"

"THOSE

119.

HOSE are the worst of suicides who voluntarily and prepensely stab or suffocate their fame when God hath commanded them to stand on high for an example."

120.

ARLYLE thus apostrophised a celebrated orator,

CARLYLE

who abused his gift of eloquence to insincere purposes of vanity, self-interest, and expediency:

"You blasphemous scoundrel! God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not to be rattled like a muffin-man's bell!"

I

121.

THINK, with Carlyle, that a lie should be trampled

on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me. A. thinks this is too young a feeling, and that as the truth is sure to conquer in the end, it is not worth while to fight every separate lie, or fling a torch into every infected hole. Perhaps not, so far as we are ourselves concerned; but we should think of others. While secure in our own antidote, or wise in our own caution, we should not leave the miasma to poison the healthful, or the briars to entangle the unwary. There is no occasion perhaps for truth to sally forth like a knight-errant tilting at every vizor, but neither should she sit self-assured in her tower of strength, leaving pitfalls outside her gate for the blind to fall into.

122,

"HERE is a way to separate memory from ima"THERE gination—we may narrate without painting. I am convinced that the mind can employ certain indistinct signs to represent even its most vivid impressions; that instead of picture writing, it can use something like algebraic symbols: such is the language of the soul when the paroxysm of pain has passed, and the wounds it received formerly are skinned over, not healed: it is a language very opposite to that used by the poet and the novelwriter."- Blanco White.

True; but a language in which the soul can converse only with itself; or else a language more conventional than words, and like paper as a tender for gold, more capable of being defaced and falsified. There is a proverb we have heard quoted: "Speech is silver, silence is golden." But better is the silver diffused than the talent of gold buried.

123.

H

OWEVER distinguished and gifted, mentally and morally, we find that in conduct and in our

external relations with society there is ever a levelling influence at work. Seldom in our relations with the world, and in the ordinary commerce of life, are the best and highest within us brought forth; for the whole system of social intercourse is levelling. As it is said that law knows no distinction of persons but that which it has itself instituted; so of society it may be said, that it allows of no distinction but those which it can recognise external distinctions. We hear it said that general society-the world, as it is called-and a public school, are excellent educators; because in one the man, in the other the boy, "finds, as the phrase is, his own level." He does not; he finds the level of others. That may be good for those below mediocrity, but for those above it bad: and it is for those we should most care, for if once brought down in early life by the levelling influence of numbers, they seldom rise again, or only partially. Nothing so dangerous as to be perpetually measuring ourselves against what is beneath us, feeling our superiority to that which we force ourselves to assimilate to. This has been the perdition of many a school-boy and many a man.