offspring. Nay, further; suppose him to be a general philanthropist, with a thirst for the promotion of universal happiness. Unless his kindnesses to his fellow-creatures are limited (as in the instance imagined is not uncommonly the case) to good advice and wishes, that thirst will most certainly be unslaked without some draught of Pactolus; or, at least, a cheque on its bank. Filthy meat, then; filthy clothes, filthy fire! Filthy beef, filthy venison, filthy wine! Dirty carriages, dirty horses, dirty mansion, dirty menials! Sordid travel, sordid study, sordid science, sordid fine arts, sordid wife and children; sordid love and domestic bliss; sordid benevolence and universal philanthropy! Such must be the language of all those who, as "filthy lucre," "dirty dross," and "sordid pelf," are accustomed to stigmatise money. The miser, doubtless, is an odious and contemptible wretch; odious because selfish, and contemptible because foolish. Let him be dealt with according to poetry. At the same time let poetical justice be done impartially. Let not those offenders escape censure who regard not money, since they can live without it,—on their neighbours. The fashionable spendthrift is just as sordid as the usurer. The stage Irishman is as despicable as the stage Scotchman; and the latter, intellectually considered, has, as the more prudent, rather the advantage of the two. Base as it may be to gloat over hoarded gold, there is something in the contemplation. of the power which gold expresses that is even grand. There lie, in posse, the mighty armaments, the countless hosts, the vast resources of an empire; there all the comforts and luxuries of life ; there the happiness of millions. Thus may an emotion approaching the sublime be excited even in the soul of a miser; and many of the tribes of Lazarus and Levi may have had loftier thoughts than we imagine. It is the bad use, or the disuse, of possessions that is ignoble. No disparagement to the coin. No dishonour to the pounds, shillings, and pence. They are types and symbols of things useful and beautiful. To spurn the representatives of so much excellence is a downright outrage upon sentiment. It is as bad as insulting a hero in his statue, or trampling on the portrait of one's lady-love. PERCIVAL LEIGH. 512 MAN WAS NOT MADE TO MOURN. Edinburgh. THERE is a voice which haunts me still, Where'er on earth I be; In lonely vale, on lofty hill, In ev'ry stream that seaward flows, In ev'ry sound of Nature's heart, This ever bears the better part- The sun that glads the summer noon, All Nature cries aloud-but:man O, gentlest mother! may thy child Then shall the blessed end be known And all shall feel, from zone to zone, Man was not made to mourn! WM. FERGUSSON. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. WHEN one looks at the amount of theoretic law and morality extant in the world, it seems a wonder that it should not be a Ideal better than it is. The precepts and injunctions recommended and enforced are enough to make one believe not only in the perfectibility, but the actual perfection of human nature. There seems no need of any new doctrine when we are so far from living up to what we have already. But there is the mischief; we are become now deaf and insensible to the good things rung in our ears; they have become a sort of refrains to which it never strikes us to attach a practical meaning; they have ceased to lay hold upon our consciences. We do not disbelieve exactly, but we have got to-Never mind. It would be social excommunication to express a doubt of any of the points of accredited morality, but the amount of practical belief we show in our life and actions is wonderful for its infinitesimal smallness,--it shows the immense surface over which a grain of reality may be attenuated. There is hardly a man to be found who has faith enough to stake the most trifling practical result on the abstract principle he would argue the most loudly to support; it must come recommended by some more tangible advantage than being merely a point of law or gospel, before he will give it the preference. The fact is, points of morality are no longer obligatory; there is universally felt to be an appeal from them to the private judgment of common sense and immediate policy; and yet there would be much virtuous clamour raised against any one who should venture to impugn any received maxim of morality in WORDS. In the present day, all the practical faith going seems to have been invested in the business by which men gain their daily bread; they believe, THAT, if well followed out, it will work their salvation in this world in the shape of money, influence, and what not. Oh, yes! if "FAITH be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," those who are able show this forth by the trust they have in the floating property they may possess in esse, though as yet it be not realised; and for this hope they are con tent to endure actual privation and inconvenience. This hope they trust to make manifest, and they have long patience for it; but for any doctrine or principle, which of them dares to live? for that requires more courage than to die. Those men who have a belief in some abstract principle, and shape their actions by it, seem enthusiasts to practical people, who are made of the stuff the world is made of,-who are adepts in the mechanical dexterity by which the routine of life is carried on, but who never trouble themselves about the principles on which, in the first instance, those rules were founded. It is a startling fact, that the men who have the most practical faith are MADMEN, and they are shut up in lunatic asylums to keep them from acting on their delusions. They would have been heroes, from their intense and steady reliance on their own inward convictions, had they not chanced on points which are capable of demonstration as practical fallacies,-things that are not; but the distance between theoretic wisdom and practical madness is not great. There is scarce a madman shut up for his wild projects and inconvenient attempts to realise them, whose THEORY has not one time or other been supported by some philosopher,-some theoretic man who gained name and fame by giving utterance to the speculation, but who proved his sanity by not allowing it to influence his practice. "The inspired and desperate alchemists" of old, engaged over the "GRAND PROJECTION" on which their life was staked, were not engaged in a crisis half so fearful as that in which a sincere and noble nature endeavours to reduce to practice an exalted speculative conception, staking not life and gold alone, but throwing reason itself into the crucible. All the wisdom, all the instruction, all the religious teaching, which has been given to the world, and which the world has ceased to regard, has been conquered for men, made articulate, rendered safe and practical guides for them, out of the dread and shadowy realms of madness and confusion. A man who dares to hold by the invisible, is like the apostle walking on the water,-if the hand from above be not stretched out to save him, he must sink down into the whirlpool of madness that lies beneath. There is a most touching meaning in that Eastern superstition of madmen being made the special protection of Heaven. But whilst men with one accord seem to have retired their faith from the forms and maxims of belief which guided their fathers, there is everywhere an extraordinary speculative activity they seem all waiting to hear some new thing; or else are engaged in altering and remodelling what they believed before; but none are resting tranquilly in that inheritance of belief to which they were born;-with all this, there is perhaps less practical faith in the teaching and doctrines extant, than there ever was since Christendom began. It is always thus on the eve of great events. At such periods the foundations of the world are out of course, and the fountains of the great deep broken up. All authority is superseded (universal authority, we mean). Every man who can get a hearing has the privilege of speaking; and the world is well disposed to give ear, if so be it may catch the accents of that "large utterance which can give unity and intelligibleness to the stammering and discordant tones in which individuals strive to embody the vast unknown thought of God which lies heavy on their souls. In this state of things, where there is no longer a CHURCH, nor a Supreme Teacher, the "POWER OF THE KEYS," as it is called, that mysterious authority derived from no human source, is removed, and every individual is invested with an importance he could not have in old and more settled times. These are days of general disorganisation, when no one mode of religion or belief "holds solely sovereign sway and masterdom." Any man who will sincerely and simply utter his own experience, his own earnest idea of what it is right or desirable to do, and to believe, becomes a hope, and an oracle, to his fellows; and a man who can utter in sincerity what he finds in his own heart, is “a light shining in a dark place." In every man is lodged an oracle of the Deity, which has been opened to no other; for though he may stand close beside us, touching us, yet is he separated from us by an impenetrable veil of flesh, as much as if he belonged to an unknown world: we know not for a certainty whether the visible objects on which we gaze at the same moment, present the same aspect to him,-the things that please us, are indifferent to him,-the same things do not affright him,— the words that move us to joy or sorrow, do not touch him; whilst, again, he is moved by things which take no effect on us. He has his own soul, and his own organisation, through which it is made manifest; but, though he may stand beside us, though we may call him brother, and the same mother may have brought us forth, yet is he a mystery to us,-we can know nothing of what appears |