heroism with the mingling of meaner motives, as they really existed; th greatness and the littleness of man; with the true lessons of the stor brought into high relief, and illuminated by the poet's genius for th teaching of all time.

I do not say, therefore, Put away your Shakspeare, never touch a novel, confine yourself to geography and history, science and statistics. If I did say so, the advice would be tolerably certain not to be followed; and I have shown, I think, that it would not be counsel of the highest wisdom. Br I do say, Exercise self-restraint in the matter, do not indulge this more tha any other appetite. Be cautious, moderate, and wise. There are a fer good novels; there are volumes innumerable of the merest trash. Some times, as I have said, there is truth of the highest kind in fiction, but oftene what there is so hidden, like the few particles of gold imbedde in tons of earth and rubbish which do but mock the Australian digger's toil that it may be well questioned whether it is worth going through so much to learn so little. Then the question is one of comparison. Your time for reading is short; your opportunities of study are few; have you time to reai even good novels? Here is the world with its wonders, have you exhausted them? Have you learned as much as you want to learn of the glorious march of the stars? Have you explored the mountains and the valleys of this earth, and pondered the testimony of its rocks? Are the great laws which regulate motion and force, with the countless application of those laws in chemistry or mechanical science, familiar to you? Can you hold converse in their own tongues with the illustrious dead? Do you know any language besides your own? In your own have you read the great classics, whose titles are familiar to the ear as household words? You are going to sit down by the fireside with Dickens's last-have you ever read Bacon's Essays? "The Heir of Redcliffe" is interesting, very-but are you familia with Macaulay's papers on Milton and Machiavelli, on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings? You are going to spend the leisure evenings of the week with Charles Kingsley, Anthony Trollope, on George Eliot. Well, I will not remonstrate, but only ask, Did you ever read Boswell's Life of

Johnson or Johnson's Lives of the Poets? You are eager to

read of the "Woman in White"-have you ever heard of Miss Strickland's "Lives of the Queens of England"? Count up the volumes of fiction you have devoured since the days when you believed in Mayne Reid and Charles Lever even until now and would not the time and attention so spent have made you master of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Yes, we cannot do all; it is wisdom, therefore, surely to choos the best; and for my part I cannot pass a railway stall with its gaudy stor of volumes, blue and yellow, and mauve and red, with all the colours of the rainbow, and many more, without seeing there a deliberate provision made to enervate the intellect and degrade the taste-the appropriate food of grown-up children, or worse; for there are not a few who seem, like Mr. Toots, when they begin to have whiskers to leave off having brains.

Now one use of a good Mutual Improvement Society is that the members are obliged to read-to read good books-books that make their readers

An

hak, and show them how to direct their thoughts to some useful end. end, I repeat, that shall often carry them away--right away from the world business, into another sphere of thought and other views of life. The od people who founded Mechanics' Institutes seem to have had the idea instructing the labouring and artisan population as to the nature of eir own tools and the mysteries of their own arts. Hence the title; and manufacturing populations it was judged the proper thing to lay in a aber of works on mechanics, hydrostatics, and the steam-engine; on com ial arithmetic, book-keeping, and political economy; on textile manufatmes, foreign tariffs, and the statistics of exportation. The fundamental almost every where were that there should be, first, no works of fiction. als-condly, no newspapers. We know what has become of those rules! The fact is, that all of us when we have done our work like, as the phrase is, tank the shop. We have had enough of machinery all day: let us now read of the old times when steam-engines were not. The day-book and the ledger are shut, and I do not care to spend the evening in talking about Book-keeping. No; let us scour the plain with the Christian chivalry of the old crusading days, or start bravely forth with the little company, as truly brave and wise, of Australian explorers. I want to be emancipated from my daily work that I may go back fresh to it. Or, to take a yet higher view, I want to assert the dignity of the man over the worker; and, while I am necessarily narrowed down to one spot of action, to claim my kindred with all humanity.

People say that the field of knowledge so traversed is but superficially pored. That is quite true; and I confess I do not altogether understand the outery we sometimes hear against superficial attainments. Superficial Beans "of or belonging to the surface;" and it is after all on the surface of the earth that we live and move and have our being. Whatever the traction of the depth may be, the surface is very fair, and pleasant to walk What, may I not pluck a daisy or smell a rose unless I am prepared to give a full account of the geological strata underneath? Why, on most bjects cts our knowledge is, and must be, superficial. Only on a few topics any of us explore the depths. It will be good for any of us, certainly, toplore the depths of something, to know one thing thoroughly, whether the Greek language, or the Geometry of Euclid, or the art of bookkeeping by double entry, or the laws of the transfer of real property, or the ay to test the quality of wool. Thoroughness in itself is a good thing, apart from the material on which it is exercised; and the business of most s gives the opportunity for attaining it in some direction or other. But am pleading now rather for mental refreshment and invigoration. And, therefore, I do not say, as some appear inclined to do, It is of no use to ake up a topic unless you mean to become a perfect master of it. Do not wach Euclid unless you are going to study the Six Books; nor History, if I have not the opportunity of learning all that Hume and Gibbon, Merivale and Macaulay, have to teach; nor science, if you stop short of the

"Beware," says That proverb, like many

others, is two-edged. "Beware of him," on his own special ground; for with his one book known well he will vanquish you, the man of many books, who know them all imperfectly. But beware of him" also, in reference to other subjects; for the, exclusiveness of his thoughts will have narrowed his mind, made him perhaps a bigot, and very likely a pedant. Concentra tiveness and diffusion are twin intellectual laws. Fix your special aim, and work at that with all your strength. Then go abroad, disdain not the surface of the fair realm of knowledge. There is many a pleasant field for thos who may not explore the deeps, with broad and breezy uplands where thos may roam who never care to climb the mountain heights.

But above all remember that the culture of thought, the acquisition o knowledge, and the play of sympathies, must ever be subordinate to the on great aim of a consecrated life. Societies there are for mutual improvement and many a book is written for popular instruction, from which religion i systematically excluded. "There are so many different opinions," it is said "about the soul, and eternity, and the relations of man with God, that it wil not be safe for us to meddle with the matter. Like Pilate, we may for eve be asking What is Truth?' and never win an answer. But there is trut! that we may attain in the flowers and in the stars, in the depth beneath and in the height above. Science, at least, will not delude us; the laws of number and form are indisputable. History has its meaning and poetry its charm to those who walk on earth alone and never soar to heaven." And hence, deliberately, whether from a false notion of profaning the sanctity of religion, or from a commendable desire to keep the peace between dis cordant sects, the highest interest of all finds no place. I am not denyin that this procedure may be wise; nor do I for a moment insinuate that thes who thus remit theology and the Bible to another sphere, are personal! indifferent to them. But, to the most wisely taught there is "a more excellen way." For, from every field of human knowledge there is a path direct t the throne of the Eternal; and we best study all topics of human inters in the light of the Divine Truth.

Who loves not knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
But on her forehead sits a fire;

She sets her forward countenance
And leaps into the future chance,
Submitting all things to desire.
Half grown as yet, a child, and vain—
She cannot fight the fear of death.
What is she, cut from love and faith,
But some wild Pallas from the brain

Of Demons? fiery hot to burst

All barriers in her onward race
For power? Let her know her place:
She is the second, not the first.

A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain, and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger chill;
For she is earthly, of the mind,

But wisdom heavenly, of the soul.

This heavenly wisdom, that only comes through reverence and faith, still the highest quest, and when found she claims her place as rightf Queen of all.

Rawdon, Leeds.

Tales and Sketches.