with them rather than desert them. It is not the following of a cold idea, or allowing the heart to be steeled against one's fellows by a set of icy formulas, which pretend to give us reasons for hardening ourselves against any human being.

Most things do not ripen at all, except underground: nevertheless, be heroic-be thyself. Imitate no one whomsoever; thou canst not possibly be anything so great as thy own self. Comparisons between man and man are always liable to fallacy: it is with his own nature and his own circumstances that each one should be compared. Men strive after a moral shadow, and neglect the infinity -the more glorious substance within themselves.

Of the nature of spirit, we know absolutely nothing. I cannot conceive (says Coleridge) a better definition of body, than spirit appearing; or of a flesh-and-blood man, than a rational spirit apparent. But a spirit per se appearing, is tantamount to a spirit appearing without its appearance. And as for ghosts, it is enough for a man of common sense (a sixth sense sadly wanting) to observe that a ghost and a shadow are included in the same definition—that is, "visibility without tangibility." We can conceive of the notion of a being of matter, but not the notion of a being of spirit. There comes before the physiologist's mind the image of something extended and opaque: if we make the conception a little more intense, then the conception of that property by which body is displaced or displaces, is superadded; and in the end we may dismiss the idea of opacity, and conceive of matter as transparent: we can reduce the idea of extension to the

sense.

most indivisible atom. In all such cases it is obvious that our conception of matter is the mere recovery by the mind of some remains of actual impression made on the We cannot call it an imperfection in our conception of spirit, that we do not conceive its mode of being, since you see we do not conceive it even of matter. Spirit is the shadowy image of matter derived from sense, which unavoidably attends upon the conception of matter.

Fearn, Berkeley, and D. Stuart, have all demonstrated there is no matter. Kant thought there was, but that we could know nothing of it. Even Sir Isaac Newton thought the most solid-looking matter was a most delicate and airy network, of which the infinitesimally invisible atoms were a thousand or a million times their own diameter distant from one another; and that all the real matter of the universe compacted, might be contained in a cubic inch! Metaphysicians concur in overthrowing and dissolving our sensible knowledge. Homer's Iliad contained in a nutshell is nil after this. They teach us we are fools, and that what we take to be a solid, is the fabric of a vision. Another triumph for the homoeopathists. They beat hollow the analytical chemist's theory that man is but a little gas in a pailful or two of water. Go-ahead, science! Who can be proud now? Coombe evidently understood matter, and what is visible and tangible; and had he not meddled with spirit, or rather cultivated psychology with equal assiduity, his Christian philosophy would have been complete. Berkeley tells me I am all spirit, without a single particle of matter belonging to me. Byron responds -"Nor matter what he said." Dr. Priestley, on the other

hand, contends that I am all body, untenanted and unanimated by any immaterial substance within. Put these two theories together, and what will be the products? That my sum total, and every other man's, amounts to just nothing at all: I have no sort of existence whatever. How, it may be asked, can the two systems be joined together, being totally incompatible? We are told, the best way is to cease from both, and believe neither.

There is a deep fallacy contained in the common expression that the animal and vegetable substances we feed on, support life. The fact is, they become life in other words, are converted into ourselves, and their inherent vitality and spiritual properties are called forth. It is the belief expressed by Banquo, when he gazes on the vanishing witches

"The earth has bubbles, as the water has,

And these are of them."

The idealism of Berkeley, though it has never organised a sect, has yet sensibly influenced the modes of thinking among metaphysicians; and the coincidence of this system with the theory of certain Hindoo philosophers, may lead us to suspect that it contains some great latent truth of which both the European and Hindoo intellect has caught a glimpse. Matter (as Dr. Coombe observes) is indeed truly a Proteus, which escapes us the moment we hope to seize it. Priestley having a good stock of mental imaginative furniture, was anxious to make the soul material; but for this purpose he was obliged to change matter from a substance into a power—that is, into no matter at all; so that he destroyed in attempting to diffuse it.

Matter, which seems to common people so intelligible, is still shrouded in mystery. We know it only by its relation to mind: as an assemblage of powers to awaken certain sensations of its relation to GOD-we may be said to know nothing. Perhaps as knowledge advances, we shall discover that the Creator is bound to His works by stronger and more intimate ties than we now imagine.

We believe in that universal faith which made it impossible for any man to survive a bodily commerce, by whatever sense, with the spiritual Being. We find it in the Old Testament, where the expression "I have seen GOD, and shall die," means simply a supernatural being, since no Hebrew believed it. It is impossible for a nature purely human to sustain for a moment the sight of the Infinite Being. After such a dispersion of its separate elements, no restitution of the total nature of consciousness was possible. Spirit can only be defined by negatives. We can reason upon it only by symbols. On infinitesimals and their opposites, we may learn that the universe is a vast aggregate of universes.

In Dickens's Household Words, for November, 1856, is an admirable paper on miscroscopes and telescopes. So gratified have we been with the peroration, that we quote it for the benefit of our readers. After dwelling on the wonders displayed in directing our visuals to a microscopic examination of animalculæ, the sparkling morceau concludes thus:- "And so the actors attached to our minor theatre, strut and fret their hour upon the stage. The downy atom that floats on the breeze, the drop of discoloured stagnant water, the tiny vermin which invades our

dwellings, the crystal which shapes itself into symmetry unseen, the cast-off skins of despised creeping things, the change effected in natural tissue by disease, the parasitic moulds which threaten the life of higher vegetables, the nameless creatures that breed and batten in mud and slime, the rejected worthless sediment of far-fetched fertilisers, the organised means of self-preservation, wellbeing, and dispersion, with which the humblest weed is endowed, the gorgeous items composing the wardrobe inventory of the beetle, the butterfly, and the moth,—all are replete with marvels which would harrass the mind, if they did not entrance it with delight. At the same time, they fill the soul with awe and wonder, they tend more than all the doctrinal arguments that have ever been urged, to impress a consciousness and an undisputed admission of the existence of Omniscience and Omnipotence, and chase away, like shadows before the solar beams, the inane and empty speculations of Atheists and Materialists. With a telescope directed towards one end of things created, and a microscope towards the other, we sigh to think how short is life, and how long is the list of acquirable knowledge. Alas! what is man in the 19th century? It is provoking that now when we have the means of learning most, we have the least time to learn it in. If we had but the longevity of the antediluvian patriarchs, we might have some hope-not of completing our education, but of passing a respectable previous examination prior to our admittance into a higher school. The nearer we approach to infinite minuteness, the more we approach the infinite beauty and the infinite skill in contrivance and adaptation,