himself. The elements of the world, fleeting and decaying as they are, could never learn to fashion a spirit, that could chain them in their fury, and employ them to subdue each other. Analogy teaches us the identity of nature between the parent and its offspring. Thus we shall refer his origin to another, superior to himself in that which alone constitutes him, in so considerable a degree, the controlling power of Earth. The Superior Intelligence, to which Nature thus points us as man's creator, revelation styles our Father, and our God. The study of the mind teaches us also our duty to this God. By learning ourselves, we learn what actions we approve. We see, we feel the smile of conscience. But He, who has thus created us, having powers similar to our own, must also be able to distinguish between the evil and the good. Were he malicious and tyrannical, he would not have given to us an inward disposition to approve the good, since he would thus place his creation in perpetual contrast with its creator. He would the rather form us in his own image, as all wish to have others consentaneous with themselves. Hence knowing what we approve, we know his pleasure, which we are as truly bound to perform as if it were sanctioned by a command. Hence we know our duty to him, and become a law unto ourselves. What has been already remarked, will naturally suggest to the reflecting mind the influence of correct theories of the mind, in its nature, powers and progress, upon the welfare of society. The casuist, that probes the corruptions of error, finds its virulence to lie in incorrect views of the nature and power of the mind. "Know thyself," is the recipe which he presents. The enlightened philanthropist refers the relative degradation of society to corresponding conceptions of the dignity and glory of the mind. He beholds the despot deny the lamp of knowledge to his subjects, with the hope of securing his authority under the leaden scepter of ignorance. He turns to the people, and finds them glorying in their shame. Not knowing that within them is a fountain of pleasure, they cleave to the earth for enjoyment, and, determining to fathom its resources, wallow in its mire. Thus it is, that all whose zeal or profession lead them to disclose the sources of public danger and happiness, direct us to a knowledge of ourselves, as our only safeguard. The stoic, who could base morality on a contempt of happiness, and look with indifference on a future state of rewards, beheld, with a frigid soul, every attempt to meliorate the condition of his species, while, by his morose and bitter aspect, he rendered virtue, which he thus bleared and mutilated, an unwelcome object to the world. Thus he drew the veil over every brightening prospect of human life, and palsied the active energies of the world. The Pyrrhonist, who questioned the authority of consciousness, and the testimony of the senses, doubted his own existence, and conceived the ties of society to be the mere cobwebs of a dreamy imagination. What then mattered it to him, that the sacredness of marriage was violated, the rights of

property disregarded, and life itself thrown away, as the sport of cruelty. It was all but a dream. The materialist, who could say that the soul resided in the blood, and was mere sensibility itself, said with Catullus, "suns may set, suns may rise, but when our sun of life is set, there follows a perpetual sleep." He carried into practice the sensual maxim, "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." No scene of debauchery was too low for him to play the actor. The cords that moored society in a calm haven, he severed, and left it to float, weather-beaten and broken, without helm or rudder, to destruction. So too, in modern time, the Mahometan, who believes that we act only as under the iron yoke of absolute predestination, rushes madly into any danger. The raging epidemic he will use no means to stay in its progress; while he will stand, with the iciest soul, amid the glow of all the sympathies of our nature. The Hindoo, who says that God is an immense ocean; and himself but a phial, floating in its bosom and filled with its substance, which at death breaks and mingles its contents with their kindred elementlosing regard for the future, takes his fill of the present. He is God, and God can do no wrong.-Such is the complexion, which a wrong mental philosophy gives to the face of human society. As soon might we hope to fly, as to climb, blindfolded, to any glory. In the absence of all knowledge of ourselves, our capacities, powers and nature, legislation could have no existence. Were some favored few able to frame a code of laws, worthy of the name, the ignorant many would be beyond its influence, but as they felt its rod. Against such complete ignorance, God, it is true, has made a provision. Our consciousness reflects, with perfect certainty, the image of our busy selves, and, if unobscured by sophistry or perverted philosophy, that image cannot but be seen. But, when superstition or despotism have enshrouded the mind, or rendered its perception oblique, then it is that the mental philosopher must call forth the hidden spark of of knowledge from the mind. When the sophist would swell into undue importance any phenomenon of the mind, the mental philosopher must show its relative bearing, the extent of its influence, and how much it is itself controlled by higher laws and more commanding facts. Or when, from co-existence, two things are alledged to sustain to each other the relation of cause and effect, and this asserted relation is made the basis or modification of important reasoning, he is to show the latent fallacy, and prevent the error which would otherwise be consequent. Or, if at any time physical facts and relations are used to reflect to our easy apprehension the acts or laws of the mind, he must convince us that matter can be employed, neither as an allegory, nor as hieroglyphics, to body forth to the ear, or eye, the truths of mental science.

When the genius of man was rising from its grave, it was mental philosophy that prepared its abode, and pointed it to a high career. It was not till the dignity of the mind was appreciated, that the chains

of authorized opinion became as tow, in the hands of the sage. And it was not till these were broken, that genius ever mounted upward. The queries that mind then proposed to itself, were such as he is fabled to have asked, who, as the story would have it, awoke into being, in the maturity of manhood, on a solitary isle "Whence came I? What am I? Whither am I bound?" Who can hear them propounded in the controversies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in reality, though not in form, without the intensest interest. They are the language of the first aspirations of mind. And how do our grief and admiration alternate, as we see "this spark of the divinity" thrust by its own fiat into the deepest shades "of nothingness," and afterwards behold it tired of its abode, "through upper and through middle darkness borne," basking in the light of Him, in whom all the magnificence of heaven and earth is lost. After it had assumed its true position on the scale of excellence, and its spirit of research was abroad in the earth, exploring nature and tasking her powers for the benefit of art, those of the finest mould in every nation came together, each with his hammer and chisel, and with their collected talent, formed a frame-work which Hiram's wealth and Solomon's taste might emulate in vain-the temple of the mind. Within its sacred walls, the studious and the learned, the philosopher and the logician, the poet and the orator, have ever since offered up their vows and sacrifices.

Let not then that study, which has awakened genius, be trodden under foot. He who would exterminate his species and glut himself with blood, might leap exulting upon the mangled corpses of his enemies; he might even insult the dead, and outrage, in his fury, all our feelings, and yet be innocent, compared with him who sneers at the untiring industry of the sage, that spends his days in unravelling the mysteries of the mind. His is a study, without which no other, whether in art or science, can come to maturity and be divested of the false glare of speculation and theory.

FEW of us in this world are so very prosaic, as not to be delighted occasionally with poetry. Moments are found in every profession, and crevices even in the closest hearts that need filling up some way or other; and this same 'some way or other' no other way, than stretching one's self lazily on his sofa, shoving by a monstrous effort his troubles from his mind, and surrendering himself to the pleasing lassitude of dreamy meditation. We never found the man so dull, or the mind so dead to the high and ardent revelings of a fine imagination, that it did not sometimes love this employment. We never saw the man-though we have seen those who professed otherwise— who could not by some means or other be betrayed into a confession of this, and thus prove the truth one of universal application, that every man is something of a poet.

We do not mean by this that every man writes poetry, or attempts it even. Perhaps not one out of fifty on an average, is bent on making himself ridiculous. But we do mean to say, that every man has felt the power which the poet makes others feel, that there is that in him which sympathizes though he understand it not, and that in this sympathy he finds a pleasure when other things are tasteless. There is poetry in every thing that lives and breathes, and poetry in every thing that contributes to the happiness of all living intelligences. The clown who stops his plow and leans on his paddlestaff, hushing his own gay whistle to hear the gayer whistle of the robin in the covert, gives evidence of the poetry in his nature. The fact that a man never attempts the exercise of this power, is no evidence that he does not possess it; while the fact that he is involuntarily betrayed into an approval of its principles, proves it written on his heart. Men are so betrayed when they admire a landscape, a cataract, or the rush of the ocean, giving evidence of the same sense

of beauty which the poet possesses though differing in degree, yet they would laugh at you to tell them so. We have even heard some men condemn poetry, who are melted into tears by music; and have heard them withhold the tribute to its merit, and yet confess its excellence. The secret of all this incongruity is, their ignoranceof its nature; for if, instead of regarding it as a gift for the few, they would see it, as it is, a blessing for the many, the difficulty would vanish.

We know very well this is somewhat heretical, and that sonneteers and singers in scores will condemn it, and probably shut us forever from the pale of poetic good-breeding, nevertheless we shall hold to the doctrine and support it with all our eloquence. We never believed in this exclusive right of poets, under which they have committed all manner of abominations; we never believed they had a right to all their eccentricities and to die in garrets. They are as much obliged to eat beef, to walk on Turkey carpets, and sleep on a bed of down, as the greatest lord of the land. The privileges extended to them, have only made them the most miserable fellows in existence; made them feel that like Cain every man's hand was against them, and shut from society some of the noblest hearts that ever knocked against the ribs of mortality. A poet's heart is a fountain of the best feelings in the world; his susceptibility is such that he can find pleasure in little things as well as great, and therefore there's no necessity for his being treated fastidiously; his wit is as sparkling as the first foam on the summer stream, while his face is a sort of looking glass in which every one may see good nature. He whiles off our leisure moments, and cheers us up when the heart aches; he keeps alive the freshness of youthful feelings, and binds them like a green laurel around the brow of age; he wooes for us when we love, complains for us when we suffer, and when we die writes epitaphs. How in the world he got the privilege of being the only miserable body, no body knows. Ever since Dante was exiled and Tasso starved, it has been forced upon him that he was a favored person; and under this belief he has exhibited weakness that put the world out of countenance, while all the rest of us have suffered as much as he and yet bear it like men.

Now one evil arising from allowing him this privilege is, the tendency to make fools. A young man no sooner finds within himself a longing to be something, than he takes it to be the incipient throes of genuine inspiration; he therefore claps a laurel on his brow a la Tasso, or throws back his delicately wrinkled neckcloth a la Byron, and begins sighing to his mistress or bedeviling human nature. Now the result of all this is as we readily perceive, the desecration of the high art of poetry and the overstocking of bedlam. The genuine poet sees his noble profession degraded, the eagle comes down from its high altitude, and the philanthropist mourns over the waste of human energies, while the puling melody itself falling on our ears,