the more easy to wait with confidence for what time only can produce in perfection. The experiment of forcing cannot safely be followed in education as in horticulture. If bodily health is not enjoyed by the adult, his acquirements will be exercised at a disadvantage, if they are not rendered perfectly useless. Many a tortoise, it may be suspected, will have passed the hares.

If physical education proceed along with that of the intellect, as it may,-if as much be done to procure large and firm muscles, vigorous digestion, and healthy assimilation of blood, as to store the mind and discipline the faculties, education may not only be carried on safely, but will even be promoted. The brain of the clever but weakly boy will become stronger as his muscles become firm, and his skin ruddy and elastic. The law of supply and demand holds just as well in education as in commercial matters. Produce or create the demand, and the supply is sure to follow. Do not let the physical be a fractional, but the primary basis of all education.

At a recent meeting at Maidstone, Mr. B. Hope, M.P., said he should be sorry to advocate lowering the standard of education, but he did advocate a greater adaptation of it to the peculiar circumstances of those we had to train up. We want (he added) something more like what is called industrial training-a more familiar common-sense grappling with the necessities of the case. You may now meet a girl coming out of a school,—aye, and her instructress too-who may be able to state the height of every mountain in Europe, and the specific gravity of every mineral, and yet be unable to boil a leg of mutton, or hem

a pocket handkerchief; able to pass a first-class examination, but unable to perform the household duties of a wife or domestic servant. What signifies nimble fingers, even, if there are vacant understandings? Well, it is equally profitable to remark-those who have startling dreams of light, have fearful intervals of darkness. You cannot be wrong, however, in playing on that true key beneath which throbs the great heart of Nature.

CHAPTER XXVII.

PHYSIOLOGY OF ABSORBTION AND DEPOSITION.-INFLUENCE OF

IMAGINATION ON DISEASE.-WAR: ITS BANEFUL CONSEQUENCES.

"Temperance is the common and universal cause of all religion and all morality."-Lord JOHN RUSSELL.

"Years following years steal something every day,-
At last they steal us from ourselves away."

EVERY minute that we live, is there passing off dead or effete matter; every inspiration and expiration is adding to and taking from the living body. The globule of blood of to-day, is not the globule of yesterday, nor will be that of to-morrow. It will have become alive in the body; it will enter into new combinations, form a new material, or add to the process of organisation; it will lose its vitality, and be cast out by the influences of the living forces, as hostile to the well-doing of the animal economy. This is the case with the solids as well as fluids; and all spring from the latter, even the bones. Sad rubbish is sometimes scoured away by a first-rate scavenger, Dame Nature. The faculty, by watching what she wishes to effect, may do much by facilitating her efforts in cleansing, purifying, perfuming, and ventilating the dirty reservoirs. We may therefore recognise in this, that the comparison instituted between man and the flower of the field, is as philosophi

cally true as it is poetically beautiful. If man would follow his instinctive propensities, dictated by the sensations of hunger and thirst, and only supply the waste that is wanted to maintain life and health, his sufferings would be comparatively trifling. Man, however, with his boasted reason, often interferes with instinct, and goes to excess; less wise than the polypi, the lowest animal in the scale of life, which refuses to unfold its tentacula to snatch a tempting morsel after it has had enough. No wonder when man indulges to repletion, he cannot see the safe and practicable philosophy, consisting of fortitude to bear, sincerity to enjoy, and faith to look beyond. No wonder the genial currents of his thoughts are frozen at the fountain, and he becomes bewildered, and flounders in a sea of troubles no wonder he knocks his pate against a post, and gives the good Samaritan, who would prevent him injuring himself and others, a slap on the face. No wonder he cannot reduce his speculations to practice, and accommodate his knowledge to the purposes of life. It is not surprising that he gets into a track where he finds nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and disappointment, crabtrees of his own planting. No wonder that the sea makes a noise, the waters rage and swell, and blacken "the winter of his discontent." A mouse that takes up its lodging in a cat's ear, has a mansion of peace to such men. Great efforts from great motives are reversed.

Almost every one takes a pleasure in requiting trifling obligations; many people are grateful for moderate ones; but there are few who do not soon forget great ones. The truth is, people like to be bewildered and deceived.

The following anecdote related by Coleridge, not only illustrates a trait of character, shewing what the influence of imagination and the evergreen of hope can do, but furnishes a salutary lesson to the credulous patron of empirics. As soon as the powers of nitrous oxyde were discovered, Dr. Beddoes at once concluded that it must needs be a specific for paralysis: a patient was selected for the trial, and the management was entrusted to Davy. Previous to administering the gas, he inserted a small pocket thermometer under the tongue of the patient, as he was accustomed to do on such occasions, to ascertain the degree of animal temperature, with a view to future comparison. The paralytic, wholly ignorant of the nature of the process to which he was to submit, but deeply impressed with the certainty of success, no sooner felt the thermometer between his teeth, than, concluding the talisman was in full operation, in a burst of enthusiasm he declared that he already experienced the effects of its benign influence throughout his whole frame. The opportunity was too good to be lost: Davy cast an intelligent glance at Coleridge; and they desired the patient to renew his visit on the following day, when the same ceremony was again performed, and repeated every succeeding day for a fortnight; the patient gradually improving during the period, when he was dismissed as cured, no other application having been used but the thermometer. Dr. Beddoes, from whom the circumstances of the case had been intentionally concealed, saw in the restoration of the patient the confirmation of his opinion, and the fulfilment of his ardent hope nitrous oxyde was a specific for paralysis!