the most celebrated names on record. Milton may be classed among the number. On perusing his controversial performances, we discover traces of the bitter in his composition; but how many passages of his poetry contain the sweetest effusions of gentleness and pathos! Luther exhibited the union of a loving spirit with a rugged severity of demeanour; the latter displayed chiefly in his public conduct; the former, where it shone brightest, in his domestic relations. Burke is another instance. His bearing was accounted not a little imperious, at least in the contests of politics; while the ordinary tenor of his existence, and some incidents in particular, evinced a generous sympathetic heart, susceptible of the most refined emotions of tenderness. To the same category may be referred Dr. Parr, who veiled a more than common share of kindness under a rough and often dogmatic exterior. "There is a sweetish pulpy manner," says Walker in his Original, "which I have observed uniformly covers, both in men and women, a bitter kernel." Even Johnson, with all the captiousness and occasional ferocity of his tone, was no stranger to the bland and benign sentiments which add so much grace to mental or literary dignity. Phenomena of the sort, where feeling lies full and fresh within, but fenced from outward show by a frame-work of rigidity, may be fancifully resembled to the gushing of a deep mossy well covered with mist or overgrown with thorns.

ONE touchstone of character is the prevalent train of reflection in seasons of relaxation from customary pursuits; and another criterion, though care is necessary in its application, is the texture of the thoughts in dreaming. Who can suppose that the slumbering visions of an imaginative or intellectual genius are similar to those of a clown? or that no distinctive peculiarities mark the dreams of the sensual, the avaricious, the aspiring, the revengeful, the affectionate ? A man's nature is often more strikingly depicted in his sleeping than in his waking hours. Physiog

nomists too have the best opportunity for the exercise of their skill when the subject of their scrutation is asleep. I have heard of a schoolmaster who used to enter the apartments of his pupils by night, for the purpose of watching the expression of the countenance while mind is thus left to its unfettered operation, that he might be assisted in his judgment of their temper and capacities.

A CONSIDERABLE portion of self-confidence has a tendency to unfold the bent of a man's nature, as well as to bring into activity his more dormant capabilities and passions. Among those of deep sensibility, so often the parent of seclusion and self-diffidence, many, no doubt, like plants nipped by the frost, or shut out from the sun and air by a net-work of overhanging branches, die with scarcely the germs of their being developed.

THE predominant passion of any one relates to those objects as to which he can least bear to learn the success of others, if he himself is unsuccessful.

THE features of character are like those of a landscape, which imperceptibly vary with the progress of day, and as lights or shadows are reflected on the scene. Or they are as rivers, on which while gazing after a brief interval, we fancy them the same that we saw before; but the mass of waters we then beheld has passed away, and nothing is the same but the channel, and the banks with their trees or verdure. Perhaps there is no moment in which a person's qualities are exactly the same as at any other period: nor does it seem unwarrantable to suppose that in the sphere beyond the grave, Mind, from its inherent activity and progressiveness, will be no less subject to the law of sleepless, unintermitted change.

B

MIND IN ITS PHYSICAL RELATIONS.

HROUGHOUT the system of animated nature, little

proportion is observable between compass of mind,

and that of the frame which it inhabits. There are more indications of reflection and contrivance in a bee, for instance, than in a lion or an elephant. Among human beings, the diminutive in body are often the largest in soul. With the brute creation in particular, the degree of understanding seems regulated by the purposes, not the dimensions, of the bodies which they possess.

It is not unfrequent for certain peculiarities of mind or propensity to be transmitted by descent; yet this must arise from the transmission of certain physical properties. Souls, in the sense of minds, or self-conscious principles of thought, feeling, and will, are not propagated; but by the materials and composition of the body, the qualities and operations of the intellect are undoubtedly affected: a circumstance that may in some measure account for the differences which seem to prevail in the mental and moral attributes of the

sexes.

THE influence of physical causes, in the formation of intellectual and moral character, has never been sufficiently regarded in any system of education. Organic structure, temperament, things affecting the senses or bodily functions,

are as closely linked with a right play of the faculties, as the materials and condition of an instrument of music with that wonderful result called melody.

IF we suppose, which we may without admitting what is usually considered the doctrine of materialism, that the attributes and exercise of the intellect depend essentially on physical organisation, we allow what is equivalent to a natural and original difference in minds; such a difference, at least, as cannot be produced or destroyed by education. There appears, in fact, no more probability against the supposition of difference in the original constitution of minds than of bodies. The hypothesis, which is supported by the general analogy of the physical and moral systems, has but a counterpart in the notion of Coleridge, who delighted in the subtlest thought, that there is a sex in souls; a problem which had not escaped the curiosity of Rousseau, whose structure of feeling left few points of sentiment unexplored.*

WITH regard to what may be called the genesis of Mind, as a question in psychology touching the origin of sensation and thought, since all that we can be said to know on the subject is derived from phenomena in connexion with material organisation, this may perhaps be offered as the sum: That when certain substances or forms of matter are placed in certain relations to other substances or outward influences, the phenomenon of LIFE presents itself; which, expressed by a series of changes that in the higher species of sentient existence would seem to be developed into the complex manifestations of intellect and moral sentiment, is yet inconceivable without the hypothesis of a great Parent

* "Dis-moi, mon enfant," writes Claire to Julie, "l'âme a-t-elle un sex?"-La Nouvelle Héloïse, seconde partie, lettre v.-The views of Coleridge may be seen in the Specimens of his Table Talk, p. 38, second edition.

Mind as the primum mobile, so constituting the primitive germ, that, under the circumstances alleged, it discloses the action of a principle on which all the successive changes, clearly indicating design, are dependent; comprehending, at a particular stage of organic evolution, the rise of feeling, or sensitive capacity, without which no changes, external or internal, could be perceived, or form the basis of intelligence. Nor is it conceivable that matter, however organised, disposed, or modified from without, can itself become a subject of consciousness and thought; the action of one kind of matter on another kind, termed organic, being utterly unable to account for results homogeneous with neither, except on the supposition of some agency or influence, in connexion with the latter, which vivifies and shapes it, and by which the system of correspondence between the outer and inner impressions is effected. Even then, however, the fact would be rather stated than solved; the rise of mental states as a sequence of cerebral action being all that we really know in the case, constituting an enigma which it were as impossible to penetrate as to gainsay.

On the supposition that man consists solely of organism and function, the inevitable inference would seem to be, that when death dissolves the one and terminates the other, as nothing of him would remain, there would be an utter annihilation of his being. The only plausible suggestions that might be urged, on speculative grounds, against such an inference, appear to be, that in one sense, as must be admitted, there is a destruction of man at death; that is, of man as such; that the Deity, who has so wondrously constituted the brain the paramount organ of feeling and thought, is doubtless able to follow the extinction of any particular mode of conscious existence with a reproduction or continuance of the consciousness in another state of being;-and that in no case are we authorised to conclude, that because physical organisation is made a condition of thought in this world, it must necessarily, or will even probably, be so in a future, the