quillité toujours pour la recherche du prétendu bonheur. Le lait, le sel, le poivre, tout est sophistiqué. On vend faux teint, et l'on se glorifie de la supercherie."

THEODORE MENDEZ sur le Duel, 1854.

"It is something more than touching to find Queen Mary's parliament, even while the fires of Smithfield were burning, engaged in preventing the manufacturers of the north from mixing devil's dust with their cloth, and the smaller tradesmen of the petty towns from cheating the poor consumers with adulterated articles."-FROUDE'S Oxford Essay on the best means of teaching English History. (Quoted in GilderDALE'S Disciplina Rediviva.)

JUST as the Roman consuls were unwilling to let a day of their year's magistracy pass without an act, so, the Roman authors seem to have been determined not to use a word without a meaning. It is scarcely possible to find in their works a single sentence which can properly be called mystical, trifling, or aimless. Their style is always direct, strong, and purposelike; there is no wilful playing either with thought, or with the language which is its vehicle. For want of this sheet-anchor, or rather helm, of common sense, how many freights of genius in modern Europe have we seen lost in mysterious depths, or prodigally scattered on barren sands.

A MAN'S life and conduct may influence his selection of arguments, and his use of them; but it cannot

possibly affect, in the slightest degree, the intrinsic truth or falsehood of a single sentence that he utters; yet theologians generally confuse these two questions, -either by a trick or a blunder.

THERE is scarcely any more delightful emotion than that which we feel when a friend who has sacrificed our esteem, by some noble act recovers it with interest.

THERE is something false about the vitality of the gayest watering-places; there is too little of the energy of the will about it. Languor is infectious, and life is infectious too. Those who " want more life and fuller" (Tennyson) should go to a busy capital, where there are in activity the movements and interests of men in earnest. You cannot look out of a window without seeing the difference. Of course, I am not here speaking of the worst class of invalids, nor of those who, in the great city, will be friendless.

THERE is no more common trick of selfishness than to indicate to our friends most clearly the course of action we wish them to take, and then to add that we have not the slightest wish to bias them. We thus throw on them the onus of refusal, and try to pocket, ourselves, the credit of generosity.

PEOPLE generally condemn war as a system of blood-shedding; but that is by no means all. It sanctions, for a time, almost everything that an honourable man would shun. It sanctions espionage, it sanctions deceit, it sanctions the opening of letters, it is often obliged to permit plunder. Can all this be without great damage to the character of a nation, even though only temporary?

As to the religious part of the question, doubtless, as in a non-natural sense a man swears that he will love his wife for ever, and promises to endow her with all his worldly goods, without being quite certain that he can do the first, and rarely intending literally to do the second; so he may non-naturally divide his mouth between the prayer for his enemy, and the cartridge with which he is going to blow his spirit out of his body; and non-naturally love his brother when, with heated blood, and to the sound of drums and trumpets, he is trying whether he or his brother is the strongest, or most skilful swordsman.

As far as authorities go on this subject, the early English divines, as Barrow, Hooker, &c. &c. never seem to have felt a moment's hesitation about the propriety of defensive warfare. Of the early reformers, Erasmus would have been a staunch member of the Peace Society; and Luther at one time said, that he did not wish to see a sword drawn even to protect the reformed doctrines, whilst Zuingle died in battle for them. The Peace Society, in a publication of 1817, Tract III, maintain, that war was wholly condemned and

not practised at all by Christians before the third century, and give many apparent proofs of it. But Milner, in his Church History, when speaking of the war of Marcus Aurelius with the Marcomani; A. D. 174, says: The Chris.

tian soldiers in his army, we are sure, in their distress would pray to God, even if Eusebius had not told us so. All Christian writers speak of the relief as vouchsafed in answer to their prayers, and no real Christian will doubt of the soundness of their judgement in this point." (Church History, chap. iv. cent. 2.) Yet, not a hundred pages afterwards, (chap. ii. cent. 3.) he says:—“ Tertullian's apology exhibits a beautiful view of the manners and of the spirit of the Christians of his times." He then quotes from it, amongst others, the following passage:-' "For what war should we not be ready, and well prepared, even though unequal in numbers, we, who die with so much pleasure, were it not that our religion requires us rather to suffer death, than to inflict it."

Here is a direct self-contradiction. So difficult it is to find men agreeing with each other or even with themselves on the subject.

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Those who profess to dislike war of all kinds, yet speak of it as a matter of necessity, are often the very people who are, as they think, firm believers in special providential interference. Yet, somehow or other, they never seem to think a special providential interference at all likely in behalf of a whole nation determined on principle rather to suffer than to strike-a curious description of Faith.

It is a common statement that peace may very safely be professed by a small community, like the Quakers, existing in the midst of a large community, not professing it.

The following passage may be just worth quoting:"This treaty of peace and friendship was made under the open sky, by the side of the Delaware, with the sun, and the river, and the forest, for witnesses. It was not confirmed by an oath; it was not ratified by signatures and seals; no written record of the conference can be found, and its terms and conditions had no abiding monument but on the heart.

New England had just terminated a disastrous war of extermination; the Dutch were scarcely ever at peace with the Algonquins; the laws of Maryland refer to Indian hostilities and massacres, which extended as far as Richmond. Penn came without arms; he declared his purpose to abstain from violence; he had no message but peace; and not a drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by an Indian." BANCROFT'S History of the United States.

It need scarcely be added that as long as the temper is hostile and bitter, the mere abstinence from arms, or the contrary, is of comparatively little importance.

However, I know and honour men in both services; and all I will venture to say is, that war is a thing the propriety of which, under any circumstances, is rather difficult of proof.

THERE is nothing that horrifies cautious people more than your attempt to make them admit what is called a general proposition.

A SUBJECT put into some minds is like a herb put into cold water; in some kinds of water it petrifies, in some it putrifies. A mind which is merely fervid and busy may make, like boiling water, a slight decoction of it, but it requires spirit and quality in the intellect to extract an essence.

RESPECTABLE English, incidentally meeting, are more shy of each other than are most of the people on the Continent; against the insular compression,