The cessation of bull-baiting and cock-fighting. missionary, to spread his faith, the merchant, to extend his commerce, in spite of their peaceful training, have hazarded dangers at which many a warrior might have shuddered. A strong feeling of right, nay, a good stiff prejudice, will often make a man both dare more, and bear more, than any disciplined indifference to spectacles of agony. Fear has oftener than courage defended itself by cruelty. It dictated half the atrocities of the worst period of the great revolution in France. How few of those who engage in teaching belong to the class from which the best teachers are drawn. Let a man be possessed, if not of the highest, at least, of well-poised faculties; endued with patience, temper, and, above all, with energy: for this is both wonderfully contagious, and will prevent a master from hesitating to put questions where he fears that he may encounter ignorance, (a very common fault;) with that fastidious love of the sound and the genuine which would compel him, as a naturalist, to throw an imperfect or suspected specimen into the fire; or, as a mechanic, to pull his own work to pieces fifty times rather than knowingly leave it faulty. Let him possess a peculiar tact for the discovery of what are likely to be difficulties, and for the anticipation of early associations of thought; for thus he will be enabled to detect or to prevent E errors, of which another man would probably never have dreamt either of the danger or existence. Let him be willing to build up, beginning from the beginning, giving each part its due weight, and not hurrying over those parts which happen to be peculiarly familiar to himself. Let him thoroughly enter into the ignorance of others, and so avoid forestalling his conclusions for the best teachers are those who seem to forget what they know right well; who work out results which have become axioms in their own minds with all the interest of a beginner, and with footsteps no longer than his. Essays written in Intervals of Business. The following anecdote, which I copied from Lady Blessington's Life, or Jerdan's Autobiography, I forget at this moment which, ought to be written in letters of gold in every public department: "Sir T. Lawrence, when finishing with consummate care a picture intended for some semi-barbarous foreign court, was asked, why he took so much pains with a picture destined, perhaps, never to come under the eye of a connoisseur. 'I cannot help it,' he replied, 'I do the best I can, unable, through a tyrant feeling that will not brook offence, to do any thing less.' This is the stalk of carl-hemp' we want in public men." 6 Others—the clergyman, for instance, when addressing an ignorant congregation-must indeed anticipate difficulties, and accommodate himself to weakbut the schoolmaster must be perpetually shifting and adjusting, with nicety, a sliding-scale of intellectual condescension, applicable to all ages and states of nesses; progress. THERE are some men on whose knowledge we cannot depend, and yet we may find it very unsafe, in argument, to calculate on their ignorance. * A FEELING of impassioned prejudice, extending through a whole people, seems often to have exerted a stronger influence, I will not say, than a sincere individual religion, but, certainly, than a professed national one. For I fancy that no one would trace mainly to religion the sobriety of the modern French and Italians, nor the continence of the ancient Germans in their forests, or the cruel Vandals in Africa; points in which they far excelled modern protestant nations. What would some legislators give to explore the secret source of such national prejudices, and to enlist them! * MAN's mind is like the eagle, sometimes soaring towards the sun, and sometimes stooping to carrion. A LONG letter to, or converse with, a congenial friend, is one of the best things for dispersing vaporous troubles, and for throwing a vapour over substantial ones. THE unity of the church is said to be as the unity "of stones fitly joined together." Most churches show the joinings; but the false semblance of most perfect unity may be accomplished by a dash of Ro man cement. In speaking of the false unity of Rome, I do not want to bring forward the old but true stories of popes and antipopes, of recalcitrant councils, of monarchs most christian, most catholic, and most disobedient, of refractory republics like Venice, excommunicated, or not, as might suit the courage or convenience of the pope for the time being; of "ce vilain tribunal de l'Inquisition," as Pascal (a Roman Catholic) calls it in his nineteenth Provincial, and as Biscay and Sicily thought it, as they proved by refusing it admission. The Romanists are not even so much as sincerely united in their claim for unity. Hear La Bruyère :— "Cette même Religion que les hommes defendent avec chaleur, et avec zèle, contre ceux qui en ont une toute contraire, ils l'altèrent eux-mêmes dans leur esprit par des sentiments particuliers. Ils y ajoutent et ils en retranchent mille choses souvent essentielles, selon ce qui leur convient, et ils demeurent fermes et inébranlables dans cette forme qu'ils lui ont donnée. Ainsi à parler populairement on peut dire d'une seule nation qu'elle vit sous un même culte, et qu'elle n'a qu'une même seule religion: mais à parler exactement, il est vrai qu'elle en a plusieurs, et que chacun presque y a la sienne.”— Charact. chap. xvi. If it should be asserted that La Bruyère was no judge, and no good catholic, it may be replied that he was at any rate good catholic enough to praise Richelieu in the following terms:-" Il a eu du temps en reste pour entamer un ouvrage, continué ensuite et achevé par l'un de nos plus grands et nos meilleurs princes l'extinction d'hérésie." Charact. chap. x. La Bruyère was a practical man, and said what he saw without ecclesiastical glosing. The fact is, we are continually meeting with diversities of various kinds. Who would have expected from Dryden, writing with all the zeal of a new convert, such a protest in favour of tolerance as that which occurs in his poem written expressly in defence of the Roman Catholic Church ?— "Sure, of all tyrannies o'er human kind, Look at the proviso in Sir Christopher Blunt's confession: "And I beseech you all to bear witness that I die a catholic, yet so, as I hope to be saved only by the death and passion of Christ and by his merits, not ascribing anything to mine own works." BACON'S Works, Confessions and other Evidences, &c. Hear Massillon himself censuring the magnificence of masses: "Car c'est de tout temps que la plupart des Princes et des grandes ont fait de la Religion un spectacle, les mystères les plus augustes et les plus terribles, égayés par tous les attraits d'une harmonie recherchée deviennent pour eux comme des jouissances profanes qui les amusent Il faut que la Religion pour leur plaire emprunte les joies et tout l'appareil du siècle, et qu' un spectacle digne des anges ait encore besoin de décorations pour être un spectacle digne d'eux." Sermon, Vendredi Saint. 66 'I happened to say that in all professions and trades men affected an air of mystery. Physicians, I observed, in particular, were objects of that remark, who persist in prescribing in Latin, many times, no doubt, at the hazard of the patient's life, through the ignorance of an apothecary. Mr. Throgmorton assented to what I said, and, turning to his chaplain, to my infinite surprise, said to him, That is just as absurd as our praying in Latin."-COWPER's Letters. So much for real unity of opinion. How sensible are Milton's words on this subject :- "As if while the temple was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should |