efforts to fortify himself against its encroachments, and to surround himself with treasures, whose durability, he vainly flatters himself, will outlast its effacing touch. The schoolboy cuts his name in the glossy stem of the beech, under whose waving foliage he has wiled away the holiday afternoon, in the vague and unexpressed hope that something connected with himself will remain when he is gone and forgotten; the poet travails in mental labour, denying himself rest and relaxation, consuming the "midnight oil" and his health together, that there may be retained, "When the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust." The man who all his life has been scraping up wealth (a scavenger generally of the most dirty description), consoles himself, when called to part from it, with the reflection that "the property will be kept in the family ;" and the high-born aristocrat is gratified with the idea, that the name and honours of his illustrious line will be perpetuated by his heir, sleeping, all unconscious of the coming greatness, in his costly cradle. However varied may be the objects which twine themselves round our hearts, we are all actuated by one impulse-to shelter them from the swelling stream of Time and Change; and we are idly busied in erecting our puny barriers against the rising waters. Well is it for us, that the operations of change are (for the most part) gentle as they are mighty,-imperceptibly extracting some closely-grasped toy from our reluctant hand, and slipping into its vacant place, some new substitute ere we are well aware of our loss happy is it for us too, that in its more startling transitions, we possess that pliability which so soon accommodates itself to circumstances; otherwise, how could we behold the fragments of precious hopes, wrecked and borne away on the restless waves of change? How familiar to us is the exclamation, "I saw So-andSo to-day-haven't seen him before for years-not a bit altered that I can see!" True, not that you can see; change may have passed its hand lightly over his features and form, but are you sure it has not been at work within? Has not its passing shadow darkened his "schemes of hope and pride?" Is his heart as fresh, is his faith as unsuspecting, are his affections as happy and pure, as in the days that are gone? Does he still view things through the bright but delusive medium of roseate fancy, or has wisdom brought sorrow for its companion, and cold calculation, : bred of bitter experience, extinguished the last lingering spark of generous fire? Does he enter now upon projects with the energy of a mind that believes in the existence of their remunerative capabilities, or does he go through them with the dull and weary air of one who feels them to be but " vanity and vexation of spirit?" Alas! we know that the kernel may be withered, while the shell is untouched—that change may spare the form, only to blight the mind-and that the heart may grow grey, while yet the hair is bright! Oh, spirit of change! cold is thy touch; and thou leavest in thy track, the chill of desolation round many a deserted hearth, long time the gathering-place of happy facesthe rallying-point of those who are striving in the world's warfare, and the sacred abode of the dear Penates. Few things are calculated to make a more painful impression of the nature of change, than the view of empty rooms, once containing within their walls so much of the warmth and light and joy of life; there is a voice in their silence ever proclaiming the mutability of human things; the dull ashes in the cheerless grate are emblematical of the decaying embers aforetime brightly burning in bosoms now changed and cold; the remnants of string which lie about on the floors, are types of the broken fibres which once bound some fond heart to a cherished object-severed now, and bleeding, but still refusing to quit their hold. It is nothing to tell us that "the change is for the better," that "they were glad to leave,' that "they would be much better off when they were gone," &c. Who but has felt the fallacious character of such comfort in the bitterness of a parting hour? Their worldly prospects may be better; they may, perhaps, have a larger share of the good things (as they are called) of this life; but think you that a place to eat and drink and sleep in, constitutes a home? Even "the ox knows its owner, and the ass his master's crib ;" and if the brutes discover a predilection for their accustomed stalls, shall the spirit feel no clinging to the spot so identified with its joys and griefs-a spot hallowed by affection, and endeared even by suffering; where some we love have lisped their first words, and others have breathed their last sighs. Ye weary-hearted exiles in a foreign land, do ye find full compensation in its warmer skies and richer soil, for the wrench that plucked your hearts up by the roots from their native earth? Does the brighter glow of the Ausonian sun counteract the cold ness of the stranger's regard? Do the exuberant riches of nature scattered around you, satisfy the cravings of the banished spirit? Perhaps there is scarcely an individual but feels an undefined sensation of regret, a kind of mournful foreboding at the thought of change; nevertheless, like adversity, it has it uses. It is the salt in the ocean of life, which, however it may impart a bitter taste to its waters, keeps them flowing in purity and wholesomeness. Every improvement in science, arts, laws, customs, literature, national or individual character, springs from the principle of change it is as a vast thoroughfare, a "right of way," for the ever-shifting and innumerable atoms which make "the sum of human things"-the "side-wings," through which the "dramatis personæ of life's farce, shall we call it? or tragedy? may pass in one guise, and repass in another. The existence of change is the life of hope; and the knowledge that no state of things is for ever, has contributed to the support of many a luckless wight, who has been fain to console himself with those fragments of philosophy, those crumbs of stoicism, shaken from the cloth of Plato's table. "Well," say they, "it's a long lane that has no turning, and when a change does come, it must be for the better that's one comfort; " and with the more reckless or despairing, "Ah! well, never mind my boy, it will be all one a hundred years hence;" thus illustrating, in their poor attempts at consolation, the universal expectations which hang upon the movements of change. Although the principle of change is the same in alt cases, there is a wide distinction in the mode of its ministration. Its operations in the physical world are gradual, regular, and certain in their developments, producing a succession of results which may be confidently expected, and so great is their precision, that some of the finest sciences are based upon the unfailing order that characterises their revolutions; but the same power, in its exercise over the condition and welfare of man, is more erratic than the wildest meteor that ever flashed its beautiful but unearthly light across the pale stars; such changes have no precedent, nor can we gather from the phases of the last, any indication of the nature of the next. The man who lies down to sleep in the proud consciousness of being the head of a nation, may be awakened in the morning with the intelligence that a numerous company propose to themselves the gratification of presently witnessing the loss of his own; while another who has pined for years in a dungeon, and who has been of no more account than the fungus on its mouldy wall, may be suddenly pressed into the vacant seat by the same fickle and irresistible influence. Natural objects, in the systematic accuracy of their mutations, seem (by comparison with the wilder freaks of man's changeful destiny) to be almost immutable. There is the sheet of water, on whose rushy margin, rod in hand, we took our boyish pastime; it is as blue and bright as ever; the fish leap up with the same joyous splash, and the May-fly dances on its sunlit surface as merrily as of yore; the thrush whistles as blithely in that blossoming orchard, as in the days when we roved through it in our predatory excursions; and each well-remembered feature of the old house seems, through its ivy-tresses, to smile an invitation to its long-forgotten visitants. But where are they whose hilarity we were wont to join, and whose hospitality we were so often pressed to share? "Some are dead, and some are gone, How does the remembrance of the happy days of old gleam with a mournful beauty through the dark clouds of change! How saddening is the thought, that its hand is mighty only to despoil, not to restore, the precious things of life! Yet does change contain in its full quiver one arrow more keen and deadly than the rest. When the eye that has long read in our glances the history of our heart's love, passes by us with a cold and averted gaze; when the face that used to meet us with kindling smiles wears "the look of a stranger; " when we feel that we are no longer identified with a single throb of that heart which once beat only for us, then we have the bitter consolation of knowing that change has done its worst work, and we can smile at its further threatening frowns. It is painful to lose our friends by separation, but still we lose them as friends, and though distance may divide us, our spirits can maintain their familiar intercourse. More painful and solemn is it, to lose those who are dear to us by death, but still we lose them while yet affection is reciprocal; we follow them to the confines of another world with offices of tenderness and love, and when they are removed from our sight, their memory is as sweet fragrance to our souls. But when "the thing we love" lives, and is estranged, there is a gap between us, deep and wide, which we can neither fill up nor cross over; then the past is a desolation, the present is bitterness, the future is a blank, and the only anodyne the crushed heart can hope to find, is the lethargy of forgetfulness! Thus doth the invisible spirit of change steal on in its mysterious course, revivifying the flower, but dimming the eyes that behold its beauty; pouring new freshness through exhausted nature, but mocking the heart by the contrast of its own barrenness; and thus, leagued with Time, will it relentlessly pursue the brightest and fairest things of earth till Heaven's mandate shall declare that time shall be no more, and change, as far as it relates to the existence of the immaterial and immortal, shall be fixed in eternal unchangeableness. A. J. New Books. FRIENDS IN COUNCIL: A Series of Readings and Discourse thereon. Book the First. Post 8vo. W. Pickering. THE capacity of thinking, after all that has been said of the power of the mind, is a rare, and perhaps in its exercise a painful faculty. But few persons think, whilst, according to the quaint expression of a quotation of Leigh Hunt, "many think they think!" We are all impressionable, and our sensibilities are pretty equally developed, whilst undoubtedly thousands are born and die who never exercise the faculty of thinking so as to produce, even to themselves, a new thought. Thinking, according to the interpretation of the word we now adopt, is but observing the relation of things, whether intellectual or physical; but who does this for himself? which of us but runs to seize the crutch which others have made, to assist out of this laborious process. To men who live happily in a series of sensations thinking is an intolerable bore and numerous literary men subsist only by a vivid revival of what the senses have recorded: these are your fast writers, and an antipathy, compounded of scorn and dread, exists towards the slow wretches who would, even in the most superficial style, point out the relations of things by unfolding the processes of nature. The whole of our modern education, and much of our pursuits, foster this habit of mind. The young ladies, who know more of astronomy than Ptolemy did, still are by no means mentally improved, for it is a mere sensational knowledge that they have acquired: and they may know how to number all the constellations of the heavens, or even calculate an eclipse, and still have never exercised any power of thinking. It is |