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,
And some are scatter'd and alone."

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 w modern education, and much of our pursuits, foster this habit of of t The young ladies, who know more of astronomy than Ptolemy sciousl are by no means mentally improved, for it is a mere sensaowledge that they have acquired: and they may know how to morning the constellations of the heavens, or even calculate an themselve still have never exercised any power of thinking. It is own ; while

from this poverty of reflection that our age is so comparatively small. We are great in the aggregate, but certainly small in the individual: for we have not the simplicity of ignorance, nor its confidingness, whilst we have much of the arrogance of knowledge, without the mental strength it should bring.

In the present work, amidst much surplusage in form and some tediousness of style, we see the power of thinking. We have new ideas upon new subjects. The relations of things undeveloped before are laid bare, and the author is entitled to rank as an essayist. It is a book that a statesman might have written, and that statesmen may read with profit. The author is a lover of wisdom, and his knowledge is wide enough to know that every subject may stretch beyond the horizon of his mental vision; and that, consequently, the old dictatorial style that pretended to exhaust a subject is not tenable. Whatever proposition he adopts he subjects to the test of others, and thus lets in light from an opposite side. Some readers, and indeed most, prefer the decisive dogmatism that either fortifies a prejudice, or blocks out of their narrow arena any opposing opinion: and such will pronounce the present author weak because he is candid, and unsatisfactory because he is honest.

We gather as much from his book as it is permitted for one mind to impart to another. We see opinions in a new light, and have new relations laid open: at the same time our own reflective powers are put in motion-the greatest benefit a writer can bestow on his reader; and our minds are not only informed but purified.

We shall select a few samples to give an idea of the mode of treatment, and thus, we trust, induce the reader to refer to the work itself.

CONFORMITY.

"Few, however, are those who venture, even for the shortest time, into that hazy world of independent thought, where a man is not upheld by a crowd of other men's opinions, but where he must find a footing of his own. Among the mass of men, there is little or no resistance to conformity. Could the history of opinions be fully written, it would be seen how large a part in human proceedings the love of conformity, or rather the fear of non-conformity, has occasioned. It has triumphed over all other fears; over love, hate, pity, sloth, anger, truth, pride, comfort, self-interest, vanity and maternal love. It has torn down the sense of beauty in the human soul, and set up in its place little ugly idols which it compels us to worship with more than Japanese devotion. It has contradicted nature in the most obvious things, and been listened to with abject submission. Its empire has been no less extensive than deep-seated. The serf to custom points his finger at the slave to fashion-as if it signified whether it is an old, or a new, thing which is irrationally conformed to. The man of letters despises both the slaves of fashion and of custom, but often runs his narrow career of thought, shut up, though he sees it not, within close walls which he does not venture even to peep over."

RECREATION.

"I have seen it quoted from Aristotle, that the end of labour is to gain leisure. It is a great saying. We have in modern times a totally wrong view of the matter. Noble work is a noble thing, but not all work. Most people seem to think that any business is in itself something grand; that to be intensely employed, for instance, about something which has no truth, beauty, or usefulness in it, which makes no man happier or wiser, is still the perfection of human endeavour, so that the work be intense. It is the intensity, not the nature, of the work, that men praise. You see the extent of this feeling in little things. People are so ashamed of being caught for a moment idle, that if you come upon the most industrious servants or workmen whilst they are standing looking at something which interests them, or fairly resting, they move off in a fright, as if they were proved, by a moment's relaxation, to be neglectful of their work. Yet it is the result that they should mainly be judged by, and to which they should appeal. But amongst all classes, the working itself, incessant working, is the thing deified. Now what is the end and object of most work? To provide for animal wants. Not a contemptible thing by any means, but still it is not all in all with man. Moreover, in those cases where the pressure of bread-getting is fairly past, we do not often find men's exertions lessened on that account. There enter into their minds as motives, ambition, a love of hoarding, or a fear of leisure, things which, in moderation, may be defended or even justified, but which are not so peremptorily and upon the face of them excellent, that they at once dignify excessive labour.

"The truth is, that to work insatiably requires much less mind than to work judiciously, and less courage, than to refuse work that cannot be done honestly. For a hundred men whose appetite for work can be driven on by vanity, avarice, ambition, or a mistaken notion of advancing their families, there is about one who is desirous of expanding his own nature and the nature of others in all directions, of cultivating many pursuits, of bringing himself and those around him in contact with the universe in many points, of being a man and not a machine."

LIVING WITH OTHERS.

"In the first place, if people are to live happily together, they must not fancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their lives have been exactly similar up to the present time, that they started exactly alike, and that they are to be for the future of the same mind. A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton's law is to astronomy. Some times men have a knowledge of it with regard to the world in general: they do not expect the outer world to agree with them in all points, but are vexed at not being able to drive their own tastes and opinions into those they live with. Diversities distress them. They will not see that there are many forms of virtue and wisdom. Yet we might as well say, 'Why all these stars; why this difference; why not all one star?'

"Many of the rules for people living together in peace, follow from the above. For instance, not to interfere unreasonably with others, not to ridicule their tastes, not to question and re-question their resolves, not to

indulge in perpetual comment on their proceedings, and to delight in their having other pursuits than ours, are all based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact, that they are not we.

"Another rule for living happily with others, is to avoid having stock subjects of disputation. It mostly happens, when people live much together, that they come to have certain set topics, around which, from frequent dispute, there is such a growth of angry words, mortified vanity and the like, that the original subject of difference becomes a standing subject for quarrel; and there is a tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to it.

Again, if people wish to live well together, they must not hold too much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to married people, when he said, Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason, every morning, all the minute detail of a domestic day.' But the application should be much more general than he made it. There is no time for such reasonings, and nothing that is worth them. And when we recollect how two lawyers, or two politicians, can go on contending, and that there is no end of one-sided reasoning on any subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best mode for arriving at truth. But certainly it is not the way to arrive at good temper. "If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live. The number of people who have taken out judge's patents for themselves is very large in any society. Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism. It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope. But these self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.

"One of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded to, is that which may be called criticism over the shoulder. Had I been consulted,'' had you listened to me,' 'but you always will,' and such short scraps of sentences may remind many of us of dissertations which we have suffered and inflicted, and of which we cannot call to mind any soothing effect.

“Another rule is, not to let familiarity swallow up all courtesy. Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly, to your associates, but not less courteously, than you do, to strangers.

"Again, we must not expect more from the society of our friends and companions than it can give; and especially must not expect contrary things. It is somewhat arrogant to talk of travelling over other minds (mind being, for what we know, infinite): but still we become familiar with the upper views, tastes, and tempers of our associates. And it is hardly in man to estimate justly what is familiar to him. In travelling along at night, as Hazlitt says, we catch a glimpse into cheerful looking rooms with light blazing in them, and we conclude, involuntarily, how happy the inmates must be. Yet there is Heaven and Hell in those rooms, the same Heaven and Hell that we have known in others."