be backed by a five-pound note? Is it merely floods of tears? Is it weak, silly maunder? When a man who has had a little too much goes about shaking hands with everybody and asking them to dine with him every day of the week, what do we say? Why we say, "Go home, my friend, and get sober, and we will talk to you another day." Or is it Pecksniff? Well, then we say at once, "This man is a humbug; take him away; put him somewhere; don't bring him amongst respectable people; the world has much work to do, and we have no time for this vapouring and silly fellow." Do you not see, then, why emotion has got a bad name in the world? It is condemned, not because of its use, but because of its abuse. Remember, then, emotion demands the union of thought and feeling. It should be controlled by intelligence; it involves a reflex action of the mind; it is not a mere sensation as when a man feels pain; it is the mind working upon a sensation. But in order that emotion may be respectable, not to say useful, or even sublime, it must satisfy conditions.

247. First, emotion must be true.

Secondly, emotion must be balanced and correlated with our other faculties.

Thirdly, emotion must be dignified; that is, it must be devoted to some worthy object.

Fourthly, it must bring forth the fruit of noble action, it must be guided into right channels, it must set in motion useful machinery, it must do honourable work.

Then consider what a power it becomes in the world, how it touches everything from the least to the greatest. There is not an act, not a thought, hardly an inflection of the voice unaffected by it. Are not the orator's words weighted with emotion? Do we not feel at times how a passionate utterance will flow over a crowd, melt, animate, subdue, or rouse people to the wildest activity, and nerve them for reckless or indomitable action? And it is the manner far more than the matter. One man may read a sublime speech or poem, but if he betray no emotion it will fall dead, while but a few simple words uttered by another will thrill through and through you. You may have often experienced this in the case of a great actor: his lowest whisper has done what the misplaced passionless rant of another failed to accomplish.

248. I will repeat to you a passage first with the right emotion as well as I can, and then I will rob it of its emotion, and leave you to draw your own conclusions. Let me take that

pathetic address to death and the land beyond the grave, in Longfellow. The poet breaks forth, feeling his soul troubled, feeling the pressure of the pain and sorrow of the world, and sighing for the peacefulness of death and the land where all things are forgotten :

Oh, land! oh, land! for all the broken-hearted:
The mildest herald by our fate allotted,
Beckons, and, with inverted torch, doth stand
To lead us with a gentle hand

Into the land of the great departed,

Into the silent land!

Now hear it another way.

I have simply withdrawn the emotion, and you burst out laughing! So you see how emotion takes hold of the mind, winds it up and lets it down. The same thing is noticeable in music-in painting; nay, even in atmospheric effects of outward nature. As when on some cold day you go out and look abroad upon woods and fields, life seems cheerless. "What a dreary chilly day!" you exclaim. But suddenly

the leaden sky is rifted, the sun bursts forth, and brings a glory upon field and woodland. A thrill of emotion strikes through you, and the dreary feeling vanishes! So emotion in a thousand ways shines out and illuminates the landscape of life at all points.

249. Or let us put emotional power in another way. Look at a steam-engine with all its wheels, cranks, and pipes. It seems a huge mass of lifeless iron, and might be supposed, if seen only at rest, to be absolutely useless. All this mighty mechanism wants something. What is it? Steam. If you put in the steam, you will see the wheels begin to turn, and at last the steam will be fully got up, and the engine will speed away with an express train. What has been done? You have supplied the motive power. Steam is the engine's emotion. And, if we want to get men to work, we must put steam into them; we must kindle up emotion, and then they will begin to go. Every great man has had this power of concentrated steam in him, this emotion bottled up; and because he has had it properly under control he has been able to do great things.

250. Would America have ever been discovered if it had not been for emotion? Think of the enthusiasm of Columbus; think of the stupidity and apathy with which he had to contend. Think of him burning with the thought of this undiscovered land, until at last, in his little boat, steering in mid-ocean, he finds this new world. Ay! at the very moment when the hearts of all his fellow-mariners failed them the land hove in sight, and the enthusiasm of Columbus was crowned with an immortal discovery !

251. Or think of Wilberforce warring against the great selfishness of our country until he had called up an opposing force of sympathy, which ended in the suppression of the slave-trade. So that through an emotion-I do not deny that duty came into play, but a knowledge of duty unbacked by feeling is very inoperativethis man communicated his feelings to the whole country, until greedy money-loving men were willing to give up their incomes in the Indies, and become comparatively poor men for the sake of an idea, in order to put down the abominable slave-trade in the British dominions.