habit: we are neither virtuous nor vicious, neither active nor idle, when we are born; or rather, we are, if anything, inclined to that which is good rather than to that which is bad. Habit, custom, education, teach the mind almost always all it knows. A young Christian learns to love his fellows from his infancy : a young Thug is taught that murder is beautiful, and that hatred to the death is a virtue. But these are the extremes of the scale between them lie infinite varieties of minds, and very few in health. One mind is like a sensitive plant in its modesty; another as bold, rough, and hardy as an oak. One mind is so weak and sickly that it looks with a morbid vanity for the applause of its friends; another cares. more wisely, little for the opinion of the world, so that it can truly applaud itself. One mind forges for itself fetters of opinion, dwarfs itself, chains itself, distorts itself, believes that faith consists in so many crossings or kneelings, or in the particular shape of a hat, gown, or coat, A second shuns work, and sinks into dotage; another works steadfastly, till, in its old age, it becomes a glorious monument, a comfort to its possessor, and, it may be, a benefit as well as a wonder to the world; for the mind, unlike the body, which, in its capacity for being trained to beauty or dwarfed to ugliness, it far excels, is beautiful in old age, and grows grander as we grow older. Like a great tree, it increases, clothes itself with verdure and beauty, and in its healthy middle-age is a shelter and a support, while in its youth it may have been but weakly, bare, and unclothed. The mind has also a wonderfully recuperative or recovering power. When a man has a strong will he can throw off the habit or the phantom which pursues him; he can leave a vice, and assume a

virtue; he can start from the decrepitude of brain-sickness to the full strength of mental health : for, essentially, mental health does depend upon ourselves. Shakspere has so told us; and our second great master, Milton, confirmed this when he wrote

"The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

LAUGHTER AND TEARS.

N the lofty and tender dedication of his last little book of poems to his wife, our great Poetlaureate, Alfred Tennyson, writes and bids her pray that he

"Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith in him,
May trust himself; and, spite of praise and scorn,
As one who feels the immeasurable world,

Attain the wise indifference of the Wise."

Alas! then, and is indifference to be our prime wisdom? and are we, the nearer we approach the stolid brain of the Caffre or the unresisting coldness of the Red Indian, to be counted wise? We, reader and writer too, have around us the immeasurable world; we walk in the presence of infinities; we have thoughts that touch upon the verge of doom, and are accompanied by a presence which is not to be put by. This may seem like grand speaking, but it means simply that we, and all who read this, are human. Are we to consider that wise indifference is to be the lesson which life teaches us-that, after many struggles, battles, and

bleedings, we are to be as stolid as an ape and as contemplative as a Hindoo-to feel nothing, say nothing, resent nothing, resist nothing, praise nothing, blame nothing, love nothing, and hate nothing? That would seem to be "the wise indifference of the Wise."

But is indifference wisdom? If so, dumbness is better than eloquence; speech is silver only, and silence is golden; action is of lead, but passion—i.e., the truly passive state --is of fine steel. These are strange doctrines: they are grand ones to some; but of old we were taught that action is better than rest, and that eloquence is finer than a dumb silence. Nowadays we have learned to doubt and to distrust ourselves. We have lost a great deal of our noble faith, and have gained a cowardly and mean experience, which makes us tacitly put up with and acquiesce in wrong, and worship success only. Riches are the great god; and Mr. Dickens tries to show, in his new novel, how every one bows down to them, and how men will worship even a dustman if he be a Golden Dustman. That this golden dustman, made suddenly rich, is drawn as a most worthy, amiable, estimable, honest man, shows the acute satire of the author; for nobody admires him because he is honest, because he is amiable, but all do so because he is rich. Because he is rich they acquiesce in his vulgarity and untaught ignorance; qualities which, being "snobs," they would have ridiculed and laughed at in the poor.

This worship of material prosperity has arisen on the decay of our faith in that which is good, great, and noble. We find in our social world (thanks to ignorant law-makers and interpreters) such a jumble of right and wrong, good

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and evil, justice and injustice, that we worship whatever is uppermost. "Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just," says Shakspere; but who believes that sentence now? Ask any lawyer whether the plain question of justice has anything to do with law; he will say "Yes, remotely:" but the chances are that he who has the right on his side loses. A Lord Chancellor advised a friend never on any account to go to law; for he seemed to hint that judges-of course criminal judges are not spoken of-interpreted law not by sense or justice, but by precedent: indeed, throughout this law-abiding people there is a strong spirit of deep and utter contempt for its lawyers and law-makers; while for its magistrates and criminal judges there is, it is but fair to say, a wide-spread veneration and respect, based on the general wisdom and justice of their decisions.

The futility of our laws, the frequent misprision of justice and right as regards property, the even success at times of the man who has the least right upon his side—these have led not only to our worship of success, but also to the idea that indifference is wisdom. Of what use is it to rejoice and be glad when the true man has to mourn and the bad man gets the better of him? Of what use is it to indulge in laughter or tears? It is better, says the Laureate, to “attain the wise indifference of the Wise."

Laughter and tears, however, are of some use in our human economy, and, be we as indifferent as we can, they will have their day. The faculty of laughing is one proof of our superiority over the brute creation. The laugh of man is a kingly laugh; and, in the fine symbolism of the ancient mythology, Jupiter himself laughed loud and long at the follies of men or