65.

L

ANDOR, in a passage I was reading to-day, speaks of a language of criticism, in which qualities should be graduated by colours; "as, for instance, purple might express grandeur and majesty of thought; scarlet, vigour of expression; pink, liveliness; green, elegant and equable composition, and so on."

Blue, then, might express contemplative power? yellow, wit? violet, tenderness? and so on.

I

€6.

QUOTED to A. the saying of a sceptical philosopher : "The world is but one enormous WILL, constantly rushing into life."

"Is that," she responded quickly, "another new name for God?"

67.

A

DEATH-BED repentance has become proverbial for its fruitlessness, and a death-bed forgiveness

equally so. They who wait till their own death-bed to make reparation, or till their adversary's deathbed to grant absolution, seem to me much upon a par in regard to the moral, as well as the religious, failure.

A

68.

CHARACTER endued with a large, vivacious, active intellect and a limited range of sympathies, generally remains immature. We can grow wise only through the experience which reaches us through our sympathies and becomes a part of our life. All other experience may be gain, but it remains in а manner extraneous, adds to our possessions without adding to our strength, and sharpens our implements without increasing our capacity to use them.

Not always those who have the quickest, keenest, perception of character are the best to deal with it, and perhaps for that very reason. Before we can influence or deal with mind, contemplation must be lost in sympathy, observation must be merged in love.

69.

M

ONTAIGNE, in his eloquent tirade against melancholy, observes that the Italians have the same word, Tristezza, for melancholy and for malignity or wickedness. The noun Tristo, "a wretch," has the double sense of our English word corresponding with the French noun misérable. So Judas Iscariot is called quel tristo. Our word "wretchedness" is not, however, used in the double sense of tristezza.

"ON ne considère pas assez les paroles comme des faits" that was well said!

Since for the purpose of circulation and intercommunication we are obliged to coin truth into words, we should be careful not to adulterate the coin, to keep it pure, and up to the original standard of significance and value, that it may be reconvertible into the truth it represents.

If I use a term in a sense wherein I know it is

not understood by the person I address, then I am guilty of using words (in so far as they represent truth), if not to ensnare intentionally, yet to mislead consciously; it is like adulterating coin.

"COMMON people," said Johnson, " do not accurately adapt their words to their thoughts, nor their thoughts to the objects; "--that is to say, they neither apprehend truly nor speak truly—and in this respect children, half-educated women, and illeducated men, are the "common people."

It is one of the most serious mistakes in Education that we are not sufficiently careful to habituate children to the accurate use of words. Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth. If we looked into the matter we should probably find that all the varieties and modifications of conscious and unconscious lying as exaggeration, equivocation, evasion, misrepresentation — might be traced to the early misuse of words; therefore the contemptuous, careless tone in which people say sometimes "words --words-mere words!" is unthinking and unwise. It tends to debase the value of that which is the only medium of the inner life between man and man :

"Nous ne sommes hommes, et nous ne tenons les uns aux autres, que par la parole," said Montaigne.

66

"WE

70.

E are happy, good, tranquil, in proportion as our inner life is accessible to the external life, and in harmony with it. When we become dead to the moving life of Nature around us, to the changes of day and night (I do not speak here of the sympathetic influences of our fellow-creatures), then we may call ourselves philosophical, but we are surely either bad or mad."

"Or perhaps only sad?"

THERE are moments in the life of every contemplative being, when the healing power of Nature is felt even as Wordsworth describes it-felt in the blood, in every pulse along the veins. In such moments converse, sympathy, the faces, the presence of the dearest, come so near to us, they make us