The immortal Shakspeare, "fancy's child, instruction so that were we but dwarfs in who warbled his native wood notes wild," intellect-yet being furnished with the is another illustration of our posi- shoulders of the giants of other days to tion. As to Homer so to him, we accord stand upon, we tower above them and see great praise. We believe him to have been farther than they could. We often hear men an intellectual giant, to have had a profound wish to live life over again-that is, they knowledge of human nature, and we can not desire to have life prolonged so that they restrain the smile of contempt at Voltaire may profit by their experience. Let them when he says that Hamlet "appears the study history aright and they will have the work of a drunken savage," and at Hume substance of their wish. The past was peowho represents him as "without any instruc-pled with men of like passions with us-on tion, either from the world or books"—yet the page of history they pass before us as in he, genius that he was, was indebted to his a moving panorama-or the pages of autopredecessors and cotemporaries in no small biography, in their letters and diaries, and degree. His works themselves give evidence on the pages of the philosophic historian we that he must have had some acquaintance see them in youth, in manhood and decline, with Latin and Greek, and it may be the we see them planning, prosecuting, achievmodern languages, and we are assured that ing and reaping the results. The warrior whatever there was in English, whether or. plans his sieges, projects his modes of attack, iginal or translations which could be of use scales the fortresses of his enemies, and to him in his poetical object, he had studied. makes their Gibraltars and so called impregHe traveled in his youth; was familiar with nable fortresses like the walks of Jericho the bards and songsters of the age before after the rams horn had been blown. Emhim, and they were not few-these poets of battled legions are dispersed before him and the multitude fed his fancy and inspired his captives follow in his train. Hector is mind with passion, and fitted him for his dragged in cruel triumph round the tomb of work. Patroclus-the determination "delenda est Carthago" is carried out to the letter. Hannibal crosses the Alps. Napoleon follows in h's steps. An Augustulus succeeds in the process of time to Augustus, and a would be Napoleon, in the person of Louis to the Corsican. Here is recorded the mingled triumphs and defeats of the worlds enslavers. Is it worth the toil and time and blood? Will it pay the cost? Does it not teach us that if the people were wise, there are games at which kings could not play?

This truth thus illustrated in literature is also established by the investigations of science. The germ of Bacon's boasted theory of induction may be traced in the works of Aristotle, and the mathematical discoveries of Leabritz, particularly his differential Calculus was cotemporaneous without collusion with Newton's fluxions, and long before either appeared in this county, an American boasted of his having discovered them--thus leading to the belief that some previous scholar had given some glimmering of this truth, which led these three explorators to their discovery.

The indebtedness of Columbus to the Scandinavian voyagers might also be enlarged upon.

In this way the study of the past, shows us age acting on age, the preceding leaving mark on that which follows.

Again-In the study of the past we read the recorded experience of mankind, and get

the nations round about." But if he has not studied for a purpose-if he can not show results that are treasures to mankind, then the history of his futile toils, will of itself be the treasury from whence we draw lessons to benefit and instruct ourselves.

The ambitious man seeking for officehonors, the aspirants for crowns, and cardinal hats, and triple tiaras, and the minor offices of state, pass before us. We see them plotting and deceiving, poisoning, and acccomplishing their purposes, and we hear their moans, exclaiming "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." We hear them in their degradation from office bemoaning their condition, or disappointed in their pursuit and defeated, blaming all but the real authors of their ruin-themselves and sometimes with rash precipitation, like that ardent republican, Cassius, at Phillippi, becoming self-destroyers.

Here, too, the votary of sensual pleasure passes in our sight; we see him pursuing a

shadow

"Fair outside,

Within, corrupted and corrupting still;
Ruined and ruinous; her sure reward,
Her total recompense was still
Vexation, disappointment and remorse."

Ex uno disce omnes

Thus, in this recorded experience of mankind is the wish of man to live life over a

chart. We say next to the Bible, for this has no rival in the true statesman's estimate, and this too is history-but a history of the Theocracy. Next to God's book-the past as exhibited in history profane, as it is called to distinguish it from the sacred page is the true chart to guide amid the currents and eddies, and snags and sand-bars-the rocks and whirlpools, where danger lurks or openly shows herself threatening ruin. The Earl of Chatham made history his favorite study, and so will every jurist and statesman who would fully equip himself to legislate for a nation. Here will he find data for settling the most important questions that present themselves. Here he studies the progress of nations, in actual operation, and not in theory. Here he is let behind the curtain and beholds the hidden springs of human affairs. But not only in the political -also in the ecclesiastical and religious economy of our race shall we find it beneficial. To the Divine it is as important as

to the Statesman. Indeed church and state have in their history been intimately allied, and most disastrously too for both-an unholy alliance. Except in a Theocracy they can not be conjoined without mutual damage. The province of the priest and king are and must be kept distinct. Religion is to sway by moral means and leave the sword to Cæsar. Christ only is competent to the possession and exercise of all power in heaven and on earth. History shows us that disaster and ruin ensues when Christ's king

gain, virtually enjoyed. It may be true that as no two men's faces are exactly alike, so the experience of no two men exactly tally, domn and the kingdoms of this world are but this much is certain in the general line-made to coalesce in the hands of men assuaments, there will be verisimilitudes, "as in ming to be Christ's vicegerents and ruling. water, face answereth to face, so the heart of in his name. Here in this study of the man to man. God, in giving us the past, or past we get confirmation of the truth and the means of its recall, gives us the boon we crave, but alas! how true the remark of Cole-where in all the history of the world can heavenly origin of the christian religion. No ridge, "that experience is too often like the stern lights of a ship, illuminating only the pathway gone over." Mankind profit not by the experience of others seldom by their

own.

Again-This is a good school for the study of political economy. This next to the Bible is the statesman's and the patriot's

we find any thing to compete with it.Here we learn the utter inadequacy of man unaided to devise a morality so pure, a code of law so just, and a system of doctrines and duties, and hopes so admirably adapted to the nature and capabilities and longings of universal man. The world at its best estate

Exhibits the action of age upon age pro

failed to do it, but the man of Nazareth and
the fishermen of Galilee accomplished this-gressively.
claiming for it a heavenly original.

Presents us the recorded experience of mankind.

Gives lesson of instruction to statesmen

in regard to civil government and to the Divine in regard to Ecclesiastical policy and religious truth. Proves to us the divinity of the christian religion and shows us God em

Then again history shows us, even the researches of infidels themselves, being the proof, the fulfillment of prophecy. Volney has given us striking and most minute confirmations of the ancient prophecies, and Gibbon too, so that as we travel over the ruins of places that were once the "glory of ployed in all the "good and ill that chequers kingdoms," and "Queen cities," with the life. Bible in our hands, we seem when reading prophecy to be reading anticipative history. The correspondence of the present condition in contrast with the precedent glory shows the inspiration of the penmen who told us what would transpire, ages before it was verified, and whose declarations seemed to cotemporaries like the ravings of folly and insanity. Here God is seen acting as the all wise disposer of men and nations, and by his providence intervening and interposing in the affairs of the race, restraining and overruling the wickedness of men, and leading them, tho' they mean not so, to accomplish his purposes and advance his designs. Here the most careless can not but see the finger of the Almighty, governing kings and kingdoms, prolonging or contracting the duration of Empires, and making the ambition of one and the avarice of another, and the tyranny of a third, and the usurpation of a fourth, and the virtues of a fifth all conspire to the accomplishment of desirable results.

But lest we should weary the patience of our readers we must forbear any farther enlargement on this subject, we have hardly begun to tell of the multiplied motives that throng upon us, and the abundant advantages that flow from the study of the past. It furnishes matter to amuse and interest

us.

It calls into exercise all our mental and moral powers.

Enables us to do justice to the maligned and the mistakenly lauded.

Had we time and space we would like to speak of its liberalizing influence,of its tendency to make us contented with our lot as Americans. We would like to show how it represses pride and vain glorying and leads from the perishable to that which is permanent. And how when rightly viewed it prompts us to "act well our part." This world of evanescent glories affords abundant fields for the most diligent explorations We are not confined in our examinations to the history of the Adamic race. Geology opens up wider fields for investigation in the physical departments of creation, and Natural Science tells us of beasts, birds and reptiles in a pre-ædamite earth. But even in confining ourself to the past 6000 years we have in authentic and written records, cities with their towers and palaces, courts with their advocates, and temples with their priests, and popular assemblies with patriots and demagogues, and palaces with their tyrants passing in review before us, and we see that which has been and that which is.— Profitably may we muse amid the ruins, even the physical ruins of the past with their mental and moral associations. some instances we can not even find the site of what covers many a page of descriptive history. In other cases a few ruins mark where once stood cities filled with the hum of busy men and women. We sometimes find, says a traveler-a palace of which nothing remains but the courts and walls, sometimes a temple whose perystile is half thrown down, and now a portico or a gallery

In

Furnishes us splendid models of literary or a triumphal arch. Here stands a group

excellence and artistic skill

of columns, and there another ranged in

rows of such length as to seem like rows of the lying homage of an external respect.-trees. On which side soever we look, the There are but few like Themistocles whose earth is strewed with vast stones half buried daughter was courted and sought by two with broken entablatures, damaged capitols, citizens, one of whom had merit and the disfigured reliefs, effaced sculptures, violated other had money. He preferred the worthy tombs, and altars defiled with mud.” man, saying he had rather she should have a man without money rather than withmoney

Oh how is pride rebuked and glorying silenced, and how emphatic is the lesson out a man, The poet, the painter, the methere read to those whose ambition is bound-aphysician, the scientific man, the true patriot and philanthropist, the worlds great reformer and regenerator must live and labor contented to be while living, rejected and reprobated, reviled and reproached, leaving it to after ages to do justice to their memory. The exceptions to this rule, but prove it true. It were easy to fill a page with illustrations. They would be the names that stand highest as the world's great men. The names that figure most conspicuously in song and science, in arts and arms, in inventions and discoveries, in promoting peace and plenty, in exhibiting piety, patriotism and philanthropy. The men whom posterity crownscotemporaries cursed-their fellows canonaded, whom we are called to canonize, and those whom the fathers slew, the children honor with sepulchres and monumental marble. So is it-the udgment of the world is

ed by the earths horizon. Thus imitating those whose record is seen in the cities, walls hanging gardens, towers and terraces, artificial lakes, broad canals, colossal pyramids, and giant statuary, that was once the wonder of the world. But now he who would admire them, must trace them in their ruin and contend with the wild beasts who dwell among them, and risk being bitten by the scorpion and poisonous reptile who claims them for his home. It will be matter of small moment to us a century hence, whether we move in one circle or another. Were kings or priests or politicians, plebeans or patricians, whether our heritage was wealth or poverty, and our place the master or the menial. The question will be not alone, what work we did but how we did it. Both what and how. Did we live for a purpose? and that not a selfish and a sordid one, but changed-history records their deeds, and benevolent and enlarged? The man who justice performs for them an apotheosis.— acts on principle-who lives as we were told From the history of the past then let us get two weeks since for posterity, and seeks our pole star. Live for an object, and let it renown by endeavoring to reform abuses.- be a worthy one. Who is content to be abased and abused, satisfied that posterity will do him justicehe is the man who has read history right. It has been the fate of al who have lived to good purpose-to be while living thus reviled; but posterity reveres them, and the world acknowledges their worth. Present reward is accorded to the plodding earth grubbing, sand-washing, muck-rake, men who live alone for money, who are mean enough to make it their master-Gold being their God. They have their reward; the world flatters them while they live and multitudes who despise them at heart, pay them

*

The substance of this article was delivered as a lecture before the Detroit Young Men's Society.

"Be just and fear not,
Let all the ends thou aim'st at, be thy country,
Thy God and Truth."

For the Miscellany. "IT IS NOT ALL OF LIFE TO LIVE?"

BY ANNA A

THERE are in the world dispositions directly opposite;-good and evil, just and unjust, moral, and depraved. Into such a world came a "living soul," a spirit unconscious of its powers and destiny. It had no habitation, no place of refuge, and i