of helplessness is relieved; the craving for sympathy from the ruling power is satisfied; there is a hold for veneration; there is room for hope there is, above all, the stimulus and support of an end perceived or anticipated; a purpose which steeps in sanctity all human experience. Yet even where this blessing is the most fully felt and recognised, the spirit cannot but be at times overwhelmed by the vast regularity of aggregate existence-thrown back upon its faith for support, when it reflects how all things go on as they did before it became conscious of existence, and how all would go on as now, if it were to die to-day. On it rolls—not only the great globe itself, but the life which stirs and hums on its surface, enveloping it like an atmosphere; -on it rolls; and the vastest tumult that may take place among its inhabitants can no more make itself seen and heard above the general stir and hum of life, than Chimborazo or the loftiest Himalaya can lift its peak into space above the atmosphere. On, on it rolls; and the strong arm of the united race could not turn from its course one planetary mote of the myriads that swim in space; no shriek of passion, nor shrill song of joy, sent up from a group of nations or a continent, could attain the ear of the eternal silence, as she sits throned among the stars. Death is less dreary than life in this view-a view which at times, perhaps, presents itself to every mind, but which speedily vanishes before the faith of those who, with the heart, believe that they are not the accidents of fate, but the children of a Father. In the house of every wise parent may then be seen an epitome of lifea sight whose consolation is needed at times, perhaps, by all. Which of the little children of a virtuous household can conceive of his entering into his parent's pursuits, or interfering with them? How sacred are the study and the office, the apparatus of a knowledge and a power which he can only venerate! Which of these little ones dreams of disturbing the course of his parent's thought or achievement? Which of them conceives of the daily routine of the household-its going forth and coming in, its rising and its rest— having been different before his birth, or that it would be altered by his absence. It is even a matter of surprise to him when it now and then occurs to him that there is any thing set apart for him that he has clothes and couch, and that his mother thinks and cares for him. If he lags behind in a walk, or finds himself alone

among the trees, he does not dream of being missed; but home rises up before him as he has always seen it—his father thoughtful, his mother occupied, and the rest gay, with the one difference of his not being there. This he believes, and has no other trust than in his shriek of terror, for being ever remembered more. Yet, all the while, from day to day, from year to year, without one moment's intermission, is the providence of his parent around him, brooding over the workings of his infant spirit, chastening its passions, nourishing its affections-now troubling it with salutary pain, now animating it with even more wholesome delight. All the while is the order of household affairs regulated for the comfort and profit of these lowly little ones, though they regard it reverently, because they cannot comprehend it. They may not know of all this-how their guardian bends over their pillow nightly, and lets no word of their careless talk drop unheeded, and records every sob of infant grief, hails every brightening gleam of reason and every chirp of childish glee-they may not know this, because they could not understand it aright, and each little heart would be inflated with pride, each little mind would lose the grace and purity of its uncon sciousness; but the guardianship is not the less real, constant, and tender, for its being unrecognised by its objects. As the spirit expands, and perceives that it is one of an innumerable family, it would be in danger of sinking into the despair of loneliness if it were not capable of

"Belief

In mercy carried infinite degrees

Beyond the tenderness of human hearts;"

while the very circumstance of multitude obviates the danger of undue elation. But, though it is good to be lowly, it behoves every one to be sensible of the guardianship of which so many evidences are around all who breathe. While the world and life roll on and on, the feeble reason of the child of Providence may be at times overpowered by the vastness of the system amidst which he lives; but his faith will smile upon his fear, rebuke him for averting his eyes, and inspire him with the thought, Nothing can crush me, for I am made for eternity. I will do, suffer, and enjoy, as my Father wills; and let the world and life roll on!"

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Such is the faith which supports, which alone can support, the many who, having been whirled in the eddying stream of social affairs, are

withdrawn by one cause or another, to abide, in some still little creek, the passage of the mighty tide. The broken-down statesman, who knows himself to be spoken of as politically dead, and sees his successors at work, building on his foundations, without more than a passing thought on him who had laboured before them, has need of this faith. The aged, who find affairs proceeding at the will of the young and hardy, whatever the grayy-haired may think and say, have need of this faith. So have the sick, when they find none but themselves disposed to look on life in the light which comes from beyond the grave. So have the persecuted, when, with or without cause, they see themselves pointed at in the street; and the despised, who find themselves neglected whichever way they turn. So have the prosperous, during those moments which must occur to all, when sympathy fails, and means to much desired ends are wanting, or when satiety makes the spirit roam abroad in search of something better than it has found. This universal, eternal, filial relation is the only universal and eternal refuge. It is the solace of royalty weeping in the inner chambers of its palaces, and of poverty drooping beside its cold hearth. It is the glad tidings preached to the poor, and in which all must be poor in spirit to have part. If they be poor in spirit, it matters little what is their external state, or whether the world, which rolls on beside or over them, be the world of a solar system, or of a conquering empire, or of a small-souled village.

223. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE USEFUL.

WIELAND.

[CHRISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND, a most voluminous German writer, was born in Suabia in 1733, and died in 1813. During this long life his labours were unremitting, and were chiefly directed to the establishment of a native German literature, and to familiarizing his countrymen with the best models of composition. He was the first translator of Shakspere, and he translated many of the great writers of antiquity. In the writings of M. de Balzac, a now forgotten French author of the seventeenth century, more remarkable for his platitudes, conceits, and witticisms, than for any thing else, there is a passage in which

the German critic and poet found much pleasure, "in spite of its epigrammatic turn, on account of the simplicity and obvious truth of the closing image in which the thought is clothed." "We require," says Balzac, "books for recreation and delight, as well as for instruction and business. Those are pleasant, these useful, and the human mind needs both. The canonical law and Justinian's code are held in honour, and are paramount in the universities; but we do not on that account banish Homer and Virgil. We should cultivate the olive and the vine, without eradicating the rose and the myrtle." I nevertheless, says Wieland, find in this passage two things on which to remark. He then proceeds to a criticism on The Beautiful and the Useful,' which is the subject of the following translation.]

Balzac, the pedant, who views the favourite of the Muses and their works with turned-up nose, assumes too much when he reckons Homer and Virgil merely among the pleasing authors. Wiser antiquity thought very differently; and Horace maintains, with good reason, that more practical philosophy is to be learned from Homer than from Crantor and Chrysippus.

It next appears, to me, that generally it shows more of a trafficking than a philosophical mode of thinking, when we place the agreeable and the useful in opposition, and look at one, as compared with the other, with a sort of contempt.

Supposing that the case assumed is where the agreeable offends against the laws of a healthy moral feeling; yet even then the useful, in so far as opposed to the agreeable and the beautiful, is enjoyed merely in common with the lowest animals; and if we love and prize what is useful to us in this sense, we do nothing more than what the ox and ass do also. The worth of this usefulness depends on its being more or less necessary. So far as a thing is necessary for the maintenance of the human species and civil society, so far it is certainly something good; but not, therefore, something excellent. We, therefore, desire the useful, not for itself, but only on account of the advantages we draw from it. The beautiful, on the contrary, we love from an inward superiority of our nature over the merely animal nature; for among all animals, man alone is gifted with a perception of order, beauty, and grace. Hence it comes that he is so much the more perfect, so much the more a man, the more extended and deep-seated is his love for the beautiful, and the more finely and certainly he is

VOL. III.

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enabled by his feelings to discriminate the different degrees and sorts of beauty. Therefore, it is also that the perception of the beautiful, in art as well as in manners and morals, distinguishes the social, developed, and civilised man from the savage and the barbarian; indeed, all art, without exception, and science itself, owe their worth almost entirely to this love of the beautiful and the perfect implanted in the breast of man. They would now be immeasurably below the height to which they have ascended in Europe, if they had been confined within the narrow boundaries of the necessary and the useful, in the common sense of the words.

This restriction was what Socrates recommended; and if he was ever wrong in any case it was surely in this. Kepler and Newton would never have discovered the laws of the universe-the most beautiful system ever produced by thought from the human mind—if they, following his precept, had confined geometry merely to the measuring of fields, and astronomy to the merely necessary use of land and sea-travellers and almanac-makers.

Socrates exhorts the painter and the sculptor to unite the beautiful and the agreeable with the useful; as he encourages the pantomimic dancer to ennoble the pleasure that his art may be capable of giving, and to delight the heart at the same time with the senses. According to the same principle, he must desire every labourer who occupies himself about something necessary, to unite the useful as much as possible with the beautiful. But to allow no value for beauty, except where it is useful, is a confusion of ideas.

Beauty and grace are undoubtedly united by nature itself with the useful but they are not, therefore, desirable because they are useful; but because, from the nature of man, he enjoys a pure pleasure in their contemplation-a pleasure precisely similar to that which the contemplation of virtue gives; a necessity as imperative for man as a reasonable being, as food, clothing, and a habitation are for him as an animal.

I say for him as an animal, because he has much in common with all or most other animals. But neither these animal wants nor the capability, and desire to satisfy them, make him a man. While he procures his food, builds himself a nest, takes to himself a mate, leads his young, fights with any other who would deprive him of his food or take possession of his nest; in all this he acts, so far as it is merely corporal, as an animal. Merely through the skill and manner in