not think of them as distinct processes going on independently of each other, and requiring each its own separate means. Still a distinct consideration of these is needed to a full

comprehension of the subject.

Self-culture is moral, a branch of singular importance When a man looks into himself, he discovers two distinct orders or kinds of principles, which it behoves him especially to comprehend. He discovers desires, appetites, passions, which terminate in himself, which crave and seek his own interest, gratification, distinction; and he discovers another principle, in opposition to these, which is impartial, disinterested, universal, enjoining on him a regard to the rights and happiness of other beings, and laying on him obligations which must be discharged, cost what they may, or however they may clash with his particular pleasure or gain.

No man, however narrowed to his own interest, however hardened by selfishness, can deny, that there springs up within him a great idea, in opposition to interest — the idea of duty; that an inward voice calls him, more or less distinctly, to revere and exercise impartial justice and universal goodwill. This disinterested principle in human nature we call sometimes reason, sometimes conscience, sometimes the moral sense or faculty.

But, be its name what it may, it is a real principle in each of us, and it is the supreme power within us, to be cultivated above all others; for on its culture the right development of all others depends. The passions, indeed, may be stronger than the conscience- may lift up a louder voice; but their clamor differs wholly from the tone of command in which the conscience speaks. They are not clothed with its authority, its binding power. In their very triumphs they are rebuked by the moral principle, and often cower before its still, deep, menacing voice.

No part of self-knowledge is more important than to discern clearly these two great principles-the self-seeking and the disinterested; and the most important part of self-culture is to depress the former and to exalt the latter, or to en

throne the sense of duty within us. There are no limits to the growth of this moral force in man, if he will cherish it faithfully. There have been men whom no power in the universe could turn from the right; to whom, death in its most dreadful forms, has been less dreaded than transgression of the inward law of universal justice and love.

CHANNING.

69. The Ideas of the Divine Mind, the Origin of every Quality pleasing to the Imagination.

FROM heaven my strains begin; from heaven descends
The flame of genius to the human breast,

And love and beauty, and poetic joy

And inspiration. Ere the radiant sun

Sprang from the east, or 'mid the vault of night
The moon suspended her serener lamp;

Ere mountains, woods, or streams adorned the globe,
O: Wisdom taught the sons of men her lore, —
Then lived the Almighty One; then, deep retired
In his unfathomed essence, viewed the forms,

The forms eternal, of created things

The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp,

The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe,
And Wisdom's mien celestial. From the first

Of days, on them his love divine he fixed-
His admiration; till, in time complete,
What he admired and loved his vital smile
Unfolded into being. Hence the breath
Of life informing each organic frame;

Hence the green earth and wild, resounding waves;
Hence light and shade alternate; warmth and cold;
And clear autumnal skies and vernal showers,
And all the fair variety of things.

But not alike to every mortal eye

Is this great scene unveiled; for since the claims
Of social life to different labors urge

The active

of powers

man, - with wise intent

The hand of Nature on peculiar minds
Imprints a different bias, and to each
Decrees its province in the common toil.
To some she taught the fabric of the sphere,
The changeful moon, the circuit of the stars,
The golden zones of heaven; to some she gave
To weigh the moment of eternal things,
Of time, and space, and fate's unbroken chain,
And will's quick impulse; others by the hand
She led o'er vales and mountains, to explore
What healing virtue swells the tender veins
Of herbs and flowers; or what the beams of morn
Draw forth, distilling from the clifted rind
In balmy tears. But some to higher hopes
Were destined; some within a finer mould
She wrought, and tempered with a purer flame.
To these the Sire omnipotent unfolds
The world's harmonious volume, here to read
The transcript of himself. On every part
They trace the bright impressions of his hand;
In earth or air, the meadow's purple stores,
The moon's mild radiance, or the virgin's form
Blooming with rosy smiles, they see portrayed
That uncreated beauty, which delights

The Mind supreme. They also feel her charms,
Enamored; they partake th' eternal joy.

AKENSIDE

Mark Akenside, the author of the "Pleasures of the Imagination," one of the most pure and noble-minded poets of the age, was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, November 9, 1721. He was of humble origin, and was sent to Edinburgh in his eighteenth year, to be educated as a clergyman, but afterwards changed his purpose, and entered himself as a student of medicine. He was then a poet, and in his "Jymn to Science,' written

in Edinburgh, we see at once the formation of his classic taste, and the dignity of his personal character:

His great prem is seldom read continuously, though its finer passages are well knowu. Chambers's Cyclopedia.

70. Education.

THE child comes into life ignorant and imbecile. With aculties which, duly trained, fit him to traverse the universe of truth, he yet begins his course a helpless stranger. To him this universe is all a mighty maze without a plan. He is a stranger alike to himself, to the world, and to God. But daily his faculties open; his intellectual eye begins to turn towards the light of truth, as his organic eye turns towards the sunbeam that falls across his chamber. His sensescarry to him constant intelligence Soon he comes to remember and to reason and resolve.

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those fleet messengers from the world without. compare these reports His mind now yearns after more knowledge. Through he livelong day, save when tired nature claims repose, he is busy seeking, or receiving with unexpected delight, new accessions of truth. All the while his faculties of memory and comparison, of judgment and abstraction, of generalization and inference, are in exercise; and, though no book

opens its mysterious light upon his understanding, nor living voice pours into his ear the fruits of another's experience and knowledge, he is still for himself a learner.

Yet such a progress which is only instinctive and spontaneous plainly needs direction, and will, if left to itself, soon reach its utmost limit. The forlorn condition of the untutored deaf mute shows how meagre and deceptive are the attainments of every unaided mind; and even where such a barrier has not been interposed by nature, we find that those who have been left without formal instruction soon become stationary, and that their minds are crowded with errors and prejudices.

It is the province of education of a system of training and tuition conducted by rule-to take this restless spirit, rejoicing in the consciousness of its awakened powers, and thirsting for knowledge, and to conduct it, for a time, along the straight path of true wisdom.

For why was that spirit, in the very outset of its course, made so helpless? Why was it deprived of those instincts which conduct the inferior animals infallibly to their being's end and aim? Why attached for months to a mother's breast, and afterwards sheltered and kept in life and health only by unceasing vigilance and care? Why, but to engage all a parent's energies in its nurture and full development; or, rather, why, but to engage them in fitting it for the unending work of self-development? The brute needs but a few powers, for it has but few wants, and they are to last but a few years. Man has wants and desires as boundless as his

Town immortality.

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To educate the intellect, then, is to so unfold, direct, and strengthen it, that it shall be prepared to be, through all its future course, a zealous and successful seeker after truth. It is to give it control of its own powers, and to teach it towards what those powers should be directed. It is to endow it by practice with the ability to collect its energies at will, and to fix them long on one point. It is to train the