petual absence of its reality; in others, the warm admiration of goodness, and the cold and indignant performance of their own most sacred duties; in some, that childish belief of their own superior refinement, which leads them to withdraw from the common scenes of life and of business, and to distinguish themselves only by capricious opinions and fantastic manners; and in others of a bolder spirit, the proud rejection of all the duties and decencies which belong only to common men, the love of that distinction in vice which they feel themselves unable to attain in virtue, and the gradual but too certain advance to the last stages of guilt, impiety and wretched ness. Amid these delusions of fancy,life, meanwhile, with all its plain and serious business is, passing; their contemporaries in every line are starting before them in the road of honour, of fortune, or of usefulness; and nothing is now left them but to concentrate all the vigour of their minds to recover the ground which they have lost. But if this last energy be wanting, if what they "would" they yet fail to "do," what, alas, can be the termination of the once ardent and aspiring mind, but ignominy and disgrace? A heart dissatisfied with mankind and with itself; a conscience sickening at the review of what is passed; a failing fortune, a degraded character, and what I fear is ever the last and the most frantic refuge of selfish and disappointed ambition-infidelity and despair."

Seneca, the moralist, is an eminent illustration, unless his character is grossly traduced, of the possession of fine theoretical views of virtue, the power to utter glittering

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sentences, words, scintillations, without any love for virtue or truth in the heart, or at any rate, without any fulfilment of them in the life. How easy it was to pen those fine and fanciful sentiments on contentment and happiness, and the pleasure of virtuous emotion, while avariciously accumulating his hoards of wealth, banqueting at ease in his magnificent gardens and palaces, pandering to the wild and licentious enjoyments of a corrupt and cruel prince, conniving at the parricidal murder of the mother of the Emperor by the son she had raised to empire and to dignity. All this appears to be true of Seneca, and therefore, he may be appropriately held up, rather to the execration than the admiration of mankind; and it should be a warning to the people of every age, never to divorce magnanimity of sentiment from magnanimity of action; life is only real when they are combined.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF CRUTCHES.

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THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF CRUTCHES. Su Episode.

CALLING the other day upon an old friend, who had some time before met with an accident which had disabled him, and compelled him to betake himself to crutches for support, I was surprised to find that his sticks had never been thrown aside; the poor fellow was afraid to take a single step without his crutches. He could not go across the room without them; the old fellow did not know how healthy he was; but there, obstinately, pertinaciously, he must shamble along on his crutches; a stick, in the street, would have served every purpose, and, in the house, even that faint support was not in the slightest degree needed. But so he moved through life; and as he went, he grumbled out, "I'm weak, sir, very weak, you see I can't do without this." "Ah! sir, 'twould be a great blessing if I had the use of my limbs, as you have." 'Oh, ma'am"-a long gasp" well, well, God's will be done." And so, from that day, the poor creature used his crutches, and talked of his crutches, till the idea had made a hypochondriac, and martyred him to its power. To hobble had become an essential part of

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his life; he would have felt dissatisfied with himself could he have gone alone; to talk against his crutches was to enter into a conspiracy against him. I ventured to throw out an expostulatory hint:—

"Now, don't you think that those things could be given up? Why, you're only weak because you don't struggle to be strong; now, take my arm-there, there. Now you see you can go without crutches."

Well, I got him to budge a step or two; but I believe ever since he has had a suspicion of me: he looks at me and shakes his head; he always seems demure when I approach him. If he tries to rise before me, he firmly compresses his lips and teeth together, saying, as plainly as silence can say, "You see what a state I'm in, and yet, you wicked dog, you want me to give up my crutches."

An able-bodied man stumbling through the world on crutches! Once for all, let us admit that it is the most solemn sight the eye can rest on; yet it is not an unfrequent and uncustomary one. Get a man into the habit of hobbling on crutches at all, and the habit will gradually become necessary to him, and he be loth to give them up. And how can strength grow, and how can the body become pliant, and muscular, and powerful, on crutches? Thus the weak become more weak, and the incapable yet more incapable. It is a glorious moment when a man breaks a crutch, even although it be on the head of the one who persuaded him to use it—when he determines to walk along the level road in his own strong

THE DANGER OF CRUTCHES.

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purpose and power-when he betakes himself to the work of mountain-climbing, and leaves his crutches behind him at the inn where he slept the last night-when he determines to be imposed upon, and to impose upon himself, by wooden helps, no longer. Some men have been in health all their days, and have never known that they are strong; but to the weak man who has feared to take a step by himself, to the man whose religion it had been to believe that he could not walk alone, it is a moment of high exultation, when the winds of heaven pipe round him, and the distant figures before him beckon him onwards, and each turn of the road reveals something new, and each piece of scenery invites to rapidity and energy at such a moment. It is, indeed, a source of high exultation to the man who had deemed himself weak, to be able to say, "But I am strong."

You see the drift of it, my friends; it is a problem rather difficult to be solved; but the probability is, that every one of you, with this book in your hand, is also leaning upon crutches. The lesson of self-reliance, of independence, is both holy and noble; and yet, alas! almost every soul you meet has its own appropriate crutches; and, still further, it is not an unfrequent occurrence that the weak attempt to persuade, and sometimes do persuade, the strong that they are too weak: and, for very company's sake, try to convert them to crutches. So we have seen a lop-sided man, as we should say-a man with a moral squint,"-and this man has really contrived to get an idea, to fetch up from the unfathomable

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