words between him and some secretly dreaded evil. He broke the barrier down, or leaped over it afterwards; but, when he built it, he may have been meaning honestly enough. The worst of it is, in such cases, that men not only express those strong opinions that cover weak points, but they are prone to seek and select illustrations from their neighbour's conduct. Better it were, and more becoming, if they confined themselves to the abstract; but it is only to philosophic minds that the purely abstract has any charm. Most people, not being philosophers, see whatever they do see in the concrete, and this concrete lies far more convenient, for purposes of inspection, in our neighbours than in ourselves.

The lines are very witty, no doubt, about "Compounding for sins we are inclined to, by damning those we have no mind to." Of course the practice is common enough to make the lines perennially quotable, but it is a coarse measure, and suits only coarser spirits. There are men of finer mould and more sensitive fibre who are haunted by their own proclivities-above all, the ghosts of dead and gone facts of their own experience are never laid-and these men are prone to denunciation of the vices to which these proclivities tend. I know the world has peculiarly hard measure for those who preach and do not practice; but, for my part, I think them quite as good, at all events, as the more astute class, who preach up the virtues they find easy to themselves, and denounce the vices to which they have no temptation. A lecture against theft is a good thinga lecture against intemperance is a good thing; but if the former be delivered by a man with ten thousand a-year, and the latter by a confirmed dyspeptic, while willing to give each of them credit for sincerity and the best possible intentions, I should be slow to base my estimate of the total moral force of their characters upon the excellence either of their words or of their example, so far as it merely illustrated the matters to which these words referred.

It is by all means necessary to practice in order that preaching may be effective; but the practice must be quite up, not merely to the letter, but to the spirit of the preaching. Who would tolerate a tirade against tobacco-smoking by a confirmed snufftaker, or a denunciation of drunkenness by a notorious gourmand?

The step from knowing to doing is rarely taken, because the preliminary step is rarely taken from knowing to feeling. This is, perhaps, the reason of the fact that at first sight looks inexplicable, that a man may have lived to be very old, and yet have acquired very little real experience either of himself or of others, or of the world around him. He has had, as it were, casual possession from time to time of innumerable facts, but he could never be said to have accumulated them. He may have had a faculty of acquiring facts, but he lacked the rarer faculty of keeping them together; and, like the cognate class that can earn but cannot save, he may be as poor at seventy as he was at seven-and-twenty. Facts enough have occurred to him, as, indeed, they occur to everyone, to serve for the construction of a whole philosophy of life; but because they were mere facts without coherence, such a philosophy is to him not only impossible

of achievement, but even inconceivable in thought. And what is it, you will ask, that makes the facts of life cohere, thus rendering philosophy and wisdom possible? What is it that makes solid knowledge melt into feeling, and then boil up to the point at which feeling passes into that ethereal vapour which, far more wonderful than steam, sets a-working the machinery both of mind and body? The secret is one, and only one. It is sympathy-fellow-feeling for those whom our experience brings within our range of vision. Dig however you may the gold of knowledge, if you will have it serve for profitable use, it must have on it the stamp of love. No one knows men until he loves them.

Most men have some sympathies, but they are limited in their range—whole classes of men and things lie outside the magic circle. When our knowledge of anything is quickened by the keen feeling of its bearing on our own personal interest, then, because we are never without a fellow-feeling for ourselves, knowledge is prompt to rush into action. It is a pity we cannot state the facts of our own experience in the terms of other people's feelings; but such statement would be the last result of perfect wisdom. No art so rare, yet none so fraught with rich result, as the art of putting ourselves in the place of others. Not, mark you well, in the sense of attributing to them our own precise modes of being affected by a particular thingthan which I know no more fertile cause of mistaken opinion and mistaken action-but in the sense of being able to separate in our own mood that element which is merely personal from that which is broadly human, and then estimating the effect of the latter upon others who, whatever differences there may be between us, are, at all events, as human as ourselves. No man was ever wise who had not attained to sympathy with others. As no man is always wise, so no man is wise in all things; and if you examine well, you will find that the things in which he is not wise are precisely the things in the direction of which his sympathies have not been cultivated.

For the fellow-feeling a man cultivates towards others, nature returns him a hundredfold by opening into his life, and through his life into his character and his soul, a thousand fertilising streams which flow, indeed, perennial in that vast circle of infinity that surrounds every human life, but which can find no entrance into the soul save by those channels that are formed by a man's sympathies with his fellow-men.

You will find men who travel from Dan to Bersheeba, from the cradle to the grave, and find all barren. Nothing interests them— nothing attracts them; their surroundings are commonplace-their lives a languid endurance. They expect little, because they are themselves prepared to give nothing. Friendship is a mythaffection a day dream. Their neighbours are "poor creatures," because they cannot believe their neighbours to be other than themselves. What is the matter with these unhappy men, whose life is a long disease? The matter is, that they have no sympathies with the beings and things around them. They have drawn about their lives a fatal circle that isolates them from their fellows. They see in all

the wide world only themselves. Other men pass before them, but they are as figures in a dream, utterly unsubstantial and unrelated. All the while the world they found barren is full of interest and of beauty, irrigated by streams that have their source in the very Throne of God, bathed in sunshine, musical with song. There are men to help and to be helped, interests, feelings, affections, from which, as from the chords of some sweet instrument, the touch of human intercourse can draw most exquisite music. How shall the blind see these things-how shall the deaf hear? I answer, by cultivating sympathy with others; for sympathy can be created where it did not exist-can be fostered where it was languid-can be strengthened even where it was already strong. There are many ways, but try just this one. You will soon sympathise with those you serve. Be of use to men, and you will learn to love them. Help others, and the help you give shall return into your own heart-shall exalt, shall enrich it. The world that was barren shall begin to bloom with beauty-shall present itself to your purified vision as it was meant to be, and as it is the garden of God, where the Father loves to walk with His children, helping them, and pleased to see them helping each other.

SONNET.

To A. C. T. AS GAINSBOROUGH'S DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE
IN CERTAIN Tableaux Vivants.

HE was a queenly duchess, and they tell

SH

Sweet stories of her gentleness and grace-
How gay she was, how lovely was her face,
How bright her eye, how witching was its spell;
And how she loved her children passing well,
And reared them not as one of noble race;
And how she hailed, to freedom dear, the place
Where 'neath Tell's arrow true, the tyrant fell.

And she to-night once more doth live and move;
Her beauty, long since mouldered, doth revive
In you, more lovely yet, who play her part.
O dear mock duchess, what sweet stores of love
You needs must gather in a hidden hive,
Whereon to feed at will your throbbing heart!

WINGED WORDS.

XII.

but to

To be

1. To be disobedient through temptation, is human sin; be disobedient for the sake of disobedience, fiendish sin. obedient for the sake of success in conduct, is human virtue; but to be obedient for the sake of obedience, angelic virtue.-Ruskin's Fors Clavigera.

2. All prophets have a wilderness to cry in. An author thinks and speaks in a certain solitude. His words, as regards their truest meaning, are not so much heard as overheard. There is a long and sad patience for the author who elaborates his thought from the depths of his heart, and modulates it with every sweetness of his voice, knowing that as regards its intimate meaning there may be no one within ear-shot.-Anon.

3. He who follows pleasure instead of business will shortly have no business to follow.-Anon.

4. The students who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later find time for illness.-Lord Derby.

5. In order to attack vice with effect, we must set up something better in its place.-Sydney Smith.

6. My God! how sad a thing is time whether it goes or comes; and how right was the saint who said: "Let us throw our hearts into eternity."-Last words of Eugénie de Guérin's Journal.

7. The hack is a better roadster than the Arab barb. So, in human action, against the spasm we offset the continuity of drill.— Ralph Waldo Emerson.

8. That heart where selfishness has found no place and raised no throne is slow to recognise its ugly presence when it looks upon it. As one possessed of an evil spirit was held in olden times to be alone conscious of the lurking demon in the breasts of other men, so kindred vices know each other in their hiding-places every day, when virtue is incredulous and blind.—Dickens.

NOTES IN THE BIG HOUSE.

We are glad to tell our young friends that on last Sunday five little patients left the Big House cured, returning to their homes quite well, and although sorry to leave us, quite merry besides. Their places were taken very quickly by other children whom we hope soon to see following in their footsteps.

Strangely enough three patients came to us lately, all ill with dropsy, a curious disease for children, one would say. Hunger and neglect bring it on, and our young benefactors would have been shocked to see the distorted looks of these poor little creatures with their faces swollen up and their features all out of shape. One of the three is gone away quite well, a second is walking about the wards, rather pale still, but quite like her nice little self again, while the third is sitting up in her bed smiling, feeling much better, but with her cheeks not quite distinct from her poor little nose as yet.

The other day two little broken collar-bones were carried in to us, and by a funny chance both the small owners were named Lizzie. One of these tiny, damaged Lizzies is already quite mended and finished off as good as new; the other is doing well, and is this moment sitting comfortably on a small boss in the corner of the window, nursing a large mug of milk, and glancing up wonderingly at us from under yellow curls when we ask her how she feels.

In the boy's ward, Willie, with a club-foot, is reclining on a kind of sofa car, which can be wheeled about the room. Willie has no idea that he has a beautiful face, fit to be painted by Fra Angelico among the angels; and he thinks the lady who looks at him so often must be longing for a sight of his treasures, which he accordingly produces from under his pillow: a tiny, transparent slate, a pack of picture-cards, and a purse, all held together by an elastic band. Willie is a good, gentle, grateful boy, and is one of those preparing for first confession.

Close by him, in a white-curtained bed, set out for change of air into the middle of the room, is Johnnie, who fell from a swing in a cherry tree, where he and "another chap were holding high jubilee one merry day two months ago. He has now got a white swelling in his knee, though his cheeks are still round, and keep a tinge in them from the country where the cherry trees are growing. We trust the day may come soon when Johnnie will be ready once more for frisky fun, though we dare say he will never be quite so rash again.

A little fellow called Michael, with a round, good-humoured face, had an operation performed upon him the other day. The hip joint had been out of place a long time, and the injury neglected. He is now in a good way of getting better. His mother came to visit him after the operation, on condition she should not make herself known to him, for fear of exciting him. Like a good, unselfish mother, she kept her promise, and went away satisfied that her boy was doing well.

And now we must ask you all to pray for poor little Patrick, who is dying of a wasting disease of the lungs. He sits up in his bed and says he suffers no pain, but his cough is very bad. He has just made his first communion and been anointed, so that he is a very happy little boy. He has got some beautiful holy pictures spread out before him, and smiles round the room as if he felt himself the least ailing and most to be envied of the whole company of children. And so he undoubtedly is.