judge of particulars one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots, and the marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned."- STEWART'S 'Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind.'

VIEWS with respect to the probable improvement of the world are so conducive to the comfort of those who entertain them, that even, although they were founded in delusion, a wise man would be disposed to cherish them. What should have induced some respectable writers to controvert them with so great an asperity of expression, it is not easy to conjecture; for whatever may be thought of their truth, their practical tendency is surely favourable to human happiness; nor can that temper of mind, which disposes a man to give them a welcome reception, be candidly suspected of designs hostile to the interests of humanity. One thing is certain, that the greatest of all obstacles to the improvement of the world, is that prevailing belief of its improbability, which damps the exertions of so many individuals; and that, in proportion as the contrary opinion becomes general, it realizes the events which it leads us to anticipate. Surely, if anything can have a tendency to call forth in the public service the exertions of individuals, it must be an idea of the magnitude of that work in which they are conspiring, and a belief of the permanence of those benefits which they confer on mankind by every attempt to inform and to enlighten them.

As in ancient Rome, therefore, it was regarded as the mark of a good citizen, never to despair of the fortunes of the republic; so the good citizen of the world, whatever may be the political aspect of his own times, will never despair of the fortunes of the human race, but will act upon the conviction that prejudice, slavery, and corruption, must gradually give way to truth, liberty, and virtue; and that, in the moral world, as well as in the material, the farther our observations extend, and the longer they are continued, the more we shall perceive of order and of benevolent design in the universe.-STEWART'S 'Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind.'

THE GLORY OF PHILOSOPHY.

WITH thee, serene Philosophy, with thee,
And thy bright garland, let me crown my song!
Effusive source of evidence and truth!

A lustre shedding o'er the ennobled mind,
Stronger than summer-noon; and pure as that,
Whose mild vibrations soothe the parted soul,
New to the dawning of celestial day.

Hence through her nourished powers, enlarged by thee,
She springs aloft with elevated pride,

Above the tangling mass of low desires,

That bind the fluttering crowd; and, angel-winged,
The heights of science and of virtue gains,

Where all is calm and clear; with Nature round,
Or in the starry regions, or the abyss,

To Reason's and to Fancy's eye displayed:
The first up-tracing, from the dreary void,
The chain of causes and effects, to Him,
The world-producing Essence! who alone
Possesses being; while the last receives
The whole magnificence of heaven and earth,
And every beauty, delicate or bold,
Obvious or more remote, with livelier sense,
Diffusive painted on the rapid mind.
Tutored by thee, hence Poetry exalts
Her voice to ages; and informs the page
With music, image, sentiment and thought,
Never to die! the treasure of mankind!
Their highest honour, and their truest joy!
Without thee, what were unenlightened Man?
A savage roaming through the woods and wilds,
In quest of prey; and with the unfashioned fur
Rough clad; devoid of every finer art,
And elegance of life. Nor happiness
Domestic, mixed of tenderness and care,
Nor moral excellence, nor social bliss,
Nor guardian law were his; nor various skill
To turn the furrow or to guide the tool
Mechanic; nor the heaven-conducted prow
Of navigation bold, that fearless braves
The burning Line or dares the wintry Pole;
Mother severe of infinite delights!
Nothing, save rapine, indolence, and guile,

And woes on woes, a still revolving train!
Whose horrid circle had made human life
Than non-existence worse: but, taught by thee,
Ours are the plans of policy and peace;
To live like brothers, and conjunctive all
Embellish life. While thus laborious crowds
Ply the tough oar, Philosophy directs
The ruling helm; or like the liberal breath
Of potent Heaven, invisible, the sail

Swells out, and bears the inferior world along.

AT the latter part of the thirteenth century there was a great darkness over the whole of Europe; but we, from our insular position, and from our being a conquered country,' ruled by foreign princes, were less advanced in education and literature than either France or Italy. It is memorable, however, that then, in all countries, various enthusiasms had declined. Chivalry had become a name, an order, but it was not a vital reality. The Crusades had ceased, and a reaction, in which people wondered at the excitement of the past, followed. Some institutions of the Church, which had subsisted for ages, were keenly felt as an oppression even by those whose tongues were silent. Monachism2 had continued from the sixth century; but now, while its hold was strong on the fears of the people, its influence on their affections had declined. Thought was moving, but yet very slowly, for ignorance checked its progress.

A greater event, for Europe, than any battle, however glorious, or the reign of any sovereign, however splendid, was the birth of the poet Dante, the illustrious Florentine, in 1265. This great man was born at a time when Italy was torn by contending factions, and when the Church rather fomented than quieted the contest. He was completely mixed up in the politics of the time; his personal sorrows aggravating the susceptibility of his temper. Very early in life he formed an enthusiastic attachment for Beatrice Portinari, whose early death cast a gloom over his mind from which he never recovered. His subsequent marriage to Gemma Donati is asserted, but on very slight grounds, to have been unhappy; certain it is his wife's family were of differ

ent opinions to himself on politics, and ultimately became his enemies. Equally fearless and melancholy, the great yet gloomy genius of Dante was destined to exert a mighty influence, not merely on Italy, but on Europe.

We shall best understand the effect of Dante's writings, on his own immediate time, if we put a supposititious* case. Imagine a mighty poet of our own age, writing a poem, that told us of the eternal destiny of great and well-known persons recently deceased; that denounced their vices, and showed with terrible distinctness, how, in the regions of punishment, they were being tormented; that uttered, like an accusing angel, admonitions and threatenings to the living, that revealed to the awe-struck gaze the invisible world, and, instead of thronging it with angels and demons, gave it a grand and terrible human interest by peopling it with well-known earthly beings.

With all our freedom of the press, and our independence of thought, the man who ventured to do that, even now, would be feared, hated, persecuted. We should forget the value of the lesson, and think only of the sternness of the teacher. In the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, when popes and potentates ruled over mind and body, we may feebly imagine the electric power of the voice that seemed to come up from the bottomless pit, charged with the wailings of the sad, and the warnings of the tortured. Hitherto poets had sung love strains and war songs, mingling such gentle satire as stimulated rather than offended. Now, there was a bard with another message. As a piece of merely human composition and secular writing there had been nothing presented to the world so original, daring, and awful, as the Divina Comedia (or the epic of the Divine Justice) of Dante.

It is impossible in a sketch to give any idea of a work that attempts to describe the unseen world with awful minuteness. In accordance with the theology of the time he describes three states-Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Every image that can fill up the terrible is used to describe the state of the lost.

The inscription on the gates of Hell prepares the mind for the horrible scenes he describes in its various gradations of woe :-

"Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, aud primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure;

All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

It was not to be expected that this great man and sublime genius, so beyond his age, would escape persecution. He was condemned to exile, and sentenced to be burnt alive, if he returned to Florence. He never did return, but wandered heartbroken for many years in different lands.-BALFOUR'S Sketches

of English Literature.'

1. Referring to the Norman Conquest. 2. The state of monks, nuns, &c. 3. Dante's great work is the Divina Comedia, and as a work of genius it ranks with the epics of Homer, Virgil, and our own Milton. Dante was a soldier and a statesman as well as an author. He died A.D. 1321, after a life of great vicissi

tudes. Carlyle ranks him as one of his poetic "heroes."

4. We have here what grammarians call an impropriety. Supposititious means "put in the place of another by trick or fraud." Imaginary or ideal would be a better word.

IT is a frequent remark of visitors to workhouse schools, that the girls present' a very superior appearance to the boys. While the former are healthy-looking and well-grown, the latter are comparatively stunted in growth, less healthy in look, and altogether of an inferior physical development. I was long puzzled to account for this difference, as the treatment of both is very similar; but I am now persuaded that it is owing to the want of appropriate industrial work for the boys. In general, there is no difficulty in finding abundant suitable employment for the girls; and though a considerable part of it, such as sewing, is sedentary; the female constitution seems to suffer far less from confinement than that of the other sex; and in washing, scouring, bed-making, &c., there is always much of that sort of work most conducive to health.

In by far the majority of workhouses, the boys are exclusively employed in shoemaking and tailoring, or other sedentary occupations; opportunities for athletic sports are rare, and thus, at an age when the frame is forming, and exercise necessary to its full development, they are kept in a way that readily accounts for their inferior physical appearance. In some country establishments, where the boys are more employed in field labour, this inferiority of appearance is not perceptible, and this fact confirms the opinion I have expressed as to the true causes of this marked difference of the sexes in some workhouses.

Hence, with a view of securing the health of the boys, garden