is that in which the middle classes most abound, for of all classes they are most likely to be governed by calm reason. But the two extremes of society, the very wealthy and the very powerful on the one hand, and on the other the necessitous, the weak, the ignorant, those who neither respect themselves nor others, are often the most difficult to bring under its control. The first are apt to be contumacious and wilful, the latter wicked; both are disposed to break through the restraints of custom and propriety, and both are often guilty of conduct that is mischievous to the community. Sometimes the one, relying on their wealth, friends, and influence, throw off all obedience, which indeed is of a piece with their bringing-up; for even in their earliest years, and in their schools, their self-will renders them difficult to control. Those on the contrary who are oppressed with want are generally too submissive; so that a state composed chiefly of these two extremes may be said to consist of tyrants and slaves; the latter unequal to the task of governing, and obliged to submit to arbitrary power, the former resisting control themselves, and ruling the rest despotically. Thence arise envy on the one side and contempt on the other, and all those enmities which destroy the bonds of political and social life. But the preponderating body in the community should be, as far as possible, one of similar habits, tastes, and fortunes. This would chiefly be found among the middle class; and that state will be best conducted which is composed to the greatest extent of those whom we may call its main support and substance. Their position, too, is the most secure, for they are above committing and below provoking injuries and offences. Accordingly, thus prayed the poet :

"Mine be the middle walk of life,

More blest, more calm, more free from strife."

It is plain, therefore, that the best commonwealth is that in which the middle class has the most influence, and is, if not more powerful than both the others combined, yet able, by throwing its weight into one scale, to turn the balance, and prevent either of the others from going into extremes. Wherefore the most happy condition of society is that where the greatest number of persons is found possessing a moderate yet sufficient substance. When this is not the case, but the state is chiefly composed of the extremes of poverty and wealth, that government very soon becomes either an unlimited democracy or an unchecked oligarchy, and soon after that all power will fall into the hands of one man; for a violent democracy and an arbitrary oligarchy naturally give birth to absolutism.-TREMENHEERE's Political Experience.'

IN WHAT PHILOSOPHY CONSISTS.

PHILOSOPHY consists not

In airy schemes, or idle speculations;
But the rule and conduct of all social life
Is her great province. Not in lone cells
Obscure she lurks, but holds her heavenly light
To senates and to kings, to guide their counsels,
And teach them to reform and bless mankind.
All policy but hers is false and rotten:
All valour not conducted by her precepts
Is a destroying fury sent from hell,

To plague unhappy man, and ruin nations.

THOMSON.

NEW facts, and phenomena bearing strongly on their subsistence, must be expected to occur to our succeeding generations, as they have arisen to ourselves since the parliamentary regulations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The past will always be education and instruction to us; and no wise man will omit carefully to study it. But the future will be every year less and less an exact copy of it; many general outlines of likeness may remain, but the individual features, mind, and habits, will be always changing.

If, then, our following population should enlarge in proportion to us, as much as we have done in comparison with our state when the Stuart dynasty closed, they will find their subsisting resources increase from new means, agencies, and circumstances, which they will create or discover, precisely as we have been doing from the accession of George II. to the reign under which we are now flourishing, with abundant subsistence issuing annually to us. The superior causes from which these arise the Divine wisdom, care, and benevolence-never change and on these we may always rely, as eternal principles which never vary, and which never will be ineffectual to us.

Let us not, therefore, from mistrusting apprehensions, act for our posterity on this subject, more than our ancestors did for us. Let us legislate on existing evils when necessary, but not on possible ones, and never on alarmed imagination. Confront danger bravely when it comes; but let us not fight with dreams

and spectres of the imagination, which have no present reality. Our predecessors wisely left us, as to our food, to nature, to Providence, and to ourselves. Let us, in like manner, leave our descendants to their own resources, talents, and exertions about it. They will have the same nature and Providence around them as all mankind hitherto have had. From these they will receive as satisfactory benefits as preceding times have enjoyed. They will not have less ingenuity, enterprise, and industry than ourselves; but they will have more knowledge, more exercised mind, better-regulated habits, and a more enlarged and enlightened judgment than even we possess. With these means and advantages, they will do better for themselves than we can do for them; and will only smile at our apprehensions, that with such a God, and such a system of external nature on their side, they should be doomed to perish by famine, because they married and multiplied, as they were created to do, and as we have, in every period, so happily and prosperously done.

Let us, then, repose calmly on the fact, that society has hitherto been supplied, regularly from the natural system of things, with the food it has required. We have, in this advanced period of the world, enough for our present wants; and all the providing causes, from which this sufficiency has resulted to us, are still in their efficacious operation, and discover no signs of diminution, of general failure, or of distressing insufficiency. The same benevolent plan, and all its associated purposes, are in steady execution; and the true principle of our trust and hope has been delivered to us from the highest authority: "Your Heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things." As long as He means us to exist on earth, nature will be made to yield the supplies which that existence will require. He must be expunged from His creation before the result can be otherwise. His laws and processes for our nutrition will not fail, until we are to cease, and then we shall no longer need them.

Let us, then, not look with an evil eye or a fearful mind on our increasing population, nor seek or desire to repress it, nor devise or pursue any measures for this purpose, to the injury or inconvenience of our present contemporaries of any country or class; and, least of all, of those who are in themselves the most helpless and powerless, and unable to plead for themselves. On the Malthusian hypothesis, enlarging population is an evil. By nature it is given, and in revelation it is represented as a blessing. The more largely the subject is studied, its benefits will be more fully seen, and more indisputably appreciated. Why, then, should we be so unjust or ungrateful to its author as to deem it a malediction? Every new comer will have a right to protest

against our good sense, or good feeling if we do so, and will deny our right to regard him as an intruder or an annoyance. By his superior improvements, he will show that he has a greater right to the inheritance and enjoyment of a life on earth than ourselves, if merit, qualities, or attainments be the criterion. We have this advantage over those who preceded us a century ago. Our successors will be as much more advanced beyond ourselves. They will come into this world as we have done; if they have no right to emerge into birth, neither had we. Their natural title to existence is, therefore, the same as ours. They will be, from their additional improvements, a species of the human race superior to what we are.

Instead, therefore, of our attempting to suppress their appearance, or to reproach them for it, we ought always to welcome their visit, and cordially assist to train and guide them to that higher gradation of our common nature which they cannot but exhibit. But the increase will certainly make due measures necessary to be adopted, in order to put all who are without inherited provision into a proper position of attaining by proper means and conduct the maintenance they will need.

There is such an apparent certainty that the new generations which are to arise will be a series of transcending gradations to what we are, and to each other, that I cannot but rejoice at the symptoms of our multiplication, and of its probable continuance. They must surpass us in knowledge, because they will be continually acquiring new accessions of it in every science, in every path of inquiry. They cannot but do this. The mind, as one writer truly said, cannot unknow; and the more it knows, the more it loves knowledge and experiences pleasure from it, and therefore will seek the more to acquire and enlarge it. Knowledge cannot increase in any one without enlightening his mind; and, by giving him more copious materials, and wider views for judging upon, must enlarge his judgment. But augmentations of knowledge and judgment must act upon the conduct, if not fully, yet always in some proportion to their amount. Every one will find this result in himself, and a generation will act more rationally, in most things, with increased knowledge and judgment, than it could do without them. Hence, moral conduct cannot but advance as experience increases, and its resulting good sense becomes more common, and will also not only become most profitable to every one, even in worldly things and circumstances, but will be perceived and felt to have this issue; and will be, therefore, practised from self-interest in the selfish, as well as from nobler impulses in those who love and seek moral beauty as soon as they discern and understand it.

A new spirit of higher moral bearing has already risen in society; our successors may have their vices and errors, but these will have beneficial differences from ours, and will not prevent that augmenting amelioration, which will be always operating to lessen their power and consequences. The more enlightened must, on numerous occasions, think and act more rightly than the unenlightened; the clear-sighted must see better than the blind or dim-sighted. They cannot do otherwise. They might be more mischievous, if mischief would be serviceable; but as this can never be the case beyond some temporary effect, nor without punishing reaction or results on themselves, right conduct and wiser minds will increase as population continues and enlarges, but will never be so great or operative when that is stationary, as when it multiplies. But all increasing national populations must, like all individual children, have a proper juvenile education. No civilized society can be comfortable without this, as the omission of it would leave those who are without it to grow up with the minds and feelings of the uncivilized communities.TURNER'S Sacred History.'

THE GOLDEN YEAR.

WE sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move ;
The sun flies forward to his brother sun;

The dark earth follows, wheeled in her ellipse,
And human things returning on themselves,
Move onward, leading up the golden year.

Ah, though the times, when some new thought can bud
Are but as poets' seasons when they flower,
Yet seas that daily gain upon the shore
Have ebb and flow conditioning their march,
And slow and sure comes up the golden year.

When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps,
But smit with freer light, shall slowly melt
In many streams to fatten lower lands,
And light shall spread, and man be liker man
Through all the season of the golden year.
Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?
If all the world were falcons, what of that?
The wonder of the eagle were the less,
But he not less the eagle. Happy days
Roll onward, leading up the golden year!