and consider what was the purpose of Heaven in the former, and what the demand of Heaven in the occupation of the latter? If we have much, we are not at liberty to put it aside, and say we should be better without it; if we have little, we are not at liberty to be dissatisfied and aspiring after more. And surely we are not at liberty to say that an other has too much or too little of what God has given? We may have our preferences, but we must not mistake them for standards of right.

I may walk in the garden and take which flower pleases me; but I should be a fool if I trampled upon the rest, because they are not like it. And I wish, indeed, that parents, in the education of their children, would have no scheme or purpose, but to discover and to forward the purposes of Heaven. Then should we not have hour after hour consumed in endeavours to teach them what they cannot learn, because it is the fashion; while powers and faculties that might be used for good, are neglected and despised. Then our children would not be taught to aspire to paths for which they are unfit, or to bury talents for which they must give account. The indiscriminate discipline of a school would not be thought a meet cultivation for every cast of character, and a suitable preparation for every sphere of duty. The timid snow-drop would not be exposed to the summer sunshine, or the myrtle to the chillness of the mountain breeze, to satisfy the prejudice or ambition of a parent. It would surely be better that, instead of being taught to aim after one character and despise another, every one were accustomed to appreciate her own; to feel what she is called to, and fitted for; the capacities she has from nature, the moral purposes to which they may be applied, and the measure of responsibility that pertains to

them. Then the superiority which now spends itself in contempt for the less endowed, would be engrossed with the fearful weight of its own responsibilities; and the inferiority which now frets itself in impatience of what it cannot measure, would bless Heaven for its easy and less perilous task.

Every character has beauties peculiar to itself, and dangers to which it is peculiarly exposed: and there are duties pertaining to each, apart from the circumstances in which they may be placed. Nothing, therefore, can be more contrary to the manifest order and disposition of Providence, than to endeavour to be or do whatever we admire in another, or to force others to be and do whatever we admire in ourselves. Which character, of the endless variety that surrounds us, is the most happy, the most useful, and most deserving to be beloved, it were impossible, I believe, to decide; and if we could, we have gained little by the decision; for we could neither give it to our children nor to ourselves. But of this we may be certain; that individual, of whatever intellectual character, is the happiest, the most useful, and the most beloved of God, if not of men, who has best subserved the purposes of Heaven in her creation and endowment, who has most carefully turned to good the faculties she has; most cautiously guarded against the evils to which her propensities incline; most justly estimated, and conscientiously fulfilled, the duties appropriate to her circumstance and character.

The more elevated and distinguished characterno matter how distinguished by rank, or wealth, or intellect-may tremble on her elevation, and be ashamed, that before Heaven she fills it so unworthily; but must not come down from it. The more lowly in mind or place, may, with humility, confess

the little that she has must be assiduously cultivated to answer even the little that is required; but she must not aspire to be more than God has made her. If we might choose for our children, we should be wise, perhaps; but why do I talk of choosing, when God has determined? To be ambitious for them of talent or intellect, is no other than to be ambitious of wealth, or rank, or other sublunary good; and to make any undue expenditure of time, or care, or money, or, still worse, any compromise of principle, for the attainment of it, is to give to vanity what is due elsewhere: for he who tried wisdom as well as folly, determined of the one as of the other, "This also is vanity." The excessive attempts at this, I do believe, in some cases, to amount almost to sin: certainly to an over-estimate of what is so dearly purchased. But on the other hand, as wealth, and rank, and every other earthly distinction, is given of God, and must be used and answered for, so I must believe also that the faculties of the mind are not to be accepted or rejected at our pleasure, as if our task of life were left for us to choose; but to be cultivated, appropriated, and respected, in others and ourselves, as pertaining to our Master, and holden for his service till his coming.

02

THE RETROSPECT.

When a fine, decisive spirit is recognised, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man, and leaves him room and freedom. A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself.

FOSTER.

I DARE say it has happened to you often, to pause upon some eminence attained, and, looking back on the space you have gone over, to perceive you have not reached it by the nearest road. You have climbed hedges where the gates stood open; torn yourself, perhaps, with brambles, where the way was cleared, and, though your object is attained at last, you have sat down, wearied, and exhausted, by a walk that might have been easy, had you found the shortest and the plainest path. If it has thus happened to you, and if looking from that eminence upon the way you came, you beheld other walkers wearying and wasting themselves with like mistakes; scrambling over obstacles that are not really in the way, embarrassed only because themselves or out of it; would you not try to make a signal to them, and point out, if possible, what you see, but they cannot, of the ground before you? Exactly such is my position in existence. I want to tell my story, but no one will listen to it. I have made signals in vain: the walkers are too busy with their scramble to observe me. Unless you will listen to me, of which, from your profession, I have conceived a hope, I have little chance of being

heard. You, perhaps, may find the means of making known my story, and will be more attended to than I can hope to be.

I was born between the Thames and the Tweed, and had parents; a father and a mother, and many relatives besides. Not foreseeing that I should ever write my story, I kept no memorandum of my days. Journals were less in fashion then than they are now; few, therefore, are the incidents of childhood I can remember. The most vivid traces are of feelings and impressions rather than of events, and these are most important to my purpose. The first, the very first thing I remember to have heard, was, that God was the disposer of all things; the object of obedience and love; the guide, the end, and aim of my existence; in comparison with whose word, and the eternal things with which his name stands connected, the interests of this world were but as the light dust upon the balance, and the opinions of men but as the babbling of ignorance and folly. It was so explained to me in the books from which I lisped my earliest lesson; it was told me so of my mother as I sat upon her knee, listening to the tales of Jesus' love, and dropping my first tears at the story of Jesus' sufferings. That the kingdom of God was the "one thing needful," to which all else was to be added as subservient, however little I understood the position, was to the best of my recollection, the first thing I knew, the first that I believed.

As years advanced, I heard it repeated every where; I repeated it daily in my prayers, wrote it in my themes, learned it in my lessons, and from my fond and anxious parents, had it pressed upon my mind in every form their pious interest in my welfare could devise. And now, in looking back upon my bygone years, I can remember no period at