shall have to sojourn here below. This he knows, because Providence has here cast his lot; while taught by the word of God to look for a better country, even a heavenly, he regards himself only as a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth. This transitory life he feels to be but the floating bridge which is bearing him, in common with all his race, over from the shores of time to the everlasting resting-places of eternity. Feeling this, he lives rather for the future than the present. Sensible that his condition is as highly privileged as any he can expect to find on earth, he exclaims with thankfulness, "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel." No restless risings of discontent, or fantastic notions of possible transcendental virtue to be attained by unsanctioned modes of life, disquiet his mind, or disturb the even tenor of his way. He looks around but to learn what is his duty, and, finding himself a member of so richly-blessed a community, his conscience tells him that as he is a partaker of its common privileges, he ought to contribute his share to its common weal. Energised by the soul-awakening religion of the Gospel as with new powers, like a man awaked from a sleep, or a giant refreshed with wine, behold! he goes forth at Duty's call to pursue his appointed work (gentle reader, mayst thou be he!), with Providence for his protector, the Word of God for his guide, and Heaven for his end.

Appendix.

NOTE A.-ON HIEROGLYPHICS.

MR. RUSKIN says that "one important consequence of our feeling the soul's pre-eminence will be our understanding the soul's language-chiefly that great symbolic language of past ages which has now so long been unspoken." But why unspoken, but because it has ceased to be a recognised method of communication. And why again is this, but that with the advance of the human mind there is a corresponding improvement in the method of conveying ideas. Men have become more intellectual: they are less dependent now than formerly upon sensible symbols to express abstract ideas. Mr. Ruskin refers in particular to the magnificent system of symbolism adopted by the ancient Assyrians, and embodied in the gigantic compound figures which have lately been discovered in the ruins of ancient Nineveh. He thinks that when we come to understand this we shall no longer regard the Greeks and Romans as superior to the Assyrians and Egyptians. But he seems to us to overlook the fact, that in the inadequacy of language, under its then imperfections, men were obliged, as it were, to resort to less abstract methods of imaging forth the ideal conceptions of the mind than they are now.

The different

methods resorted to at different periods of the world's history, are well explained in the following passage out of the writings of the distinguished Dr. Young

"In the infancy of art and civilisation, mankind appear to have employed mimetic images, or portraits, to represent individual objects, and give notice of events to those at a distance. Thus the Mexicans denoted the arrival of the Spaniards by a rude delineation of a ship, and of a man distinguished by the peculiarities of an European dress. This is what may be called picture writing, or the natural representation of objects or actions. But these mimetic images, which could convey no idea of time, nor indicate any abstract quality or attribute, were totally insufficient for the purposes of communicating information and recording events. Hence conventional signs, sometimes kuriological, and sometimes tropical, were chosen to serve as symbols both of things and thoughts, of objects in nature and ideas of the mind. . . . Thus the classifications which take place in all languages, but more especially the tropes and figures which abound in all dialects spoken by nations not yet refined by the highest pitch of civilisation, must have greatly facilitated both the invention and the comprehension of hieroglyphics. In the progress of improvement, then, we have two stages clearly defined: first, picture writing, which consists in the mere representation of events, or of objects in a state of action with one another; and, secondly, hieroglyphics, or symbolical writing, which is sometimes kuriological and some

times tropical."-Encyc. Brit., Art. Hieroglyphics, Sec. 1.

It is thus shown that the modes of conveying thought have come under the laws of a progressive science. Are we, then, to go backwards by way of advance, and return to picture-teaching by way of improvement?

But we shall be reminded, perhaps, that all language is, in point of fact, pictorial. Very true; but then pictures of thought speak direct to the mind, and not through the dull medium of the body; they are, therefore, more purely spiritual. Though articulate language is an original gift of God to man, yet it was not formed in its fulness, we must remember, at once. Though the power was of God, its improvement and application was to be of man. And the leap was so great from mere spoken language to written ideas, that men at first employed objective images, as sensible expressions for their thoughts. Of this we have exhumed examples in those gigantic and grotesque monsters, before alluded to, which have lately been brought to light by the indefatigable Dr. Layard, out of the long-buried remains of one of the largest of ancient cities. Here the peculiarities of different animals are combined as the representatives of thought, and are made use of to body forth to the sight the mind's conceptions even in regard to the attributes of Divinity. "I used to contemplate for hours," he says, "these mysterious emblems, and muse over their intent and history. What more noble forms could

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have ushered the people into the temple of their gods? What more sublime images could have been borrowed from nature, by men who sought, unaided by the light of revealed religion, to embody their conception of the wisdom, power, and ubiquity of a Supreme Being! They could find no better type of intellect and knowledge, than the head of the man; of strength, than the body of the lion; of rapidity of motion, than the wings of the bird. These winged human-headed lions were not idle creatures, the offspring of mere fancy; their meaning was written upon them. They had awed and instructed races which had flourished

three thousand years ago. Through the portals which they guarded, kings, priests, and warriors had borne sacrifices to their altars, long before the wisdom of the East had penetrated to Greece, and had furnished its mythology with symbols long recognised by the Assyrian votaries."-Layard's Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i.

But admitting all that this author here says, in proof of the massive genius of those who conceived these wondrous combinations of the animal to body forth the spiritual-again we ask, Are we to return back to these gross and sensuous methods of expressing ideas, or to content ourselves with the more feeble resurrections of medieval piety, in the place of those intellectual or rather purely spiritual methods of conceiving of and worshipping the Deity, of which Christ, by revealing him in character and action, has rendered us capable? The great disease of the moral