harmony of a well-balanced mind and the soundness of a well-developed body, and preserving or recreating the active wholeness, the physical and mental health of the whole man. It is thus a part of culture, and might well be considered to be a part of religion too.

Many examples might be given in illustration of the principle here stated. Where the instinctive action of mind or body suggests a restorative or recreative movement, it will usually be found to proceed on this principle of complement, compensation, or antithesis. It is a well-known optical experience, that when an eye which has been dazzled by some brilliant colour is turned away from it to some colourless object, that object is partially obliterated by a patch or blot of some other quite different colour. But the imaginary colour bears an exact relation to the colour which produced the dazzling effect. It is its correlative, its complement, its opposite, and the mingling of the two would produce perfect harmony, because they would constitute perfect light. But this physical fact has a hundred parallels in our moral and intellectual life. Our castles in the air are never counterparts of home; they are generally complementary to it. The ideal life we picture to ourselves in day-dreams is generally set in vivid contrast to the life we really live. Escaping into a world we can create after our own fancy, it is often the antithesis of this. The serious work of Milton's life was political and theological controversy. He was known among his contemporaries as the great heretic and Radical of his time, and was supposed to delight in the distasteful and disturbing labours to which the interests of truth and liberty seemed to call him. But though he lived in the very noise and dust of the battle, his "love of sacred song" kept the fountain of his feelings fresh and clear. all the strength of his nature, for what he believed to be kept all its sweetness by converse with poetic themes. his duty, but poetry was his delight. He did his work with an heroic devotedness, but kept himself from one-sided development by the divine recreation of his muse; and when he had fallen on evil days and evil tongues, he took refuge from them in an ideal world, and refreshed his mind with immortal song. Coming nearer to our own times, we find other examples of the same principle. Lamb's quaint and quiet humour was the escape of a gentle nature from harsh surroundings, and the genial satire and good-humoured mockery which make his essays such fascinating reading are but the antithesis of his serious and sad experience, the flight of his fancy into another sphere to redress the balance of this. He laughs with his readers because he needed a laugh, and could not laugh with himself. He is bright, and airy, and gay in his writings, because he must have some glimpses of life's brighter side, and such glimpses were not given him by experience, for his heavy domestic cares and troubles took all airiness and gaiety out of his life. Almost the same may be said of Hood. His genial laughter came from a suffering soul. His literary labours were the escape of his mind from ill health and painful experiences into another world. Nor is it violating any propriety to say that, in a

He fought, with the right, but he Controversy was

very different manner, we owe Mrs. Gaskell's writings to the same principle of our nature. It was a home affliction that gave her great powers to the public use. It was as a recreation in the highest sense of the word, as an escape from the great void of a life from which a cherished presence had been taken, that she began that series of exquisite creations which has seemed to multiply the number of our acquaintances, and to enlarge even the circle of our friendships. But this escape from the real into the ideal would not be possible to any were not our nature "antithetically mixed." Physically and mentally overbalance is distress and disease, equipoise is happiness and health; and whether it be needful duties or unavoidable experiences, cherished habits or detested necessities, which throw the weight on one side, that only is a truly restorative discipline or recreative experience which puts an equal weight upon the other side.

Guided by this principle it would be very possible for us to select our recreations with a near approach to scientific fitness. To understand the nature of recreation and the high purposes it may subserve is to be far on the road to the discovery of its method. Physically, it should be directed to the restoration of the body's wholeness by ensuring the equal and harmonious development of all its parts. Intellectually, it should aim at rounding off our experience, and extending the culture of our faculties to every part of them. It should not minister to the mere love of change or the desire of novelty, but new experiences and changed surroundings are essential to its perfectness. It should be change of occupation and of mental air. It should take us into a new world, and open a wider horizon to our observation and experience. Holiday travel is, in fact, its typical form, and that recreation will be most truly recreative to which we can turn from time to time with all the zest of freshness, in which we can forget our cares and merge our anxieties, and which is so far from the track of necessary work, so different from our enforced activity, that we can enter on it with something of that fresh and joyous feeling with which at this moment we are "off for the holidays."

0

NE Saturday afternoon work was
done, and Cassie had gone down
to the mill to be paid. It was a
still evening, and Lydia sat on a
broad stone outside her door,
with her Bible on her knees; but
she was not reading, only looking
intently up at a little sunset cloud
sailing over her head. There is
a woman in front of Guido's
"Massacre of the Innocents
at Bologna, with a dead baby at
her feet and her eyes fixed on
its angelic semblance in the sky
above. Lydia's face had the
same expression. "Their angels
do always behold the face of their

Father in Heaven," she whispered to herself. It was the only luxury in which she indulged, to sit in perfect stillness and think of her child, -"gone back again," as she always called it to herself. She was roused by the click of the little garden-gate, and turning, met the keen grey eyes of old Nanny Elmes fixed upon her. Nanny was leaning over the wicket, clad as usual in a long grey great-coat, the tails of which reached almost to her heels. She now put down her basket and came and sat on the low "I've been a watchin' o' ye ever so long, Lyddy, and ye than the stone babby in the church. I didn't know as how ye could read," she added, looking suspiciously at the book. ""Tain't but a very little. I learnt

wall beside her.

stirred no more

*

mysen a bit afore I married.

There was a little maid o' Mrs. Goose's as were a rare un for her book, and she learnt me my letters, and fund the places i' th' Bible when parson was a readin', and so I cum for to know the words when I see'd un in their own places-when they'se at home as 'twere. And it seems," she went on after a pause, "when I gets at the words, like as if I were a hearing

Why not? "Oh, learn me true understanding."-Ps. cxix. "My life and education both do learn me now."-Othello, Act i.