SINCERITY.

THE first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers, under whatever strength of sympathy, or desire to prolong happy thoughts in others for their sake or your own only as sympathizing with theirs, it may originate. All sympathy, not consistent with acknowledged virtue, is but disguised selfishness.

TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.

THE pre-eminence of truth over falsehood, even when occasioned by that truth, is as a gentle fountain breathing from forth its air-let into the snow piled over and around it, which it turns into its own substance, and flows with greater murmur; and though it be again arrested, still it is but for a time,-it awaits only the change of the wind to awake and roll onwards its ever increasing stream :

I semplici pastori

Sul Vesolo nevoso,
Fatti curvi e canuti,

D'alto stupor son muti,
Mirando al fonte ombroso
Il Po con pochi umori ;
Poscia udendo gl' onori

Dell' urna angusta e stretta,

But falsehood is fire in stubble;-it likewise turns all the light stuff around it into its own substance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment, and then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them.

RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES.

A MAN may look at glass, or through it, or both. Let all earthly things be unto thee as glass to see heaven through! Religious ceremonies should be pure glass, not dyed in the gorgeous crimsons and purple blues and greens of the drapery of saints and saintesses.

ASSOCIATION.

MANY a star, which we behold as single, the astronomer resolves into two, each, perhaps, the centre of a separate system. Oft are the flowers of the bind-weed mistaken for the growth of the plant, which it chokes with its intertwine. And many are the unsuspected

double stars, and frequent are the parasite weeds, which the philosopher detects in the received opinions of men :-so strong is the tendency of the imagination to identify what it has long consociated. Things that have habitually, though, perhaps, accidentally and arbitrarily, been thought of in connection with each other, we are prone to regard as inseparable. The fatal brand is cast into the fire, and therefore Meleager must consume in the flames. To these conjunctions of custom and association—(the associative power of the mind which holds the mid place between memory and sense,)—we may best apply Sir Thomas Brown's remark, that many things coagulate on commixture, the separate natures of which promise no concretion.

CURIOSITY.

THE curiosity of an honourable mind willingly rests there, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbour bids it stop;-in other words, it willingly stops at the point, where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt!

NEW TRUTHS.

To all new truths, or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive-wreath.

VICIOUS PLEASURES.

CENTRIES, or wooden frames, are put under the arches of a bridge, to remain no longer than till the latter are consolidated. Even so pleasures are the devil's scaffolding to build a habit upon;-that formed and steady, the pleasures are sent for fire-wood, and the hell begins in this life.

MERITING HEAVEN.

VIRTUE makes us not worthy, but only worthier, of happiness. Existence itself gives a claim to joy. Virtue and happiness are incommensurate quantities. How much virtue must I have, before I have paid off the old debt of my happiness in infancy and childhood! O! We all outrun the constable with

heaven's justice! We have to earn the earth, before we can think of earning heaven.

DUST TO DUST.

We were indeed,

πάντα κόνις, καὶ πάντα γέλως, καὶ πάντα τὸ μηδὲν

if we did not feel that we were so.

HUMAN COUNTENANCE.

THERE is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer.

LIE USEFUL TO TRUTH.

A LIE accidentally useful to the cause of an oppressed truth: Thus was the tongue of a dog made medicinal to a feeble and sickly Lazarus.

SCIENCE IN ROMAN CATHOLIC STATES.

IN Roman Catholic states, where science has forced its way, and some light must follow, the devil himself cunningly sets up a shop for common sense at the sign of the Infidel.