THERE is a difference between truth and error; an axiom which needs no argument to substantiate. There is also a distinction separating fact and fable, or the heir from the impostor. We dig deep and build high for walls to defend the prince, and lavish the treasures of the realm to engirdle his brow with a crown of erudition and wisdom; yet beyond the ramparts prowls the dark designer, with his cunning and his treachery, as the lever and the fulcrum, to topple over the lawful inheritor, while frequent errors and careless sentinels allow him to creep in to test his strength. As in the medical profession Doctor Sangrado still moves, in his own weakness a tome of skill and experience, while in reality a mere charlatan, so among mankind are those professing great possessions yet sadly adrift from the actual enjoyment.

As mortals we are imperfect; nor can we at any time, age, or by fortuitous circumstance, attain perfection, neither speak nor write words or sentences that breathe of perfectness. The reason is obvious: we are each and all biassed by our own idiosyncrasies, which hinge upon the peculiarity of temperament to a greater or less degree. A nervous man, stimulated by excitement, becomes absorbed in a subject, which he attempts to declare, and he proves a clever essayist or a terse, epigrammatic orator. Still, he fails to create a

fellow enthusiasm in the bilious man, who, cool in spirit, has that perfect control over self which the nervous man often courts but never wins. This difference in temperaments constitutes the pabulum for all the discord of mind, be it in the high places of earth' or among the less aspiring. Whichever temperament is paramount, you will there detect sentiments of a peculiar nature signalizing their origin by their fruits, usurping the place of all others; the reigning monarch of thought and of action; and one has treason in his heart dare he lift his head to open his lips in argument. Themistocles' exclamation, Strike, but hear me !' is made subservient to the more modern imperative Off with his head!'

There is a vein, nay, an artery, in the organization of society, which to many minds needs a purgative for its purification; but the nature of the physic or the method of administering, non inventus est. There needs the uprising of a mighty Esculapius, whose nod shall be as potent as that of puissant Jove; for man has become mechanical in thought as well as in movement; the power that shook high Olympus could hardly rouse him from his lethargy. Alas! the god Somnus, who upon Cimmerus slept a thousand years, has his imitators and his adherents. It is this: the channel of thought is clogged by the wrecks of so many endeavors of purblind mortals, who, greedy for immortality, burst upon the world with a glow-worm light, and faded into shadows, that others, (and others are many,) steering up the stream without helm or compass, snag their unballasted boats and sink likewise, while their spars and hulks are left decoys for the next endeavorer. Man thinks not for himself; his originality is lost in the fatal speciousness of the false apostles of rhetoric and of eloquence. The mind of the errorist is like a field sown with wheat, wherein creepeth the tare to choke and the rust to blight, without the slightest attempt to eradicate the one or prevent the other; and the result is, the soil capable of bearing a golden harvest is negligently left to produce nought but barrenness or abortion. Weeds are indigenous to all lands; but the fragrant rose and the yellow corn are obtainable only by carefulness and labor.

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This artery, pregnant with impurities, pervades the entire system of society, until you see its effects upon and throughout the whole mechanism. Various excrescences, which attain a decayed maturity, and whose fruit, as grand-children, are cast upon us for endurance, are observable in daily life. Perhaps it may be novelty of style and sentiment, the mere gewgaw of the brain; but it is, nevertheless, farreaching in its effects, and always with a proclivity to baneful issues. The unprincipled penny-a-liners, authors' as they are honorably called, are they who flood our youthful minds with a subtle spirit of wildness, which needs but the circumstance to image the monster. With a scintillation of evil craftiness, and an inspiration that cometh not of God, do these writers undress their brains of ideas full of fearful meaning to the inexperienced; and so cunning is their weft, with its hues of bespangled gold, that, like the apple from the hand of Eve, it is taken with avidity, and with an indifference to consequences. The inward torture tells the deluded victim at the eleventh hour that

a serpent has been cherished. Such readings follow the absence of mental discipline, and a desire to imitate some thoughtless ones who have passed through the brushwood. Imitation rather than originality is the inception of a state of powerlessness. All concede that 'the mind is the standard.' Our vade mecum, we look upon the handiworks of God with awe and yet with admiration. The golden sunset and the silver moonlight; the soft eye of woman and the rosy prattler; are subjects we contemplate with pleasurable interest. A gratuity it is we cannot transfer; a treasure more precious than the cedar of Tyre, the gem of Sardis, or the pearl of Gungunnah. And yet we abuse it both in a constant application of its powers and a total neglect of its capacities. The one abuse is injurious, the other criminal. The one uncommon, the other so frequent that it disgusts.

There is a large portion of mankind who with a physical enervation and a lassitude of mind allow others to feed them, and swallow the nourishment, be it a worm or a sparrow. Now these public caterers are those who have suddenly discovered their capacity of being 'blown up,' and even in their thinking it is done: shallow-pated fellows, with an enormous abundance of ego non tu, and who imagine themselves elevated far above the general talent. How they have crawled up the ladder none know, but there they are, soaring aloft in an element ill becoming their superlative ignorance. Perhaps it is a lecturer, whose subject favoring seriousness attracts the well-meaning, and who by apparent zeal and enthusiasm in his trade, gains friends. He has a ready and voluble tongue; a full eye, that can at the shortest imaginable notice film over with moisture; an untiring loquacity to clog your ears with balderdash and cant. Perhaps his subject allows a margin for humorous display; if so, it is well used. A fund of old anecdotes and nursery rhymes is gleaned from Thomas' Almanac, or Mother Goose, and altered to fit; while the imagination, let loose to its utmost bounds, picks up ornaments crushed and withered by use and time, that have been in requisition since Tubal Cain drew the bow to feast and edify his auditors, forsooth! Shades of Syntax and ashes of Lindley Murray, can you lie undisturbed ?

Perhaps it is a representative of reformers from certain pernicious vices. His pedigree may savor of the awl or the needle; it matters not, so he has a flippant tongue. Inveigled by the idea of being known as Timothy Straw, Esq., the Reformer; of being foisted before the community-nay, the world; looked upon by bright eyes, and lionized' by weak men and silly women; why the poor man feels he has changed; that his mind has suddenly enlarged; that he undertakes no more than a natural capacity dictates! Puffed with flattery, his vanity fed to satiety, he is as conspicuous as Dr. Law, or Prof. Knowledge, and, in fact, better known than the profoundest logician or belles-lettres scholar. O tempora! Six months agone, with an indifference at once brutish, this same wiseacre was picked from amid the common filth of self and street. Shall the picture be painted with a deeper shade? Nay, in it there is more truth than romance. With a change as sudden as death to the living, he is transformed into a public man, and all the world and his wife' have gone mad after

him. He is the last novelty; the last sutler for an army of morbid palates, and proves the appetizer to whet the taste lost by indolence and base excess. The thunder of the Roman Vatican could no more displace him from the hearts of the people than could Cæsar have turned from crossing the Rubicon. Like an electric shock does this mad enthusiasm pass from one to another, until all mouths open but to pronounce him the most natural orator and gifted man before the public.

Is this really so? Has our master talent; our ideal chief of eloquence and of song, been covered by living rags but as a disguise to be suddenly thrown off to our greater amazement and surprise? Impossible! Some may believe it, some will not. Well then, from what cometh this love of mental change? Again: it can be attributed to an absence of mental discipline; to the lack of originality of thought, which leaves others to write, speak and think for ourselves. Admit that it is fashionable; that it is treason against mind; an un-. pardonable breach of etiquette; an open-mouthed slander to speak other than in praise of him who makes the welkin glad with shouts of acclamation; him of the public desk and clamorous tongue, and mountebank oratorship; shall we too bow the knee? GOD save the mark!

Manifold are the ways to ride into publicity, and many are the competitors. One covers himself with a mantle of righteousness, another smiles would-be courtesy while acting the boor. The world is the fool; he the Solomon. Like a walled city are we, hemmed in by superstition, ignorance and imposition.

There are certain defined rules of energized thought which, if not ordained, have become regulated and established by time, and in the pursuance of which, the result is not problematical. It is known before tested, and with the ordinary experience of control, the profound writer can also be the true prophet. He has his course, and his charger is at his volition. Give then the right speed or the right check, and the flying chariot is the object of all eyes to gaze upon in rapt wonder. Its shafts are of iron, its impetus from GOD; what obstacle can delay, or what power of earth can impede? But let the course be uncertain, the charger untamed, and the progress is tortuous, while the vehicle pulled by unequal exertions is cracked, broken and crushed ere the gazer has turned. And yet with these wrecks about as monitors for the future, there are Jehus ready, ay, eager, to pull taut the rein and bury the spur, while admiring thousands stand by to encore them on to madness. As a ship beautiful in symmetry, majestic in her bearing, with hatches battened upon a precious cargo, can yield plenteousness to her owners, so the mind with culture and application can make the vaulted heavens ring with praises, and distil upon the heart the oil of gladness with the music of sweet adulation. It is the Eden of existence. Ambition is natural, failures are unfortunate, and condemnation is cruel; but where the one o'erleaps itself, the second follows as a contingency, while the supplement is but its final portion. Could we listen to true common sense, allowing ourselves no untutored master, but watch the movements of a