per-durance and double loads of lead," which tender virgins yet endure-the -headach which must have assailed the" towered Cybeles" of the last century beneath their tiers of curls and bushels of powder-the constrained attitudes-the sticks and back-boards of modern boarding-schools-or the numberless secrets never divulged to man, by which females in every age, and of every age, purchase imaginary comeliness at the expense of real comfort.

Were it not unfashionable to moralise, I might here remark, how the very follies and fopperies of mankind bear witness to the existence of a nobler immaterial principle, still urging them to treat their bodies as their slaves, their property, and not their very selves. For it is not to be forgotten, that the vanity of person, the pride of fashion, the desire of admiration, the dread of singularity, or what ever else may have prompted these practices, however reprehensible in its excess, is still an intellectual, not a sensual principle. The Hindoo who reclines upon a couch of spikes; the nun who wears sackcloth, and feeds on offals that famine might cast the gorge at; the poor enthusiast that spent his life on a pillar, or she who gives her tawny skin to be needled and flowered as if it were an insensible garment; each and all display a spirit that is stronger than sense-a power that laughs at pain-a soul that tyrannizes over the flesh, as if it were something alien and of another nature. Nor do I doubt that man-ay, and soft trembling woman also-may exult in agony, and rejoice with the joy of victory upon the rack. Do we not see the vilest malefactors jest with the gallows, and make merry with the lash? Mountebanks and bedlamites would gash themselves for gain: Drunkards ofttimes for mere sport or bravado. What toil, what privation, are not men daily imposing upon themselves for a trifling wager, and the praise of fools? Need we refer to the gladiators of old-poor slaves, whom courage greater than all the boasted achieve ments of Curii and Dentati could not rescue from contempt; who, (to use the words of the great Jeremy,) "when they were exposed naked to each other's short swords, and were to cut each other's souls away in portions of flesh, as if their forms had been as divisible as the life of worms,-they did not sigh or groan: it was a shame

to decline the blow, but according to the just measures of art. The women that saw the wound shriek out; and he that receives it holds his peace. He did not only stand bravely, but will also fall so; and when he was down, scorned to shrink his head, when the insolent conqueror came to lift it from his shoulders: and yet this man, in his first design, aimed only at liberty and the reputation of a good fencer; and when he sank down, he saw he could only receive the honour of a brave man,— the noise whereof he shall never hear, when his ashes are crammed into his narrow urn." Holy Dying, ch. 3, sect. 4. And can virtue be weaker than vanity? Shall he "whom the truth makes free," be more coward than a stage-playing slave? Shall the hope of immortality in heaven-the applause of God and angels-the beauty of holiness-shall these less avail to hearten the children of light, than the clamour of a theatre, or the shout of a rabble, or the envy of a ball-room,— the poor praise of a delicate hue and slender form, or the devilish renown of impenitent villainy, which have fortified the nerves of the frailest, or the worst of worldlings-of fantastic females, of half-brutified savages, of miserable buffoons, and hardened ruffians at the gibbet?

The power of supporting pain, and defying death, is no virtue, at least it is no proof (Tμg) of righteousness; nor is its exercise a sure evidence of a good cause, or even of sincerity in error. It is a gift, not a grace-a natural gift-a faculty innate-and only wanting in a few constitutionally defective, or unnerved by sloth and luxury. The love of life and ease are indeed strong in every breast, and will ever prevail, where not duly counterbalanced. Wise and thoughtful men often seem to overvalue their life and limbs, because they will not risk them for trivial gains. Others, endowed with fine faculties, but lacking the principle that should direct their use, turn cowards-sensualists, from a pride of superior sense. They are wise enough to despise the ordinary prizes of human ambition; but they hav not the light which points to an incorruptible crown. Thus, from mere contempt of others, they degrade themselves. Their question is still, What is there worth fighting or suffering for? Their shrewd wits tell them, nothing on earth; and so far they are right: but they are lamentably blind to the

great ends for which the ability to dare and to suffer were bestowed.

'Tis by comparison—an easy task Earth to despise-but to converse with Heaven

That is not easy.

But

Falstaff is a coward of this class.
few men of pleasure have fortitude
enough to profess themselves cowards.
There was sense in Rochester's obser-
vation, that all men would be cowards
if they dare. Of men such as he con-
versed with, it may be almost true,
for valour in a voluptuary is irrational.
Again, strong imagination, operating
on disordered nerves, makes some fan
cy themselves cowards, who, when
called to the test, may perhaps prove
heroes; for

The sense of death is most in apprehen

sion

And the poor beetle that we tread upon In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great

As when a giant dies.

A profound sentence, which has been strangely perverted into a commonplace precept of humanity to beetles while its real intention is to represent the nothingness of bodily pains, which, after all, are no greater in a giant (I hope not in my gigantic progenitors) than in an insect. The fact I think extremely dubious. No animal seems capable of sufferings so exquisite as man, to say nothing of the aggravation each moment's pain receives from the prospect of a painful succession. Most men are naturally brave-All men are, in some cases, cowardlyAll are timid where they expect to be worsted. An individual, if not resolved to die, must always be a coward against a multitude—a multitude, even of the bravest nation, turn_tail before a few disciplined soldiers. Wo men are generally cowards in action, unless some commanding duty give them strength, because the conscious ness of a feeble frame makes victory desperate; while, in passive endurance, they often far surpass the brag garts of war-because reason informs them, that patience is stronger than all extremities. Many a stout martyr might have proved a craven soldier; for my own part, I could look more stead. fastly on the executioner's axe than the enemy's bayonet. Even animals that are most fearful of every other species will fight desperately against their own kind, and the Oriental na

tions, who are so quickly put to rout by European troops, persevere, with mad constancy, in their domestic combats.

The strength of will, in suffering, is secure of victory-but action is obliged to borrow hope of contingency; and let a man be never so stout in purpose, he knows not but another as stout may be stronger-limbed, or better-weaponed, or more cunning in fence, or higher in the favour of Destiny; and he, whom certain death could not subdue, is ofttimes vanquished by the possibility of defeat. Take a wide survey of mortal humours, and we shall conclude, that no man is absolutely brave or coward-that the weakness of nature is never so far expelled but it will reign in some part-nor the self-as ted, but it will make itself known in sistive power of will ever so debilitasome instance. It was a vain boast of the Stoics, that pain can be indifferent. We may glory in it-and glory is delightful-but that very glory Hence, few are found to bear little proves that it is not indifferent. pains easily in tolerance whereof there is no glory.

Pains of all sorts are intolerable, when they make us conscious of weakness.—“To be weak is miserable.” Power, the power of will felt and manifested, is the proper joy of man, as he is man, neither exalted above, nor sunk below his proper nature. If pain, peril, or the pangs of death, bring this power into distinct consciousness,→→→ things of choice and pride. then may pain, peril, death, become

Northern nations was such as to ap The contempt of death among the pear wonderful even to the Greeks lour, looked with melancholy uncerand Romans, who, with all their vatainty on "the undiscovered country."

life with almost effeminate fondness. Homer's bravest heroes cling to Achilles moralises on his brief allotted space more pathetically than heroically. How heavily the fear of something after death weighed on the Gentile spirit, may be inferred from the extravagant admiration of the Epicu ed them with the horrid hope of anreans for their founder, who had lullnihilation. The Stoics inculcated an indifference to life; but this was the dogma of a sect, not the spirit of a people. Death in the field was, indeed, preferred to flight and shame; but to esteem it as the one, honourable conclusion of a warrior's glories, to

look on natural dissolution as a calamity or disgrace, is a height of barbaric heroism" beyond all Greek-beyond all Roman fame."

Death can never be indifferent till man is assured, which none was ever yet, that, with his breath, his being passes into nothing. Whether his hopes and fears steer by the chart and compass of a formal creed, or drift along the shoreless sea of faithless conjecture, a possible eternity of bliss or bale can never be indifferent. The idea of extinction is not terrible, simply because man cannot form such an idea at all. Let him try as long as he will, let him negative every conceived and conceivable form of future existence !—he is as far as ever from having exhausted the infinitude of possibility. Imagination will continually produce the line of consciousness through limitless darkness. Many are the devices of fancy to relieve the soul from the dead weight of unideal nothing. Some crave a senseless duration in dry bones, or sepulchral ashes, or ghastly mummies; or, rather than not to be, would dwell in the cold obstruction of the grave, or the damp hollow solitude of the charnelhouse. Some choose a life in other's breath, an everlasting fame, and listen delighted to the imaginary voice of unborn ages. Some secure a permanence in their works, their country, their posterity; and yet, neither the protracted dissolution of the carcase, nor the ceaseless tradition of renown, nor a line of progeny stretched to the crack of doom, can add an instant of the brief existence of the conscious Being. Our fathers held a more palpable phantom-a dream of grosser substance that the soul, the self, the personal identity, only shifted its te nement, and subsisted by perpetual change.

Et vos barbaricos ritus, moremque sinis

In ferrum mens prona viris, animæque
capaces

Mortis; et ignavum reditura parcere vita.
LUCAN, B. 1.

It is not strictly philosophical, however, to account for the national ten

cause.

perament by the national creed, unless that creed be really the revealed truth. It is putting an effect for a Goths became a hunting, warlike, and We cannot suppose that the drunken people, because they imagi ned their beatitude hereafter to consist in chasing an everlastingly revivified Odin, out of the skulls of their eneboar, and drinking ale, in the Hall of mies. No; they copied a heaven from their earthly pursuits and desires. The paradise of human inventions is never more than an imaginary eternity of unalloyed human pleasures, varied according to the taste of the inventor. Virgil's Elysium is filled with warriors, poets, and lawgivers, each reacting, in glorified semblance, their old parts beneath that purer sky. Plato's conceptions of a future state manifestly emanated from that visionary ambition of intellect-those yearning aspirations after a closer intuition of the ideal Good and Beautiful, that our compound being can enjoy, which illuminated and sublimed his mighty genius to the very verge of inspiration. Thus, the philosopher's Elysium is speculative the politician's practical

the labourer looks for rest-the injured for vengeance-the prisoner for freedom. The Goth transferred his drinking bout, the Mahometan his Haram, to the skies. Thus each and all build up a Heaven with the shadows of carnal affections, or the brighter effulgence of self-pleasing thought. litician, or more vivid dreamer, subA period comes, when some wily po stantiates the dim surmises of the longing soul into a scheme of national belief, and asserts imperatively, that magic mirror have a correspondent the forms indistinctly beheld in the reality in time and place-an objective existence. The fleeting vapours of passionate imagination are condensed, and, as it were, precipitated. They become a power separate from the mind-controlling the will, and modifying the total nature. Whatever of permanent and positive is infused into human sentiments, is derived from Religion, whose office is to establish a supersensual world, as real, and more permanent, than the world of sense.

THE OLD BACHELOR.

THE BATTLE OF THE BREEKS, AND THE MONKEY.
Two Passages in the Life of Willium M'Gee, Weaver in Hamilton.

THE BATTLE OF THE BREEKS.

I OFTEN wonder when I think of the tribulations that men bring upon themsells through a want of gumption and common independence of speerit. There now, was I for nae less than eighteen years as henpickit a man as ever wrocht at the loom. Maggy and me, after the first week of our marriage, never foregathered weel thegither. There was something unco dour and imperious about her temper, although, I maun say, barring this drawback, she was nae that ill in her way either -that is to say, she had a sort of kindness about her, and behaved in a truly mitherly way to the bairns, giein' them a' things needfu' in the way of feeding and claithing so far as our means admitted. But, O man, for a' that, she was a dour wife. There was nae pleasing her ae way or anither; and whenever I heard the bell ringing for the kirk, it put me in mind of her tongue-aye wag, wagging, and abusing me beyond bounds. In ae word, I was a puir, broken-hearted man, and aften wished mysell in Abraham's bosom, awa frae the cares and miseries of this sinfu' world.

I was just saying that folk often rin their heads into scrapes for want of a pickle natural spunk. Let nae man tell me that guid nature and simpleecity will get on best in this world; na-faith, no. I hae had ower muckle experience that way; and the langer I live has pruved to me that my auld maister, James Currie, (him in the Quarry Loan,) wasna sae far wrang when he alleged, in his droll gude humoured way, that a man should hae enough of the deil about him to keep the deil frae him. That was, after a', ane of the wisest observes I hae heard of for a lang time. Little did I opine that I would ever be obleegated to mak' use o't in my ain particklar case: --but, bide awee, and ye shall see how it was brocht about between me and Maggy.

It was on a wintry night when she set out to pick a quarrel wi' Mrs Todd, the huckster's wife, anent the price of a pickle flour which I had bought some days before, for making batter of, but which didna turn out sae weel as

I expeckit, considering what was paid for't. Had I been consulted, I would fash her thumb about the matter, hae tell't her to bide at hame, and no which after a' was only an affair of here nor there. But, na; Maggy was three-happence farthing, and neither nane o' the kind to let sic an object stan' by; so out she sets, wi' her red cloak about her, and her black velvet bonnet-that she had just that day got upon her head. But I maun first hame frae Miss Lorimer, the milliner tell what passed between her and me on this wonderfu' occasion.

"And now, my dear," quo' I, looking as couthy and humble as I could, and pu'ing my Kilmarnock nicht- cap a wee grain aff my brow in a kind of ye're ganging to be about? Odds, half respectfu' fashion, "what's this woman, I wadna gie a pirn for a' that has happened. What signifies groat!" Faith, I would better hae held a pickle flour scrimp worth half a my tongue, for nae sooner was the word uttered, than takin' haud of a can, half fu' o' ready-made dressing, which I was preparing to lay on a wab Andrew Treddles, the Glasgow manuof blue check I was working for Mr she let it flee at my head like a cannon facturer-I say, takin' haud of this, ball. But Providence was kind, and I had every reason to expeck, it gied instead of knocking out my brains, as bang against our ain looking glass, and shattered it into five hunder pieces. the dressing having flown out as the But I didna a'thegither escape skaith, face ower in a manner maist extraor can gaed by me, and plaistered a' my ruption was roused at this deadly atdinar to behold. By jingo, my cortempt, and gin she hadna been my wife, I wad hae thrawn about her neck henpickit, and she had sic a mastery like a tappit hen's. But, na-I was ower me as nae persuasions of my ain could do naething but stan' glowering judgment could owercome. Sae I at her like a moudiewart, while she poured out as muckle abuse as if I had been her flunky, instead of her natural lord and master. Ance or twice I fand my nieves yeuking to gie her a