of our occupying a place in this crowd is important to others as well as to ourselves; each individual is a centre of some kind-a centre of good or evil; and when men properly consider how far the undulations of a single volition, carried into speech or act, may be propagated through the living expanse which surrounds them, they will use wisely and cautiously the stupendous influence they possess. The holy impulses of some souls are perhaps destined to heave through the whole mass of their age's posterity.

Every man's life therefore is something added to the good or the evil. It has a value one way or the other. In this respect no one can be altogether idle, however much he may intend it; there is no neutral ground throughout the universe, I believe, where minds may retire from the contest, and "from the loopholes of retreat" look quietly upon the strife-not a foot of extra-parochial ground where they may find exemption from the duty of maintaining virtue and resisting evil. There are but two poles of being-the good and the evil-and wherever intelligent, reasoning creatures are found, they must be pointing or gravitating towards one of these. Here the slender needles of this our human life oscillate to and fro as they yield to the varying solicitations to which they are exposed; but these movements are accurately registered, and it will ultimately be seen which of these attractive forces has been allowed to predominate. Every man has his peculiar mission and office in this life; he may never know it; he may never arouse himself to perceive it as a solemn fact, or execute it as an important duty. But nevertheless he has been despatched hither to occupy a particular place, and accomplish a specific end. We are all apostles of some kind or another, although few may be publicly accredited as such, and still fewer may seem to consummate the object of their mission. Too many, alas, hide their credentials, even when conscious of their possession, and play truant— truant to their fellows-truant to their Creator-amongst the silken fopperies of folly and fashion, until their allotted period has been completed. A part of this mission is to improve the Humanity with which he is connected. He is expressly retained by the Deity for the purpose of improving and exalting it; he stands here as a workman to try his skill in beautifying its forms-in refining its thoughtsin purifying its workings-in enobling and guiding its tendencies. Is not this an office of dignity and a duty of stupendous moment? Yes, it is an honourable office, for if its duties are valiantly discharged, it raises you infinitely above those who evade them; it is a royal office, for it makes you the guide and ruler of those who are too feeble or indolent to put their own energies in motion; it is a Godlike office too, for it empowers you to confer inestimable benefits upon your fellows, and to communicate an impetus to our race which may seriously advance its interests and augment its happiness. Would to Heaven that man could believe the Deity has a purpose in everything he does; and that creatures directly formed by him, and rendered capable of achieving so much, were not tossed into this world to sport and gambol through life as if it were the airy unsubstantial pageant of a dreaming imagination. Life a dream! It is no dream of the Deity even but a fact-a truth-a reality—from which he expects a substantial result.

God makes no duplicates. Each man may be said to be as much an original in respect of his spiritual nature as any of his predecessors. It doubtless requires as great an exertion of divine power to produce a living being of our own epoch as in the younger ages of the world. I know of no stranger fancy, than that which supposes the derivation of human souls from a human ancestry, or the transmission of spirit from father to son along the main trunk or spreading branches of a pedigree. I never yet heard of the man who had such a superabundance of soul that he could afford to detach one particle from his stock and hand it over to his descendant as his peculiar property. A human Apollo may be built out of the elements lying in any ditch so far as the material structure is concerned, but the mind which is to animate it, must be superadded to all those previously existing, and therefore must come fresh and new to its earthly habitation. I would'nt thank you for a second-hand soul! If mind were derived from our ancestors, it would soon become too meagre and attenuated to warm our clay; however immense the fund of soul possessed by Pere Adam it would long ago have been exhausted if partitioned amongst his descendants! No;-man's parentage is divine. He need not trace the stream of his being through a muddy channel of kings and warriors, of queens and courtezans; he has but one step to take, there is but one descent in his genealogy, and in the great and good Being with whom alone rests the power of creating mind, he learns to acknowledge his parent and sole ancestor. Charlemagne or William the Conqueror would form an awkward, clumsy link in such a pedigree, were it possible to interpose him between the soul and its divine author-would he not?

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There is a mould for every spirit—a mould which will serve for no other. The poetical conceit, that nature made but one individual from a particular cast, and then destroyed it, is as true as it is striking. But it is what she does for every clodhopper. She is no plagiarist or imitator-even of her own works. Why should she make counterparts when her skill is consummate-her purposes infinite-her invention unlimited-and her resources inexhaustible? Ascending to the highest, or pondering over the meanest of her works, we find no symptoms of failing powers or flagging ingenuity: her prodigality appears in every production of her hands: she covers every leaf with its own hieroglyphic characters: she tinges every flower with its culiar hues: she imparts to every voice its distinctive tone, by which you recognise it amongst thousands: and though she has shaped myriads of human countenances, yet she continues to stamp upon each some particular expression which marks it from all others. Roam where you will, you can find none with a frame and features exactly corresponding to your own: none with a mind and heart, similarly constituted and developed in all respects; none with thoughts, feelings, passions, and purposes which are copied or reflected from your own. But why insist on this? Because it suggests that you are the only specimen of a particular intelligence to be found within the limits. of creation! Is not that honour? But it is responsibility also for each man then becomes the subject of a distinct experiment made by the Deity:-" fiat experimentum in corpore vili."-Shall it fail?

It has been well said that there are the rudiments of an angel or a

demon in every mortal. If the eye could only pierce through cloth, cuticle and animal matter into the adytum of Being, it would perceive the future ghost coiled up in darkness, and dozing until the period of its emancipation from fleshly fetters should arrive. Yes; what powers and principles are pent up and imprisoned within the narrow limits of the human body! Were they but fairly aroused and fully loosed from their torpor, like the elastic fluids in chemical mixtures, they would instantly shatter the petty restraints imposed upon them: the hollow forms the conventional affectations the arbitrary conceits-the social idolatries and paltry ambitions, which are wrapped round and round the soul until it is well nigh strangled, would be torn away by an irresistible development of its power, and scattered to the winds by an explosion of its gigantic energies. What interest ought to attach to the puniest of human spirits! Half-a-dozen centuries will convert a piece of metal, or a fragment of wood, into an object of high antiquarian value; but here is a thing-a living thing-over which ages shall wave their dusky wings, and yet none of its powers shall fail-none of its faculties be dimmed! A million years may pass :-it has not then grown grey with age! Millions upon millions!-yet it is somewhere it is something: after all its expansions and developmentsafter its long voyaging and mysterious experience of the future-it is the very thing which passed you in Fleet-street or Pall-mall, Anno Domini 1843!

It is a difficult thing to look across the counter or out of the shopwindows into Eternity! The almanack-sheet for this year is broad enough to hide the whole of the Future from our eyes. And yet there is no question of greater moment than the position of man, with reference to this same mystical Future. It were well if he could bear in mind, that this world is but an island in the immense ocean of infinitude it is but a point protruded from the abyss of space upon which he has found a temporary footing: around him the billows of a mighty sea are incessantly rolling: one companion after another deserts him, and vanishes amongst its waves: he, too, must soon unmoor, and venture unaccompanied upon the strange, mysterious voyage, bound to the far-off land, whence no traveller returns to tell the wonders he has seen or the truths he has learnt !-A safe and a happy voyage to all.

Kind and courteous reader, allow me to conclude this dull, prosy, sermonizing paper, in the stirring strains of noble-hearted Robert Nicoll; they will awaken you!

My bonnie wee wifie, I'm waefu' to leave thee-
To leave thee sae lanely an far, far frae me;
Come night an' come morning, I'll soon be returning,
Then O my dear wifie how happy we'll be.
The night it is cauld, and the way dreigh an' dreary,
The snaw's drifting blinly o're moorland an' lea;
All nature looks eerie-how can she be cheerie,

For weel maun she ken that I'm parted frae thee.

Oh wae is the lammy that's lost its dear mammy;
An' wae is the bird that sits chirping alane?
The plaints they are making-their wee bit hearts breaking,
Are throbbings o' pleasure compared wi my pain.
The sun to the simmer-the bark to the timmer-
The sense to the saul, an' the light to the e'e-
The bud to the blossom-sae thou'rt to my bosom—
Oh wae's my heart wifie when parted frae thee?
There's nae gude availing, in weeping an' wailing,
Though fortune be failing an' friendships decay,
For love in hearts glowing, its riches bestowing,
Bequeaths us a treasure death takes not away.
Let nae gruesome feeling creep owre thy heart stealing,
The bloom frae thy cheek when thou'rt thinking of me;
Come night an' come morning-then hame, hame returning,
Nae mair cozie wifie we parted shall be.

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.

Ere childhood's happy reign is o'er-

Ere hopes and fears, or memory have birth—
Pleased with the present joy, nor wishing more,
What fairer seems than thou, oh earth?

And youth when nursing it's first grief,
Wandering the fairy-land of Memory,

Those "scenes so charming" raise a sweet belief,
The future as the past will be.

Thus we life's chequered path pursue,

Now raised to extacy and now depressed,
Slaves to our own and others' passions too,
Alternate hated and caressed.

And when old age at length draws nigh,
It finds us oft still hoping to be blest;
Till truth prophetic points to worlds on high,
And whispers, "This is not thy rest!"

He.

WALKS ROUND LONDON.-No. 2.

EPPING FOREST.

(Continued from No. 5.)

THE changes that take place in the appearance of forest scenery, when autumn comes in, with its warm moist atmosphere, are very considerable. Then all nature appears in a new phase. The golden flowers of the summer have made way for the red tints of autumn, the dried and withered herbage has again become tinted with a bright green, the autumnal songsters have commenced their wild melodies, and the dried up brooklets and pools, sparkle again with their living waters. But far greater than these are the changes that take place in the hues of the trees, and the sky. We have sat us down on a small verdant hillock, in the forest, towards the close of a bright autumnal day, and marked the glorious changes of the scenery around. The sun wending his slow way down the western sky, floats as in a sea of molten gold, the emanation of his splendid brightness, himself by far more bright. The tree tops near at hand lit by its mellow splendour, bring forward the warmth of its effulgence, mixed with such varied tints so beautiful, so iris like, that even the pencil fails to paint their loveliness. The rich warm mellow tints relieved by depth of shade, wend mingling with rich reds, through purples and cool greys. Then the little leaves stand forth in living green whilst the dark sprays waved by the western wind, give life and motion over the glowing sky. Who can describe the rich hues of a venerable oak in an autumnal afternoon? The liveliness, the brightness, the almost living splendour, of the side lit by the sun, and the depth, the mass of effect in the shady side relieved here and there, by the warm half tint of its mighty gnarled arms, defy description. The rich warm reds of the oaks, commixed with the yellow greens of the beeches, the deep brown and purple tints of the fern beds and the thousand various flowerets that lay scattered amongst them, form a glorious picture, whilst farther off are the warm greys and blues of the distance, carried out by the sparkling waters of the pools, which reflect again on the earth the mellow tints of the sky. There as I sat musing on the poetry-the idealized splendour of the landscape, time passed on; hour succeeded hour-the sun sank behind the bold swell of a distant hill, which stood up bodily in depth of colour, before the rich pink sky, itself bathed in crimson splendour, whilst light clouds of crimson greys, and purple browns, spread in long streaky lines, till higher still the deep transparent blue sky faded away into a dusky grey.

What, I thought to myself as I sat there gazing on the landscape, over which the spirit of beauty seemed to hover, what can equal the glowing loveliness of such a scene? But, to feel to know, that all these glorious hues are but the rich tints that death puts on to cheat the eye of time!-that all these rich red and glowing yellows that seem suffused with splendour, are but the dead colours of the withered leaves that even now fall with a low pattering sound to the earth. The knowledge of this, to the mind's eye, in an instant disrobes the trees of their leaves, and the will-be wintry aspect of the forest deadens the mind even while gazing on its autumn splendour.