Take, for instance, the first appearance of Jonathan Swift on the scene where afterwards he was to be the moving spirit. We are introduced to to him at the famous coffee-house in Covent Garden kept by Button, and frequented by the gentlemen who were termed "the wits." These wits, one of them tells us, had for several successive days observed in the coffee-house a strange clergyman, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any of them, and whose custom it was to lay his hat down on a table, and "walk backward and forward at a good pace for half an hour, or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seeming in the least to attend to anything that was going forward there. He then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away without opening his lips." The onlookers, as may be supposed,

were greatly fluttered by the apparition; for, "having observed his singular behaviour for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses, and the name that he went by among them was that of 'The Mad Parson."" One evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest of the wits were observing this strange character, they saw him cast his eyes several times on "a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be just come out of the country;" and at last, "in a very abrupt manner, without any previous salute "-for Swift even then did not fashion himself to the formalities-" asked him if he remembered any good weather in the world." The gentleman in boots, after staring a little at the oddity of the question, answered that he "remembered a great deal." "That is more than I can say," rejoined the questioner. "I never remember any

that was not too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry. But, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year it is all very well."* The spectators of this scene, who had quitted their seats to get nearer the interlocutors, were, we are told, more than ever confirmed in their opinion of the strange parson's madness.

* Literature and its Professors, by Thomas Purnell.

...

"The ancient Aryans felt from the beginning, ay, it may be, more in the beginning than afterwards, the presence of a Beyond, of an Infinite, of a Divine, or whatever else we may call it now; and they tried to grasp and comprehend it, as we all do, by giving to it name after name. They forsook the bright Devas, not because they believed or desired less, but because they believed and desired more than the bright Devas. There was a new conception working in their mind; and the cries of despair were but the harbingers of a new birth."-MAX MÜLLER: "On the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religions of India."

66

Mystical, more than magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward: here properly Soul first speaks with Soul."

CARLYLE: "Sartor Resartus.'

THIS age of ours is certainly one of mental unrest. Everyone has views and aspirations of his own

on all subjects, from the earthworm to the over-soul. Doubt of some kind or other generally runs in harness with these views and aspirations, or rather, usually precedes them. It is sometimes of a low and frivolous character, pretentious and boasting, blowing a trumpet to indicate its existence. The doubter says to himself in foolish pride: "The greatest men of the age are unbelievers, and I will be one, for I, too, am superior to the common herd." Alas, poor fool! Why not drive a thoroughly logical conclusion, and say: "The greatest singers of the day, Tennyson, Browning, and two or three others, fasten their boots with tagged laces, and so do I; therefore I, too, am a great singer."

But to the man of tender, yet strong, nature, whose desire to get nearer his God is the hunger and