SEPTEMBER.

As evening fades on the September shoreThe calm bright waves and fields -the scene brings back

The days on which we paced the beach of yore, And meadows crossed with many a winding track;

Once more the time returns to me, once more
The happy airs that by us went and came,
As by the winding autumn road we pass;
The scent of apple orchards by the sea,
And gleams of clusters ripening ruddily;
And here and there amid the rain-bright
grass,

The poppy's fluctuant spot of crimson flame. Then through the tranquil blue air, from its noon,

Sinks the gold sun, slanting long shadows o'er The yellow harvest fields along the shore,

From grassy steep and full-leaved tree, where sings

The thrush in the clear stillness, until soon, Through the faint mist of the green hollow rings,

The sprinkled tinkle of the gathering sheep,
Footing the herb toward their quiet fold.
A furl of cloud o'er the sea line is roll'd.

And o'er the misty meadows drowsed in
sleep.

The windows of the town, late flashing
gold,

Begin to glimmer whitely in the moon.
-Dub. U. Mag.

"WHAT SHALL WE BRING YOU HOME?"

Answered by one of the " Stay-at-homes" in the

city.

BY JOHN T. SARGENT.

BRING home that mountain air,
A loftiness of soul,
Which may go with us everywhere,
And all our deeds control.

Bring home that scent of flowers,
A purity of heart,
Whose odor sanctifies the hours
While we are forced to part!

Bring us that strength of weakness
Which from the ground you glean,
Humility and meekness,

The ،، flowers that blush unseen!"

Wild roses from the hedges,

Sweet temper, love of truth, Faith, hope and love, the pledges Of joy to age and youth.

Bring home that shaded path

Which windeth through the wood,

4. Temple's Rugby Sermons (Easter-day). 8vo. London, 1861.

5. Mill on Utilitarianism. 8vo. 1862. 6. Essays on Criticism. By M. ARNOLD. 12mo. London, 1865.

7. Ecce Homo. 8vo. London, 1865. 8. Miss Cobbe's Studies, Ethical and Social. Post 8vo. London, 1885.

9. Martineau's Essays. Post 8vo. London, 1866.

10. Grant's Aristotle's Ethics. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1866.

11. Ferrier's Lectures and Philosophical Remains. 2 vols. Edin. 1866.

WHY is Ethical Science, as pursued in this country of late years, even to reflecting men so little attractive and so little edifying? The cognate study of metaphysics has, after long neglect, recently, in a wonderful way, renewed its youth; but to moral science no such revival has as yet come. And yet human character, the subject it deals with, is one, it would seem, of no inconsiderable interest. Physical science has no doubt drained off the current of men's thoughts, and left many subjects which once engaged them high and dry. But man, his spiritual being, his possibilities here, his destiny hereafter, these still remain, amid all the absorption of external things, the one highest marvel, the paramount centre of interest to men. It cannot be said that modern literature -the great exponent of what men are thinking- circles less than of old round the great human problems. Rather with the circuit of the suns, not only have the thoughts of men widened, but also their moral consciousness, we will not say their heart, has deepened. Modern literature, as compared with that of last century, has nothing more distinctive in it than this, that it has broken into deeper ground of sentiment and reflection, ground which had hitherto lain fallow, nonexistent, or unperceived. About the deeper soul-secrets, literary men of last century either did not greatly trouble themselves, or they practised a very strict reserve. But our own and the preceding age has seen an unveiling of the most inward often of the most sacred, feelings which

has sometimes gone beyond the limits of manliness and self-respect. This bringingto-light of layers of consciousness hitherto concealed, though sometimes carried too far, has certainly enriched our literature with new wealth of moral content. In the best modern poetry, it has shown itself by greater intensity and spirituality; in the highest modern novels, by delicacy of analysis, discrimination of the finer tints of feeling, variety and fine shading of character hitherto unknown; in the modern essay, by a subtleness and penetrative force which make the most perfect papers of-Addison seem slight and trivial. It farther manifests itself in the growing love and keener appreciation of the few great world-poets, who are, after all, the finest embodiments of moral wisdom. It may be that so much ethical thought has been turned off into these channels, that it has left less to be expended in the more systematic form of ethical science. It may be too, that as the field of moral experience widens, and the meaning of life deepens, and its problems become more complex, it demands proportionably stronger and rarer powers to gather up all this wealth, and shape it into systematic form. Certain it is, that the modern time produces no such masters of moral wisdom for our day as Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius were to the old world, or even as Bishop Butler was to his generation. Wide, many-sided, sensitive, deep, complex, as is the moral life in which we now move, if we would seek any philosophic guidance through its intricacies, any thinking which is at once solid, clear, practical, and instinct with life, we must turn, not to any modern treatise, but to the pages of these bygone worthies. What help ardent spirits, looking for guidance in our day, have found, has been not from the philosophers, but from some living poet, some giant of literature with no pretension to philosophy, or some inspired preacher. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, Frederick Robertson, these, not the regular philosophers, have been the moral teachers of our generation; and, to these, young men have turned, to get from them what help they might. And now it seems, that, in these last days, many, wearied out with straining after their high but impalpable spiritualities, have betaken themselves to a style of teaching which, if it promises less, offers, as they think, something more systematic and more certain. despair of spiritual truth, they are fain to fill their hunger with the husks of a philo-ophy which would confine all men's thoug its within the phenomenal world, and deny all

In

knowledge that goes beyond the co-existences and successions of phenomena.

From aberrations like this perhaps no moral philosophy would have delivered men. But it would be well, if, warned by such signs, it were to return closer to life and fact, deal more with things which men really feel; if, leaving general sentiments and moral theories, it would attempt some true diagnosis of the very complex facts of human nature, of the moral maladies from which men suffer, the burdens they need removed, the aspirations which they can practically live by. Instead of this, instead of dealing with the actual and the ideal, which co-exist in man, and out of which, if at all, a harmony of life is to be woven, -philosophers have been content to repeat a meagre and conventional psychology, taken mostly from books, not fresh from living hearts; or they have lost themselves in the metaphysical problems which no doubt everywhere underlie moral life, but which, pursued too far, distract attention from the vital realities. These two causes have exhausted the strength and the interest of moral study, either a cut-anddried conventional psychology, or absorbing metaphysical discussion. The former, in which moral truths appeared shrivelled up, like plants in a botanist's herbarium, is the style of things you find in the most approved text-books of the last generation.

'Never before,' as one has smartly said, had human nature been so neatly dissected, so handily sorted, or so ornamentally packed up. The virtues and vices, the appetites, emotions, affections, and sentiments stood each in their appointed corner, and with their appropriate label, to wait in neat expectation for the season of the professorial lectures; and the literary world only delayed their acquiescence in a uniform creed of moral philosophy till they should have arranged to their satisfaction whether the appetites should be secreted in the cupboard, or paraded on the chimney-piece; or whether certain of the less creditable packets ought in law and prudence, or ought not in charity, to be ticketed" Poison." Every thing was should be, or was soon to be so, - differences were not too different nor unanimity too unani mous; opinion did not degenerate into certainty, nor interest into earnestness; moral philosophy stood apart, like a literary gentleman of easy circumstances, from religion and politics; and t uth itself was grateful for patronage, instead of being clamorous for allegiance. Types were delicate, margins were large, publishers were attentive, the intellectual world said it was intellectual, and the public 'acquiesced in the assertion. What more could scientific heart

.desire?'

as it

This description may contain something of caricature, and yet there are books enough on moral science which justify it, books which no doubt have been successful in disgusting many with the subject of which they treat. Nor has moral philosophy suffered less from those deeper and more abstract discussions which have often in modern times been substituted for itself. Men of a profounder turn have so busied themselves with investigations of the nature of right, the law of duty, freedom, and necessity, and such like hard matters, that these have absorbed all their interest and energy, and left none for the treatment of those concrete realities which make up the moral life of man. Not that such discussions can be dispensed with. They are always necessary, never more so than now, when the spiritual ground of man's moral being is so often denied by materialistic or by merely phenomenal systems. It were well, perhaps, that they should be made a department by themselves, under the title of Metaphysic of Ethics, to be entered on by those who have special gifts for such inquiries. For when substituted for the whole or chief part of moral inquiry, they become unpractical discussions of a practical subject,' and as such alienate many from a study, which, if rightly treated, would deepen their thought and elevate their char

acter.

For what is the real object with which moral science deals? Every science has some concrete entity, some congeries of facts, which is called in a general way its subject-matter. Botany, we say, deals with plants or herbs, geology with the strata. which form the earth's crust, astronomy with the stars and their motions, psychology with all the states of human consciousness. What, then, is the concrete entity with which moral science deals? It is not the active powers of man, nor the emotions, nor the moral faculty - not these, each or all. It is simply human character. This is the one great subject it has ever before it. About this it asks what is character, its nature, its elements? what influences make it? what mar it? in what consists its perfection? what is its destiny? This may seem a very elementary statement; but it is quite needful to recur to it, and even to reiterate it, so much has it been lost sight of in the pursuit of side questions branching out of it. At the outset, before any analysis is begun, the student cannot too deeply receive the impression of character as a great and substantive reality. Some vague perception of character, all men, of course,