Alas! I do not-I cannot think with the writer. My own experience-my whole observation forbid it. The worst sufferings of human nature are those which no law can reach -no form of government control. What code can soothe the burning pain of disease, or rouse its languor? What code can alleviate the bitterness of death, dry the tears of the mourner, and force the grave to give up the loved and the lost? What form of laws can control the affections, those busy ministers of sorrow? Can they console them when unrequited—alter them when misplaced-or recall them when departed for ever? Alas! they are of no avail. Can the law blunt the cutting edge of ridicule, or soften the bitter words of unkindness? Can the law give us grace, wit, beauty, or prevent our feeling their want, or envying their more fortunate possessors? All the law can do, is to give us hard bread, which we must earn with our toil, and then steep with our tears. Yet more, the law can guard our life-life! that possession which, of all others, man values the least; but it can give nothing that endears, or exalts it nothing that confers on it either a value or a charm. The first records of our young world were those of tears and blood; its

last records will be those of tears and blood also. I hear of the progress of civilisation, and I marvel how it can be called happiness. We discovered America, and that word is now synonymous with a brave, enlightened, and free nation; but to make way for that prosperity, a whole people have perished from the face of the earth. Our ships have gone through the silent seas, and a new continent rose before their prows in fertility and beauty. We have emptied on it our prisons—and the untrodden wood echoes to the oath and the axe of the convict.

Or, to come home again. The wealth of the world, its power, its intelligence, pours into London. We have the enjoyments of riches and of mind-our sciences and fine arts take every day some step to perfection; but none of these are happiness. Wealth, that mighty source of heart-burnings, who shall distribute it? To take from industry is to give a premium to idleness. And yet how hard, that one man should possess millions, while to another a penny is a welcome gift! How are we to help this? "Is it my fault," the rich man may say, "that I, or my father, or my grandfather, have been more prudent or more

fortunate than you or yours? If you take that which is mine to-day, where is your security but that another may take it from you again to-morrow?" And yet poverty- - - how bitter it is! first its disgrace, and then its want. I never, even in an advertisement praying for that charity which is too often denied, read the words "who have known better days," without a sympathy even to pain. And yet what statute can guard against extravagance, improvidence, or idleness? And even this propertythe hinge on which all our social institutions turn, for whose sake we both make and break laws-does that give happiness? Ask the sick, the sad, or the dying, though their home be the palace, and their clothing the purple.

Then we have intellectual enjoyments, the works of genius, those of the fine arts. There was Mr. Canning, the eloquent and the patriotic, died, not three years ago, of a fevered mind and a worn-out body-worn out by the scoff, the obstacle, the vain excitement, the exhausting exertion. Genius was Byron, whose life was divided between disappointment and resentment, was he happy? What is Genius but an altar richly wrought in fine gold, and placed in the most sacred and glo

rious part of the marble temple? but there the living victim is offered in sacrifice, and the wreath of flowers left to wither. The fine arts, they which add so much to the adornment of their time—it is a sad page in life in which their annals are written. How few among the statues which stand in grace and power, till they seem the incarnation of the diviner part of our nature-how few among the pictures which shed their dream-like beauty on our wallshow few of these but are the fruit of lives passed in toil, in want, in the heart-burning of hope whose fulfilment comes not, and of cares that eat away the very soul! Look at the many diseases to which skill is of no avail-look at the many crimes, and crimes committed, too, by the educated, who have been trained from their youth upwards in good. Or look only within your own heart, and see there the germ of every sin and every sorrow; - and then tell me of the perfectibility or the happiness of humanity. In another world, "the wicked may cease from troubling, and the weary be at rest;" but not in a world like ours-the weak, the erring, and the fallen. We forget we are living under a curse; and who can recall that curse save the God who pronounced it?

CHAPTER XXII.

"Ah, whence yon glare

That fires the arch of heaven ?—that dark red smoke
Blotting the silver moon ?"

"And what were earth and stars,

If to the human mind's imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?"— SHELLEY.

THERE is something sublime in being out of humour with the whole world. Discontent against an individual is called anger; that against the many, misanthropy. There is a great deal of poetry in an epithet. Lorraine indulged in the latter mood of mind for a week. His brother called- he was denied: a first conciliating note from Mr. Delawarr was unanswered the second met a cold but bitter reply. Both grew angry, and public dispute ended in private dissension.

It is a curious fact, how violent people get upon political questions, particularly if they are