eloquence. His poetry has never been popular, though it contains very many choice passages. His character as a philosopher will chiefly rest upon his "Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind," which were published in two volumes, after his death. A more instructive and interesting book can hardly be found in the compass of English literature. It is full of passages of exquisite beauty and lofty eloquence.

THE POWER OF HABIT.

That the frequent repetition of any action increases the tendency to it, all of you must have experienced in yourselves, in innumerable cases, of little importance, perhaps, but sufficiently indicative of the influence; and there are few of you, probably, who have not had an opportunity of remarking in others the fatal power of habits of a very different kind. In the corruption of a great city, it is scarcely possible to look around, without perceiving some warning example of that blasting and deadening influence, before which, everything that was generous and benevolent in the heart has withered, while everything which was noxious has flourished with more rapid maturity; like those plants, which can extend their roots, indeed, even in a pure soil, and fling out a few leaves amid balmy airs and odors, but which burst out in all their luxuriance only from a soil that is fed with constant putrescency, and in an atmosphere which it is poison to inhale. It is not vicenot cold and insensible and contented vice, that has never known any better feelings-which we view with melancholy regret. It is virtue at least what once was virtue-that has yielded progressively and silently to an influence scarcely perceived, till it has become the very thing which it abhorred. Nothing can be more just than the picture of this sad progress, described in the wellknown lines of Pope:

"Vice is a monster of such frightful mien,
That, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

In the slow progress of some insidious disease, which is scarcely regarded by its cheerful and unconscious victim, it is mournful to mark the smile of gaiety as it plays over that very bloom, which is not the freshness of health, but the flushing of approaching mortality, amid studies perhaps just opening into intellectual excellence, and hopes, and plans of generous ambition, that are never

1 Essay on Man, Ep. II. v. 217-220.

to be fulfilled. But how much more painful is it to behold that equally insidious, and far more desolating progress, with which guilty passion steals upon the heart-when there is still sufficient virtue to feel remorse, and to sigh at the remembrance of purer years, but not sufficient to throw off the guilt, which is felt to be oppressive, and to return to that purity in which it would again, in its bitter moments, gladly take shelter, if only it had energy to vanquish the almost irresistible habits that would tear it back! "Crimes lead to crimes, and link so straight, What first was accident, at last is fate;

The unhappy servant sinks into a slave,

And virtue's last sad strugglings cannot save."-MALLET.

We must not conceive, however, that habit is powerful only in strengthening what is EVIL; though it is this sort of operation which, of course, forces itself more upon our observation and memory-like the noontide darkness of the tempest, that is remembered, when the calm, and the sunshine, and the gentle shower are forgotten. There can be no question that the same principle, which confirms and aggravates what is evil, strengthens and cherishes also what is good. The virtuous, indeed, do not require the influence of habitual benevolence or devotion to force them, as it were, to new acts of kindness to man, or to new sentiments of gratitude to God. But the temptations, to which even virtue might sometimes be in danger of yielding in the commencement of its delightful progress, become powerless and free from peril when that progress is more advanced. There are spirits which, even on earth, are elevated above that little scene of mortal ambition with which their benevolent wishes, for the sufferers there, are the single tie that connects them still. All with them is serenity; the darkness and the storm are beneath them. They have only to look down, with generous sympathy, on those who have not yet risen so high; and to look up, with gratitude, to that heaven which is above their head, and which is almost opening to receive them.

Lecture xliii.

BENEVOLENCE.

That benevolence, the moral link which connects man with man, is in itself virtuous, may indeed appear, to some very rigid questioners of every feeling, to require proof; but it can appear to require it only to those who deny altogether the very moral distinction of virtue and vice, in that general scepticism which has been already fully considered by us. Of those who allow virtue

to be more than a name, there is no one who will refuse to benevolent exertions the praise of this excellence-no one who can read the history of any of those heroes of the moral scene, whose life has been one continued deed of generosity to mankind, without feeling that, if there be virtue on earth, there has been virtue in that bosom which has suffered much, or dared much, that the world might be free from any of the ills which disgraced it. The strong lines, with which the author of the "Botanic Garden" concludes his praise of one of the most illustrious of these heroes of benevolence, scarcely express more than we truly feel on the contemplation of such a character. It does seem as if man, when he acts as man should act, is a being of some higher order than the frail, erring creatures among whom we ourselves pass a life, that, with all its occasional acts of generosity and self-command, is still, like theirs, a life of frailty and error:

CHARACTER OF HOWARD.

And now, Philanthropy! thy rays divine
Dart round the globe, from Zembla to the Line;
O'er each dark prison plays the cheering light
Like northern lustres o'er the vault of night.
From realm to realm, with cross or crescent crown'd,
Where'er Mankind and Misery are found,
O'er burning sands, deep waves, or wilds of snow,
Thy Howard, journeying, seeks the house of woe.
Down many a winding step to dungeons dank,
Where anguish wails aloud, and fetters clank;
To caves bestrew'd with many a mouldering bone,
And cells, whose echoes only learn to groan;
Where no kind bars a whispering friend disclose,
No sunbeam enters, and no zephyr blows-
He treads, inemulous of fame or wealth,
Profuse of toil, and prodigal of health:
With soft assuasive eloquence expands
Power's rigid heart, and opes his clenching hands;
Leads stern-eyed Justice to the dark domains,
If not to sever, to relax the chains;

Or guides awaken'd Mercy through the gloom,
And shows the prison, sister to the tomb;
Gives to her babes the self-devoted wife,

To her fond husband liberty and life.
The spirits of the good, who bend from high
Wide o'er these earthly scenes their partial eye,
When first array'd in Virtue's purest robe,
They saw her Howard traversing the globe,

Mistook a mortal for an angel-guest,

And ask'd what seraph foot the earth imprest.
-Onward he moves. Disease and death retire-
And murmuring demons hate him and admire.'

The benevolent spirit, as its object is the happiness of all who are capable of feeling happiness, is as universal in its efforts as are the miseries which are capable of being relieved, or the enjoyments which it is possible to extend to a single human being, within the reach of its efforts, or almost of its wishes. When we speak of benefactions, indeed, we think only of one species of good action; and charity itself, so comprehensive in its etymological meaning, is used as if it were nearly synonymous with the mere opening of the purse. But "it is not money only which the unfortunate need; and they are but sluggards in well-doing," as Rousseau strikingly expresses the character of this indolent benevolence, "who know to do good only when they have a purse in their hand." Consolations, counsels, cares, friendship, protection, are so many resources which pity leaves us for the assistance of the indigent, even though wealth should be wanting. The oppressed often continue to be oppressed, merely because they are without an organ to render their complaints known to those who have the power of succor. It requires sometimes but a word which they cannot say; a reason which they know not how to state; the opening of a single door of a great man, through which they are not permitted to pass, to obtain for them all of which they are in need. The intrepid support of a disinterested virtue is, in such cases, able to remove an infinity of obstacles: and the eloquence of a single good man, in the cause of the injured, can appal tyranny itself in the midst of its power.

THE GOODNESS OF GOD.

The goodness of God is, of all subjects of inquiry, that which is most interesting to us. It is the goodness of him to whom we owe, not merely that we exist, but that we are happy or miserable now, and according to which we are to hope or fear for a future, that is not limited to a few years, but extends through all the ages of immortality. Have we, then, reason to believe that God is good? that the designing power, which it is impossible for us not to perceive and admit, is a power of cruelty or kindness? Of whom is this the question? of those whose whole life has been a

Darwin's Botanic Garden.

continued display of the bountiful provision of Heaven from the first moment at which life began.

It is the inquiry of those who, by the goodness of that God whose goodness they question, found, on their very entrance into this scene of life, sources of friendship already provided for them, merely because they had wants that already required friendshipwhose first years were years of cheerfulness almost uninterrupted, as if existence were all that is necessary for happiness-to whom, in after life, almost every exertion which they were capable of making was a pleasure, and almost every object which met their eye a sense of direct gratification, or of knowledge, which was itself delightful-who were not formed to be only thus selfishly happy, but seemed called, by some propitious voice of nature, to the diffusion of happiness, by the enjoyment which arose from that very diffusion-and warned from injuring others, by the pain which accompanied the very wish of doing evil, and the still greater pain of remorse, when evil had at any time been intentionally inflicted. Nor is it to be counted a slight part of the goodness of God that he has given us that very goodness as an object of our thought, and has thus opened to us, inexhaustibly, a pure and sublime pleasure in the contemplation of those divine qualities which are themselves the source of all the pleasures that we feel.

Such is the goodness of God, in its relation to mankind, in infancy, in manhood, in every period of life. But we are not to

think that the goodness of God extends only to man.

The hum

blest life, which man despises, is not despised by him who made man of nothing, and all things of nothing, and "whose tender mercies are over all his works."

Has God, thou fool, work'd solely for thy good?
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spread the flowery lawn.
Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompously bestride
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?

The birds of Heaven shall vindicate their grain.1

In vain do we strive to represent to ourselves all nature as our own, and only our own. The happiness which we see the other races around us enjoying is a proof that it is theirs as well as ours;

Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. III. v. 27-38.