removed from the wanton and unmeaning defiance of probabilities. The beautiful tale of Grantley Manor' before referred to, may serve to illustrate the difference between the two cases. The evident aim of the writer of this story was to set before us the highest perfection of which the female character is capable; and her deep acquaintance with spiritualism taught her, that in order to attain it, she must surround her heroine with difficulties and trials. Hence we have a character which, to many persons, seems unnatural, but which, in fact, is simply uncommon; and uncommon only because we do not accustom ourselves to regard the whole of our life as a sacrifice to be offered up on the altar of Duty. In this book, the meaning and purpose of every trial are as evident in their development as if they had been set down in so many words; and the author is fully justified in having had recourse to unusual circumstances, since her end could not possibly have been attained without them.

One other mistake remains to be noticed before the subject can be dismissed with a clear conscience; viz. the imperfect conceptions concering Love and Marriage which the greater number of fictions are calculated to inspire. With regard to Love, the most common errors consist in making it a matter of passion rather than affection, and in looking upon it, not as a means of moral and spiritual advancement, but as forming in itself the great end and aim of life. That, for a certain time, it should appear so to the parties interested, is doubtless natural enough; but, by degrees, their eyes will be opened to the selfishness of the mere feeling, and they will understand that true Love is no dainty holiday guest; but a companion to guide and support our steps in the rough and thorny pathways of life. They will see that one principal reason why they have been taught to sympathize with one, is that they may extend this sympathy to others; and that the highest point of love has never been attained until we have kindly words, and sweet and gentle looks, for all whom God's providence has placed around us.

The peculiar idea of Love entertained by a writer of fictions, must materially influence his opinion of Marriage. In all cases where Love is regarded as the end of life, Marriage becomes a dull and common-place affair; the halo which had hitherto surrounded the lovers forsakes them at the church-porch, or, at the utmost, just survives the honey-moon and tour. How few writers ever venture to meddle at all with Married-life! It is too tedious' for a 'tale'!

Of the many benefits for which Fiction is indebted to Miss Bremer, not the least is her fondness for interesting us in stories of married life. She is never afraid to make hero and heroine out of husband and wife; and tho we lose by this means the mere excitement of the ultra-romance school, we gain a quiet and gentle interest which is far more conducive to our spiritual health.

May we be suffered, by way of peroration to these discursive remarks, to suggest what just now appears to be the great requisite of Fiction:-That it shall descend from the solitary grandeur in which it has so long been content to sit, and take possession of the broad realm of every-day life: That it shall teach the equal nobleness of all orders and conditions, and the sinful folly of the sense in which we use the word 'common-place.'

Our concluding thought we will translate into the eloquent words of one who has seen deeply into the true nature of Fiction.

с

Perhaps, gentle reader, thou art one of those who think the days of romance gone for ever. Believe it not! Oh, believe it not! Thou hast at this moment in thy heart as sweet a romance as ever was written. Thou art not less a woman because thou dost not sit aloft in a tower, with a tassel gentle on thy wrist! Thou art not less a man because thou wearest no hauberk, nor mail-sark, and goest not on horse back after foolish adventures! Nay, nay! Every one has a romance in his own heart. All that has blessed or awed the world lies there; and

"The oracle within him, that which lives,

He must invoke and question-not dead books,
Not ordinances, not mould-rotten papers.'

• Professor Longfellow, in his Hyperion.

E. J.

DEPRESSION.

F thou art miserable and dost find

Thy heart's flow and its fair outcomings cease,
Nor song nor earth nor sky nor summer breeze

Delighting as of old thy sense and mind,

Filling them with true gladness unconfin'd;

Know that the cause and blame of this decease

Of inner joy, lies (tho the speech displease
Thee) with no one but thyself. For all-kind
Nature brooks not her children pay the smart
For other faults than those themselves commit.
In harmony, friend, with thyself thou art
Not. Some broken law has issued its writ
Against thee. With thy hand or mouth or heart
Thou hast left undone or misdone. No wit
Of man can therefore save thee from the dart
Of injured Conscience, which doth ever hit
Some sore, and to the bosom pangs impart
Sin's world-old tax and retribution fit.

A. K.

NOTES IN THE FIELDS.

N an evening early in June, I was reading in the fields that noble passage upon skies, pages 204, 205 of 'Modern Painters'. Its force and truth penetrated to the depths of my being, and I turned to the sky determined to watch it as I had never done before.

With the skies of night I had long been familiar: I had seen them under all aspects, from the leaden grey of the biting east wind, to the firmament without a cloud, with all its 'troops of stars'. But at such seasons we cannot describe on the spot, and our impressions are either less vivid, or mingled with grosser hues ere we are in circumstances to do so. 'Let it be things of earth, and the more they are idealized by taking their place in the memory, the better.' But thought cannot add holiness to the stars. Their rays teach a higher purity to minds of the purest cast-their light shines ever bright and undimmed, tho hidden from us by the vapors of earth-they are above us and beyond us for ever! Serene, unobtrusive, beautiful and inaccessible, they shed their pure rays nightly, on the sons and daughters of time.

But hitherto daylight had brought such manifold beauty, the fresh green of the woods, with its infinitely varied hues-the young flowers springing by the water courses, among the lush grass-the mingling music of the song of birds, and the river's low sweet chimes-that the sky, however fine, had been beheld only as a part, a thing to dispense the gladness of sunshine, or the pensive sadness of shade. But now I resolved to make the sky the main object of observation—to sce all others only as they were influenced by it, or were summoned into my mind by its changes. It was indeed a pure and holy contemplation! Never shall I forget that sweet evening! Not three miles from a great commercial city, around me a landscape not strikingly picturesque, I spent two hours in the most exquisite enjoyment. My mind, calm, serene as the sky on which I gazed, went not back to the past, looked not forward to the future; I seemed to partake of that rest which is promised to the good-I could apprehend the nowness of Eternity.

I sat on elevated ground, by the side of a field of young wheat. Among the trees and underwood were many warblers, but over them all was heard the lark, who kept singing his ever pleasing song, which sounds joyous when we are joyous, and sad when we are sad; the clouds were all behind the sun, save one or two faint streaks that crossed his centre, somewhat like Jupiter's belts; overhead was the distant blue, with a thin veil of white broken at intervals; and nearer still, streaks and masses of neutral tints, getting more crowded and dense towards the north. As the sun slowly sank, the southern sky fell into lines of pale brown and dusky white, like the ripple mark on the sands when the tide has receded; and along the lower and warmer side of this curtain, rose the vapors of the distant town. I turned, and how the sun had changed! Gone all bands, all shadA sphere of molten gold was surrounded by burnished masses, ever changing, yet ever glorious. Now he is down, down, down, but he has left his burning kiss on the clouds, and I can follow him in thought to other regions :

OWS.

'Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in. The east sent up streaks of fantastic form to gaze on him and to be warmed by his beams; higher and higher they rose, deepening in hue as they approached him. His halo became paler and paler, and now all is grey. The lark sank into his nest, and his note gave place to the birds of twilight that began to pipe across the fields. That hush was abroad over Nature which follows the setting of the sun, and the sleeping flowers gathered up their rays for the night. How peaceful, in the grey twilight, seemed the distant town! I dared not, in such holy mood, dwell on the sin and sorrow that might be lurking there. The mind, harmonized by the calm and holy aspect of nature, rose above the circumstances of sorrow and degradation-for such there was found no place. A low wind passed over the young grain, and gently stirred the leaves of the trees. I caught the soft whisper; it was to me, very literally, the voices of Angels. I rose to depart. The twilight had deepened-the western sky had become colder and more distant-the clouds were all gone, and in the focus of the pale light of the Zodiac, gleamed the planet Venus. I gazed yet awhile longer, watching the approach of 'Great, still night.'

Already the Mars-like Arcturus was high in the East, and the larger stars of the circumpolar constellations gleamed thrö.

And every night is thus beautiful, thought I-but, alas! not on every night is the ladder placed between us and heaven, for the angels of God to ascend and descend. Yet let us treasure such hours; they are to us isles of Peace on the troubled waters of Life, enabling us to say, with renewed faith, 'Thou hast granted me life and favor, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.'

K. B.

TRUE HUMILITY.

Genuine humility consists in a just estimation of our individual powers-in thinking the truth concerning our actual relationships to God and Man. It is the joint result of a Wise Benevolence and a subordinated Self-Love. The just Self-Thinker, is the truly Humble, Tolerant, and Truthful Man; because in him Self-Love exerts no undue influence over his judgments and actions. The humble man is therefore the truly independent man,-a self-respecter of the laws and liberties of his own Being a sacred respecter also of the rights and faculties of his Neighbor. A wilful blindness to our own capacity, character, and claims, is an ungrateful denial of the best gifts of God. To be thoroly sound, humility must be thoroly truthful. Hence real humility demands a just and truthful estimate of ourselves, both as the ground for a grateful acknowlegement of the Divine mercies, and as the stimulus to an useful exercise of the highest talents entrusted to our care. Wisely said an Ancient Transcendentalist—the inspired Son of Sirach- Glorify thy soul in meekness, and give it honor according to the dignity thereof. In every good work TRUST THY OWN SOUL, for this is the keeping of the commandments.' Tho (for obvious reasons) hated, denounced, and belied by Priests and Priest-made Weaklings, the doctrine of Selfreliance is one with Divine Humility.

F. R. L.

M

THE TRUE CATHOLIC RELIGION.

A LECTURE BY WILLIAM MACCALL.

HE most important religious controversy of the day relates to the claims which the Puseyite party in the Church of England have for some years so pertinaciously asserted and so ostentatiously paraded. Except where childishly, and with most anile and antiquated ignorance, this controversy has stirred up a few strong popular prejudices, it has excited little interest in the bosom of the people. Nor is it ever likely to leaven and rouse them much, unless some unexpected contingency call forth an explosion of antagonism, the last outpouring of vitality from exhausted Protestantism. Puseyism, whatever its merits and demerits, and I have not been slow to admit and to honor the former, is the subtile speculation, the mystic dream of the studious, not the divine response to a deep human yearning. It is more imaginative than passionate, and therefore can never of itself constitute a revolution. Its significance lies not so much in what it is or does, or is destined to become or to cause, as in what it indicates. And he who is not willing to ponder its indications can neither understand the actual movements, nor work for the future progress, of the world. Its unconscious mission is great, just in the degree that its conscious mission is small. Its conscious mission is theological, its unconscious mission is æsthetical, and its æsthetical influences will go forth the more invincibly the more strenuously its theological pretensions are denied. Viewed simply as an attempt to revive a defunct infallibility it will go the way of all other infallibilities; but viewed in relation to the aesthetical culture which it is certain largely to bestow on our country, we are justified in classing it among the most potent and blissful agencies of civilization.

The grand assumption of Puseyism is, that the Church of England is the only true Catholic Church. The boundless authority of the priesthood, auricular confession, exorcism, and other doctrines, forms, and institutions, we may readily admit, provided we yield our assent to that primal assumption. The Popish Church has hitherto assumed to be The Only True Catholic Church, and treated all other Churches as audacious rebels. Now, with most amusing impudence and with an astounding forgetfulness of the fact that we are not living in Ancient Egypt but in Modern England, not in an age of pyramids but of printing machines, Puseyism attempts to grasp the monopoly of truth and catholicity, and with arrogance sublime from its very absurdity, designates the Popish Church-the Romish Schism! But the Popish Church is not disposed quietly to surrender its title of the only True and Catholic, merely to oblige a handful of Oxford bookworms, who, perched on heaps of huge folios in musty libraries, craze themselves into the belief that they are sitting on the exalted throne of an unlimited spiritual monarchy. Thus we have a brace of True Catholic Churches instead of one, each denouncing the other, and everything else, as schismatic and heretical. It would