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unbroken struggle-one ardent sigh. There is the same unity of interest in the life of a great verbal scholar, or of a true miser; the same singleness of purpose, which gives solidity to floating minutes, hours,

and years.

A great lawyer deserves an eminent rank among true livers. We do not mean a political adventurer, who breathes feverishly amidst the contests, and intrigues, and petty triumphs of party; nor a dabbler in criticism, poetry, or the drama; nor even a popular nisi-prius advocate, who passes through a succession of hasty toils and violent excitements to fortune and to oblivion. But we have respect to the real dull plodder-to him who has bidden an early "farewell to his Muse," if he ever had one; who counts on years of solitary study, and shrinks not back; who proceeds, step by step, through the mighty maze with a cheerful heart, and counts on his distant success with mathematical precision. His industry and self-denial are powers as true as fancy or eloquence, and he soon learns to take as hearty a pleasure in their exercise. His retrospect is vast and single-of doubts solved, stoutest books mastered, nicest webs disentangled, and all from one intelligible motive which grows old with him, and, though it "strengthened with his strength," will not diminish with his decline. It is better in the end to have had the pathway of life circumscribed and railed in by forms and narrow observances, than to have strayed at will about the vast field open to human enterprise, in the freest and most graceful wanderings; because in the latter case we cannot trace our road again, or call it over; while in the first, we see it distinctly to the last, and can linger in thought over all the spots where our feet have trodden. The "old names" bring back the "old instincts" to our hearts. Instead of faint sympathies with a multitude of things, a kind of small partnership with thousands in certain general dogmas and speculations, we have all our own past individual being as a solid and abiding possession.

In

A metaphysician who thinks earnestly and intensely for himself, may truly be said to live long. He has this great advantage over the most felicitous inventor of machinery, or the most acute of scientific inquirers, that all his discoveries have a personal interest; he has his existence for his living study; his own heart is the mighty problem on which he meditates, and the "exceeding great reward" of his victories. a moment of happy thought he may attain conquests, "compared to which the laurels which a Cæsar reaps are weeds. Years of anxious thought are rewarded by the attainment of one triumphant certainty, which immediately gives a key to the solution of a thousand pregnant doubts and mysteries, and enables him almost to "curdle a long life into an hour." When he has, after long pursued and baffled endeavours, rolled aside some huge difficulty which lay in his path, he will find beneath it a passage to the bright subtleties of his nature, through which he may range at will, and gather immortal fruits, like Aladdin in the subterranean gardens. He counts his life thus not only by the steps which he has taken, but by the vast prospects which, at every turn of his journey, have recompensed his toils, over which he has diffused his spirit as he went on his way rejoicing. We will conclude this article

with the estimate made of life from his own experience by one of the most profound and original of thinkers.

"It is little, it is short, it is not worth having—if we take the last hour, and leave out all that has gone before, which has been one way of looking at the subject. Such calculators seem to say that life is nothing when it is over; and that may, in their sense, be true. If the old rule-Respice finem-were to be made absolute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate till the day of his death, there are few among us whose existence would, upon such conditions, be much to be envied. But this is not a fair view of the case. A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the candle; and this I say is considerable, and not a little matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary, from our own superannuated desires or forgetful indifference, is about as reasonable as to say, a man never was young because he is grown old, or never lived because he is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor the last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two-not our exit, nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think while there-that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed, it would be easy to shew that it is the very extent of human life, the infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the hours, months, years, spent in one fond pursuit after another; that it is, in a word, the length of our common journey, and the quantity of events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing! It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvass would be big enough to hold its striking groups, its endless objects! It is light as vanity; and yet, if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart-aches were compressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed with the blow! What a huge heap, a huge, dumb heap,' of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is composed of! How many ideas and trains of sentiment, long, deep, and intense, often pass through the mind in one day's thinking or reading for instance! How many such days are there in a year, how many years in a long life, still occupied with something interesting-still recalling some old impression-still recurring to some difficult question, and making progress in it, every step accompanied with a sense of power, and every moment conscious of the high endeavour or the glad success;' for the mind seizes only on that which keeps it employed, and is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excitement by the necessity of its own nature.”—Hazlitt's Table Talk, Essay 6.

T. N. T.

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DWARFS.

"Illum omnis tectis agrisque effusa juventus

Turbaque miratur matrum, et prospectat euntem
Attonitis inhians animis."

THERE appears to be no reason drawn from either physiology or analogy, why the most astonishing powers of intellect, the soundest sense, the most luxuriant imagination, should not take up their abode in those abridgments of human nature, called Dwarfs. Even were we so unhappy as to yield our assent to the startling and humiliating propositions," that medullary substance is capable of sensation and thought," "that the phenomena of mind result entirely from bodily structure," and "that Shakspeare's and Newton's superiority consisted only in having an extra inch of brain in the right place," we might still stand up in support of the mental capabilities of the pigmy race. Messrs. Lawrence, Spurzheim, &c. must confess, that the brain of a Dwarf bears, at least, the same proportion to the weight of his whole body as that of a full-grown man, and, in many instances, a much larger, if we were permitted to judge from the size of the casket which contains it. Large heads, however, are almost proverbially indicative of small brains; and those little beings whose Lilliputian character has been stamped, not by injury prior or subsequent to birth, but by the finger of Nature herself, are often beautifully proportioned in every respect, perfect and pleasing miniatures of the human animal. If, from speculating on the possibility of having dwarf statesmen, philosophers, and poets, we proceed to inquire into the results of actual experience, we shall indeed find less reason to expect a Locke thirty inches high, or an epic poem written by fingers no thicker than a goose-quill. Among all those human toys that have at different times amused Romans and children, carried knights' shields, and ladies' loveletters, told monarchs unpalatable truths, and danced hornpipes upon tables, we cannot remember one distinguished by higher mental powers than were sufficient to produce a timely jest or smart repartee, while numbers of the dwarfish tribe have ranked yet lower in the scale of intellect. Genius, indeed, would be no compensation for tiny stature; on the contrary, it would considerably aggravate the misfortune of personal singularity. That acute sensibility, that proud consciousness of superiority, which usually accompany strong mental powers, would for ever torment and distress the tenant of a ridiculously small body: he would be angered by the coaxing tone of familiarity which it is scarcely possible to avoid when addressing a little creature of childish proportions, he would indignantly spurn the privileges to which diminutive size could alone entitle him, and perhaps reject the proffered kiss of rank and beauty, which would not be offered were he three feet taller, and which, if three feet taller, he would consider worth an age of homage and exertion,--a guerdon, "Tal che nel fuoco faria l'uom felice." The pointing finger of vulgar astonishment would outweigh the applause of the learned, and wreaths of bay and laurel would not console him for the impossibility of walking through a town without a troop of rude gazers at his heels. Better, happier is it for Dwarfs,

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