panied with great danger. In storms at sea, human efforts produce but dubious results; and little real protection can be sought for from the rage of the elements. Under these circumstances man feels his weakness, and that there is a Power greatly stronger than himselfsome agency wielded and directed against him-whose behests the winds and waves unerringly obey.

The natural result of this is, that the fisherman is a close observer of omens, and a firm believer in visions and wraiths. He spiritualizes everything he sees. Plying his precarious profession at all times of the night, amid the scenes of former disasters-uninformed and credulous, and with the recollection of the dead vividly impressed on his memory-he is placed exactly in those circumstances in which most may be made of those rarer phenomena of sky and sea, which, seen through the medium of his superstitious emotions, occupy a picturesque place in the chronicles of his race. The ignis fatuus of some landlocked bay, the shooting meteor, the spectral-looking mist-wreath, the awakened seal, the sudden plunge of the porpoise, the wailing scream of the various kinds of water-fowl, are all full of meaning to his lively imagination, and are constantly associated in his mind with certain events which may hourly befall him. Often the superstitious notions of the fisherman assume a strongly-marked mythological form. He addresses himself to the blind powers of nature, as if they were imbued with instinct and life, and possessed a governing will. He prays to the wind in his own language; hẹ whistles to invoke the breeze when his sails slacken; and likewise tries to soothe the boisterous surges, by using a low moaning chant.

AN AUTUMN DAY WITH SOME OF THE SCHOLASTIC DOCTORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

AN autumn day, representative of nature, both sunny and vital, seems out of character with the literary men of the dark ages. We naturally and insensibly associate the gloomy and dismal with everything appertaining to them. There is neither light nor warmth in such a region. We conceive nature never to have smiled during their long reign. We cannot fancy how there was summer and winter, seed-time and harvest; how flowers grew and trees blossomed; how joy and festivity ever resounded in the dwellings of men; or how the orb of day ever gained a mastery over the dense mass of vapours which had hid his bright face from gladdening a lovely universe. One continued night reigned over the then civilized world. The mind of man was dwarfed into a knotty and crabbed production. It never soared into the ethereal, the grand, the imaginative, or the lovely. Year after year, and century after century, found it clothed in some poverty-stricken dress, performing its daily monotonous duties of juggling with words, and of defining what could never be defined. The scholastics were all head but no heart. The deep sympathies of human nature were dried up in them. If ever felt, it

was only by stealth. The learned dignitaries neither laughed nor sang; neither married nor were given in marriage, though they bore but little resemblance to the angels in heaven. We never see anything but the naked and blanched bones of dialectics; never get beyond the sounds of snarling discussions and verbal logomachies.

Such are the leading conceptions which ninety-nine out of every hundred of the reading and thinking part of the community entertain of middle-age lore, and middleage writers. The general current and spirit of history has indelibly stamped this on the modern intellect. Hence it is that these learned doctors have been a standing jest for the lively and humorous spirits of modern times. To extract anything light and amusing-anything to while away a dull hour, or relieve the tension of an overstrained brain, from Rosellinus, Gilbert de Porée, or Thomas Aquinas, were to attempt to draw blood from a whinstone. Like all general conclusions, however, this has its exceptions. The long disputes of the middle ages had their uses in the mental economy of our race. Men of genius were struck out by the collision of the conflict; great ideas were developed and distinguished; thought was refined and subtilized; and the doctrinal parts of all branches of knowledge-for they all have their doctrines -were more and more accurately defined and mapped out. Leibnitz was the first of modern philosophers to maintain that hidden treasures would be found amidst the voluminous speculations of the scholastic thinkers; and the attempts which of late years have been made in several countries of Europe, particularly in France, to make excursions into the neglected regions of learning,

have thrown a light on the subject, both novel and pleasing. We find many of the erudite doctors men of shrewd intellect on matters of every-day observation. They occasionally took rambles into the light and by-paths of literature, and composed small tracts on questions of ordinary life, with considerable discrimination, critical taste, and piquancy.

With these sentiments and opinions we have approached these venerable doctors of the schools this glorious autumn day. The sun comes, but the wind comes like cool wine, and when contrasted with the hundred folios, which chance, in our present location, has laid at our feet, the self-imposed task may seem one rather of sheer punishment than pleasure. But not so to our taste. This is not time thrown away, nor labour uselessly undertaken. We opine, perhaps, that our residence among the mountains has something to do with our tastes at this juncture. We love the refreshing breeze which rushes through their defiles. It strengthens our nerves for action, and makes contemplation doubly grateful and enticing. Nature is never sad. She has a joyousness of spirit that knows no limits. In all her phases she speaks to the heart and affections, and imparts to them the most exquisite pleasure. We fancy, therefore, our present labour is, in some degree, in unison. with her suggestions. The heathy moors, the solitary wastes, the barren and frowning mountains, those dells and caves seldom frequented by the foot of man, light up a certain kind of enthusiasm in the soul, not unlike or uncongenial to the huge and comparatively arid ranges of scholastic erudition. We instinctively seize these

analogies of nature; they form the stepping-stones for us in the path of life.

In a recent examination of some manuscripts in Paris, ascribed to the pen of Rosellinus, French critics have discovered several detached pieces of writing, which display a lively turn of mind, altogether apart from the usual topics of scholastic abstraction and interest. In a short essay, entitled "Aphorisms," we have the following observations from this early and well-known schoolman :

upon

ON THE IMAGINATION.-There never was a greater fallacy than that indulged in by many heavy-headed people, that the exercise of the fancy or imagination is, for the most part, useless or dangerous. It would be as wise to say that painting and sculpture are useless, or that narrative or description are useless; for what are the offices of these? To place before the mind's eye one or more events or objects in so striking a manner that a strong moral effect is produced, and the lesson of history or of real philosophy is impressed with tenfold force him who reads and sees. To do these things at all, a fine imagination is requisite. He who groups or paints a historical picture, must first conjure up in his own mind the whole visible scene he is to portray; and he who essays to write a fine historical narrative, must, by the force of fancy, himself became an actor in the scene, and mingle personally, as it were, in the moving currents of events. But the fancy or imagination can do more than this: it can, out of materials of its own, construct an edifice almost as morally useful as truth itself; and by the skilful application of vivid allegory or fictitious narrative, expose vice or wretchedness in their blackest de