loses the value of momentum; a light foot bounds over the ground, and a willing hand lifts without measuring the weight. Hood sang mournfully The year's in the wane, There is nothing adorning; The night has no eve, And the day has no morning- He who thinks cold feels cold; a warm heart sends a glow of heat through the whole body. The poor little flies dropping about numbed and exhausted, with no power to resist the cold, with no vigour to repel the destroying hand of Death, call to mind the mental and moral condition of many feeble natures, to whom the approach of winter is like the drawing of a great dark pall over the face of Nature. Such faint hearts sicken and fail at the moment when brave spirits find a fresh motive for exertion, and, acting, live. It is the dead point of the year with us. To call up new energy and crest the wave should be the aim of all. XXXVII. MERRY-MAKING-A HOMILY FOR THE OLD. AMONG the sagacious and cynical observations credited to Sir George Cornewall Lewis is one to the effect that Life would be tolerable but for its amusements. We venture to think it would be intolerable without them. Some lugubrious or exceedingly learned people are perpetually spoiling sport by uncomfortably wise reflections about folly and childishness, and trying to make the young and careless think that happiness is composed of intense solidity, ceaseless thoughtfulness, and the sort of propriety which consists in sitting quite still and looking very sedate, as though goodness and gloom were twin-virtues, bound up together, and bound to live and die together. What a dolorous world this would be if the "goody-goody" folk, with their notions, could have their way! It would not be a whit purer or really more "proper," for all the former professions and pretensions they would encourage and claim for us. The pride that apes humility is especially contemptible; and the piety that prompts men and women to prate incessantly of self-denial is suspicious enough to raise a question of self-deception or insincerity. There is so much necessary shade in the world that one may be forgiven for doubting the sanity of those who affect to dislike the sunshine. Asceticism is an insult to the Creator, who made everything pleasant to the eye and agreeable to the taste. All that is sad or mournful in life, all that is depressing and distressing in the scenes and circumstances that surround us, comes from man, is the fruit of his sin-that is, of his imprudence, his misuse of the objects and opportunities made to minister to his comfort. is a strangely perverted form of gratitude and reverence which offers pain and unhappiness as a tribute to the God of peace, joy, good-will, and supreme felicity. The ecstasy of unworldly rap X That ture is, if possible, a worse state of mind than melancholy devotion. It is an utterly morbid condition, in which the emotional nature is overpowered either by maudlin sentiment acting on a weak mind or by a brain disordered by bodily disease. The ecstasies so belauded by sectarian fanaticism are, in truth, paroxysms of unhealthy day-dreaminess, induced by a wilful abnegation of common sense, or the consequences of mental and physical debility which real friends, instead of fostering, should strive to relieve. True religion, the religion of common life, is as far removed from sentiment as genuine Christianity from cant. "To be good is to be happy "-happy because good wishes can be happily gratified. Self-denial implies either that self desires something which is not good or that the self-denier is making or seeking to make—a merit of folly. If self longs for evil, a good man will be very much ashamed of self; and a prudent one will not prattle of self-denial, because he will perceive that it involves the confession that self desires something which it is not right or good to have. To go about talking of self-denial is as silly as it would be to say "I want to have and do what is so wrong that I must deny myself." To refuse self a lawful pleasure is to injure self and insult the Deity, who has given men all things lawfully to enjoy. The pretence that God will be pleased with such an act of self-denial is as obvious a piece of folly as to imagine that a kind benefactor would be gratified if, instead of enjoying his good gifts, those upon whom they were bestowed brought them back with a long face, and prayed the benevolent giver to accept the homage of refusal as a token of respect. It needs only a moment's reflection to see how preposterous such an act of presumption and effrontery would be. Let those who preach and teach a gospel of lugubrious and self-denying austerity, throw tradition aside and betake them straight "to the Law and the testimony." They will not find their warrant in Scripture; and there is no light in their vain philosophy. The world was once, we are told, all happiness. The shadows only cooled the day and heightened the brightness of the joyous scene. Children, with happy, honest hearts and frank faces, hilarious and |