wider than theirs, and whose force is less; but the want of spiritual and imaginative wisdom will stop them there; and the understandings, from which mankind will seek a permanent and authentic guidance, will be those which have been exalted by love and enlarged by humility.

If wisdom be defeated by ambition and self-love, when these are occupied with the mere inward consciousness of intellectual power, still more is it so when they are eager to obtain recognition and admiration from without. Men who are accustomed to write or speak for effect, may write or speak what is wise from time to time, because they may be capable of thinking and intellectually adopting what is wise but they will not be wise men; because the love of God, the love of man, and the love of truth, not having the mastery with them, the growth and structure of their minds must needs be perverted if not stunted. Thence it is that so many men are observed to speak wisely and yet act foolishly; they are not deficient in their understandings, but the wisdom of the heart is wanting to their ends and objects, and to those feelings which have the direction of their acts. And if they do speak wisely, it is not because they are wise; for the permanent shape and organization of the mind proceeds from what we feel and do, and not from what we speak, write, or think. There is a great volume of truth in the admonition which teaches us that the spirit of obedience is to prepare the way, action to come next, and that knowledge is not precedent to these, but consequent: "Do the will of my Father which is in heaven, and thou shalt know of the doctrine."

Those who are much conversant with intellectual men will observe, I think, that the particular action of self-love, by which their minds are most frequently warped from wisdom, is that which belongs to a pride and pleasure taken in the exercise of the argumentative faculty; whence it arises, that that faculty is enabled to assert a predominance over its betters. With such men, the elements of a question which will make effect in argument,-those which are, so far as they go, demonstrative,— will be rated above their value; and those which are matter of proportion and degree, not palpable, ponderable, or easily or shortly producible in words, or which are matters of moral estimation and optional opinion, will go for less than they are worth, because they are not available to insure the victory or grace the triumph of a disputant.

In some discussions, a wise man will be silenced by argumentation, only because he knows that the question should be determined by considerations which lie beyond the reach of argumentative exhibition. And, indeed, in all but purely scientific questions, arguments are not to be submitted to by the judgment as first in command; rather they are to be used as auxiliaries and pioneers; the judgment should profit by them to the extent of the services they can render, but after their work is done, it should come to its conclusions upon its own free survey. I have seldom known a man with great powers of argumentation abundantly indulged, who could attain to an habitually just judgment. In our courts of law, where advocacy and debate are most in use, ability, sagacity, and intellectual power flourish and abound, whilst wisdom is said to have been disbarred. In our houses of parliament the case is somewhat otherwise; the silent members, and those that take but little part in the debate, and indeed the country at large which may be said to listen, exercise some subduing influence over the spirit of argumentation, and the responsibility for results restrains it, so that here its predominance is much less than in the courts of law; yet even in the houses of parliament wisdom has been supposed to have less to say to the proceedings than a certain species of courage.

Ambition and self-love will commonly derange that proportion between the active and passive understanding which is essential to wisdom, and will lead a man to value thoughts and opinions less according to their worth and truth, than according

as they are his own or another's. The objection made by Brutus to Cicero in the play, that he "would never follow anything which other men began," points to one corruption operated by self-love upon a great understanding. Some preference a man may reasonably accord to what is the growth of his own mind apart from its absolute value, on the ground of its specific usefulness to himself; for what is native to the soil will thrive better and bear more fruit than what has been transplanted : but, on the other hand, if a man would enlarge the scope and diversify the kinds of his thoughts and contemplations, he should not think too much to apprehend, nor talk too much to listen. He should cherish the thoughts of his own begetting with a living care and a temperate discipline-they are the family of his mind and his chief reliance-but he should give a hospitable reception to guests and to travellers with stories of far countries, and the family should not be suffered to crowd the doors.

Even without the stimulant of self-love, some minds, owing to a natural redundance of activity and excess of velocity and fertility, cannot be sufficiently passive to be wise. A capability to take a thousand views of a subject is hard to be reconciled with directness and singleness of judgment; and he who can find a great deal to say for any view, will not often go the straight road to the one view that is right. If subtlety be added to exuberance, the judgment is still more endangered

"Tell Wit how oft she wrangle

In tickel points of niceness,
Tell Wisdom she entangles

Herself in over-wiseness."*

But when self-love is not at the root, there is better hope for wisdom. Nature presents us with various walks of intellectual life, and such a selection may be made as shall render a disproportion of the active to the passive intellect less dangerous. Speculative wisdom will suffer less by excess of thinking than practical wisdom. There are fields to be fought in which a wide range is more essential than an unerring aim. In some regions we are to cultivate the surface; in others to sink the shart. No one intellect can be equally available for opposite avocations, and where there is no interference of self-love, wisdom will be attained through a wise choice of work. One eminent man of our time has said of another, that "science was his forte, and omni-science his foible." But that instance was not an extreme one. Cases have occurred in which wisdom has suffered total overthrow; the greatest intellect and the greatest folly have been known to meet; and the universalist, who handles everything and embraces nothing, has been seen to pass into a pursuer of the mere vanities and frivolities of intellectual display.

If, however, a man of genius be fortunately free from ambition, there is yet another enemy which will commonly lie in wait for his wisdom; to wit, a great capacity of enjoyment. This generally accompanies geniuses, and is, perhaps, the greatest of all trials to the moral and spiritual heart. It was a trial too severe even for Solomon,

"whose heart, though large,
Beguiled by fair Idolatresses, fell
To idols foul." +

The temptation by which such a man is assailed consists in imagining that he nas within himself, and by virtue of his temperament, sources of joy altogether independent of conduct and circumstances. It is true that he has these sources on this unconditional tenure for a time; and it is owing to this very truth that his

futurity is in danger, not in respect of wisdom only, but also in respect of happiness. And if we look to recorded examples, we shall find that a great capacity of enjoyment does ordinarily bring about the destruction of enjoyment in its own ulterior consequences, having uprooted wisdom by the way.

A man of genius, so gifted-or, let us rather say, so tempted-lives, until the consummation approaches, as if he possessed some elixir or phylactery, reckless of consequences, because his happiness, being so inward to his nature, seems to be inherent and indefeasible. Wisdom is not wanted. The intellect, perhaps, amidst the abundance of its joys, rejoices in wise contemplations; but wisdom is not adopted and domesticated in the mind, owing to the fearlessness of the heart. For wisdom will have no hold of the heart in which joy is not tempered by fear. The fear of the Lord, we know, is the beginning of it; and some hallowing and chastening influences of fear will always go along with it. Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight; spiritual fear, of a foresight which reaches beyond the grave; temporal fear, of a foresight that falls short: but without fear there is neither the one foresight nor the other; and as pain has been truly said to be the deepest thing in our nature, so is it fear that will bring the depths of our nature within our knowledge:

"What sees rejoicing genius in the earth?

A thousand meadows with a thousand herds
Freshly luxuriant in a May-day dawn;
A thousand ships that caracole and prance
With freights of gold upon a sunny sea;

A thousand gardens gladdened by all flowers

That on the air breathe out an odorous beauty."

Genius may see all this and rejoice; but it will not exalt itself into wisdom, unless it see also the meadow in the livid lines of winter, the ship under bare poles, and the flower when the beauty of the fashion of it perishes.

It is true, however, that the cases are rare and exceptional in which this dangerous capacity of enjoyment is an unbroken habit, so as to bring a steady and continuous pressure upon the moral mind. A great capacity of suffering belongs to genius also; and it has been observed that an alternation of joyfulness and dejection is quite as characteristic of the man of genius as intensity in either kind. Doubtless these alternations will greatly enlarge his knowledge both of man and of the universe. The many moods of his own mind will give him a penetrating and experienced insight into many minds; and he will contemplate the universe and all that goes on in it from many points of view. Moreover, it is by reaction from the extreme of one state, that the mind receives the most powerful impulse towards another-in resilience, that it has its plenary force. But, though these alternations of excess do thus enlarge and enrich the understanding, and minister to wisdom so far forth, they must yet, by the shocks which they occasion to the moral will, do injury on the whole to that composite edifice, built up of the moral and rational mind, in which wisdom has her dwelling. The injury is not so great as in the other case: better are winter and summer for the mind than the torrid zonefeasts and fasts than a perpetual plenty-but either way the temperament of genius is hardly ever favourable to wisdom; that is, the highest order of genius, or that which includes wisdom, is of all things the most rare.

On the other hand, wisdom without genius (a far more precious gift than genius without wisdom) is, by God's blessing upon the humble and loving heart, though not as often met with as "the ordinary of Nature's sale-work," yet not altogether rare; for the desire to be right will go a great way towards wisdom. Intellectual guidance is the less needed where there is little to lead astray-where humility lets

the heart loose to the impulses of love. That we can be wise by impulse seems a paradox to some; but it is part of that true doctrine which traces wisdom to the moral as well as the intellectual mind, and more surely to the former than to the latter-one of those truths which is recognised when we look into our nature through the clearness of a poetic spirit :

"Moments there are in life-alas, how few!

When casting cold prudential doubts aside,
We take a generous impulse for our guide,
And following promptly what the heart thinks best,
Commit to Providence the rest;

Sure that no after-reckoning will arise

Of shame or sorrow, for the heart is wise.

And happy they who thus in faith obey

Their better nature: err sometimes they may,
And some sad thoughts lie heavy in the breast,
Such as by hope deceived are left behind;
But like a shadow these will pass away

From the pure sunshine of the peaceful mind."

The doctrine of wisdom by impulse is no doubt liable to be much misused and misapplied. The right to rest upon such a creed accrues only to those who have so trained their nature as to be entitled to trust it. It is the impulse of the habitual heart which the judgment may fairly follow upon occasion-of the heart which, being habitually humble and loving, has been framed by love to wisdom. Some such fashioning love will always effect; for love cannot exist without solicitude, solicitude brings thoughtfulness, and it is in a thoughtful love that the wisdom of the heart consists. The impulse of such a heart will take its shape and guidance from the very mould in which it is cast, without any application of the reason express; and the most inadvertent motion of a wise heart will for the most part be wisely directed; providentially, let us rather say; for Providence has no more eminent seat than in the wisdom of the heart.

Southey's Oliver Newman.

817.-IMITATION OF HORACE.

SWIFT AND POPE.

[THIS professes to be an imitation of the sixth Satire of the Second Book of Horace's Satires. The first part, to the 124th line, is by Swift; the remainder was added by Pope.]

I've often wish'd that I had clear,
For life, six hundred pounds a-year.
A handsome house to lodge a friend,
A river at my garden's end,
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land set out to plant a wood.
Well, now I have all this and more,
I ask not to increase my store;
“But here a grievance seems to lie,
All this is mine but till I die;

I can't but think 'twould sound more
clever,

To me and to my heirs for ever.
If I ne'er got or lost a groat,
By any trick, or any fault;

And if I pray by reason's rules,

And not like forty other fools;
As thus, 'Vouchsafe, oh gracious
Maker!

To grant me this and t'other acre ;
Or, if it be thy will and pleasure,
Direct my plough to find a treasure!'
But only what my station fits
And to be kept in my right wits,
Preserve, Almighty Providence!
Just what you gave me, competence!
And let me in these shades compose
Something in verse as true as prose ;
Remov'd from all th' ambitious scene,
Nor puff'd by pride,nor sunk by spleen."