that is a deep interest in the welfare of mankind. The possession of this may sometimes render the very want of amiableness touching, because it seems to arise from the reverse of what is unamiable and selfish, and to be exasperated, not because itself is unhappy, but because others are so. It was this, far more than his intellectual endowments (great as they were), which made us like Mr. Hazlitt. Many a contest has it saved us with him, many a sharp answer, and interval of alienation; and often, perhaps, did he attribute to an apprehension of his formidable powers (for which, in our animal spirits, we did not care twopence) what was owing entirely to our love of the sweet drop at the bottom of his heart. But only imagine a man who should feel this interest too, and be deeply amiable, and have great sufferings, bodily and mental, and know his own errors, and waive the claims of his own virtues, and manifest an unceasing considerateness for the comfort of those about him, in the very least as well as greatest things; surviving, in the pure life of his heart, all mistake, all misconception, all exasperation, and ever having a soft word in his extremity, not only for those who consoled, but for those who distressed him; and imagine how we must have loved him! It was Mr. Shelley. His genius, transcendent as it was, would not have bound us to him; his poetry, his tragedy, his philosophy, would not have bound us; no, not even his generosity, had it been less amiable. It was his unbounded heart and his ever-kind speech. Now, observe, pray, dear reader, that what was most delightful in such a man as this, is most delightful, in its degree, in all others; and that

people are loved, not in proportion to their intellect, but in proportion to their lovability. Intellectual powers are the leaders of the world, but only for the purpose of guiding them into the promised land of peace and amiableness or of showing them encouraging pictures of it by the way. They are no more the things to live with or repose with, apart from qualities of the heart and temper, than the means are without the end; or than a guide to a pleasant spot is the spot itself, with its trees, health, and quiet.

It has been truly said, that knowledge is of the head, but wisdom is of the heart; that is, you may know a great many things, but turn them to no good account of life and intercourse, without a certain harmony of nature often possessed by those whose knowledge is little or nothing. Many a man is to be found, who knows what amiableness is, without being amiable; and many an amiable man, who would be put to the blush if you expected of him a knowing definition of amiableness. But there are a great many people held to be very knowing, and entertaining the opinion themselves, who, in fact, are only led by that opinion to think they may dispense with being amiable, and who, in so thinking, confute their pretension to knowingness. The truth is, that knowledge is by no means so common a thing as people suppose it; while luckily, on the other hand, wisdom is much less uncommon: for it has been held a proof of one of the greatest instances of knowledge that ever existed, that it knew how little it did know! whereas everybody is wise in proportion as he is happy or patient; that is to say, in proportion as he makes the best of good or bad fortune,

LIFE AFTER DEATH.— BELIEF IN
SPIRITS.

E made use of an inaccurate expression in a communication to a correspondent the other day, which we take the liberty of thus publicly correcting. We spoke of man as a."finite " as a creature. The term, strictly speaking, does not convey the meaning we intended. Finis is an end; and finite might imply a being whose end, or utter termination, was known and certain. Assuredly we wrote the word in no such spirit of presumption. All our writings will testify, that we are of a religion which enjoys the most unbounded hopes of man, both here and hereafter. By finite, we meant to imply a creature of limited powers and circumscribed present existence. Far were we from daring to lift up mortal finger against immortal futurity. Religion itself must first be put out of man's heart, and the very stars out of the sky, and no such words be remembered as sentiment and imagination and memory, and hope too, ay, and reason, before we should presume to say what end ought to be put to these endless aspirations of the soul.

We are for making the most of the present world, as if there were no hereafter; and the most of hereafter, as if there were no present world. We think

that God and Christianity and utility and imagination and right reason, and whatsoever is complete and harmonious in the constitution of the human faculties, however opposed it may seem, enjoin us to do BOTH. We are surprised, notwithstanding the allowance to be made for the great diversity of Christian sects, how any Christian, calling himself such by the least right of discipline, can undervalue the utmost human endeavors in behalf of this world, the utmost cultivation of this one (among others) of the manifest and starry gardens of God; but we are most of all surprised at it in those that adhere the most literally to injunction and prophecy, while they know how to confine the fugitive and conventional uses of the terms "this world," &c., &c., to their proper meanings.

In the feasibility of this consummation, the most infidel utilitarian is of the same faith with the most believing Christian, and so far is

"The best good Christian he,

Although he knows it not."

Now, he is only to carry his beloved reason a little farther, and he will find himself on the confines of the most unbounded hopes of another world, as well as of the present; for reason itself, in its ordinary sense, will tell him that it is reasonable to make the utmost of all his faculties, imagination included. Mr. Bentham, the very incarnation of his reason, has told him so.* And if he come to the pure reason of the Germans, or the discoveries which that contemplative nation say they have made in the highest regions of * "Deontology," vol ii. p. 102.

the mind, of a reason above ordinary reason, reconciling the logic and consciousness of the latter with the former's instinctive and hitherto undeveloped affirmations, he is told that he may give evidence to faith after his own most approved fashion. For our parts, we confess that we are of a more child-like turn of contentment; and that, keeping our ordinary reason to what appears to us its fittest task,-namely, the guarding us against the admission of gratuitous pains, — we will suffer a loving faith to open to us whatever regions it pleases of possibilities honorable to God and man, cultivating them studiously, whether we thoroughly understand them or not. For who thoroughly understands any thing which he cultivates, even to the flowers at his feet? And, cultivating these, shall we refuse to cultivate also the stars, and aspirations and thoughts angelical, and hopes of rejoining friends and kindred, and all the flowers of heaven? No, assuredly, — not while we have a star to see, and a thought to reach it. Why should Heaven have given us those? Why not have put us into some blank region of space, with a wall of nothingness on all sides of us, and no power to have a thought beyond it? Because, some advocate of chance and blind action may say, it could not help it; because the nature of things could not help it; because things are as they are. Oh the assumptions of those who protest against assumption ! of the faculty which exclusively calls itself reason, and would deprive us of some of our most reasonable faculties! Even upon the ground of these gentlemen's showing, faith itself cannot be helped; at least, not as long as things" are as they are ;" and, in this respect,