Thus much analysis reveals of the origin, essence and influence of this habit, but its operation upon particular elements of character must be traced, if we would reach any practical appreciation of its results. Even here there is danger that everything advanced will be nullified by prejudice, ever arming itself against the moralist, who seems to exaggerate the little failings of human nature that he may have something to carp at. Once more we beg you consider that we are developing the general tendencies of a habit, and not accurately relating its effects in a particular instance, though it is but too true that most of the preceding and following positions might be readily supported by sad personal observation, and doubtless also by appeal to the consciousness of any who have suffered from this enemy. Summon before you the elements of a manly character. Muster them in all their sturdiness and majesty. Here are courage, and conscience, and earnestness, and judgment and dignity. Begin with courage, the head, front and crown of manly virtue. The truest, the divinest, perhaps the rarest courage is that which dares to look unflinchingly into the face of truth,-to know and own it in its elevated spirituality,-in the comprehensiveness and sternness of its requirements. The commonest, the basest, the most ruinous cowardice is dread of truth and the severity of its denunciations against the unworthy life. We endeavored to show how a habit of insincere conversation might flow from moral cowardice; but is this the only possible relation between them? Does not every man see how naturally, how inevitably, the giddy offspring will foster its base parent? He who has once thus violated the majesty and claims of moral truth,—who has substituted for its rectitude and dignity, the fantastic jumble of his own folly, dares not gaze again upon the offended majestic countenance. That man would be indeed an incomprehensible hero, who, having once burlesqued a requirement of the moral law, could, when occasion required, turn back unshrinkingly and look upon the pure and perfect statute he defamed.

There is yet another step in the process by which this habitual word-masking kills the power of truth; it is the stupor of

conscience. The light is first unwelcome, then invisible. You begin in unwillingness, you end in inability; the origin is moral cowardice, the result is moral blindness. He who dares not exercise his moral sense will not very long be troubled by the disturbing keenness of its appreciation. Trace the effect of indirect and frivolous speech on some of the individual virtues. How insidiously does it undermine truthfulness! Must not awe-stricken reverence flee away before the breath of its thoughtless impious jesting? Yes! for it is as true as it is strange and shocking, that human folly especially delights to twine its rotesque deformity about the simple, awful word of God. What shall preserve the definite, abiding, wonder-working sense of individual responsibility, when the truth that declares it is distorted into a jeering lie? Judge now whether this be an unnatural sequence of causes and results; nay, can you even say that it is a case altogether unknown to your personal observation? A young man, a noble generous youth it may be, disturbed by the pressure of conscience upon some special fault, or upon the general laxity of his life, begins half unconsciously to deaden the power of his tormentor by ironical statements and versions of the truth that troubles him, by burlesque expressions of his uneasiness and his purposes of amendment. Gradually but surely he acquires a distaste for the law in its purity and severity, until finally he ceases to feel its rebuke, and is at rest in folly. Enlightened moral courage, truth, reverence, sense of responsibility, conscience, all are fled from such a man, and the power which has dislodged and driven out this garrison of virtues is the demon of insincere conversation. Such an one may be roused, he may even not slide away very far into open immorality; but thus much is sure, when his awakening does come, he will find a terrible reckoning with the insulted majesty of truth.

We have, perhaps, already lingered too long over the purely moral aspect of the subject. There are other qualities intimately connected with the secret of a worthy and successful life. Eminent amongst these is earnestness. There is a morbid, self-conscious intensity, the burden of the whining prophets of these latter days; there is a vague and aimless

burning, which consumes only the bosom that conceives it, and these barren counterfeits have brought contempt on every one who cries to men as Kingsley did, "live earnest, earnest, earnest." Yet there is a genuine earnestness, the fervid, fruitful energy of the man who is "diligent in business and fervent in spirit." Analyze it: aspiration, purpose, resolution, zeal; a habit of frivolous conversation! Are they not as diverse, as discordant, as irreconcilable as fire and water? How will you best smother the heavings and swellings of noble aspiration? how fritter away the sober consciousness of purpose? how unnerve the fixedness of resolution? how quench the glowing fires of zeal? how will you gain your end more fully, surely, and speedily than by allowing yourself to slide into this contemptible petty vice? What best cherishes aspiration? Is it not the glorious inspiration of the truth? What educates and condenses aspiration into purpose? Is it not the clear light of the truth? What fortifies purpose with resolution, and vitalizes it with zeal? Is it not the encouraging voice of truth crying "it is well to be zealously affected always in a good cause?" How then shall genuine earnestness ever vivify the soul and life of him who murders the simplicity, lcftiness and intensity of truth, by this wretched habit of trivial and insincere speech? If the genius of Satan should labor to invent a drug for earnestness, could it devise a more potent spell?

Give a man courage, conscience and earnestness; you have prepared him for a life of noble, yet it may be fruitless struggle. Add judgment and you have done all that nature can do to ensure his success. If such a thing be possible, see to it that the man thus nobly armed and panoplied begin to indulge this unworthy littleness; even judgment will fall before its insidious influence. Judgment is the quality which appreciates the real nature and relative importance of things, and decides on the basis of such appreciation. But the only revelation to us of the real nature of things is truth, and we have all along marked as the characteristic essence of this conversational habit, failure fully to appreciate truth. Recall another fixed principle; speech rules almost as directly as it serves thought. Tell me then! the man who in speech fails

properly to reverence the direct, simple truth, will he probably in thought realize and respect the real nature of things? Have you any right to expect your reason will continue correctly to appreciate, distinguish and decide, if it find not free expression for its sober earnest judgments? In one word, judgment depends upon correct appreciation: habitually indirect and frivolous speech indicates and educates a lack of appreciation of the real and relative importance of things.

We will not insult reason by proving the issue between folly and dignity; we appeal rather to your intuitive sense of moral and manly elevation. Is there anything really distasteful or disgraceful in undistorted, undisguised expression? Is it not rather despicably low and small to shun the simplicity of unaffected truth? actually to violate sincerity in our unnatural eagerness to hit upon some ludicrous or unexpected word-play, something which shall, to our degraded taste, relieve the dullness of direct natural utterance?

This then is our indictment against the habit we condemn. Its tendency is to dissipate what we call character. It spoils the perfection of every manly virtue; it blunts, debauches, enervates every noble faculty of intellect and heart.

We beg you receive this closing thought. It will serve both as a satisfactory explanation of the apparently over strained character of the whole discussion, and a most efficient enforcement of the appeal. Truth is, of itself, so obviously fitted to secure our intellectual and moral development, that the practical question for every man of honest aspiration is this, "why does not truth perform its work in me?" Whenever then you discover a direct method of killing its beneficent power, should you not feel "I am face to face with one of my deadliest foes." Is it manly to let it escape, because in itself considered, it seems to be a thing of little consequence? May not this very impression of its triviality, be the secret of its power for evil? "Is it not a little one ?" has ever been the siren song that lulls the conscience of the moral sluggard as he glides under the yoke of sinful habit.

No! Brothers, spare not such an unmanly weakness, on such a pitiful plea. If you are conscious of having yielded, turn now and crush your despicable foe.

ARTICLE XII.-TRANSLATION.

In the curriculum of all Colleges, and by consequence, in all preparatory schools, the study of the ancient languages holds a most important place. Some sufficient motive has determined this prominence; and the inquiries which suggest themselves to the minds of many, especially of the uneducated, are natural. Is utility the principal motive? and are they useful as an end or as a mean? In other words, are they beneficial considered in themselves, or as a "gymnastic of the mind." Is it the pleasure to be derived from them which constitutes this motive? And, if so, which is productive of the greater enjoyment, the critical study of them as languages, the examination of their grammatical structure,—or the translation, merely for the sake of the translation ? As the answer to either of these questions would occupy the space of an Article, in this we shall limit ourselves to the consideration of translation,-its pleasures and advantage. We shall endeavor to show that benefits accrue from this practice to all. Yet that they are of special value to the composer, though not confined to him.

A sufficient incentive to translation is the gratification which this employment affords. We find in the classics, models of grace, beauty and force. The poems and orations, the dramas and histories of modern tongues, cannot claim precedence over those of the Greeks and Romans. Modern poetry has its Shakspeare and its Milton; oratory boasts of Erskine, of Pitt, of Webster; Macaulay has decked with garlands the dry facts of history, and clothed them in language of majesty and beauty; Cousin, Reid, Sir William Hamilton, have viewed the mind with stereoscopic eyes; and we point with pride to the dramatist who revelled in the lap of nature. Yet for force, originality, beauty, do we not naturally turn to the pages of antiquity? We do not say there are no solitary exceptions; that there are no circumstances in modern literature which give it a value above that of the ancients. In the estimate given we speak of the aggregate. We may not be able to assign a reason