know their method of fixing the attention upon the spiritual lessons of the Bible which remain amid every changing interpretation, of leading their pupils to trust more and more to that religious faculty which belongs to their nature, and out of which all Scriptures and all religions have sprung. We should like to know what characters they have selected from the Christian Church as examples and inspirations to our own generation. We know that these things are being done faithfully and well in almost every parish; for we meet constantly with young persons whose high aims show they have had such teaching, and not unfrequently we find them going back in affectionate gratitude to the hours they spent with their teachers in the Sunday-school.

THINGS AT HOME AND ABROAD.

SUMMER HOURS.

Our Review comes at intervals, with such a moderate pace, compared with the daily or weekly journals, that perhaps we have no special need to claim vacations, on the ground of fatigue; but we believe it has become a settled fact now that the American people need a change" in the summer weather, whatever may be their avocations or their homes. We remember, in old times, how our middle-aged townspeople would start off, with their one steady horse, for a visit to the "Springs" for a few days, or go a-cousining among the hills of New Hampshire; and the young people left at home were happy with their simple picnics or a trip up Monadnock. But in our surburban towns, now, whole families take their march for the summer; and those who run away for a week, but prefer their homes in the summer days, are almost cowed by their departing neighbors, no matter what may be the cool delights of their own piazzas and groves of trees.

In our short stay among the mountains, we have nothing wonderful to relate. The mountains were serene and beautiful; the wood-thrush in the thicket at morning and night sang those few liquid notes which give to us always such a thought of motherly or family love, repose, peace, and joy in those sweet solitudes. As Cowper says in his fine hymn:

The mower whetted his scythe, and looked anxiously at the skies; for the hay-cocks around were still standing waiting for the July showers to be over. The sun at length came out; and the gay wagons passed by, filled with the laughing parties, and we at length became one of such a mountain-load, and dashed

along up and down the hills, with Washington and Lafayette looking down upon us at every turn in the road.

What wonderful power these mountains have, or these wagons at least, to take the stiffness from city-dwellers, the aching out of care, the fussiness and pretence from the narrow-minded and provincial, the age out of the bones; in short, clearing away all the claims of propriety, the restrictions of society from young and old!

This mountain life of excursions has a God-given mission, we believe, in its exhilarating, simple character. Seashores and Springs develop the taste for dress and show, and the tendency for cliques. Grand tours by railway are prosaic and selfish in the nightly arrival of parties at great hotels, to flit away at morning, none the wiser from contact with human nature.

But, here, the nature expands. All men seem like brethren. The least object of interest or incident by the way stirs the pulses, unlocks hidden sympathies, brings out the child again, and irradiates the being with that soft light of enthusiasm, love, romance, poetry, which binds a company together for the hour with sweet influences that linger in the memory forever.

Among other things that we recall was the talk with our landlord and driver. We had attended the little Methodist church in the village near our retreat, on the Sunday before; and, as we discussed the sermon, he told us of the preacher who was there before. A remarkable man we should judge. Not so much for ability, although he had that, but for those rare qualities of tact, sympathy, and earnestness of purpose, which made him, in the three years allotted to him, the friend of every one in the parish; the man who had the power to call out the best in their natures, who drew the people to the church like a magnet, who forced them with no unpalatable doctrines, made no tirade against amusements, but gently and firmly persuaded them to the acceptance of the great truths of "righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." Such was, in substance, the sketch which our landlord gave of his minister as we drove along; and we were affected not merely with pleasure that this mountain pulpit was such a joy and a throne," but also at the thought that our highest aims and purposes are all the same in each denomination, and that the same cry is for such evangelists the world over, men whose preaching is not incited alone by the great religious or scientific questions of the day, although that is

good, but most especially by the actual every-day wants, sorrows, hunger of their people.

We said, "What a pity that this fine influence should be taken away at the end of three years!" "Not at all," was the reply. "He is going on, doing the same work for others, from place to place." And, for a moment, our faith was shaken in the value of a permanent ministry. But there are "diversities of gifts, the same spirit working in all." The quality of work is independent of time it is neither short nor long. A man may go from one sphere to another, touching the dead sleepers and arousing them to life, or he may dwell serenely with one flock all his days, keeping them up to the "prize of the high calling," and radiating out an influence to the whole country round, and even the world. Let us take care how we hear; for, as sure as the true minister gets the ear of his people, so true it is that "he that hath ears to hear must hear." Let the hearer know that he can make or unmake his minister by the way he hears: he may poison the stream of his influence, or help it to flow a sweet river of blessing and refreshment to all around.

It is pleasant to find, as we go on in life, how true liberality of spirit is to be found among " all sorts and conditions of men." We put a little, old-fashioned volume of Pope into our travellingbag, partly because it was small, and partly because we had a curiosity to know a little more about a man who had so much influence among literary people in England at one period. We have been struck with some passages in the memoir, where Pope was rebuked by his friends for holding intercourse with a man of an opposite political party. He replied that he hated narrowness of soul in any party, and that he could pray not only for opposite parties, but for opposite religions. When the Bishop of Rochester endeavored to separate Pope from the Romish communion, he answered, “I verily believe your lordship and I are both of the same religion, if we were thoroughly understood by one another, and that all honest and reasonable Christians would be so, if they did but talk enough together every day, and had nothing to do together but to serve God and live in peace with their neighbors."

To return to our journey. We were obliged at length to leave the mountain regions, with the aerial voices of Echo Lake floating in our memories and the gurgling of the Flume plashing in our ears. Our road lay along the thriving villages of New

Hampshire, where peace and plenty seemed to abound. Even among the mountains, we saw fewer poor little farm-houses, and more signs of prosperity than in former years. As we approach White River Junction, the scene changes. The beautiful Connecticut keeps along our way, and the smiling valleys greet us. Then we approach Bellows Falls, that picturesque spot which bears the name of a family that has given us ministers, jurists, honored citizens, and noble women. Then we descend from the hills of Walpole to the valley of Keene, that fair town lying in the smile of Monadnock. Here was a halting-place to recall the memories of other days. Then on to the sea. But we must stop on our way at Concord, that pleasant old place which knows so well how to keep up with the age without destroying the past. It would be an unpardonable blunder for us not to look in at the "School of Philosophy," although we felt no special call to vex our brains with abstruse speculation. We found a gentle lady in the professorial chair, whose clear voice and earnest face disarmed us of our antagonism to her subject, which was "Schopenhauer and his Philosophy." It was plain that this lady, Mrs. Hathaway, was no mere dilettante at her work, no pretender or would-be philosopher. The reflective cast of her face, and her grave yet sweet demeanor, showed a mind which dwelt by nature on the causes of things, and loved to study into the chimeras and even falsities of the thinker's brain. She did not make us love Schopenhauer. Neither did she love him. She strongly dissented from his pessimistic, unspiritual theory of life; but she gave him credit for a kind of dogged endurance, and a spirit even of self-sacrifice in his outlook for the world, which, though ending in dust and ashes, the extermination of miserable mortals, as the hoped-for boon, still had some redeeming features of kindness and sympathy for humanity. Some of Mrs. Hathaway's sentences were fine, as where she said, "As a boy whistles in the dark to keep his courage up, so this materialistic age must work to keep itself from thinking." The paper was followed by discussion from Mr. Alcott, Mr. Emery, Drs. Harris and Jones, Mr. Sanborn, Mr. Nichols, etc.

Our next stay was at the quaint old town of Marblehead, or rather the "Neck," with the gay harbor and the spires gleaming on the opposite side, where on still days you can almost hear one sneeze across the water. What a world this is for stubborn