In the neighbourhood, a beautiful young girl of sixteen lived with her parents, and used to see the young man in his walks, and speak kindly to him. For some time he took no notice of her; but after meeting her for several months, he began to look for her, and to feel disappointed if she did not appear. He became so much interested, that he directed his steps involuntarily to her father's cottage, and gave her bouquets of flowers. By degrees he conversed with her through the window. His mental faculties were roused; the dawn of convalescence appeared. The girl was virtuous, intelligent, and lovely, and encouraged his visits when she was told that she was benefiting his mental health. She asked him if he could read and write? He answered, No. She wrote some lines to him to induce him to learn. This had the desired effect. He applied himself to study, and soon wrote good and sensible letters to her. He recovered his reason. She was married to a young man from the neighbouring city. Great fears were entertained that this event would undo the good which she had accomplished. The young patient sustained a severe shock, but his mind did not sink under it. He acquiesced in the propriety of her choice, continued to improve, and at last was restored to his family cured. She had a child, and was soon after brought to the same hospital perfectly insane. The young man heard of this event, and was exceedingly anxious to see her; but an interview was denied to him, both on her account and his own. She died. He continued well, and became an active member of society. What a beautiful romance might be founded on this narrative!

A LADY CURED OF POLITICAL AMBITION.

Combe.

When Madame de Staël's book, "Sur la Révolution Française," came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. I turned, in the first place, as everybody did, eagerly to the chapter on England, but, though my natural feelings were gratified, my female

pride was dreadfully mortified by what she says of the ladies of England; in fact, she could not judge of them. They were afraid of her. They would not come out of their shells. What she called timidity, and what I am sure she longed to call stupidity, was the silence of overawed admiration, or mixed curiosity and discretion. Those who did venture had not full possession of their powers, or in a hurry showed them in a wrong condition. She saw none of them in their natural state. She asserts that, though there may be women distinguished as writers in England, there are no ladies who have any great conversational or political influence in society, of that kind which, during the ancien régime, was obtained in France by what they would call their femmes marquantes.

Between ourselves, I suspect she was a little mistaken in some of these assertions; but be that as it may, I determined to prove that she was mistaken; I was conscious that I had more within me than I had yet brought out; I did not doubt that I had eloquence, if I had but courage to produce it. It is really astonishing what a mischievous effect those few passages produced on my mind. In London, one book drives out anotherone impression, however deep, is effaced by the next shaking of the sand; but I was then in the country, for, unluckily for me, Lord Davenant had been sent away on some special embassy. Left alone with my nonsense, I set about, as soon as I was able, to assemble an audience around me, to exhibit myself in the character of a female politician, and I believe I had a notion at the same time of being the English Corinne. Rochefoucault, the dexterous anatomist of self-love, says that we confess our small faults to persuade the world that we have no larger ones. But, for my part, I feel that there are some small faults more difficult to me to confess than any large ones. Affectation, for instance; it is something so little, so paltry; it is more than a crime; it is a ridicule: I believe I did make myself completely ridiculous; I am glad Lord Davenant was not by-it lasted but

a short time. Our dear good friend Dumont could not bear to see it; his regard for Lord Davenant urged him the more to disenchant me, and bring me back, before his return, to my natural form. The disenchantment was rather rude.

One evening after I had been snuffing up incense till I was quite intoxicated, when my votaries had departed, and we were alone together, I said to him, "Allow that this is what would be called at Paris un

grand succès." Dumont made no reply, but stood opposite to me playing in his peculiar manner with his great snuff-box, slowly swaying the snuff from side to side. Knowing this to be a sign that he was in some great dilemma, I asked of what he was thinking. "Of you," said he.

"And what of me?"

In his French accent he repeated those two provoking lines

"New wit, like wine, intoxicates the brain,

Too strong for feeble women to sustain."

"To my face?" I said, smiling, for I tried to command my temper.

"Better than behind your back, as others do," said he. "Behind my back! Impossible!"

"Perfectly possible, as I could prove if you were strong enough to bear it."

"Quite strong enough," I said, and bade him speak on. "Suppose you were offered the fairy ring that rendered the possessor invisible and enabled him to hear everything that was said, and all that was thought of him, would you throw it away or put it on your finger?"

"Put it on my finger," I replied; "and this instant, for a true friend is better than a magic ring, I put it on."

"You are very brave; then you shall hear the lines I heard in a rival salon, repeated by him who last wafted the censer to you to-night." He repeated a kind of doggrel pasquinade, beginning with

"Tell me, gentles, have you seen,
The prating she, the mock Corinne?"

Dumont, who had the courage, for my good, to inflict the blow, could not stay to see its effect; and this time I was left alone, not with my nonsense, but with my reason. It was quite sufficient. I was cured: my only consolation in my disgrace was, that I honourably kept Dumont's counsel. The friend who composed the lampoon from that day to this never knew that I had heard it; though I must own, I often longed to tell him, when he was offering his incense again, that I wished he would reverse his practice, and let us have the satire in my presence, and keep the flattery for my absence.

GREAT IDEAS.

Maria Edgeworth.

What is needed to elevate the soul is, not that a man should know all that has been thought and written in regard to the spiritual nature-not that a man should become an encyclopædia; but that the great ideas, in which all discoveries terminate, which sum up all sciences, which the philosopher extracts from infinite details, may be comprehended and felt. It is not the quantity, but the quality of knowledge, which determines the mind's dignity. A man of immense information may, through the want of large and comprehensive ideas, be far inferior in intellect to a labourer, who, with little knowledge, has yet seized on great truths. For example, I do not expect the labourer to study theology in the ancient languages, in the writings of the Fathers, in the history of sects, etc.; nor is this needful. All theology, scattered as it is through countless volumes, is summed up in the idea of God; and let this idea shine bright and clear in the labourer's soul, and he has the essence of theological libraries, and a far higher light than has visited thousands of renowned divines. A great mind is formed by a few great ideas, not by an infinity of loose details. I have known very learned men who seemed to me very poor in intellect, because they had no grand thoughts. What avails it

that a man has studied ever so minutely the histories of Greece and Rome if the great ideas of freedom, and beauty, and valour, and spiritual energy, have not been kindled by those records into living fires in his soul? The illumination of an age does not consist in the amount of its knowledge, but in the broad and noble principles of which that knowledge is the foundation and inspirer. The truth is, that the most laborious and successful student is confined in his researches to a very few of God's works; but this limited knowledge of things may still suggest universal laws, broad principles, grand ideas, and these elevate the mind. There are certain thoughts, principles, ideas, which by their nature rule over all knowledge, which are intrinsically glorious, quickening, all-comprehending, eternal. Channing.

THE PATRIOT KING.

The good of the people is the ultimate and true end of government. Governors are therefore appointed for this end, and the civil constitution which appoints them, and invests them with their power, is determined to do so by that law of nature and reason which has determined the end of government, and which admits this form of government as the proper mean of arriving at it. Now the greatest good of a people is their liberty; and in the case here referred to, the people has judged it so, and provided for it accordingly. Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to the individual body: without health no pleasure can be tasted by man, without liberty no happiness can be enjoyed by society. The obligation, therefore, to defend and maintain the freedom of such constitutions, will appear most sacred to a patriot king. Kings who have weak understandings, bad hearts, and strong prejudices, and all these, as it often happens, inflamed by their passions, and rendered incurable by their self-conceit and presumption, such kings are apt to imagine-and they conduct themselves so as to make many of their subjects imagine-that the king and the people in free.