The wit of ludicrous reference is instanced in the story of Foote, who see ing a dirty little ragged boy mounted astride a noble horse, prancing along in all the magnificent freedom and strength of nature, exclaimed: "Warburton on Shakspeare." The wit of repartee annihilating the querist, in the anecdote of Lord Norbury, who, riding in the coach of his friend Purcell, and chancing to pass a gallows, asked, "Where would you be, Purcell, if every man had his due ?" "Alone in my carriage," was the reply. When Foote, on being asked, if he had ever seen Cork, replied, "No; but I have seen many drawings ofit"-he punned; but produced a flash of satirical wit, when his companion, inquiring further, what he thought of the condition of the people from those drawings, he answered, that it had settled a question which had long perplexed him, namely, what the English beggars did with their cast-off clothes. The characteristic of Sydney Smith's wit, which is more humorous than satirical, is its immensely laughable extravagance, such as his remark on the unequal union of a small person and great mind in Lord John Russell-that he had not body enough to cover his intellect that his intellect was indecently exposed; that on his comfortless condition on Salisbury Plain-that he was twelve miles from a lemon, &c. The wit of ludicrous observation: Foote remarked on Lord North, that he looked like a man who had lost an hour in the morning and was all day looking for it. Jerrold's wit is as brief as the best French sayings-more bitter, but less delicate. When at dinner, one of the company, despite the variety of viands, cried out, Well, let others eat what they like, but calf's head say I." "That's egotism," said Jerrold. Talleyrand's wit, which is almost always exquisite, is of the finest sort-that of comic distinction. "I feel the tortures of hell," said an

improbate character of the revolution to him. "Already?"

Wit is, indeed, the kaleidoscope of the mind, which alternately summons all the faculties of the intellect, observation, comparison, reason, fancy, and imagination to minister under the direction of its fantastical magic; or

as it allies itself to each, each and all of which it moulds and colours with its own hues, the gems which it forms different in shape, hue, and sparkle, may be illustrated by the changes in crystallization which take place in some lustrous chemical substance, according to its affinity for the sweets, salts, and acids which are mingled in the medium.

SPIRIT AND MATTER.

ALL that the mind-contemplating spirit, unaided by the immortal lights of faith and revelation, knows is, that it is consciousness resulting from an organization. Primarily, ideas come to us through the senses, and are repeated either through them, or by associations with others retained in the consciousness. An infant's brain is at first a passive recipient of impressions. It is like the hand; it feels, is sensible to touch, capable of seizure, but incapable of regulation for any defined purpose beyond the limits of instinct. After a while it begins to register and distinguish them, and from that moment dates the beginning of its mind. "There is nothing in the intellect," said Leibnitz," which was not previously in the senses, except the intellect itself;" by which he means the latent power of regulating the impressions of the senses, and perceiving the relations between ideas, resulting from the gradual strengthening and active efficiency of the cerebral machinery, and of the conscious element to which it ministers.

Plato considered that the reason of the soul, or its sense and capacity for perceiving truth, was the proof of its immortality; and though his pantheism excludes the personality of deity, Spinosa held the belief that neither body nor spirit were capable of ultimate extinction. "Mens humana non potest cum corpore detrui, sed ejus aliquid remanet quod æternum est." The idea of Plato is à conception of reason, as just as noble, for

nothing can be more rational than that the rational element of the soul, the highest illustration of the progressive laws of creation on this planet, should be perpetuated-should preserve a continued consciousness and activity after the dissolution of the organization, whose only object was referable to its development. As no element of inert matter is lost or perishable (even the object of the comets, it may be conjectured, is that of collecting the ponderable and imponderable substances radiated or otherwise given off by the spheres in their transit through space, and reconsigning them into the centre of the system)-it is in the last degree irrational to suppose that intelligent life, the ultimate fact of nature and crown of being, should fulfil an inferior destiny; and though the human race has possibly its limit in the scale of creation and time, we may, even scientifically, conclude that their conscious imponderable element or spirit, will, when the planet has undergone a higher change of condition, consequent upon its advance toward the more central regions of this universe, become transformed, in virtue of the progressive law thus occurring, into a superior race, gifted with higher organizations, and higher intelligence.

DISENTHRALMENT.

THE state of the soul after death, forms, next to the reverential aspiration towards deity, the loftiest theme of imaginative contemplation. A person once passing from a reverie on the above subject, into a dream, in which he thought that he died, became intelligent of the following vague revelation. In dying he was conscious of nothing more than sinking for a time into an oblivious slumber; but presently awaking, he recognised a change of condition-a feeling of freedom-an unwonted and intense claritude of being. Wherever he wished to be, he was; whatever he desired to see, he saw; movement from one point of space to another was insensible in its rapidity; intellectual processes arrived instantaneously at truth; and when his spirit was not in action, its prevailing sense was that of deity, as of an universal Conscious Light pervading the regions and spaces of infinity.

THE DRUIDS.

THE Druidical character and religion as described by the Greeks and Romans (whose distinctive races, not to speak of their polytheisms, were but of yesterday compared with the Celts) was the result of a succession of ages and circumstances. Originally they were magicians-those priests of the earliest Fetish epoch-just like the magic doctors of the Africans in the present day. By acting on the superstitious ignorance of the barbarians, they gradually formed a powerful theocratic order, which, of course, involved a political. The rude Cyclopean structure of their temples indicates a very remote period, but the order had existed long before they were built, as they exhibit in their arrangement some knowledge of astronomy-the result of the Celts having advanced from the wandering life of the hunter to the pastoral state. The Druid sect arose at a period when Europe was covered with woods; hence, from the shelter they afforded the half naked savage, a sacredness attached to them. The practice of sacrificing human victims was, doubtless, one of their primitive ceremonials, as, with many other barbarous peoples, being intended to propitiate the god of war, war being one of the most fearful causes of their suffering; and as the Celts and Germans lived in a chronic state of combat, such sacrifices were continued after they had advanced to a life of agriculture (the Celts at least) and even other industries. Like the Chaldeans and all peoples arrived at pastoral civilization, they gained an acquaintance with visual astronomy, while their code of moral maxims had its origin in their governing position with respect to the people, and their meditative secluded life, after their power was established.

The dogma of the immortality of the soul, which distinguishes their theology from that of many other primitive pagan sects, originated naturally in the instinct of self-preservation becoming intellectualized and analogized by observing the never-ending succession of the seasons, the setting and returning of the celestial orbs. This dogma, they found, acted as powerfully on the warlike Celt as that of Mahomet on the Saracen, as an inspirer of courage. The

oak played a great part in forming their ideas--the oak, the household god of the naked, wandering savage, which protected him from the inclemency of the seasons, hot and cold, was doubtless the primitive object of Celtic veneration. Presently, by observing the effect of the sun on production, of the moon as a regulator of time, they advanced from pure nature-worship to polytheism. Each period of the year had its god. Spring became a time of joy from the reappearance of the sun god, to whom sacrifices were offered, and fires lit on the highest mountains (as nearest his being); autumn, the time of falling leaves, the festival of sorrow and death (Samhan). The oak, however, continued the original image of the god; and the miseltoe, which continues

green in the midst of winter-the emblem of life in the midst of deaththe type of immortality. As in all other pagan orders of the early world, the conservation of their power as a separate dominant order, necessitated the practice of initiation. Of the learning of the Druids little can now be gathered, but such as they possessed must have related chiefly to morals and agriculture. It is curious to examine their Ogham alphabet, in its relation to the remote period when Europe was covered with woods-an alphabet, each letter of which has clearly its origin in the fact of their having taken the tree branch, with one or more offshoots, as representatives of particular sounds, subsequently engraving on rocks the rude alphabetical system thus invented.

MONTAIGNE THE COUNTRY SQUIRE.

PLACED in a position of independence by the death of his father, and liberated from the yoke of a profession he disliked, Montaigne withdrew himself definitively both from his region of courtly flunkeydom at Paris, which had not yielded him so much as the wages of a fat thistle for his years of donkey drudgery, and from the judicial benches of Bordeaux, which were neither his lucre nor his love. He recorded the event by an inscription, still existing in the Château Montaigne, to the effect, "that in the year of Our Lord, 1571, aged thirty-eight, Michel de Montaigne, having long been weary of the slavery of courts and public employments, takes refuge in the bosom of those learned ladies" the Muses. The bower within which he sheltered himself from the chagrins of public life, and may we say it, from the impending massacre of St. Bartholomew, was of an agreeable character. His château was an ambitious farmhouse, or country gentleman's residence, having most of the familiar features of the French country-house, and not much imposing about it, except two small towers of dissimilar architec

ture which flanked the entrance. It stood upon a hill, in an undulating country, quite as wild as cultivateda country which one might apostrophise in the passionate accents of La Boetie: "Oh! Medoc, my wild and solitary country, there is no land more agreeable than thou art in my eyes! Thou art at the end of the world, and that is why I love thee." One of those towers is immortalized as the library of Montaigne-the upper story-his Parnassus of court to the Muses, his Delphi of devotion to Apollo. The chamber was round, with an angular projection at one side-and round this, on five shelves, were ranged those books of which the author made such liberal use in the composition of his essays. The angular portion of the apartment was where the author sat and wrote, was capable of a fire in winter, and had its walls decorated with frescoes from subjects of classic fable. Both rooms together furnished a promenade of sixteen paces, and his composition derived much of their spirit from his peripatetic cogitations. His thoughts slept if he sat down.

But he had rather a serious drawback upon the comfort of a fidgetty or abstracted gentleman, in the fact

that the windows of his study were a complete observatory of the château, its yards, gardens, and almost every room in the house. Such a situation was perilous to his equanimity, and threatened to strangle in the birth the embryo offspring of his brain. Not a cock crew, or dog bayed, or cowboy kissed the dairymaid, or madam tongue-lashed the refractory damsels, but it made its way to observant eye and ear in the watchtower. And they acted like sparks upon tinder, for he was of a stormy nature, was the literary sieur; he shared in those nerves but thinly skinned, which are the miserable dower of the irritable author-class; could scold a hundred times a-day, but also a hundred times forgive the offender. He fairly tells us something of his domestic annoyances. That window of his watchtower let in more than light for the sage's use: it let in a host of blue devils and botherations, that kept at least his blood from stagnating, and his spirits from becoming inert from repose. He found it as troublesome to govern a family as to govern a kingdom: "As small type wearies the eye more than large type, so petty cares," says he, fatigue the mind more than great cares. I cannot avoid," he adds, "running up against something at home every hour that displeases me. The pilfering which they think they conceal best from me, I know best." He admits that he used to feign being in a passion in order to govern his house, and probably imitated the vociferations of his cara sposa. He must have often laid down his pen with which he was philosophising against the ills of life and fortune, to look out of the window of his tower, and torment himself about things going wrong, vessels broken, intrigues in progress, petty larcenies committed. It is certain that the multiplicity of fretting concerns at home kept this fidgetty man of letters in a continual state of ferment-from tiles blowing off his house unseasonably, to babies who would squall while teething, Montaigne entered late in life on housekeeping, and evidently had little delight in it, although forced by circumstances or impulse to interfere. "I wish," he says "that instead of some of the pieces of his succession, my father had left me that

passionate love which in his old age he had for household affairs." Montaigne's usual term for his attendants, when he was enraged with them, was "calves," about as respectful as our donkeys, and no worse than that uncomplimentary brute-comparison. Montaigne was aware of his infirmity, for he owns, that he knew servants who would rather beg their bread than live with him.

There, in that tower, with those unfortunate lookouts, otherwise greatly secluded, that is, distant enough from human sympathy, for it was shut out from the rest of the house, and was only approachable from without, yet open to vexatious sights and sounds as plentiful as hailstones, did this exceptional mortal sit down to write those essays, which for shrewdness, frankness, drollery, are beyond compare; which make one smile at one while with their singular simplicity and oddity, make one stare at others by their profound observation and knowledge of men and books, but quite as often make you fling them away in utter disgust at their gratuitous and vaunted coarseness and indelicacy. One has but to know the age in which he lived, and the court-school in which he passed his early manhood, to know what to expect from Montaigne on this score; and the anticipation is strengthened by the physiognomy of his portrait, for if ever Epicurean hog was written over any countenance, it is inscribed upon Montaigne's. The sensual far predominates over the intellectual in his pictured presentation; and we regret to say, that his likeness, as drawn with his own pen, too closely verifies the prognostication. laugh at his wit and humour; we drink in both knowledge and enjoyment from his homely wisdom; but we turn away with loathing from the grossness of his sentiments, and the frequent rudeness of his language. "I admire," says he, "the continence of the Feuillans and the Capuchins, but I am not continent myself." We must do the essayist, however, the justice of believing that some of his coarseness was affected, a kind of bravado of candour-a knight-errantry of ingenuousness, which took its inspiration from Rabelais, and the licence of the times. We are quite sure that in some respects Montaigne

We

displayed a gentlemanly reserve unknown to not a few of his associates, for he affirms it in his third essay in so many words; that there were certain things he did do, and certain things he refrained from doing in the presence of others at the dictate of self-respect and natural modesty, which others entertained no scruple about. The declaration, so far as it goes, is satisfactory as a vindication of Montaigne's views of social propriety.

But we must give the picture of the library in Montaigne's own words, although they involve a partial repetition of the preceding. "The form of the room is circular, and the only straight piece of wall is where I place my table and chair. As I sit, I can take in at one glance round the curve all my books ranged on shelves, five ranges, one above the other. Three windows give me three wide and rich views over the country. The room is sixteen paces in diameter. In winter I am less continually there, for my house is perched on a hill, as its name imports, and none of its rooms is so exposed to the wind as this one; yet it pleases me because it is somewhat difficult of access and retired, as much on account of the utility of the exercise as because I there avoid the crowd. Here is my seat, my place, my rest; I try to make it purely my own, and to free this single corner from conjugal, filial, and civil community. Elsewhere I have but a verbal authority-here it is substantial and confessed. Wretched is he who in his own home has really no home of his own, where he can pay court to himself, and hide himself when he pleases! Ambition must recompense its followers well, to induce them to remain ever in view, like the statue in a market-place. Magna servitus est magna fortuna. They have not even their wardrobe for retreat. Verily, I would rather be ever alone than never alone."

But though this place was his asylum, it was not his cell. Nothing was further from his habits than the moroseness of the solitary, the selfdenial of the anchorite. He lived in decent state as a country gentleman; was on intimate terms with his neighbours; was a member further of a large family of brothers and

sisters settled around, all having besides their particular relationships and interconnexions; and had literary, civic, and other communication with the capital of the province, the fair waterside city, au Bord d'Eaux. There were the de Foix, the D'Estissacs, the Montlucs, the de Pibracs, and others, besides his learned visiters who dropped in to share the hospitalities of one whom Justus Lipsius termed the French Thales. Many of these were of the very first rank in the learned world, who, whatever they may have thought of the erudition of their host, entertained a philosophic respect for the flavour of his venison, his foiegras, and the Tête de Buch oyster patês of his coasts, washed down with his generous liqueurs, and seasoned with the half-pedantic, half-social humour of his observations. Montaigne was fond of hunting, yet his heart was touched by the sobbing of the hare in its agony, torn by dogs; and, like melancholy Jaques, he moralized on the hunted deer. If he took an animal alive he let it go again, copying the humanity of the philosopher of the Golden Rules. He liked animals; and petted cats, acquiring thereby a couplet in our Butler's doggrel. He was a small man of little dignity of appearance, squat and sturdy, no proficient in the bodily exercises of his time, such as fencing, tennis, &c., and was rather careless about dressing in style; says, in fact, that no gentleman should dress well at home; an observation that smacks more of the student than the courtier. He had a passion for sweet smells-that of a fragrant kiss would hang about his moustaches for hours-and disliked to reside in Paris for the same reason which makes us loathe all Continental cities, the intolerable odours that infect the air. He was awkward in many things; could not play music nor sing, could scarcely dance, or fold a letter, or mend a pen, or carve meat, or saddle a horse. He could not remember his dreams; swore by the sacred name; feared the dew, but liked rain as the ducks do; was irritated if a slipper went wrong, or the thong of his saddle; liked to rest with his legs in the air, anticipating Brother Jonathan; and was fond of scratching his ears. At table he dis