lazily for a moment among the pine-boughs, and then rousing themselves and stretching off upon the sweetest possible northwind. If we had foreseen what was before us, we could have shown no more appropriate colours on our first settling at Glen Luna. We watched the flag for a little, speculating upon the probable distance to which it could be seen, and then turned homeward. The moccasin-flowers were fully out now, and in beautiful variety. Some very tall, and of the most delicate pink, while in others the rich depth of colour seemed to compensate for a lower growth. My hand was never ruthless in the matter of picking, but I could hardly pass by such beauties; and with some late anemones, an early wild lily, and corydalis flowers, I soon had enough to dress a vase to put in Kate's room.

"How weary

I was then with having done so much, and with having no more to do! Weary of waiting for the stage-horn, which I thought would never blow; and then fluttered and excited when I heard the faint sound in the distance, and stood watching for the first glimpse of the carriage. We had an April meeting all round; but the rest of the day was clear sunshine. I remember that we found the first ripe strawberry and the first wild violet that afternoon; that we told everything and showed everything, and yet could not be satisfied with telling and showing; that we settled down into being very quiet and happy, despite bare floors and confusion. Kate had seen the flag miles away, and had received all the messages that I sent my absent sister through its white folds."

We must briefly introduce the reader to Miss Easy Caffery; we wish we had room for the description of her snug home, entitled the Bird's Nest.

My stepmother was in the kitchen, cap on head, and broom in hand, and opposite to her stood a lady who looked as if housecleaning and moving had formed no chapter of her existence. Not very tall, nor very large, rather delicately formed, indeed-her morning dress spotless, a nice little parasol in her hand, while, on her head the very pink of pink handkerchiefs, self-denyingly received the dust wherewith our atmosphere was loaded.

"And this is one of your daughters, yes?' said the lady as she caught sight of me, 'the oldest, I suppose, yes ma'am? how old is the youngest?'

"This is the youngest,' replied my stepmother.

"The youngest! but my dear Mrs. Howard, you surprise me, indeed, yes. I hope they will come and see me very often, yes ma'am. And won't you let one of them go home with me, and stay till you get settled-or both of them-yes ma'am? it would give me so much pleasure.'

"There is only this one at home, now,' said my stepmother, smiling, and I think she could hardly be prevailed on to leave me without her important assistance. But we are very much obliged to you for such a kind offer, Miss Caffery, and for coming to see us in all this dust and confusion.'

"Dust!' said Miss Caffery, 'Oh, I have seen dust before, ma'am, yes, very often; and I can always breathe where my friends Not obliged at all, it would be only a pleasure to me, yes. But I wish you would come out of it for a while.'

can.

"I will come and see you as soon as I am out of it,' said Mrs. Howard, you may be sure of that.'

"Yes ma'am, pray do. And do send to me, if I can be of any use; I should be so glad to help you; yes ma'am, I should, indeed.'

And the pink handkerchief departed, somewhat the worse, I fear, for its sojourn in our kitchen, and we saw it passing along the walk, till it reached the woods, and was hidden, like a rose, in the green foliage. Miss Caffery was not young, but she had taken Time so pleasantly, that Time had returned the compliment. Her hair, still unchanged, was of so soft a colour, so neatly parted her whole voice and action were so gentle and truthful-that one would, at a venture, have joined her in saying 'Yes ma'am,' to everything she uttered. Perfect repose as her eye was, it was not the repose of shallow water, and her mouth was eminently sympathetic.. . . Well might my father say, 'Good Miss Caffery!' Our hearts echoed it many times in the course of that afternoon. The mere sight of her would have soothed most people, and her white dress, so delicately ruffled, was enough to unruffle every one else. Her white dress, too, was so pleasant-so feelingly gentle-that one was touched, as well as interested, by what she said. Every word and look spoke the eminent humanity of her nature, but said as plainly that it was humanity purified. I never saw her now without thinking of Mr. Collingwood's words, a lovely and well-developed Christian character; they helped me to understand what before I had only felt. It was like being shown the secret spring whence came some indefinable freshness of the atmosphere.'

ART. III.-SIR W. HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY.

Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform: chiefly from the Edinburgh Review ; corrected, vindicated, enlarged, in Notes and Appendices, by Sir William Hamilton, Bart. London.

1852.

The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D., now fully collected, with selections from his unpublished letters. Preface, Notes, and Supplementary Dissertations, by Sir William Hamilton, Bart. Edinburgh. 1846.

THESE goodly volumes have in their very aspect an interest independenf of the rare value of their contents. They are the record of a life, devoted with singular faithfulness to an unambitious, yet laborious and noble work: and no studious man can turn over the pages, crowded with the proofs of conscientious care, without profound respect for a teacher who so honours his task, not with a high estimate only, but with thorough and unsparing achievement. Should the reader, instead of turning over the pages, with modern levity of hand, effectively master them by patient toil of mind, and should he be at all qualified to appreciate the cost of gaining, and the value of possessing, the erudite and disciplined intellect implied in these discussions, he will scarcely be untouched by a certain sadness in the homage which he pays to the author's genius and accomplishment. It is impossible to doubt that, in all the higher essentials, Sir W. Hamilton is fitted to be more faultless as a teacher and greater as a philosopher, than at any earlier period of his career: yet when the ripeness is most complete, and the balance best adjusted between the material of knowledge and the force of thought, there comes some presage of a close; and we find him engaged in the most dignified and significant act of a Professor's history,-the gathering together of his scattered stores, and the transference of them from the class-room to the world. Seldom, indeed, does human life appear less adequate to the enterprises it suggests,

than when it is measured against the comprehensive aspirations of a mind competent to philosophy. In no other intellectual pursuit,-still less in any active occupation,is length of time so sure a gain of faculty. There is a term of middle age, beyond which, it is probable, the memory will be apt to play the Historian false, and to require redoubled precautions against mistake: and we remember hearing Sismondi, when appealed to for some fact or date, make the memorable confession, "Alas! all history divides itself for me into two parts,-that which I have written and forgot, and that which I wish to write and have not learned." For the Poet there is a season of inward fire which must not be permitted to damp itself down; its later gleams are fitful, and do not suffice to conquer the colder colouring of mere thought. The student of physical science, having strung its facts together on the hypotheses in vogue when he was thirty, finds his mental cabinet disarranged and his picture of nature confused by the new theoretical conceptions which, ere he is sixty, supply the catchwords of analogy and connexion. But in logical and metaphysical studies (as in the functions of the statesman and the judge) a slower law of maturity appears to prevail; and the tendency always to represent the sage as an old man, is not an unmeaning accident. Plato's Laws astonish us less, as the production of an octogenarian, than the Edipus in Colonus. The habits of reflexion, which are the great instruments of success in the Prima Philosophia, scarcely reach their meridian till Sense and Imagination begin to pale: the tact of fine discrimination first attains its rights, when the fondness for analogies has abated its temptations: and the universe of Ideas, like the vault of the nocturnal sky, reveals the more clearly its relations and its depth, as the shadows fall upon the concrete world and deaden the colours of the noon of life. Moreover, the very purpose of intellectual philosophy,-to detect and exhibit as an organic whole the grounds of certitude and the methods of thought common to all the sciences,is one which, it is evident, will be prosecuted with increasing promise of success, in proportion as a man's view over the whole field of knowledge becomes wider, and he bears within his living experience more various samples of its culture and products. A certain encyclopedic breadth of in

telligence and sympathy is of more avail to the higher speculation than any affluence of special endowment or erudition and this expansion, formed as it is by the confluence of many currents of thought from the narrow passes of our impetuous years, first assumes its full volume in the later reaches of life, as it nears the sea. Nor, in any society old enough to have produced metaphysic systems, will the largest amount of other knowledge qualify the inquirer for his proper success. He cannot proceed as if no one had tried the work before him. He must see how predecessors have answered the problems which he hopes to solve: and whether he follows or deserts their clue, the mere act of tracing it will afford an inestimable guidance to himself. Without a large acquaintance with the history of philosophy, the greatest inventive power will but elaborate some one-sided theory; and the utmost acuteness and depth may waste themselves in reproducing doctrines which have run their cycle, and been forgot. In an age inheriting so many literatures as ours, this survey is in itself the work of half a life and not till it approaches completion do the great cardinal tendencies of human thought,-Idealism and Realism,-Pantheism and Dualism,-Necessity and Freewill,-so mark themselves out as to show the symmetry of their relations and the multitude of their varieties, and become intelligible at once in their root and in their blossom. In apparent consciousness of the immaturity of their earlier genius, the greatest philosophical writers have reserved their chief efforts for the period of approaching age. Eminent names may, indeed, be cited to prove that the metaphysic laurel does not wait for grey hairs on the head which it adorns. Berkeley was only twenty-six on the appearance of his "Principles of Human Knowledge;" nor was Hume older, we believe, when he published his "Treatise on Human Nature;" or Brown, at the earliest date of his essay on the "Relation of Cause and Effect;" and though the "Ethics" of Spinoza was a posthumous publication, the author's early death (at 45) compels us to refer it to the mid-term of ordinary life. Hegel also was not more than thirty-seven when his "Phänomenologie des Geistes" foreshadowed the system which, ten years later, appeared complete in the "Encyclopädie." But in each of these instances the author has