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knowledge, and will defeat that very pertinacious enemy, selflove. The combat will endure the whole of a man's life; and indeed we often see that, as one grows older, self-conceit, love, and opinion strengthen; and an old man who, when young, was modest and retiring, becomes an opinionative, obstinate old fool, a bore to others, odious to the young and shameful to the old. Around this contemptible old man self-love has thrown a magic veil, which blinds him to the sneers of others and the strong contempt which we may be sure is openly exhibited; for, as it has been said, self-love has always something comfortable to retire upon. The evil of the matter is this—that, however comfortable it may appear, the victim is lulled into a deep sleep, from which he seldom, if ever, awakens.

When a man is "toy-bewitched," and "made blind by self," as we have many instances in history that men are, self-love appears as a fatal passion indeed. When it has once been indulged in beyond a proper and natural boundary, when a man or woman continually refers every action in the world to the interest it has upon self, and self only, then that man or woman is in a state as sad and disgusting as it is dangerous. "The frame of our nature," says Barrow, "speaketh that we are not born for ourselves alone. We shall find man, if we contemplate him, to be a nobler thing than to have been designed merely for his own single pleasure : his endowments are too excellent, his capacities too large, for so mean and narrow purposes. How pitiful a creature were man if this were all he were made for !"

Pursuing this argument further, the learned author whose words we have quoted proceeds to show that a wise selfishness will keep us to our duty, and from a too great love of self. A generous man will indulge in and cultivate large benevolent impulses, and he is undoubtedly a happier man than one who is narrow and mean. So even a true regard for our enjoyment and for our own peace will make us enlarge our views and our sympathies. As we are all born with many faculties, so the proper cultivation of those faculties will lead us away from the inner blind self. To have sublime thoughts is a noble thing to have a cultivated taste, a fine expression, and grand imagination: all these are noble, but cannot become for a moment the property of a merely selfish fool. "He who has grand thoughts is grand at the moment of their inspiration," said Sir Egerton Brydges, when defending Lord Byron; and he who would regard the whole must forget self. In so doing, and in subduing narrow and egotistical prejudices, in foregoing indulgences, in looking on all men as his brothers, in sharing their pleasures, and forgetting in the common good his own sorrows, a man necessarily becomes happier. True riches have been very happily defined to consist not in having much, but in being contented with little. If we are to believe the historic fables, Alexander wept because there were no more continents to conquer, and Diogenes threw away a wooden bowl which he carried when he found that he could just as well drink from the hollow of his hand. The man who narrowed his wants to the smallest limits was not only the wiser, but the happier man; and the man who expands his sym

pathies and narrows his egotisms is happier and wiser even than he. A miser who accumulates gold frequently starves himself after an existence of the greatest privation, after enduring fear, hunger, and cold merely for the sake of a senseless heap of gold, which can do him no good, and which upon his death passes at once to somebody else. The animal instincts of the babe teach it to know its outward self, to feel and to express its inward wants. As children grow up they are all more or less selfish, crying when they are denied anything, seeking immediate gratification, hungry for indulgence and for pleasure. Youth itself, beautiful in its force and strength, is yet vain, empty, and selfish. Even love between the sexes, the very bond of union, is too often an expression of selfishness sad to contemplate. In the rapture of love the two young people forget their parents, their friends, and the world around them. Then the fever and the ferment passes, and wisdom comes with years. The first baby teaches a great lesson: love enlarges its narrow circle, and takes in another item. Suffering, sorrow, trial, and experience, touch the woman's heart and the man's mind, and true wisdom forces them to know that they―

'by sacred sympathy, can make

The whole one self! self that no alien knows!
Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel!

Self, spreading still! oblivious of its own,
Yet all of all possessing!"

ON BOYHOOD, AND GROWING UP.

GREAT many men, and almost all women— except hard and fossil specimens of the sex whose selfishness is of the flintiest kind-love babies. There is something so soft, pretty, helpless, and gentle about them, something so wondrous in their pure eyes and tender hands, that we rough men really do--much to our own wonder sometimes-love them very much. A picture of a baby-face hangs above my desk as I write, and I turn to it with quiet affection, and look at the closed eyes and parted lips, whence almost a baby's softly drawn breath comes and goes. Babies render us tender and more human. Yes, we love babies; but I do not think, in spite of much romance, that any of us quite love boys.

Nor do boys love their own state much, although some writers go on harping on the old, old string, “My boyhood's days! Ah, happy theme!" Is it so?

We had other themes,

and were not too happy. A growing boy is like a young puppy at an awkward age: the grown up men or dogs shun him; the girls don't like him; the women invariably despise him, for he is an animal they cannot reverence; and there

the poor fellow is, all legs and arms; his boots, high-lows, Balmorals, or Bluchers, protruding from beneath his trousers; his tongue uneducated and awkward, his movements ungainly, and his brains not quite in the right place. He himself knows the inferior position he is in, and, poor hybrid animal, is always wanting to be with men when he is with boys, and feeling uncomfortable, and wanting to be with boys, when he is with men. He has only one ardent desire, and that is to grow quickly older, and settle, or else to turn pirate and revenge himself on society. He knows his own worth, if others do not know it; and, in spite of the wonderful illusions of youth, of fresh feelings which we all regret, boyhood is, to most of us, an unhappy time.

That is, it used to be so eighteen years ago. What it is now with the boys it is hard to say; perhaps the same ; but we have many fast boys now who shoot up into men, and put us "oldsters," as they call every man past twenty-five, into the shade.

Every generation changes. It has been said of an innovator that for the first ten years he is considered a fool, the second a promising man, and the third a hero. So men's opinions change and vary. Our best living historian lectured not long ago* on the Science of History, and all he could deduce from his subject was that there was no science in it. You may call it a science when you can with certainty know. what is coming from what has past. When we know that

* At the Royal Institution, February, 1864.

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