soon as you are in active way of mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over an undefined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of others' faults: in every person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong: honor that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life should seem rugged as a palm tree stem: still, never mind, so long as it has been growing; and has its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of honied fruit, at top. And even if you cannot find much good in yourself at last, think that it does not much matter to the universe either what you were, or are; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be; and rejoice in their nobleness. An immense quantity of modern confession of sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly egotism; which will rather gloat over its own evil, than lose the centralization of its interest in itself.

MARY. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did the old Greek proverb Know thyself' come to be so highly esteemed?

L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs; Apollo's proverb, and the sun's; but do you think you can know yourself by looking into yourself? Never. You can know what you are, only by looking out of yourself. Measure your own powers with those of others; compare your own interests with those of others; try to understand what you appear to them, as well as what they appear to you; and judge of yourselves, in all things, relatively and subordinately; not positively starting always with a wholesome conviction of the probability that there is nothing particular about you. For instance, some of you perhaps think you can write poetry. Dwell on your own feelings and doings:-and you will soon think yourselves Tenth Muses; but forget your own feelings; and try, instead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or

Dante and you will soon begin to feel yourselves foolish girls-which is much like the fact.

very

So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfortune; you meditate over its effects on you personally; and begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a this or that or the other of profound significance; and that all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little while, that they may watch its effects on your mind. But give up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy; examine a little what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happening, every second, to twenty times worthier persons: and your self-consciousness will change into pity and humility; and you will know yourself, so far as to understand that there hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man.'

Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any person of sense would arrive at, supposing the texts which relate to the inner evil of the heart were as many, and as prominent, as they are often supposed to be by careless readers. But the way in which common people read their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said), over and over, where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to their spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is. But you can only get the skins of the texts that way. If you want their juice, you must press them in cluster. Now, the clustered texts about the human heart, insist, as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts, but on the terrific distinction between the bad and the good ones. 'A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil.' They on the rock are they which, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it.' 'Delight thyself in the Lord, and

1 he

He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' wicked have bent their bow, that they may privily snoot at him that is upright in heart.' And so on; they are countless, to the same effect. And, for all of us, the question is not at all to ascertain how much or how little corruption there is in human nature; but to ascertain whether, out of all the mass of that nature, we are of the sheep or the goat breed; whether we are people of upright heart, being shot at, or people of crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the texts bearing on the subject, this, which is a quite simple and practical order, is the one you have chiefly to hold in mind. 'Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.'

LUCILLA. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem!

L. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the universe is bound to look consistent to a girl of fifteen? Look up at your own room window; you can just see it from where you sit. I'm glad that it is left open, as it ought to be, in so fine a day. But do you see what a black spot it looks, in the sun-lighted wall?

LUCILLA. Yes, it looks as black as ink.

L. Yet you know it is a very bright room when you are inside of it; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very probable, also, that if you look into your heart from the sun's point of view, it might appear a very black hole indeed: nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make it very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters up. And the one question for you, remember, is not 'dark or light?' but tidy or untidy? Look well to your sweeping and garnishing; and be sure it is only the banished spirit, or some of the seven wickeder ones at his back, who will still whisper to you that it is all black.

·

LECTURE VI.

CRYSTAL QUARRELS.

Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game at crystallization in the morning, of which various account has to be rendered. In particular, everybody has to explain why they were always where they were not intended to be.

L. (having received and considered the report). You have got on pretty well, children: but you know these were easy figures you have been trying. Wait till I have drawn you out the plans of some crystals of snow!

MARY. I don't think those will be the most difficult :-they are so beautiful that we shall remember our places better; and then they are all regular, and in stars it is those twisty oblique ones we are afraid of.

L. Read Carlyle's account of the battle of Leuthen, and learn Friedrich's ‘oblique order.' You will get it done for once, I think, provided you can march as a pair of compasses would.' But remember, when you can construct the most difficult single figures, you have only learned half the game-nothing so much as the half, indeed, as the crystals themselves play it.

MARY. Indeed; what else is there?

L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallizes alone. Usually two or three, under quite different crystalline laws, form together. They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, when they are in fine temper: and observe what this signifies. It signifies that the two, or more, minerals of different natures agree, somehow.

between themselves, how much space each will want ; --agree which of them shall give way to the other at their junction; or in what measure each will accommodate itself to the other's shape! And then each takes its permitted shape, and allotted share of space; yielding, or being yielded to, as it builds, till each crystal has fitted itself perfectly and gracefully to its differently-natured neighbor. So that, in order to practise this, in even the simplest terms, you must divide into two parties, wearing different colors; each must choose a different figure to construct; and you must form one of these figures through the other, both going on at the same time.

MARY. I thing we may, perhaps, manage it; but I cannot at all understand how the crystals do. It seems to imply so much preconcerting of plan, and so much giving way to each other, as if they really were living.

L. Yes, it implies both concurrence and compromise, regulating all wilfulness of design: and, more curious still, the crystals do not always give way to each other. They show exactly the same varieties of temper that human creatures might. Sometimes they yield the required place with perfect grace and courtesy; forming fantastic, but exquisitely finished groups and sometimes they will not yield at all; but fight furiously for their places, losing all shape and honor, and even their own likeness, in the contest. MARY. But is not that wholly wonderful? How is it that one never sees it spoken of in books?

L. The scientific men are all busy in determining the constant laws under which the struggle takes place ; these indefinite humors of the elements are of no interest to them. And unscientific people rarely give themselves the trouble of thinking at all, when they look at stones. Not that it is of much use to think; the more one thinks, the more one is puzzled.

MARY. Surely it is more wonderful than anything in botany?

L. Everything has its own wonders; but, given the