bition to disappointment: the course is then over; the wheel turns round but once; while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual. FOUNDERS OF FAMILIES. Young gentlemen! let not the highest of you who hear me this evening be led into the delusion-for such it is-that the founder of his family was originally a greater or a better man than the lowest here. He willed it, and became it. He must have stood low; he must have worked hard, and with tools, moreover, of his own invention and fashioning. He waved and whistled off ten thousand strong and importunate temptations; he dashed the dice-box from the jewelled hand of Chance, the cup from Pleasure's, and trod under foot the sorceries of each; he ascended steadily the precipices of Danger, and looked down with intrepidity from the summit; he overawed Arrogance with Sedateness; he seized by the horn and overleaped low Violence; and he fairly swung Fortune round. NICHOLAS WISEMAN, 1802–1865. NICHOLAS WISEMAN, Cardinal, was born at Seville, in Spain, August 2, 1802, of Irish parents who had settled there. He was educated in the English college at Rome, received the degree of D.D. in 1824, and was promoted to the priesthood in 1825. He became Professor of Oriental Literature, and in December, 1828, rector of the English college. In 1835 he was in London, and delivered a course of lectures "On the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Faith." In 1840 he was appointed Coadjutor Bishop to Dr. Walsh; "the Vicar Apostolic of the Central District of England;" and President of St. Mary's College, at Oscott. In 1850 he was made "Vicar Apostolic of the London District," and in the following year was made by the Pope "Archbishop of Westminster," and raised to the dignity of Cardinal. From that time to his death, February 15, 1865, he labored most assiduously in the discharge of his duties, delivering numerous lectures and sermons on various subjects, many of which were published. His talents were of a very high order, and he was acknowledged as one of the first scholars in Europe. Besides being skilled in the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Oriental tongues, he was well acquainted with most of the European languages. He was one of the chief founders of the Dublin Review; and his Essays in that periodical were highly creditable to him. His chief work is, Twelve Lectures on the Connexion between Science and Revealed Religion, published in 1836, in two volumes, which gave him a high reputation; and few books of the size contain more varied and interesting information. DIFFERENT LANGUAGES AS FIT FOR DIFFERENT DESIGNS. We are not, I think, to imagine that Divine Providence, in distributing to different human families this holy gift of speech, had no farther purpose than the material dispersion of the human race, or the bestowing on them varied forms of utterance: there was doubtless therein a deeper and more important end,-the sharing out among them of the intellectual powers. For language is so manifestly the embodying power, the incarnation, so to speak, of thought, that we can almost as easily imagine to ourselves a soul without a body, as our thoughts unclothed by the forms of their outward expression. And hence these organs of the spirit's conceptions must, in their turn, mould, control, and modify its peculiar character, so that the mind of a nation must necessarily correspond to the language it possesses. The Semitic family, destitute of particles and grammatical forms suited to express the relations of things, stiffened by an unyielding construction, and confined by the dependence of words upon verbal roots to ideas of outward action, could not lead the mind to abstract or abstruse ideas; and hence its dialects have been ever adapted for the simplest historical narratives, and for the most exquisite poetry, where mere impressions or sensations are felt and described in the most rapid succession; while not a school of native philosophy has arisen within their pale, not an element of metaphysical thought occurs in their sublimest compositions. Hence are the deepest revelations of religion, the awfullest denunciations of prophecy, the wisest lessons of virtue, clothed, in Hebrew, under imagery drawn from outward nature. And in this respect the author of the Koran necessarily followed the same course. But to the Indo-European was given a wonderful suppleness in expressing the inward and outward relations of things, by flexion in its nouns, by conditional and indefinite tenses in its verbs, by the tendency to make or adapt innumerable particles, but principally by the powerful and almost unlimited faculty of compounding words; joined whereunto is the facility of varying, inverting, and involving the construction, and the power of immediately and completely transferring the force of words, from a material to a purely mental representation. Hence, while it is a fit instrument for effecting the loftiest designs of genius, it is no less powerful in the hands of the philosopher; and in it, and by it, have arisen those varied systems which, in ancient India, and in later Greece, and in modern Germany, have attempted to fathom the human understanding and analyze to their primitive elements the forms of our ideas.1 1" As an illustration of these remarks, Ijectively,―a violence too great, in other Enmay say that, in our times, the transcendental philosophy could hardly have risen in any country except Germany, whose language possesses the characteristics of the family more than any other, and could most easily permit or suggest the using of the first pronoun ob ropean languages, for them to have first de vised it. In Latin, for instance, where there is no article, it is almost impossible to express it; nor could one using that language have conceived such an idea."-WISEMAN. And do you not see in all this a subserviency to still nobler designs, when in conjunction with these reflections you look back at the order observed by God in the manifestation of his religion? For so long as his revelations were rather to be preserved than propagated, while his truths regarded principally the history of man and his simplest duties towards God, when his law consisted of precepts rather of outward observance than of inward constraint, while the direction of men was managed rather by the mysterious agency of seers into futurity than by the steady rule of unalterable law, the entire system of religion was deposited in the hands of that human family whose intellectual character and language were admirably framed for clinging with tenacity to simple traditions of early days, and for describing all that was on the outside of man, and lent themselves most effectually to the awful ministry of the prophet's mission. But no sooner is a mighty change introduced into the groundwork of his revelation, and the faculties unto which it is addressed, than a corresponding transfer manifestly takes place in the family whereunto its ministration and principal direction are obviously committed. The religion now intended for the whole world, and for each individual of the human race, requiring in consequence a more varied evidence to meet the wants and satisfy the longings of every tribe, and every country, and every age, is handed over "to other husbandmen," whose deeper power of thought, whose ever eager impulse to investigate, would more easily discover and bring to light its inexhaustible beauties; who would search out its connexions with every other order of truth, every other system of God's dispensation: thus ever bringing forth new motives of conviction and new themes of praise. And in this manner Divine Wisdom, while it hath made the substance of religion one and immutable, hath yet in a manner tied its evidences to the restless wheel of man's endeavor, and mingled them with the other motives of his impelling desires, that so every step made in the prosecution of sound study and humble inquiry may give them also a new advance and a varied position, on which the reflecting mind may dwell with surpassing admiration. ISAAC TAYLOR, 1787-1865. ISAAC TAYLOR, Jr., the son of the Rev. Isaac Taylor, an Independent minister of Ongar,1 Essex, was born at that place in 1787. He received his education at 1 Several members of the family are well known in literature. Charles, brother of Isaac senior, was the learned editor of Calmet's Bible Dictionary; Ann (Isaac's wife), author of Maternal Solicitude,-a book much read at the time; the two sisters of Isaac junior, Ann (afterwards Mrs. Gilbert) and Jane, were the authors of Original Poems for Infant home, under the direction of his father. His literary tastes and religious principles began to be developed when he was quite a youth; and he early became & contributor to the Eclectic Review. In 1822 appeared his first work,-Elements of Thought; and in 1860 his last,-The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry: between these he published about twenty-five volumes, the chief of which are-Natural History of Enthusiasm, Saturday Evening, Fanaticism, Spiritual Despotism, Plysical Theory of another Life, Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Tracts for the Times, Loyola and Jesuitism, and Wesley and Methodism. He died on the 28th of June, 1865. Isaac Taylor has been well called "the greatest English lay theologian since Coleridge." All his writings evince great research, profound thought, and a pure Christian and catholic spirit. By birth and education a "Dissenter,” he connected himself, in the latter part of his life, with the "Established” Church. But he was no sectarian. He loved truth wherever found, and pursued it with a zeal that knew no abatement, and with a learning that has rarely been excelled. He devoted himself to spiritual studies simply from his pure love for them; and so much sought for were his works from the very beginning, that he was enabled to make religious literature his profession. He cannot be called a "popular" writer, in the broad sense of that term; but his works, from their comprehensive and catholic spirit, their profound research, and their logical power, have always been the choice companions of the thoughtful and the inquiring.3 DANGERS OF THE RELIGION OF THE IMAGINATION. The religion of the heart, it is manifest, may be supplanted by a religion of the imagination, just in the same way that the social affections are often dislodged or corrupted by factitious sensibilities. Every one knows that an artificial excitement of the kind and tender emotions of our nature may take place through the medium of the imagination. Hence the power of poetry and the drama. But every one must also know that these feelings, how vivid soever and seemingly pure and salutary they may be, and however nearly they may resemble the genuine workings of the soul, are so far from producing the same softening effect upon the character, that they tend rather to indurate the heart. Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of luxurious pleasure, then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the moral system, they become a freezing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence, and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in fact, more impenetrable than that which usually Minds, and Hymns for Infant Minds. Jane herself wrote Display, a Tale for Young People, 1815. 1 The organ of the Independents or Congregationalists 2" His Ancient Christianity, by its erudition and argumentative power, completely demolished the position taken by the Tractarians." 3 Read an article on his Literary Life, in Macmillan's Magazine for January, 1866. envelops a pampered imagination. The reality of woe is the very circumstance that paralyzes sympathy; and the eye that can pour forth its flood of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama, grudges a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the unhappy. Much more often than not, this kind of luxurious sensitiveness to fiction is conjoined with a callousness that enables the subject of it to pass through the affecting occasions of domestic life in immovable apathy: the heart has become, like that of leviathan, "firm as a stone, yea, hard as a piece of the nether millstone." This process of perversion and of induration may as readily have place among the religious emotions as among those of any other class; for the laws of human nature are uniform, whatever may be the immediate cause which puts them in action; and a fictitious piety corrupts or petrifies the heart not less certainly than does a romantic sentimentality. The danger attending enthusiasm in religion is not, then, of a trivial sort; and whoever disaffects the substantial matters of Christianity, and seeks to derive from it merely, or chiefly, the gratifications of excited feeling,-whoever combines from its materials a paradise of abstract contemplation or of poetic imagery, where he may take refuge from the annoyances and the importunate claims of common life,-whoever thus delights himself with dreams and is insensible to realities, lives in peril of awaking from his illusions when truth comes too late. The religious idealist sincerely believes himself, perhaps, to be eminently devout; and those who witness his abstraction, his elevation, his enjoyments, may reverence his piety; meanwhile, this fictitious happiness creeps as a lethargy through the moral system, and is rendering him continually less and less susceptible of those emotions in which true religion consists. JOHN WESLEY. Wesley took his position upon the field of the world,-the friend of man, the enemy of nothing but sin. On this ground he has a claim to be regarded with reverent affection and admiration, which is as valid as that of any of the worthies to whom a place has been assigned among the benefactors of mankind. The very inconsistencies that mark his progress (when properly considered) do but enhance his demand upon our sympathies. If, indeed, as heartless writers have affirmed, he had been nothing better than an ambitious plotter, the builder of a house in which he should rule and be worshipped, no such inconsistencies would ever have come to the surface, or would for a moment have made him halt on his path. Unquestionably, it was from the want of a plot at the beginning, and from the lack of ambition as he went on, that he found himself compelled to yield, once and |