the mind, either through the intellect or through the affections? Had we to recur to the whole chain of evidence by which any truth is proved every time it was needed, and were there no shorter mode of satisfying the judgment or awakening the corresponding affections when required for daily use, how little would ever be done or felt, and how would all life become one protracted debate; but happily, when a truth is once proved, and we have set our seal to the proposition, it abides, henceforth, with the certainty of an axiom, ready for use; and if once received into the heart, its corresponding sentiments as well as ideas, are indelibly associated with its enunciation. I think then, that symbols are signs associated with thoughts or with sentiments, which have originally been discussed and are laid up in the heart or mind for use, and that a symbol is, therefore, a compendious way of bringing the whole upshot of a train of thought or feeling to bear upon a subject without trouble or loss of time.

"For in truth, though types at first derive their power from what they represent, they in process of time enhance the powers of that which is represented.

"Thus, a child learns to value pence, because those ugly pieces buy him playthings, or books, or eatables. The aged miser hugs his gold, for the symbol by long use has enhanced his idea of the

antitype; he sees in the gold the potentiality of houses, railroads, banks, or works of art; so long as he uses it as a symbol, he enjoys in thought the whole, but when expended it dwindles into a selection of one or two of these objects only; and hence the symbol imparted a far wider and more forcible view or cumulative impression of the aggregate which might be classified under it, than any one of the realities alone could do.

"It appears to me then, that symbols enable us to bring home to the mind and heart the combined weight of whole classes of ideas or feelings couched under them, which otherwise would have been weakened by a merely individual and dissevered influence."

Again, Mrs. SchimmelPenninck writes on the same subject:

"I wish to speak to thee on symbols. Does it not make all the difference whether they are established as permanent types or as passing illustrations? In the first case, they become so necessarily associated with the antitype as finally to become substitutions. When used transiently, I think that a variety of symbols, all differing from each other, and only uniting in spirit in one particular, serve to convey an abstract principle far more clearly, and

yet more abstractedly, than could be by any one description in words; since whatever words are used must in truth be at last resolvable into objects of perception as their bases, and then the idea is limited to one type, instead of being the sublimated essence extracted from many. Is not this so as regards the use of types in setting forth ideas? And, again, are they not useful to those who have once received the abstract truth, as a memento and not as a substitution? And is it not as a substitution only that they are dangerous? Are not sensible objects as the money of the intellect, which, being base in itself, becomes yet a standard of value, and a measure between the minds of different men, who, without some material standard, could never explain or make palpable their ideas to each other, nor compare their own? They are that language of things of which the language of words is but a transcript, and without which the latter would never have subsisted; so that without sensible objects thought would have wanted its most powerful instrument, necessary alike to its accuracy, its transmission, its stereotyping, and to its multiplication."

We add the following extracts as specimens of her more familiar correspondence. The succeeding letter, amongst other things, contains Mrs. SchimmelPenninck's views on the principles which should regulate writers of biography.

"July 5th, 1848.

"It is half-past eleven, the Church bell is just ringing. C is gone out to breakfast, and L is engaged in preparation for our going to the cottage, for a few days, to-morrow, and I am sitting alone in my usual place to write a few lines to thee. Thou art probably just about parting with Oand this brief chapter of your life is closed, and a new one about to unfold.

"How solemn parting ever is to the heart, and I may say to the conscience too, for I think that we never part with those we closely love without feeling not only the uncertainty and doubt that hangs over the future, but also the responsibility for the now unalterable past. The soul seems always to hear something not unlike the words that which is unjust must be unjust still; that which is righteous must be righteous still;' and the contrast of the impossibility of grasping the illusive visions of the future with the indelibility of the now unalterable past weighs at such times heavily on the heart . . . "I hope thy visit to the Lakes will give thee pleasure and strength. Do write to me quickly, and if thou canst, fully. We go to the cottage tomorrow, but thou hadst better direct to me here, as I am not likely to stay there many days. In truth I am so unwell that I feel in a sort of perpetual stupor,

trines of that Church, the ample room and help it affords for the abundant carrying out of every varied Christian leading, whether mystic, contemplative, intellectual, mechanical, or laborious. Yet I am conscious I value it not only for the good I truly think it actually possesses, enhanced, perhaps, by the prestige of its antiquity, and historic and picturesque claim on the taste; but I likewise do so by my affections being drawn forth towards it from early association; nay, I think, more than that, from its having been the channel through which our Lord himself has often sent His blessing when no other was open to me.

"Yet, while I deeply recognise this debt of personal gratitude, I also feel that my own peculiar circumstances, however they may have awakened the feelings, yet ought not to warp the truth of deliberate judgment on the comparative merits of Catholicism and Protestantism. Each, I believe, has been overrun with many accumulating corruptions, in its course through centuries of this evil world. Each, also, I as fully believe, has likewise at its respective root, a great, an invaluable and impregnable truth. The one is founded on love, on implicit faith, undoubting affiance and adoration. The other, the Protestant phase, becomes necessary, because, since the fall, what comes through the fallible channel of man requires sifting, doubting,