beyond controversy. For it is already known that the child takes its mental nature in about equal portions from its parents, and this fact at once leads to our conclusion, as well as explains why brilliant parents often have dunces among their offspring.

"Let us illustrate this. A man has the purely intellectual characteristics in great force, but is wanting in will; he is, consequently, a dreamy philosopher or a visionary speculator. He marries a woman who, with but ordinary intellect, has immense energy. One child of this pair may combine the weakness of both parents, and will be in that event an irreclaimable fool. But another may inherit the mother's will with the father's intellect; and this child, unless ruined by a bad education, is certain to become distinguished.

"Or, take another example. A woman of no remarkable abilities, but with a fine moral nature, is married to a man without principle, but possessing shining abilities. One child of this pair may have the good qualities of both parents, and become a Bunyan, a Nestor, or even a Washington. But another may inherit the deficiencies of both, and grow up, unless carefully guarded, to become but a brilliant villain. Or, take a third instance. One parent may have much imagination, but little else, and the other nothing remarkable, but great perceptive faculties. The union of these two characteristics in a child will produce a poet. The transmission of either in excess, unless balanced by strong reasoning powers, may make only a human monkey or romantic fool.

"This law explains also why so few eminent men belong to one family. There have rarely been two distinguished poets, painters, generals, or even statesmen who were father, or son, or even brothers. The elder and younger Pitt, though both prime ministers, and both famous speakers, were strikingly dissimilar in their mental constitution, so that this example, which seems at first to oppose our theory, really sustains it. In fact, when we consider that the mind has so many and so distinguished ingredients, ideality, causality, benevolence, reverence, destructiveness, constructiveness, and that they are combined in millions of varieties in as many million persons, the wonder is not that two individuals, even of the same family, resemble each other so much. Given the score and odd of separate bumps into which phrenology divides the brain, and take the child of any

two persons, and who shall say in what exact proportions out of the ten thousand possible ones these qualities ought to unite."

INTELLECTUAL PRACTICE AND HABITS.

Possibly there is less difference in the natural powers of understanding in men than some have supposed. "We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us further than can be easily imagined: but it is only the exercise of those powers which gives us ability and skill in anything, and leads us towards perfection.

"A middle-aged ploughman will scarce ever be brought to the carriage and language of a professional man, though his body be as well proportioned, and his joints as supple, and his natural parts not any way inferior. The legs of a dancing master, and the fingers of a musician, fall, as it were, naturally, without thought or pains, into regular and admirable motions. Bid them change their parts, and they will in vain endeavor to produce like motions in the members not used to them, and it will require length of time and long practice to attain but some degrees of a like ability. What incredible and astonishing actions do we find rope-dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to !—not but that sundry in almost all manual arts are as wonderful; but I name those which the world takes notice of for such, because, on that very account, they give money to see them. All these admired motions, beyond the reach, and almost the conception, of unpracticed spectators, are nothing but the mere effects of use and industry in men whose bodies have nothing peculiar in them from those of the amazed lookers-on. "As it is in the body, so it is in the mind.

Practice makes it what it is, and most, even of those excellencies which are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery; others for apologues and apposite diverting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather, because it is not got by rules; and those who excel in either of them never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to be learned.

But yet it is true that at first, some lucky hit, which took with somebody, gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavors that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it without perceiving how; and that is attributed wholly to nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first rise to it; but that never carries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces anything, for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same matter at court and in the university. And he that will go but from Westminster Hall to the Exchange, will find a different genius and turn in their ways of talking; and yet one cannot think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or inns of court.

"To what purpose all this, but to show that the difference so observable in men's understandings and parts does not arise so much from the natural faculties as acquired habits? He would be laughed at that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger at past fifty. And he will not have much better success, who shall endeavor at or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory. Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule: and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician extempore by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.

that age to make a man reason well,

"This being so, that defects and weakness in men's understandings as well as other faculties come from a want of a right use of their own minds, I am apt to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them. We see men fre

quently dexterous and sharp enough in making a bargain, who, if you reason with them about matters of religion, appear perfectly stupid. "What, then, should be done in the case? I answer, we should always remember what I said above, that the faculties of our souls are improved and made useful to us, just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would you have a man write or paint, dance or fence well, or perform any other manual operation dexterously and with ease, let him have ever so much vigor and activity, suppleness and address, naturally, yet nobody expects this from him unless he has been used to it, and has employed time and pains in fashioning and forming his hand, or outward parts, to these motions. Just so it is in the mind-would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observing the connection of ideas, and following them in train. Nothing does this better than mathematics, which, therefore, I think, should be taught all those who have the time and opportunity; not so much to make mathematicians, as to make them reasonable creatures; for though we all call ourselves so, because we are born to it, if we please, yet we may truly say, nature gives us but the seeds of it; we are born to be, if we please, rational creatures, but it is use and exercise only that makes us so."-Conduct of the Understanding.

"Do you

DREAMS.

believe in dreams?' 'Why, yes and no. When they come true, then I believe in them; When they come false, I don't believe in them.""

Thus Longfellow makes one of his characters to discriminate. And this is probably about the position of most persons respecting dreams. Occasionally, a dream seems to indicate a supernatural action on the mind, so completely is it in its essential details fulfilled. The mother of Cardinal Bembo dreamed that Giusto would wound her son in the right hand, and so powerful was the impression produced upon her mind that she entreated the Cardinal, with much earnestness, to beware. "You know how often my dreams have been verified," she said; "therefore I entreat you, my son, endeavor to have no altercation with the man. But he did, just the same,

دو

and received a fearful wound in the second finger of the right hand, which caused him to look upon his mother's dream as a revelation.

We read that "Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him." Dan. ii. 1. In February, 1786, Professor Meyer, of Halle, was sent for by one of his pupils, a medical student, who lay dangerously ill. The patient told him that he should certainly die, having had a warning dream to that effect. "I wrote it down," he added, "the morning after it happened and laid it in a drawer, of which this is the key; when I am gone read it over. On the 4th of March the student died. Professor Meyer opened the drawer of the writing-desk, in which he found this narration: "I thought I was walking in the churchyard of Halle, and admiring the number of excellent epitaphs which are cut on the gravestones there. Passing from one to another, I was struck by a plain tombstone, of which I went to read the inscription. With surprise I found upon it my fore-names and surname, and that I died on the 4th of March. With progressive anxiety I tried to read the date of the year; but I thought there was moss over the fourth cipher of 178-. I picked up a stone to scrape the figures clean, and just as I began to distinguish a 6, with fearful palpitation, I awoke."

The ancients attached much importance to dreams, and employed professional experts to interpret them. It is reported that Cyrus was cast forth at his birth, because a dream of his mother was interpreted to promise him universal empire. In Homer, dreams came from Jove. The Greeks and Romans believed that their gods appeared in dreams, thus answering their votaries. The Moslems thought good dreams from God, and the bad ones from the devil. The American Indians attach importance to all dreams, and think white men should do the same. When Sir William Johnson, prior to the Revolution, received some richly-laced suits of clothing from England, the covetous spirit in Hendrick, king of the five nations of Mohawks, was aroused at sight of them. In a few days he had a dream to the effect that Sir William gave him one of the fine suits which he had received from over the great water. No sooner had he told his dream to the renowned Englishman, than he was presented with one of the richest suits,