The conversation upon culture now terminated for the present. Upon consulting their watches, they found that they had so far prolonged their discourse into the forenoon, that they could scarcely be in time for any of the morning lessons given at the temple. Mr. Marsden, therefore, ordered an early dinner, and they sallied forth to take a ramble through the wood, and fields, and quiet green lanes, returning through the picturesque village of Ainsley. Here they lingered to gaze on the neat white cottages, each with its latticed window, surrounded without, or adorned within, by shrub or flower. They visited the court-house, restored by the Earl, in the old rustic style, with oak beams and plaster, and glanced at the public gardens, serving both as a promenade and as plots for cottagers. It was evident, every where, that a superior taste and benevolence were at work, making the traces of man harmonious with the beautiful portion of nature, amid which they lay. Mr. Marsden informed his visitor that a large number of these improvements was due to the care of Lady Ainsley, the young wife of the Earl, who watched over the families on the estate with a sort of maternal interest. the afternoon they descended the glen, and mounted the opposite hill. Paying a cursory visit to the regular schoolhouse, they just noticed the spaciousness of the numerous class-rooms, and their ample provision with every kind of illustration, whether specimen, model, or picture, necessary to the subjects taught therein. The view from every window lay over wood and glen, and away over the white cottages, and the rich country beyond, to the distant hills, in one direction, and over the low long horizon of flat land, in the other. In CHAPTER III. THE day being warm and fine, many of the classes were receiving a lesson at the temple, and thither Mr. Marsden and his visitor accordingly repaired. As they approached the building, the former enquired of his guest, if he admired Gothic architecture?" Elwood."I have always had a peculiar fondness for Gothic architecture. Its forms seem to me more harmonious with the forms of nature, than many of those of the classic style. I always feel as if, like the mighty and graceful forms of the forest, they symbolized forth to me, and made me thus feel in contact with, some mystic life. One feels, I mean, as if these forms had grown or developed to their present state. And I am persuaded, that though accidently resulting at first, they were seized and retained by some inner consciousness of this sort to which they appealed. And, thus, the life seems in them which developed them. The classic forms, with their right-angles and horizontal lines, and artificial ornament, seem to remind one more, that they are cut out-wrought by man from the outside. Hence, the Gothic always appears to me to be more appropriate for religious purposes, because it secretly harmonizes the mind to feel that invisible and mystic life with which religion is concerned." It may easily be supposed, then, that it was to Elwood a peculiar delight to gaze on this noble pile-to walk round it again and again-look up to its lofty windows and towersfollow its delicate tracery with his eye, and scan its symmetries and dimensions. After he had thus perused the exterior of the building, he returned to Mr. Marsden, who had been delighted with his enthusiasm, and asked the meaning of the unusual addition of the arcade, or running porch, or cloister, which flanked the aisles." Marsden." This arcade or porch is the outer court, which represents the first course of our instructions, and where, in fact, those instructions are delivered when the fine, warm weather tempts us. "The court looks out upon external life and nature, to show that we must build all our teachings upon observation-pro ceeding from the known to the unknown. This court opens by side doors into the building more particularly called the temple—and which is appropriated more emphatically to religious studies and exercises-because we believe, as you will now understand, that the noblest result of intellectual culture is religion. This is its real crown and true development. We wish, also, by this arrangement to impress upon the mind the fact, that by no other way than that culture which first brings the soul in contact, through actual life and nature, with moral and religious facts, can the mind be prepared to feel truly religious emotions. Religion, in its widest sense, is looking up to persons, in contradistinction to things or principles, with the higher portion of our nature. Now, we seem to look up to superior persons with two classes of feelings, one of which we may call the intellectual feelings, because they have such close connection with our intellectual nature— and the other the moral. By the intellectual feelings we look up to superior beings with admiration for the beauty of their thoughts-awe for the grandeur pervading themsometimes with wonder at the mystery which surrounds them, and intellectual reverence for their wisdom or truth. With the purely moral feelings on the other hand, we look up with reverence for their moral attributes,―gratitude for their benevolence-trust in their continued love. Now, let us take first the intellectual element of religion. Can any being venerate that quality in another for which he has neither conception nor value in his own experience? Can a child, for example, who has not learnt to seek and value knowledge for itself, reverence another mind for its superior knowledge? Will he admire the beauty or grandeur of another's soul if he has no particle of love for mental beauty or grandeur for himself? It is manifest to us, that in order to enable the child to look up with reverence, both to the great intellectual spirits of our race, and to the great Father of intellect, we must awaken somewhat of the intellectual character within the child himself,—we must develope some portion of love for the true, admiration for the beautiful, awe for the grand, and wonder for the mysterious. Then, he will find in superior minds a grander and completer picture of that which within himself has most moved his nobler feelings. And as he has loved the small, faint and imperfect fore-shadowing within, he will love with intenser force the larger and more glorious revelation without. In our view, then, one of the grandest results of intellectual culture is the capacity it developes for sympathising with, and therefore reverencing, superior intellectual beings. The first step in mental cultivation, is a love for noble things, or principlestruth, beauty, grandeur, mystery. The second step is a reverence for the persons who embody these things; and just as the pupil, in studying language, is learning the use of that power which he may afterwards employ to utter glorious thoughts-like those of Plato or Milton, so, in learning to love knowledge, and all the high features which it discloses, he is exercising those very feelings by which soon he is to ascend to devotion towards the eternal God. "There is, then, a primary and secondary state of these intellectual feelings. The second state is but a metamorphosis from the first. Intellectual reverence for intellectual nobles, is but a developed state of intellectual yearnings; and you can no more have the second without the first, than you can have the butterfly without the chrysalis. But, then, observe in what harmony are all highest and most beautiful aims. Seek only to develope the intelligence in accordance with nature, and behold you have, in the end, spontaneously unfolding themselves, the noble and beauteous growths of reverence and devotion. Let us notice how these same principles hold true with regard to the other or moral element of reverence. I have detained your attention all this time upon one side only of our culture-the intellectual: I have spoken, it is true, of that moral education which is concerned with intellectual pursuits, looking upon them as noble occupations, and even high duties; but it cannot have escaped your attention that there is a larger and more important field of action than the intellectual-the field of our relations to human beings. Now, if you observe, from one of our arcades, our pupil looks out upon nature-upon rich valleys, shining streams, wooded hills and mountains, with here and there glimpses of the distant ocean. From the other, he looks out upon the evidences of human life, upon our own little village, and many other villages and hamlets dotting the plain; and in the distance, the great hive of human beings-the town of W. I have as yet only introduced you to the intellectual culture pursued in the porch or arcade of nature. is another and more important branch pursued in the porch of humanity." There Elwood accordingly observed, that the porch, indicated by his guide, was adorned here and there with a running scroll, upon which was the word "Philanthropia;" as over the opposite porch he had found a similar scroll, with the word "Philosophia." 66 "As in the other porch, looking forth upon nature," continued Mr. Marsden, our pupils are introduced to philosophy-i. e., in the real old meaning of the wordlove for wisdom, and which forms the intellectual element of religion, so in this, looking forth upon the signs of human life, we endeavour to awaken that love for man which is its moral element. Now, it is evident that what I before said regarding the impossibility of a mind feeling reverence for superior intellects, until it is itself possessed of some degree of intellectual life, will apply also to moral reverence. We revere superior moral beings, because they perform actions which we call moral, and which, we instinctively infer, proceed from sentiments that we term moral. But, how can we possibly sympathise with any such moral nature, or revere it for being what it is, if we ourselves have not moral sentiments, which manifest themselves in actionwhich regard moral actions with delight-which feel that they are moral? "It cannot be too clearly discerned that we can revere God, or any other good being, for moral character and conduct, only in proportion as we can present to ourselves the moral feelings which make the character and produce the conduct. And we can know such feelings only by experiencing them, just as we can know musical sounds only by hearing them and feeling them to be musical. We know that actions are moral only by their agreeing with our moral feelings, as we know that sounds are musical by their agreeing with our musical feeling. If we have no moral feeling, we may know that an action has been named moral by others—that it is a prudent action for our own self-interest; but we cannot truly know, much less deeply feel, that it is moral. The moral actions of beings are, then, only the symbols to us of their moral feelings, just as notes in musical writing are symbols of beautiful sounds. Now, until we have heard and felt music, its symbols have no true meaning to us. Take a being who has never heard music, and therefore knows nothing of the feelings it excites, and showing him the symbols of a sublime composition of Mozart, tell him |