How could this be? No doubt the very force of his character had its roots amid strong passions. From the worst temptations of these he might have been preserved by guidance and sympathy. But the very elevation of his ruling aims and loves, by isolating him, became his snare. Often after long and exhausting devotion to the pursuit of truth, or to labour in plans to benefit his countrymen and species, a pause would ensue in his life. His energies had overwrought themselves, and his enthusiasm burnt itself away; and then he would turn for support to the sympathy of his kind. But, when he found hearts dead to that sacred love of truth which moved himself, and saw that the thoughts of noblest thinkers, which to him were as the precious fine gold, were to others no better than dull pieces of basest metal, unless stamped with the authority of sect or party, or current in the world for respectability or other grosser value-then his heart would sink within him; he would lose confidence in his own better instincts, and think of himself as an anomaly-“ one born out of due season." The things he had pursued with such ardour would, for a time, lose their beauty and their worth. His lower nature long restrained would rise within him. Despairing of finding sympathy in his nobler feelings he would turn to companionship in ignoble ones. These lapses were followed by terrible reactions. He would give himself up for a time to the most lacerating remorse, and then again would start forward with almost superhuman exertion and selfdenial, to escape from himself and reach again the peace he had forfeited.

Yet this is the kind of experience out of which the earnest moral nature with intensest power is often formed. Hence sometimes comes the reformer, who himself struggling with the power and contamination of sin-while he yearns for a purity which seems always afar off, speaks as to himself those burning and passionate words which move the heart of a nation or an age.

Thus, through varied periods of light and darkness, Ainsley went on to opening manhood, about which time it was his fortune to meet, amid the circumstances of his college life, with a private tutor, a few years older than himself, of the name of Marsden.

Young Ainsley soon discovered that he had in him a man of high and vigorous thought, and of profound and varied

attainments; but what to him was more than everything, the spirit of Marsden soon revealed itself as eminently kindred to his own. Marsden did not hide from his young friend and pupil that he, too, had passed through the ordeal of temptation —not without frequent prostrations; but now he could say, to the inexpressible consolation of Ainsley, that, through the purifying power of sorrow and of a deeper self-communion, he had attained, at last, the calm of self-dependence, and therein of that faith which affords the solid ground upon which the energies of action can plant themselves.

From that hour the ascendancy of Marsden over Ainsley's mind became almost absolute. His career of waywardness was over. Marsden became to him a new and mighty confirmation of his better self-the representative to him of an order of human beings in whose souls there moved a life responsive to his own.

"Since I have known you," said the grateful and affectionate young man one day, writing to his friend, “I have found my soul; I have discovered the reality of my deeper and better nature. There is something very wonderful, dear Marsden, in this discovery of a soul the double, as it were, of our own. That a being, distant, perhaps, in time and space, should have thought our thoughts, known our longings, felt our deep intuitions of conscience, been subject to our temptations, and walked life with our burden of consciousness, becomes to us at once the grandest of facts. That soul becomes to us like some granite rock, on which the whole superstructure of our trust and conviction can now repose. And the confidence afforded us is far more than that which we should expect from finding the mere duplicate of our own nature. That soul is taken by us for more than its own single individuality. The very fact of the repetition of ourselves under such distinct and dissimilar circumstances makes us instinctively look upon that soul as a manifestation of the universal human nature. And when, in addition to the prophetic representation, in worthy and soulsubduing speech, of the great revelations of the spirit to itself, there is also an actual outworking of these in a true and faithful life as I may say, without even the appearance of flattery, I have found in you-then the trust communicated to us in the principles within us, which have thus been embodied, becomes immeasurably increased. It is no longer like

the trust which the traveller gives us, when, far away, we have been dreaming of our early home, and he describes to us scenes which we recognise as our own native valleys, and the dear hill-sides on which we have played, and the streams for whose music we have so often longed; for we know the traveller may, after all, deceive us, fool us with our own enthusiasm, or take hints from our own remembrances. But now our trust is like the sober certainty in the solid fields on which we actually walk with our friend, and the deep-rooted trees, and eternal stars between, to which we look up together."

If Ainsley and Marsden had lived in earlier times, they would probably have endeavoured to appeal to the adult mind, and to form a sect with a new moral life. As it was, they discerned their mission to be something very different. "It is beginning to be evident to us," said Lord Ainsley, one day, to Marsden, "that after so many ages of passionate struggle by noblest souls, even to the death, the labour of the immortals for us has almost been wasted, as to visible effect,-and all because it has been exerted at impracticable points. The great reformers of the world have hitherto boldly, though, perhaps, not wisely, rushed upon the full-swollen river of human life, and, with efforts that only broke their own hearts, sought to turn aside its stubborn current of prejudices and habits. We are beginning mournfully to see how hopeless is the task, but, at the same time, to discern that perhaps the triumphs of which they dreamt in vain do really await ourselves. If we, with something of their faithfulness of pose, and with more than their prudence, will only go back to the fountains of life, we may then take its waters as they issue into being, and dig for them, with unerring efficacy, tracks which shall guide and keep them in the loftier courses along which we wish them to flow."

pur

The minds of the two friends were above the common weakness of rejecting a thought because it is becoming popular. They were struck by the new belief in education, examined it, and agreed that it was the great idea, the last revelation for the age. In a wise education for the young, seemed to them to lie all glorious possibilities for the futurepolitical, social, moral, intellectual, and physical. And the great problem to be solved-the great truth to be sought, and given to the age, was What is education to be?-what is its true idea?" That once attained, the highest work of the

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philanthropist, the Christian, and the reformer seemed to be marked out—it was, to labour with this idea-both to use it and to preach it.

During the recess, Marsden had accompanied his pupil home. They were together in the garden, and had been conversing with the gardener respecting the nature and treatment of some new and beautiful plants just arrived from South America. Marsden, who was an enthusiastic botanist, had been surprised and delighted with the extent and accuracy of the man's information in his favourite science, as well as in the connected science of chemistry. "With what a ready instinct," said he to Ainsley, "we avail ourselves, in our material interests, of the improvement of science and the march of intellect; and yet how strangely backward we are to take the hints offered us for our more spiritual interests! Your steward told me yesterday that he had been long looking out for a gardener to his mind,-for one who, besides some empirical knowledge gained from practice and experience, should have some acquaintance with the sciences connected with his art. 'For surely,' said he, ‘a man whose business it is to manage plants, and who can manage them only by complying with the laws of their nature-taking the hint from nature and helping her, as it were-must be the more fitted to manage them when he understands some of the laws of their nature, and the laws of those things-such as light, heat, electricity, soil-which are the great influences that act upon them. Liebig tells us, as a law in the chemistry of plants, that soils should be manured with refuse or ashes from the plant which is to be raised therein again; so that soil for peas may properly be treated with the ashes from pea stalks. Now surely he who knows this fact of pea-nature will be better able to raise peas than one who has never suspected it.' Does it not occur to you, dear Ainsley, how exactly applicable is this reasoning of the steward to the great work of educating the beautiful and priceless plant of the young mind, so as to lead it to unfold all its richest blossoms and most precious fruit? All our empirical knowledge, derived from precedent and practice, helps us only a little way. We have not been able, as yet, to produce much other than common and stunted souls in our mind-gardens and forcing-houses. Does it not seem to you that if we would be gardeners of the soul, worthy of our work, we too must patiently sit down and

study the nature of the plants we would cultivate, the laws of their development, and the laws of the influences, too, which them?"

act upon

Ainsley." Then the idea of education must grow out of a correct idea of the nature of the human mind or soul, and of the mode in which it becomes educated by external influences? In other words, you would have us study the physiology of the soul; and, I suppose, the corresponding chemistry is an analysis of the influences which act upon the soul, and how they act. In this mental chemistry, lessons of every kind, and every influence which helps or may help to form the character, are to be subjected to our patient examination."

Marsden.-"Precisely. That this physiology and chemistry of the mind should be essential studies with the mindculturist, appears self-evident; and yet how little the educational zeal around us seems to discern the fact! My brother wrote me a few days since, that in our native town he and his neighbours were congratulating themselves that they had succeeded in chasing from their neighbourhood a medical quack, who had long been deluding the ignorant into trusting their health to his blind care; yet, it appears that the fellow, though a quack, was really of considerable talent and experience; but he had received no education that could bring him acquainted with the physiology of the frame whose hidden diseases he pretended to subdue, or with the chemistry of the medicines which he presumed to administer. Yet, in that same town how many physicians, medical advisers of the soul, will be allowed to continue their practice unquestioned! They are to draw forth in healthy vigour the faculties or members of the soul, while the very existence of many of these is hidden from their suspicion. They are to prevent spiritual diseases, without any but the dimmest conception of the noxious influences which may produce them, or of the operation of the remedies to be administered for them when produced. Really, Ainsley, when I reflect upon our absolute helplessness in education, I am ashamed, and feel that future generations will really look back upon us as having been in the depths of barbarism. Only imagine with what contempt your surgeon would think upon some long-bearded, longcloaked Saxon leech, (the lic carer, i. e. the flesh or body carer,) who undertook to care for the health of a village, and never suspected, poor soul, that there were such things as