h something that is good
for him to do, is the encouragement of another man's sympathy. What
Bacon says the voice of the man is to the dog--the encouragement of a
higher nature--each man can in a lesser degree afford his neighbour;
for a man receives the suggestions of another mind with somewhat of
the respect and courtesy with which he would greet a higher nature.'
Speaking with reference to the pursuits of men of literary and
artistic genius, it is written: 'Almost any worldly state in which a
man can be placed is a hinderance to him, if he have other than mere
worldly things to do. Poverty, wealth, many duties, or many affairs,
distract and confuse him.' One sentence more is all that can be added
here; and if it seems to be suggested by an aphorism of Bacon, it is
equal to it in pith and penetration:--'Every _felicity_, as well as
wife and children, is a hostage to fortune.'

These sentences have been gathered chiefly from _Friends in Council_,
though a few of them are taken from _Companions of my Solitude_. The
two books are informed with the same spirit; and to a meditative
person, one could not recommend a choicer store of reading. Those,
however, to whom the works are as yet unknown, may wish to see some
longer and more connected extract. It is difficult to decide upon what
ought to be presented, where almost everything is exquisite; yet as a
choice must be made, we will take some sentences from an essay on
'Despair,' wherein the writer offers a few remedial suggestions
against the burden of remorse:--

'To have erred in one branch of our duties, does not unfit us for the
performance of all the rest, unless we suffer the dark spot to spread
over our whole nature, which may happen almost unobserved in the
torpor of despair. This kind of despair is chiefly grounded on a
foolish belief that individual words or actions constitute the whole
life of man; whereas they are often not fair representatives of
portions even of that life. The fragments of rock in a mountain stream
may tell much of its history, are, in fact, results of its doings, but
they are not the stream. They were brought down when it was turbid; it
may now be clear: they are as much the result of other circumstances
as of the action of the stream: their history is fitful: they give us
no sure intelligence of the future course of the stream, or of the
nature of its waters; and may scarcely shew more than that it has not
been always as it is. The actions