trivances he pleases to avoid fatigue; but when it appears, he should not excuse himself, but yield to its impulse. He should learn to distinguish indolence, and other counterfeits, from that genuine weariness which makes the sleep of a labouring man sweet. Weariness is the best friend of labour, just as the toothache is the best friend of sound teeth. Weariness is an angel. When the proper end of your day has come, she hovers over your desk, and, if you are careless of the time, she breathes a misty breath upon your eyelids, and loads your pen with an invisible weight; the shadow of her grey wings dims your page, and her throbbing hand upon your forehead admonishes you of her presence. Let her visits be few and far between, and it is well; but you will never regret that you entertain her even unawares. You may avoid, but never resist her. She comes from Heaven to save life.

But comes there never into your study a little imp of darkness of intellectual darkness, we mean-whose efforts to imitate the gentle interference of fatigue are as grotesque as they are vexatious, and who does not succeed in deceiving, however readily one may sometimes fall in with his humour? The heavy pen, the dull page, the wandering thoughts, sometimes interrupt the most successful currents of labour, in those morning hours, and in the fresh days after vacations, when we cannot find the excuse of weariness. There is an indisposition to continuous labour, which is utterly different from fatigue.

John Foster declared: "I have no power of getting fast forward in any literary task; it costs me far more labour than any other mortal who has been in the habit so long. I have the most extreme and invariable repugnance to all literary labours of any kind, and almost all mental labour. When I have anything of the kind to do, I linger hours and hours before I can resolutely set about it, and days and weeks if it is some task more than ordinary."

Dr. Humphrey recommends that the unwilling thoughts be frightened to their task by the same means which Lord Jeffrey used to drive out a headache. He says, in his letters to his son: When you sit down to write, you sometimes will, no doubt, find it difficult to collect your scattered thoughts at the moment, and fix them upon the subject. If, in these cases, you take up a newspaper, or whatever other light reading may happen to be at hand, with the hope of luring the truants back, you will be disappointed. Nothing but stern and decided measures will answer. I would advise you to resort at once to geometry or conic sections, or some other equally inexorable discipline to settle the business. I have myself often called in the aid of Euclid for a few moments, and

always with good success. A little wholesome schooling of the mind upon lines and angles and proportions, when it is not in the right mood for study, will commonly make it quite willing to exchange them for the labour of composition, as the easier task of the two."

There is sound philosophy perhaps in this recommendation. Many persons have observed that the preliminary process of "composing the thoughts" is one which requires a little time and effort, especially where one comes to his subject from a period of exercise, or repose, or any other condition in which the brain has not been active. The functional activity of the brain depends on the copious supply of the arterial blood, its activity varying with that supply, increasing as that supply is greater, and relaxing when it is diminished. But unlike other organs of the body, the brain is densely packed in an unyielding cavity, and there must be room made for this increased volume of circulation whenever it takes place. This is accomplished, physiologists tell us, in the cerebro-spinal fluid, the quantity of which has been estimated at two ounces. This fluid is readily absorbed and as readily reproduced, and thus its quantity varies in a certain inverse proportion to the volume of the circulation of blood in the brain; and by this means an equality of pressure is secured throughout all the variations in the force of the circulation. The act of adjustment between this balancing fluid and the blood requires a little period for its completion, and therefore the brain cannot instantaneously be brought to its maximum action.

Hence, when the circulation has been diverted from the brain, and the proposed mental effort requires it to be vigorously revived in the brain, time must be allowed for this process of adjustment, and room must be made for the needed supply of blood; and perhaps a familiar demonstration in mathematics, which fixes the attention, and will instantly detect any delinquency of that faculty, may often be one of the best modes of employing this transition period, and aiding the change.

We may observe here the singular paradox, which we believe the philosophy of the mind and the experience of the scholar equally establish, that what are usually called the heaviest or severest subjects of thought are the least exhausting to the thinker. Isaac Newton could, month after month, spend in the profoundest problems of pure mathematics twice as many hours in the day as Walter Scott could give to the composition of what we call light reading; and it will be found that mathematicians, theologians, and metaphysicians have been able to sustain more protracted labour, and with less injury, than have poets and novelists. There are not wanting reasons which aid

us to understand this paradox, but we will not enter upon them here.

Irregularities of habit will doubtless disturb the action of the mind. The mental power that is thrown away and wasted by recklessness in this respect is incalculable. But there are variations in mental power in the midst of health, in the absence of fatigue, and under the most regular habits. Perhaps few authors have more carefully adapted their habits to their work, or ordered their method of life with a more quiet equality, than did Milton. He went to bed uniformly at nine o'clock. He rose in the summer generally at four, and in winter at five. When, contrary to his usual custom, he indulged himself with longer rest, he employed a person to read to him from the time of his waking to that of his rising. The opening of his day was uniformly consecrated to religion. A chapter of the Hebrew Scriptures being read to him as soon as he was up, he passed the subsequent interval till seven o'clock in private meditation. From seven till twelve he either studied, listened while some author was read to him, or dictated as some friendly hand supplied him with its pen. At twelve commenced his hour of exercise, which before his blindness was usually passed in his garden or in walking, and afterwards for the most part in the swing which he had contrived for the purpose of exercise. His early and frugal dinner succeeded, and when it was finished he resigned himself to the recreation of music, by which he found his mind at once gratified and restored. He played on the organ, and sang, or his wife sang for him. From his music he returned with fresh vigor to his books or his composition. At six he admitted the visits of his friends; he took his abstemious supper, of olives or some light thing, at eight; and at nine, having smoked a pipe and drank a glass of water, he retired. Yet in the midst of this clock-like regularity his labours were broken by frequent unfruitful seasons. Some days would elapse undistinguished by a verse, while on others he would dictate thirty or forty lines. He seldom wrote any in the summer.

Cowper said that he composed best in winter, because then he could find nothing else to do but think; and he contrasted himself in this respect with other poets, who have found an inspiration in the attractive scenes of the more genial seasons.

Calvin, who studied and wrote in bed, if he felt his facility of composition quitting him, as not unfrequently he did, gave up writing and composing, and went about his out-door duties for days, weeks, and months together. But as soon as he felt the inspiration again, he went back to his bed, and his secretary set to work forthwith.

There are avocations, like those of the advocate, the preacher, the journalist, which must be pursued continuously, well or ill, and in spite of such variations of feeling. In these labours men, doubtless, learn to disregard in some degree these moods of mind; but the variable quality of the productions of one man on different days confirms what testimony we have of their existence.

The zeal or the indifference, the clearness or the dulness, the quickness or the sluggishness of thought, are, however, much determined by the methods of labour into which the person falls, and by the incidental habits and circumstances of his life; and the young student should know that, though some men of very desultory and irregular habits have produced splendid works, nothing but early rising and methodical habits of study can ensure great or permanent results.-Atlantic Monthly.

NONCONFORMISTS AND NATIONAL
EDUCATION.

THE Conversion of Mr. Disraeli into a radical reformer is hardly more surprising than the complete transformation which has taken place in the position of Mr. Edward Baines on the subject of national education. There are numbers who can still remember the zeal, earnestness, and ability, with which he led the crusade in 1847, not only against the Minutes of Council, but against any and every proposition for the interference of the Government with the education of the people, the long and elaborate statistical tables which proved to demonstration that the work had already been done to a much greater extent than was generally believed, the startling list of objections by which it was conclusively shown that the Privy Council were going to do all sorts of dreadful things, both in Church and State; introduce continental bureaucracy, undermine our civil liberty, and above all, set up what would really become a new Church Establishment. Until recently it was supposed that those who acted with him, the Principal of Honiton College in particular, remained firm and uncompromising in the maintenance of the same view. As Mr. Fletcher showed, in his able and manly speech at the Conference at the London Tavern, it is only three years since the old flag was hung out as bravely and defiantly as ever, and much more recently the conductor of

an influential organ of the Independents was threatened with a rival paper if he dared to suggest the wisdom of any surrender on the question. But now an entire change has come over Mr. Baines, Dr. Unwin, and others, and they are for abandoning the old ground entirely, and even for accepting Government aid under the very objectionable system at present maintained by the Privy Council. There are many Nonconformists who have never been able to adopt Mr. Baines' extreme position as to the unlawfulness of all State action in relation to education, who nevertheless have refused to receive aid for schools, so long as it was given on the condition that religious instruction should be imparted in them. Mr. Baines and his friends have now left these men far behind; they would throw the Nonconformist objection altogether aside, on the ground that the religious requirements have been reduced to the minimum, and though they are willing to engage in an attempt to secure their abandonment, would not allow their retention to interfere with the acceptance of the grants. They would, in short, avail themselves of a nominal concession on the part of the Privy Council, which in fact, is no concession at all, confess that they have been defeated, and henceforth co-operate in the development of the present system, at the same time seeking to alter it to the extent recommended by the Royal Commission of 1858.

We should be the last to reproach any one for an honest change of opinions frankly stated and defended on intelligible grounds. Mr. Baines' speech at Manchester was an honourable avowal of mistake, and as such it ought to be received. Personally, we wish that the reaction had not been quite so strong, and that in abandoning a position found to be untenable, he had not taken up another which appears to us equally unsafe, but of his sincerity and earnestness no one can entertain a doubt. The force of circumstances has been against him, and he has at last accepted the resistless logic of facts. It was simply impossible that Congregational voluntary schools could compete successfully against their highly-favoured rivals. They were too heavily weighted, and were sure, sooner or later, to be distanced in the race. It is quite possible, indeed, to point to some prosperous schools that have never accepted a grant, but these are rare exceptions, and exceptions the reason for which can easily be discovered. Either they are in connection with wealthy churches, which have taken up this work of dayschool education as a specialty, and have applied themselves to other departments in order to secure efficiency in this one; or they have been maintained by high fees gladly paid by tradesmen or the better class of artizans, but altogether beyond the means of the really poor; or they have not been exposed to the