all this professional matter: it is a comfort to talk out one's mind even to friends whom one will never see. I dare say discerning folk will know, that the writer has been describing his own constant temptation; and that, however needful he may feel these seasons of rest to be, it is only now and then that he can train himself to take them. And he has found that nothing gives the mind more effectual rest, than change of employment. You have heard, doubtless, of that mill-horse, which all days of the week but Sunday was engaged in walking round and round a certain narrow circle. You may remember what was the Sunday's occupation of that sagacious creature. An unthinking person might have surmised that the horse, which had perpetually to walk on working days, would have chosen on its day of rest to lie still and do nothing. But the horse knew better. It spent Sunday in walking round and round, in the opposite direction from that in which it walked on weekdays. It found rest, in short, not in idleness; but in variation of employment. I commend that horse. I have tried to do something analogous to what it did. These essays have been to me a pleasant change, from the writing of many sermons. And even in leisure hours, if it be (as Sydney Smith said) 'the nature of the animal to write,' the pen will be taken up naturally and habitually. I can say sincerely, that more important duties have never been postponed to the production of these chapters and I please myself with the belief, that the hands into which this volume is likely to fall, will not be those of total strangers. You may perhaps find, my friendly reader, that these essays of an old friend, whom you knew in the days when he was a country parson, have somewhat changed their character, in consistence with his total change of life. But I have reason to cherish a quiet trust, that they have done good to some of my fellowcreatures. I suppose the like happens to all authors, who write in sincerity and in kindness of heart: but I cannot forget what numbers of men and women, otherwise unknown, from either side of the Atlantic, have cheered and encouraged the writer, sometimes in weary hours, by thanking him for some little good impression left by these pages upon heart and life. I have not been able to forego the great delight of trying to produce what might afford some pleasure and profit to friends far beyond the boundaries of my parish nor have I been able to think that it was my duty to do so. BEING THOUGHTS ON THE PRACTICAL SERVICE OF A CONSOLATORY ESSAY. LMOST every man is what, if he were a horse, would be called a screw. Almost every man is unsound. Indeed, my reader, I might well say even more than this. It would be no more than truth, to say that there does not breathe any human being who could satisfactorily pass a thorough examination of his physical and moral nature by a competent inspector. I do not here enter on the etymological question, why an unsound horse is called a screw. Let that be discussed by abler hands. Possibly the phrase set out at length originally ran, that an unsound horse was an animal in whose constitution there was a screw loose. And the jarring effect produced upon any machine by looseness on the part of a screw which ought to be tight, is well known to thoughtful and experienced minds. By a process of gradual abbreviation, the phrase indicated passed into the simpler statement, that the unsound steed was himself a screw. By a bold transition, by a subtle intellectual process, the thing supposed to be wrong in the animal's physical system was taken to mean the animal in whose physical system the thing was wrong. Or, it is conceivable that the use of the word screw implied that the animal, possibly in early youth, had got some unlucky twist or wrench, which permanently damaged its bodily nature, or warped its moral development. A tendon perhaps received a tug which it never quite got over. A joint was suddenly turned in a direction in which Nature had not contemplated its ever turning and the joint never played quite smoothly and sweetly again. In this sense, we should discern in the use of the word screw, something analogous to the expressive Scotticism, which says of a perverse and impracticable man, that he is a thrawn person; that is, a person who has got a thraw or twist; or rather, a person the machinery of whose mind works as machinery might be conceived to work which had got a thraw or twist. : The reflective reader will easily discern that a complex piece of machinery, by receiving an unlucky twist, even a slight twist, would be put into a state in which it would not go sweetly, or would not go at all. After this excursus, which I regard as not unworthy the attention of the Dean of Westminster, who has for long been, through his works, my guide and philosopher in all matters relating to the study of words, I recur to the grand principle laid down at the beginning of the present dissertation, and say deliberately, that ALMOST EVERY MAN THAT LIVES, IS WHAT, IF HE WERE A HORSE, WOULD BE CALLED A SCREW. Almost every man is unsound. Every man (to use the language of a veterinary surgeon) has in him the seeds of unsoundness. You could not honestly give a warranty with almost any mortal. Alas! my brother; in the highest and most solemn of all respects, if soundness ascribed to a creature implies that it is what it ought to be, who shall venture to warrant any man sound! I do not mean to make my readers uncomfortable, by suggesting that every man is physically unsound: I speak of intellectual and moral unsoundness. You know, the most important thing about a horse is his body; and accordingly when we speak of a horse's soundness or unsoundness, we speak physically; we speak of his body. But the most important thing about a man is his mind; and so, when we say a man is sound or unsound, we are thinking of mental soundness or unsoundness. In short, the man is mainly a soul; the horse is mainly and essentially a body. And though the moral qualities even of a horse are of great importance,—such qualities as vice |