sad moral of that son's life by his early grave,a tenderness that drew his little grandchildren to his study the moment they entered his house, and made even the insane of his parish insist on being taken to the parsonage, that they might be soothed by his gentle ministrations. It would be instructive to dwell upon his noble maintenance of the dignity of man, to the discomfiture of those who make orthodoxy consist in debasing him; upon his objections to Sunday schools, evening meetings, protracted meetings, tract societies, &c., objections which time proved to have been valid, though time may also, in some measure, have obviated them; upon the vast influence which he exerted on and through his pupils; upon the sensitiveness which shrank from revealing his inward life, which "disliked the practice of living out-of-doors, of having all things common, and of giving publicity to all religious action"; upon the bashfulness which forced him to soothe the agitation that, to the last Sabbath of his pulpit-life, he felt in view of addressing a multitude, by reflecting, "In one hour it will be all over"; upon the wit, which, always under control, was always ready, for attack or defence; upon that vivid faith, that actual belief, that intimate acquaintance with God, and that strong realization of a spiritual world which saw "angels encamping on the plains of Franklin, and hourly ascending or descending to or from the skies," that made not

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only the quiet village, but the whole world, aglow and astir with the Great Spirit"; upon the strength of that soul, which in the depths of a secluded parish left its mark on his own age, and must stamp it on the ages that follow; - but want of space forbids. No thoughtful person can read the book without feeling a deep gratitude to him who has turned aside from severer studies to enrich his generation with the knowledge of one whose life is a priceless legacy to his country.

I

VIII.

BRAIN AND BRAWN.

T seems a great pity that right things have a tendency to rush into extremes, and become wrong ones; for too much

of a good thing is very nearly, if not quite, as bad as a bad thing. From which text behold a short sermon.

In the Old World, and in portions of the New, labor is degraded. It is connected with ideas of servitude and incapacity. We, in New England, are trying to remedy the evil. We wish to redeem labor, to make worth, and not occupation, the standard of rank. This is a laudable end, only in our eagerness to accomplish it, we are in some danger of over-doing, to the injury of the very individual whom we seek to benefit. We forget that labor is not, in itself, noble. It was denounced upon Adam, and his descendants, as a curse; and though prayer, and love, and faith transmute it into a blessing, it does not lose its original nature. It remains, in some aspects, a

curse still. It is to be accepted, not chosen. The ox and the ass were, from the beginning, given to man, to serve him; but not till the flaming sword was drawn to keep the way of Paradise, was man, the master, doomed to eat bread in the sweat of his face.

But though labor has, of itself, no moral character, it can be rendered subservient to noble uses. It is to us what we make it. To George Stephenson, iron and water and burning coals were nimble servitors to do his will; and, at his bidding, they brought the sea inland, and bore the land seaward, and laid commerce, and civilization, yes, and Christianity too, at his feet; but scores of men hammered by. the side of George Stephenson, and never struck out the spark of an idea. They, camel-wise, bowed their shoulders to a life-long burden: he chained it to his triumphal car, and rode, a conqueror. In the one case, labor was creative, and therefore godlike; in the other, routine, of the earth, earthy,not a thing to be despised, but also not to be extolled. Hugh Miller breaking up stones by the roadside, and Patrick McCarty carting them to mend the road with, would seem, to a casual passenger, to be working together, with the same object in view; but they were ages apart.

Yet one might sometimes suppose that labor was the undoubted badge of a higher nobility, and the laboring man the true aristocrat, by

divine right. Lyceum lecturers, agricultural-fair orators, county newspapers, cajole their listeners and readers with sounding words about a "bold yeomanry, our country's pride," and the "sturdy mechanic, the bone and sinew of the land"; and the bold yeoman and sturdy mechanic chuckle over the flattery, go home to their daily monotonous drudgery, and settle on their lees in selfcomplacent ignorance. But the yeoman, or mechanic, who delves without thought, or invention, or reflection, from sunrise to sunset, and spends the evening over his pipe and his mug of cider, is a very great deal lower than the angels; is, I had almost said, a cumberer of the ground from which he draws his fancied nobility.

This is not to say aught against the honorableness of agricultural or mechanical occupations. It is only that, like all other occupations, they derive, but do not confer, honor or shame. Ignorance and stupidity are disgraceful in farmer or doctor. Intelligence and refinement are respectable in shoemaker or lawyer. The inheritance of an estate does not convert a clown into a gentleman, nor does its loss convert a gentleman into a clown. He that sweeps a floor as for God's laws, makes that and the action fine; and he that sweeps a floor, year in and year out, with no higher end in view, is fine and refined neither in himself nor in his action.

Yet you will often hear such encomiums passed