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.

འབྲུབ

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

as, "He is the hardest-working man in town." "He is a fine man, - always at it, up early and late." "He is a most industrious man. You always know where to find him. Go to his bench."

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Such remarks are intended to indicate virtues, and perhaps they do, but not necessarily. If a man is forced, by untoward circumstances, either to labor unceasingly or to see his family suffer, then, if he perform cheerfully his unceasing labor, it is a great virtue. Or, if his mind has been sparingly endowed by his Creator, and he has to use the whole of it, and his body and time too, in the support of his family, and does it, it is still a virtue, but a little one. If he labors unceasingly because it is a habit, or to hoard up money, or because he has no taste for anything else, it is no virtue at all. It is a fault; not to say a crime. God did not create us to be " always at it." There are times and seasons when we ought to be away from it." There are duties which lie otherwhere than in the shop or on the farm. Therefore, when you call upon us to admire one of your hard-working men, be so good as to inform us first, to which class he belongs; whether his lauded virtue is not his sin to be rebuked, or, at least, his weakness to be compassionated. not the very reason why he has to toil and moil over his corn and potatoes, that he has not intelligence enough to apply the best methods of culture to his farm,-methods which would give him

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