a fidelity which gained him preeminence in his class, as already attaining a "style of classic strength and purity. He was graduated in 1814, with the highest honors of the institution, having received the appointment of Valedictorian. He pursued his professional studies at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1823 he received and accepted a call to become pastor of a Unitarian Church in New Bedford, where he remained ten years. During this period he lectured frequently, and wrote for the press. He first visited Europe for the improvement of his health in June, 1833, where he spent a year. After his return, he published some results of his travels in a volume entitled, “The Old World and the New." This book contains some of the best criticisms on painting, on music, on sculp. ture, on men, things, and places; and more than all, views of society, of govern ment, of the tendency of monarchical institutions, and of the condition of the European people, which are sound, comprehensive, and deeply interesting. On his return from Europe he was settled over "The Second Congregational Unitarian Society" of New York. In 1842 he again went abroad for his health, taking his family with him. He passed two years in France, Italy, Switzerland, and England. In 1848, his health again failing, he dissolved his connection with his church. Since that time he has occasionally preached and lectured in nearly all the large cities of the Union. All, except his late writings, are bound in one volume, published at London, in 1844. His productions since that period are published in New York, in three volumes, except his latest, "The Problem of Human Destiny," which appeared in 1864. Dr. Dewey has great depth of thought. His imagination is rich, but not superfluous; ready, but not obtrusive. His style is artistic and scholarly. His periods are perfectly complete and rounded, yet filled by the thought; the variety is great, yet a symmetry prevails; and in general we find that harmony between the thoughts and their form which should always obtain.

SECTION X.

I.

54. LETTERS.

LESSED be letters!-they are the monitors, they are also

B are

Your speech, and their speeches, are conventional; they are molded by circumstances; they are suggested by the observation, remark, and influence of the parties to whom the speaking is addressed, or by whom it may be overheard. Your truëst thought is modified half through its utterance by a look, a sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is not individual: it is not in'tegral: it is social and mixed,-half of you, and half of others. It bends, it sways, it multiplies, it retires, and it advances, as the talk of others presses, relaxes, or quickens.

2. But it is not so with Letters :-there you are, with only

the soulless pen, and the snow-white, virgin paper. Your soul is measuring itself by itself, and saying its own sayings: there are no sneers to modify its utterance,-no scowl to scare; nothing is present but you and your thought. Utter it then freely-write it down-stamp it-burn it in the ink!-There it is, a true soul-print!

3. Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a letter! It is worth all the lip-talk of the world. Do you say, it is studied, made up, acted, rehearsed, contrived, artistic? Let me see it then; let me run it over: tell me age, sex, cir'cumstances, and I will tell you if it be studied or real; if it be the merèst lip-slang put into words, or heart-talk blazing on the paper.

4. I have a little packet, not very large, tied up with narrow crimson ribbon, now soiled with frequent handling, which far into some winter's night I take down from its nook upon my shelf, and untie, and open, and run over, with such sorrow and such joy, such tears and such smiles, as I am sure make me, for weeks after, a kinder and holiër man.

:

5. There are in this little packet letters in the familiar hand of a mother what gentle admonition-what tender affection! God have mercy on him who outlives the tears that such admonitions and such affection call up to the eye! There are others in the budget, in the delicate and unformed hand of a loved and lost sister ;- -written when she and you were full of glee, and the best mirth of youthfuínèss: does it harm you to recall that mirthfulness? or to trace again, for the hundredth time, that scrawling postscript at the bottom, with its 's so carefully dotted, and its gigantic t's so carefully crossed, by the childish hand of a little brother?

6. I have added latterly to that packet of letters: I almost need a new and longer ribbon; the old one is getting too short. Not a few of these new and cherished letters, a former Reverie has brought to me; not letters of cold praise, saying it was well done, artfully executed, prettily imagined-no such thing; but letters of sympathy-of sympathy which means sympathy.

7. It would be cold and dastardly work to copy them; I am too selfish for that. It is enough to say that they, the kind writers, have seen a heart in the Reverie-have felt that it was real, true. They know it: a secret influence has told it. What matters it, pray, if literally there was no wife, and no dead child,

and no coffin, in the house? Is not feeling, feeling; and heart, heart? Are not these fancies thronging on my brain, bringing tears to my eyes, bringing joy to my soul, as living as any thing human can be living? What if they have no material type-no objective form? All that is crude,-a mere reduction of ideälity to sense-a transformation of the spiritual to the earthy-a leveling of soul to matter.

8. Are we not creatures of thought and passion? Is any thing about us more earnest than that same thought and passion? Is there any thing more reäl,—more characteristic of that great and dim destiny to which we are born, and which may be written down in that terrible word-FOREVER? Let those who will, then, sneer at what in their wisdom they call untruth—at what is false, because it has no material presence: this does not create falsity; would to Heaven that it did!

9. And yet, if there was actual, material truth, superadded to Reverie, would such objectors sympathize the more? No!-a thousand times, no; the heart that has no sympathy with thoughts and feelings that scorch the soul, is dead also-whatever its mocking tears and gestures may say-to a coffin or a grave! Let them pass, and we will come back to these cherished letters.

10. A mother who has lost a child, has, she says, shed a tear -not one, but many-over the dead boy's coldness. And another, who has not, but who trembles lest she lose, has found the words failing as she reads, and a dim, sorrow-borne mist spreading over the page. Another, yet rejoicing in all those family ties that make life a charm, has listened nervously to careful reading, until the husband is called home, and the coffin is in the house- 66 Stop!" she says; and a gush of tears tells the rest. Yet the cold critic will say "It was artfully done." A curse on him! it was not art; it was nature.

11 Another, a young, fresh, healthful girl-mind, has seen something in the love-picture-albeit so weak-of truth; and has kindly believed that it must be earnest. Ay, indeed is it, fair and generous one,-earnest as life and hope! Who, indeed, with a heart at all, that has not yet slipped away irrep'arably and forever from the shores of youth-from that fairy-land which young enthusiasm creates, and over which bright dreams hover-but knows it to be real? And so such things will be

real, till hopes are dashed, and Death is come. Another, a father, has laid down the book in tears.-God bless them all! How far better this, than the cold praise of newspaper paragraphs, or the critically contrived approval of colder friends!

12. Let me gather up these letters carefully,-to be read when the heart is faint, and sick of all that there is unreal and selfish in the world. Let me tie them together, with a new, and longer bit of ribbon,—not by a love knot, that is too hard -but by an easy slipping knot, that so I may get at them the better. And now they are all together, a snug packet, and we will label them, not sentimentally (I pity the one who thinks it), but earnestly, and in the best meaning of the term-REMEMBRANCERS OF THE HEART. D. G. MITCHELL.

I

II.

55. SELECT PASSAGES IN PROSE.

I. GOOD USE OF MEMORY.

66

CAN not too strongly urge upon the young the advantage of committing to memory the choicest passages in prose and poëtry in English literature. What we learn thoroughly when young, remains by us through life. Sir," said the great Dr. Johnson to Boswell,1 "in my early days I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now. My judgment, to be sure, was not so good; but I had all the facts. I remember very well when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, 'Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years/come unto you, you will find that pōring upon books will be but an irksome task.'

II. INJUDICIOUS HASTE IN STUDY.-LOCKE."

THE eagerness and strong bent of the mind after knowledge, if not warily regulated, is often a hinderance to it. It still presses into further discoveries and new objects, and catches at

'James Boswell, the friend and biographer of Dr. Johnson, born 1740, and died 1795.

2 John Locke, a name than which there is none higher in English philosophical literature, author of the

celebrated "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding," was born at Wrington, near Bristol, England, on the 29th of August, 1632, and died at Oates, in Essex, on the 28th of October, 1704

the variety of knowledge, and therefore often stays not long enough on what is before it, to look into it as it should, for haste to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that rides post through a country may be able, from the transient view, to tell in general how the parts lie, and may be able to give some loose description of here a mountain and there a plain, here a morăss' and there a river; woodland in one part and savannas in another. Such superficial ideas and observations as these he may collect in galloping over it; but the more useful observations of the coil, plants, animals, and inhabitants, with their several sorts and properties, must necessarily escape him; and it is seldom men ever discover the rich mines without some digging. Nature commonly lodges her treasures and jewels in rocky ground. If the matter be knotty, and the sense lies deep, the mind must stop and buckle to it, and stick upon it with labor, and thought, and close contemplation, and not leave it until it has mastered the difficulty and got possession of truth.

But here, care must be taken to avoid the other extreme: a man must not stick at every useless nicety, and expect mysteries of science in every trivial question or scruple that he may raise. He that will stand to pick up and examine every pebble that comes in his way, is as unlikely to return enriched and laded with jewels, as the other that traveled full speed. Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obviousnèss or difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency. Insignificant observations should not take up any of our minutes; and those that enlarge our view, and give light toward further and useful discoveries, should not be neglected, though they stop our course, and spend some of our time in a fixed

attention.

III. STUDIES.-BACON.1

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privatenèss and retiring; for orna

1 Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England under James I., author of the "Instauratio Magna," was born in London on 22d of January, 1561, and died in 1626. The immortal Englishman possessed a mind so vast, with powers so varied, that it can not be said that any one depart

ment of labor, or species of activity, belonged to him peculiarly. From early manhood Bacon was immersed in public affairs, intrusted with very onerous functions: in the first rank of jurisconsult, he moved in the work of reforming and arranging the laws of England; as a statesman, he la