pausing at the gate to finish their discourse. As they now turned away to separate, Smith stopped, and cried out, “One word more, neighbor; pray tell me if you observe these rules yourself." David hesitated a moment, and then, with an expression of countenance that was half sadness and half a smile, he said, "The question is a very fair one, though I do not see that the answer can affect the goodness of the rules." "But then I shall have the more courage to undertake them, if I find that they are real things, and not mere words." "Very well; I told you that they had helped me; and they have unspeakably; but I do not live up to them fully, I do not fully live up to any of my good purposes. But this I can tell you, solemnly, that it is only by living by them that I ever gained any thing, and I have always found myself a loser just in proportion as I have slighted them." THE POETRY OF MATHEMATICS. TO MANY minds, no two ideas could be presented having less affinity than those of Poetry and Mathematics. Yet it is certain that they have many mutual, necessary, indissoluble relations. In the universe which we inhabit, we see every where two elements, Order and Beauty; - Order securing utility, Beauty providing pleasure. Every thing is made for a use, and therefore subject to a rigid law of order. All things are arranged for happiness, and therefore are enveloped in beauty. Turn whithersoever we may, Order and Beauty are the joint presiding geniuses of the scene. Hence, in the use to which man, the observer, puts the world he lives in, there arise two processes of thought, according as he investigates the laws of this order, or contemplates, enjoys, and expresses this beauty. The first issues in science chiefly in the mathematics, the monarch of the sciences; the second gives birth to poetry. In studying the order of the universe, man is a mathematician; in studying the beauty of the universe, he is a poet. And hence, as order and beauty are every where coëxistent and inseparable, as each is to be found every where, in connection with every thing, therefore poetry and mathematics must every where and in all things coëxist, side by side, in some sort of partnership. It was on such an evening, when the sun had just given his parting look to the blooming and weary world, that David Ellington had come home from his work, and was seated, with his little family, at the evening meal. The day had been sultry, and the air was close and oppressive. Jane had therefore taken the table out from the confined apartment into the open air, and spread it under the shadow of the great tree behind the house. There they sat in the cool of the calm twilight, their spirits as even as the hour; and some philosophers might be puzzled to know whether the expression of the scene without had done most to give the temper to their minds, or the state of their minds bestowed its beauty on the scene. David and Jane were no philosophers; but the thought naturally occurred to them, and they gave the question their own solution. "One would almost fancy," said Jane, "that the very sky and air were full of feeling and thought. How can they have so much expression of the soul, without any soul?" "He who made them," replied David, "cannot but give an expression to all that he makes; it all bears the mark of his hand; it is therefore adapted to excite feeling in the souls who observe it. The works he has made are suited to the souls he has made." "And it seems to me that they address the heart just as words do. They mean something, and the eye receives their meaning as the ear does the meaning of words. It seems to me there is no difference, excepting that words are more distinct.' "In that respect, the beauty of such an evening as this is like poetry, which suggests sentiment rather than distinct thought; or perhaps more like music, which brings on a certain state of feeling, and not a definite train of ideas. A piece of music stirs up my feelings or puts me in a rev |