rature cannot purify and elevate man, since itself needs so much to be purified and elevated.

Words are, however, such sacred types of the divine oracle, so near akin to that word which in the ever beginning is, that as being the mode in which the loftiest and purest must utter themselves to the common understanding, even our current literature is dashed occasionally by a purer rill than the body of the broad stream. In the warm season, sundry little freshets come down from the mountains, sparkling in the sun, bathing and quenching the thirst of the arid soul. But this literature, by reason of its very originality, is so quaint and strange that the great Mississippi flood is not at one with it until it becomes saturated with its unsubsiding silt; and the condition of its acceptance is to adopt the old prevailing muddiness. Thus virtue's self grows powerless; and, to maintain existence, life is destroyed.

From this account of the general bearing of literature, we exempt all those efforts of the moralist, who only employs the pen or the press, or the tongue, as means, and neither of them the best, by which the moral purpose is to be declared. Of these efforts something must be said hereafter.

Science is a prop on which men have of late almost universally leaned; but, with what impropriety, is daily growing more and more apparent. Ungracious in the extreme is it to say aught against science, against knowledge, against intellectual culture. These, in their order, and as opposed to their negations, are so beautiful, that the tongue recoils from the smallest whisper in their dispraise. Yet the declaration must go forth, that science is not moral virtue; and that, being an accommodation road with two branches, it is as frequently the avenue to degradation as to elevation. Scarcely a projector, or inventor, or intense student, has broached the object of his absorbing pursuit, without affirming also that it was the means for human regeneration. The profits on gas light were to pay off national debts and set the bankrupt world upright to start afresh. Spinningjennies, steam-engines, power-looms, canals, rail-roads, have each in turn been made to promise pecuniary and moral redemption to the insolvent and hardened human race. But this species of redemptory designs is nearly worn

threadbare. The hope in science is as attenuated as the hope in politics. They are, in fact, branches of the same stock. Expansions from the great trunk of selfishness, they bear the same kind of fruit.

Little novelty as there is in the announcement, that knowledge is subordinate to goodness, and difficult as it is to avoid cant in the annunciation, it must yet again be said, Knowledge, pursued as an accumulation of useful store; science, studied with the omission of the master science con-science- is, at best, like an examination of the nutshell without a penetration to the kernel. Science has in vain ventured into every possible department of human life on our behoof; and vain must ever be such enterprise. A stone is but a stone, polish it as smoothly as we may; and it can never be chipped into a corn stalk. The grass, too, living as it is, must be taken in and digested, its refuse passed away, before its elements can be assimilated to animal being. So too of science. It may be the air which the moral nature breathes in, and thus it may be used by its superior, but never can it generate, or be the parent of, moral life.

Science has gathered our cottage spinners and spinsters and knitters, from their separated firesides to the magnificent and heated cotton mills; it transforms sailors and stage drivers into brakemen and stokers; it penetrates mountains; it quickly crosses oceans. Like the elephant's trunk, nothing is too large for its strength, nothing too minute for its sensibility. It permeates everything and everywhere. Cotton, woollen, needles, buttons, ships, books, society, and theology; all are brought to the bar of sciThe analytic, the doctrinal, the skilful, prevail over the synthetic, the loveful, the unitive. Whatever can be proved by logic, or made to appear rational by argument, is accepted; while that which is deeper than all proof, and is the basis of all rationality, is to go for nought.

ence.

With a perpetual deferring of hope, which, by perverting the heart's eye from the true and stable centre upon the turbulent and dazzling circumference, makes the soul forever sad and sick, science still attracts as the magnet of human resuscitation. Man appears to have engaged science as a special pleader in the court of conscience, to avert the consequences of his culprit conduct. Hired extenua

tion is deemed cheaper than self-repentance. To know every wise saw and moral sentiment that ever were uttered, is not nearer to a realization of them in the man who remembers them, than in the paper on which they are written. All this fact knowledge, or report of fact knowledge, of which the world is so full, seems barren of the desired consequences. We know how may millions of miles lie between Saturn and the Sun, and how many thousand seconds light is travelling from the fixed stars to our little planet, but are wandering much as ever from the road to happiness, and are as unready as the ignorant to enter thereon by its only wicket gate.

"Science may be applied to inadequate objects." True. We may exaggerate or ridicule when we say the optician will never spy out bliss for us through his lenses, nor the cotton-mill spin happiness with its million yards of unmingled yarn. So analysis and rationality step forward into a new sphere, and venture to elaborate a Science of Society. Amongst the recent offspring of the scientific nature, are political economy and human association. The right divine of kings has, through the right divine of landlords, descended to the crowned heads of factory owners, and the orthodox doctrine is now the right divine of cotton lords. Hereditary monarchy, subdued by blood aristocracy, to be in its turn levelled by opulent democracy. In all of which the res publicæ are equally neglected; the common wealth is swallowed up by individual miserliness and individual misery.

Magnificence of idea and of execution have not, however, been wanting in the recent modes any more than in the ancient. The argosies of merchant princes are eclipsed by townships of busy industry, and the feudal cavalcade is surpassed by the fairy-like gliding of the mail train, which only needs the dimness of remote time and the glance of genius, to render as poetic as its predecessors. These extensive schemes for the increase of wealth, these unprecedented combinations for the augmentation of individual happiness, could not long exist without suggesting to the benevolent mind ideas of the like nature for the common good. Thus the science of society, no longer left, as of old, to individual private enterprise, has been projected into the grand, the public, the combinative. Of

these several plans have been some time before the world, and, for one or two, there are now practical operations commenced. Various doctrines of human nature are mixed up with these practical schemes; and pleasant withal it is to the moral metaphysician to be confirmed in his a priori intuitions of considering first the man, and secondarily the plans, to see that all parties are necessarily brought back again who venture to reverse this mode.

Amongst the many schemes for aggrandisement by means of joint-stock companies, it has been submitted to capitalists that greater security and a larger return await their outlay in schemes for the bettering of human beings, than they can obtain in any other kind of risk. Capital is, however, slow in adventuring; and, as yet, only a few small associations have been formed with this object, in addition to the efforts of one or two persons who have boldly ventured to embark individually. At Citeaux, in the south of France, Mr. Arthur Young, formerly an Amsterdam merchant, has laid out 1,450,000 francs for an estate of thirteen hundred acres, and 154,000 francs more for stock in hand, on which a Phalanstery is formed. The chateau is represented as very magnificent; and the whole buildings and court yards cover thirteen acres. Mr. Young transfers shares on equitable conditions to purchasers either resident or not. The basis of recompense is threefold; having relation to investments of capital, skill, and labor, the latter enjoying the larger return, the first receiving the smallest percentage. It need scarcely be observed that Arthur Young is a faithful disciple of Charles Fourier. It does not appear that any other such plan of association is in operation, or even projected in the continental countries of Europe. The various old religious foundations may probably supply some of the conditions provided in such institutions.

In England, however, where the almshouse or the unionwork house is the highest refuge which society offers to unemployed labor or virtuous skill, in age or youth, the subject of social science has been regarded with the deepest attention. A nation almost ceaselessly engaged in combatting with poverty, and having strong desires for ease, unavoidably catches at whatever may present the smallest hope for a respite from ill-requited toil. No wonder, there

fore, that the British Isles have heard a loud response in favor of thoughts so comprehensive, as to promise relief from every clerical, legal, governmental, doctrinal, and practical evil. In the multitude of inventions which ground the people down, one was descried which proposed to exempt them from the galling mill-stone. However noble may have been the contemplated design, it was accepted as means of increasing the supply of bread, and of averting the consciousness of blame. Hope and consolation for body and mind, therefore, met a reception in idea much greater than in practice. And as the poverty to be meliorated was too excessive to help itself, nothing has been done of a permanent character until very recently.

At Tytherly, in Hampshire, estates amounting to about one thousand acres, held principally on long leases, have been appropriated by some wealthy individuals, in conjunction with a widely spread list of smaller subscribers, to the carrying out of the idea which has adopted especially the term "social." The principles are mainly, in morals, that "the character of man is made not by him, but for him;" and, in economy, that of a community of goods. In what way, or to what extent, these principles will work out with human materials generated and educated, as all have more or less been, on the opposite doctrines and practice, future reports must show. Time has not yet permitted the requisite experience. The buildings erected are furnished on the most commodious, and even luxurious scale, for the reception of about two hundred persons, but at an expenditure which threatens the profitable action of the industrial materials. An investment of about £30,000 comprises the pecuniary capital of this adventure.

Upon this attempt innumerable eyes are fixed, as upon the day-star of hope. Should it rise, countless hearts will be gladdened, which, in the dim uncertain twilight, durst not so much as venture to announce their sympathy. Some, also, contemplate its possible success with terror, as the uprooting of all that is sacred and comfortable. Not alone, however, the toil-worn, ill-requited artisan, is an anxious spectator of this scene, but even the successful trader, disgusted with the processes to wealth, as well as dissatisfied in its possession, hopes to liberate his offspring from such soulstaining courses.