of God, that nations must trust, when perils gather thick about them, and their last moments seem to be at hand. The history of the world shows us that men are not to be counted by their numbers, but by the fire and vigor of their passions; by their deep sense of injury; by their memory of past glory; by their eagerness for fresh fame; by their clear and steady resolution of ceasing to live, or of achieving a particular object, which, when it is _once_ formed, strikes off a load of manacles and chains, and gives free space to all heavenly and heroic feelings. All great and extraordinary actions come from the heart. There are seasons in human affairs, when qualities fit enough to conduct the common business of life, are feeble and useless, and when men must trust to emotion for that safety which reason at such times can never give. These are the feelings which led the ten thousand over the Carduchian mountains; these are the feelings by which a handful of Greeks broke in pieces the power of Persia: they have, by turns, humbled Austria, reduced Spain; and in the fens of the Dutch, and on the mountains of the Swiss, defended the happiness, and revenged the oppressions of man! God calls all the passions out in their keenness and vigor for the present safety of mankind. Anger, and revenge, and the heroic mind, and a readiness to suffer; all the secret strength, all the invisible array of the feelings, all that nature has reserved for the great scenes of the world. For the usual hopes and the common aids of man are all gone! Kings have perished, armies are subdued, nations mouldered away! Nothing remains, under God, but those passions which have often proved the best ministers of His vengeance, and the surest protectors of the world. In that, and similar passages, a sustained feeling and expression not ordinarily associated with Sydney Smith, impresses the reader with its unaffected eloquence and emotion. We close the book reluctantly, for we leave many things unquoted that had the most forcibly impressed us. In the two chapters on the conduct of the understanding, there are most masterly disquisitions on labor and study as connected with the manifestations of genius; on the importance of men adhering to the particular line of their powers or talents, and on the tendency of all varieties of human accomplishment to the same great object of exalting and gladdening life. We would also particularly mention a happy and noble recommendation of the uses of classical study at the close of the chapter on the sublime. YOUNG POET'S PLAINT. God, release our dying sister! Beauteous blight hath sadly kiss'd her Whiter than the wild, white roses, Famine in her face discloses Mute submission, patience holy, Passing fair! but passing slowly.