‘“The business of our life seems to be, to acquire the habit of acting in such a manner as we should do, if we were conscious of all we know; and in this respect no action of our lives can be indifferent, but must either tend to form this habit or a contrary one: so that those whose attempt to act right does not commence with their power of acting at all, have much to undo, as well as to do. The craving, and blankness of feeling, which attends the early stages of this habit (‘show some token upon me for good’), makes anything acceptable which can even in fancy fill it; and it is delightful to see things turn out well, whose case seems, in some sort, to represent to us our indistinct conceptions of our own. Animals fainting under the effect of exercise, and then again recovering their strength, which that very exercise has contributed to increase; the slow and uncertain degrees in which this exercise is effected, and yet the certainty that it is effected;――the growth of trees sometimes tossed by winds and checked by frosts, yet, by the evil effects of these winds directed in what quarter to strike their roots, so as to secure themselves for the future, and by these frosts hardened and fitted for a new progress the next summer:――in things of this sort I am [altered in the MS. from ‘we are’] so constituted, as to see brethren in affliction evidently making progress towards release….” * * * * * ‘The impression left on the mind after a first perusal of the Journal is doubtless a depressing one, both from the unhappiness which it records, and (it may be) from a fear that if we would exercise the same strict vigilance over our own hearts, or would aim at the same high mark, we might find cause for disquiet too. It is a real satisfaction to find, both at the end of the Journal that the author considers himself to have passed into a happier state, and in his Letters, that he gradually ceases to speak of his own despondency, either openly to his nearest friend, or in those half-jesting hints of which his other friends must only now feel the meaning. His external demeanour, both from natural disposition and from his contempt for any display of feeling, seems always to have been so full of life and energy, that from it alone, perhaps, no change in this respect could have been inferred. This despondency we have not attempted to show in the extracts, though it does slightly appear there; but rather his high desires to “enter within the veil,” to be “hidden in the presence of the Lord,” and the mode which he took to realise them. This forms a remarkable contrast with the self-confidence and unreality which too frequently springs from the consciousness of high views. It is, unfortunately, not often that we see men of bold and independent minds, subtle and comprehensive powers of reasoning, and romantic desires, giving up, till they shall be fit for it, all notion of