To us, the depositories of vast confidences on these matters, it appears that there is no manner of necessity for either practice. We can avouch, from what we witness, that there may be sympathy with every order of understanding and every phase of opinion, without either hypocrisy, or tendency to disputation, or a surrender of differing views. We see how there may be an intrepid and continuous avowal of opinions, without disturbance to the unlearned and the feeble. We can fully agree with Göthe as to the unequalled mischief of endangering belief in that vast majority of minds which have other work to do than to investigate matters of opinion, without seeing it to be at all necessary to countenance what we know or believe to be error. We can fully agree with his practical antagonists as to the nobleness of candour, and the evils which ensue from dogmatism; while, at the same time, we would sooner die than dare to tempt one intellect to follow us, after one self-conviction of such an instability as theirs. Where there is a habit of mutability, there is intellectual infirmity, as is shown, with indescribable clearness, to us gazers into the mirror of events. It is a singular privilege granted to us, to witness the workings of the best method,--of that “simplicity and godly sincerity” which is unconsciously adopted by the wise to whom Truth is neither the spirit of rashness, nor “of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound mind.” It has occurred to me, at times, that a second volume,--“On the Formation and Publication of Opinions,”--less popularly useful perhaps than the existing one, but deeper and more comprehensive, might be an invaluable gift from the hands of some one in a retreat, (in a sick retreat, as illness invites confidence,)--from the hands of some one who would know how to use with equal discretion and intrepidity his singular opportunities.