Among other merits of this method, may be reckoned this--that it helps to introduce us to a privilege which may be disregarded by many, but which to us is inestimable--that of causing pleasure, rather than pain, to those connected with us. It is the prerogative of the healthy and happy to give pleasure wherever they go; it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering. To the far-seeing invalid, who is aware not only of this immediate effect, but of its remote consequences, this is the most afflicting feature of his condition. If we can, by any management, evade this liability, we have cause to be grateful indeed. If, by submitting ourselves to all softening and ennobling influences, we can so nourish and educe the immortal part of ourselves as to subdue our own conflicts, and present our active and enjoying aspect to those who visit us, we are absolved from the worst penalties of our state. If, as years pass on, we find ourselves sought from the impulse of inclination, as well as from the stringency of duty--if we are permitted to see faces light up from ours, and hear the music of mirth succeed to the low serious tones of sympathetic greeting--we may let our hearts bound with the assurance that all is well with us. When we cannot refuse to see that children come to us eagerly, and that our riper companions stay late by our sofa, and come again and again, till nothing short of duty calls them away, any one might envy us the feelings with which we lie down again in our solitude. We are not proud, like the young beauty with her conquest over hearts, or like the political or literary hero with his sway over the passions or the reason; but we are elate--and not without cause--elate in our privilege of annihilating the constraint and distaste inspired by our condition, and of finding ourselves restored to something like an equality of intercourse with the healthy in soul. The best and highest must ever be selected from among the healthy and the happy--from among those whose conditions of being are the most perfectly fulfilled; but, without aspiring to their consummate privileges, we feel ourselves abundantly blessed in such a partial emancipation as permits us, on occasion, and without shame, to join their “glorious company.” THE END. LONDON: BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. * * * * * _April, 1844_ MR. MOXON HAS RECENTLY PUBLISHED:-- I.