unworthy or dangerous, except the pleasures of the mind, to me it is unknown; and though a well-trained intellect should do no more than to enable us to take delight in pure and noble objects, it would be a chief help to worthy life. And when the whole tendency of our social existence is to draw men out of themselves and to make them seek the good of life in what is external, as money, display, position, renown, is it not a gain, if, while we open their minds to the charm of intellectual beauty, we make them see that this eager striving for wealth and place is a vulgar chase? And does not the spirit of refinement in thought, in speech, in manner, add worth and fairness to him whom it inspires, though the motive which preserves him from what is low or gross be no higher than a fastidious delicacy and self-respect? To deny the moral influence of intellectual culture is as great an error as to affirm that it alone is a sufficient safeguard of morality. Its tendency unquestionably is to make men gentle, amiable, fair-minded, truthful, benevolent, modest, sober. It curbs ambition and teaches resignation; chastens the imagination and mitigates ferocity; dissuades from duelling because it is barbarous, and from war because it is cruel, and from persecution because it trusts in the prevalence of reason. It seeks to fit the mind and the character to the world, to all possible circumstances, so that whatever happens we remain ourselves,--calm, clear-seeing, able to do and to suffer. At great heights, or in the presence of irresistible force, as of a mighty waterfall, we grow dizzy; and in the same way, in the midst of multitudes, in the eagerness of strife, in the whirlwind of passion, equipoise is lost, and we cease to be ourselves, to become part of an aggregate of forces that hurry us on, whither we know not. To be able to stand in the presence of such power, and to feel its influence, and yet not to lose self-possession, is to be strong; is, on proper occasion, to be great. And the aim of the best education is to teach us the secret and the method of this complete self-control; and in so far it is not only moral, but also religious, though religion walks in a more royal road, and bids us love God and trust so absolutely in Him that life and death become equal, and all the ways and workings of men as the storm to one who on lofty mountain peak, amid the blue heavens, with the sunlight around him and the quiet breathing of the winds, sees far below, as in another world, the black clouds and lurid lightning flash and hears the roll of distant thunder.