True, there may be little of practical benefit--as the world defines practicality--in searching out the causes of the myriad emotions that sweep with lightning rapidity across the soul, now raising us to the summit of bliss, now plunging us into the depths of despair--little of practical benefit in endeavoring to analyze the soul itself into its constituent elements, and to bring ourselves face to face with our better, nobler selves, and with the Mighty Power which created us and all things. But there is, in this inner life, a pleasure higher and more lasting than those evanescent ones which the world can afford, and which elevates and purifies as they do not. And aside from mere pleasure, there is in such a study a practicability--taking the word in a broader and nobler sense--which puts to the blush man's busy schemes for wealth and honor. The beauties and sublimity of nature may indeed fill us with awe at the omnipotence of the mighty Architect, and with love and gratitude for His goodness, but it is only in the presence of the soul--His greatest work--that we realize the awful power of the Creator; it is only when threading the secret avenues of our own intellectual and spiritual being that we are brought into actual communion with God, and bow in adoration before Him who 'doeth all things well.' Therefore, I maintain that he whose meditations run most in this channel is not only the happiest, but the purest man; that his views of life are the broadest and noblest; that he it is who is most open to the appeal of suffering or of sorrow; who is most ready to sacrifice self and work for the good of his fellow beings, and to discharge faithfully his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call him. But I am digressing into a prosy essay, which I did not intend, and neglecting that which I did intend, namely, to jot down a few theories which have crept into the brain of one not much given to musing. For even I--a poor 'marching sub'--sitting here by a cheery coal grate, and watching the white smoke as it curls lazily up from the bowl of my meerschaum, have theories touching the soul--theories born in the glowing coals and mounting in the curling smoke wreaths, but, unlike them, growing more and more voluminous as they ascend, till I am like to be lost in the ocean of speculations which my own musings have summoned up.