S. 35. An excellent burlesque on parts of the Schoolmen, though I believe an unintentional one. S. 36. Truly sublime--and in Sir T. B.'s very best manner. S. 39. This is a most admirable passage. Yes,--the history of a man for the nine months preceding his birth, would, probably, be far more interesting, and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it. (S. 48.) This is made good by experience, which can from the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall it into its stalks and leaves again. Stuff. This was, I believe, some lying boast of Paracelsus, which the good Sir T. B. has swallowed for a fact. (Part II. s. 2.) I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my God. We ought not to relieve a poor man merely because our own feelings impel us, but because these feelings are just and proper feelings. My feelings might impel me to revenge with the same force with which they urge me to charity. I must therefore have some rule by which I may judge my feelings,--and this rule is God's will. (S. 5, 6.) I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God. We cannot love a friend as a woman; but we may love a woman as a friend. Friendship satisfies the highest parts of our nature; but a wife, who is capable of friendship, satisfies all. The great business of real unostentatious virtue is--not to eradicate any genuine instinct or appetite of human nature; but--to establish a concord and unity betwixt all parts of our nature, to give a feeling and a passion to our purer intellect, and to intellectualize our feelings and passions. This a happy marriage, blest with children, effectuates in the highest degree, of which our nature is capable, and is therefore chosen by St. Paul as the symbol of the union of the church with Christ; that is, of the souls of all good men with God. "I scarcely distinguish," said once a good old man, "the wife of my old age from the wife of my youth; for when we were both young, and she was beautiful, for once that I caressed her with a meaner passion, I caressed her a thousand times with love--and these caresses still remain to us." Besides, there is another reason why friendship is of somewhat less value than love, which includes friendship, it is this--we may love many persons, all very dearly; but we cannot love many persons all equally dearly. There will be differences, there will be gradations. But our nature imperiously asks a summit, a resting-place; it is with the affections in love as with the reason in religion, we cannot diffuse and equalize; we must have a supreme, a one, the highest. What is more common than to say of a man in love, 'he idolizes her,' 'he makes a god of her?' Now, in order that a person should continue to love another better than all others, it seems