Qualities which can be exhibited as a show are discovered and appreciated accordingly. But wisdom and virtue, which are to the mind what breath is to the body, have no part assigned or assignable to them on such a stage. A man may pass a life in London without an occasion arising by which his neighbours can learn whether he is an honest fellow or a rogue. The consequence is, that a good deal of such a man's moral nature gets imperfectly developed, and dies away. The appropriate object is not brought sufficiently close and home to him to stimulate and call forth his latent powers. Charity is perhaps better off than most. By a satisfactory compromise, it falls into the hands of a mendicity society. But there are other virtues which do not admit of being compounded for, and their burden transferred to a committee, for two guineas a-year. In these cases the moral tax is too often evaded altogether. We are well aware that men of pleasure are far from being the only persons who have turned into a maxim of life the sentence which the Duke of Buckingham passed upon the dog which barked after him,--"Would to God you were married and settled in the country!" It is evident that the word _provincial_ is often felt, by characters of a higher strain and object, to imply an imputation or admission of mediocrity. Now, greatly as nations differ, it is generally admitted that all capitals are pretty much alike. It follows therefore, that the characteristic spirit and principle of a nation do not appear there to most advantage. Enow worthy representatives of that spirit and principle are doubtless there; but they are there too much as though they were not. It is an atmosphere which no individual powers can penetrate, and where it needs more than an ordinary sun to make itself felt or seen. We are satisfied that, on a just estimate of the whole case, the provinces, as distinguished from the metropolis, would be found in many instances, perhaps in most, to be the home which a wise lover of himself, and a sincere lover of his kind, would do well to fix in;--not indeed as the scene of a brilliant or sybarite existence, but as the post of that salutary influence which sinks deepest; and of that usefulness and happiness which last the longest; as most visibly incorporated with, and represented by, our fellow-beings.--_Edinburgh Review._ * * * * * INFANCY. (_From the Feuilles d'Automne of Victor Hugo, translated in the Foreign Quarterly Review._) In the dusky court, Near the altar laid, Sleeps the child in shadow, Of his mother's bed: Softly he reposes, And his lids of roses. Closed to earth, uncloses On the heaven o'erhead. Many a dream is with him, Fresh from the fairy land, Spangled o'er with diamonds Seems the ocean sand; Suns are gleaming there. Troops of ladies fair Souls of infants bear In their charming hand.