Mechanical contrivances obviously give immense occupation to those singular persons who can love Machines, and do not regard them (as I must confess is my case) with mingled mistrust, suspicion, and abhorrence, as small models of the Universe on the Atheistic Projection. Again, for the discovery of any chemical _desideratum_, ceaseless industry and years of thought are expended; and a Palissy deems a quarter of a lifetime properly given to pondering upon the best glaze for crockery. Only by such sacrifices, indeed, have both the fine and the industrial arts attained success; and happy must the man be counted whose millions of thoughts expended on such topics have at the end attained any practical conclusion to be added to the store of human knowledge. Not so (albeit the thoughts are much after the same working character) are the endless meditations of the idle on things wholly personal and ephemeral, such as the inordinate care about the details of furniture and equipage now prevalent among the rich in England, and the lavish waste of feminine minds on double acrostics, art, embroidery, and, above all, Dress! A young lady once informed me that, after having for some hours retired to repose, her sister, who slept in the same room, had disturbed her in the middle of the night: “Eugénie, waken up! I have thought of a trimming for our new gowns!” Till larger and nobler interests are opened to women, I fear there must be a good many whose “dream by night and thought by day” is of trimmings. When we have deducted all these silly and trivial and useless thoughts from the sum of human thinking,—and evil and malicious thoughts, still worse by far,—what small residuum of room is there, alas, for anything like real serious reflection! How seldom do the larger topics presented by history, science, or philosophy engage us! How yet more rarely do we face the great questions of the whence, the why, and the whither of all this hurrying life of ours, pouring out its tiny sands so rapidly! To some, indeed, a noble philanthropic purpose or profound religious faith gives not only consistency and meaning to life, but supplies a background to all thoughts,—an object high above them, to which the mental eye turns at every moment. But this is, alas! the exception far more than the rule; and, where there is no absorbing human affection, it is on trifles light as air and interests transitory as a passing cloud that are usually fixed those minds whose boast it is that their thoughts “travel through eternity.” Alone among Thoughts of joy or sorrow, hope or fear, stands the grim, soul-chilling thought of Death. It is a strange fact that, face it and attempt to familiarize ourselves with it as we may, this one thought ever presents itself as something fresh, something we had never really thought before,—“_I shall die!_” There is a shock in the simple words ever repeated each time we speak them in the depths of our souls.