short cut-which does while others think, and makes the world go its way, while intellect argues, refines, and beats about the bush-is an object of genuine awe and reverence to metaphysical and speculative minds; but also it is made use of by a certain class of theorists (amongst the infinite number of subjects so applied) to talk nonsense about, and very deliberate nonsense we might suspect, but that fluent tongues can talk themselves into a partial belief of anything. Lecturers, either amateur or professional, are very fond of exalting the will. It is flattering to the vanity of an audience to be told that it only depends on themselves to be as powerful and successful as the great leaders of thought and action; and many speakers say it under the vague notion that, though it is not strictly true, it is a good, proper, stimulating thing to say. They know that the members of a Mechanics' Institute do not care to be taught out of the Catechism, yet the occasion enjoins a moral, and utility is the order of the day. Especially if they themselves are at the top of the tree, it looks and feels like humility to assure every raw youth of the company that he has only to try, with a will, and he may attain to the speaker's level. Only set your hearts, he cries-in spite of a conviction deep inside, giving the lie to his words-only resolve, with an intense, continuous act of volition to do and to be such-and-such things, and you will infallibly succeed. "How many men have begun as you have, and ended by being partners where they were errand-boys? How many have begun with twopence-possibly the sum in

your pockets at this moment-and ended life the owner of half a million? How many have begun mere journeymen, as some of you are, and risen to be inventors, discoverers, the everlasting benefactors of mankind? And any of you may do the same if only you have a will strong enough. All these men had a will; they never gave in; they suffered no pleasure to allure them from the one object of their lives; they conquered all difficulties; they were proof against disappointment ; hence your Fairbairns, your Stevensons, and all the merchant princes of the land." Facetious allusions are possibly thrown in to Whittington and his master's daughter, or that beggar-boy of Florence, who, receiving an alms from a fair maid of high degree, incontinently resolved to make her his wife, left the city on the instant a soldier, and came back generalissimo, to claim and win his reward. Fortunately for the audience, these ideas never enter the mind beyond infusing a temporary unmeaning inflation. The errand-boy cannot get up the sublime preliminary will which is to set the rest in motion. A will, unprompted by power to work it out, is nothing. Nor will conceit of power do much. A few rebuffs and failures abate pretension, except where vanity impairs the sanity of the brain. If people did not know all the while that men cannot make fortunes in business without a good head for it, and that it is no use being persevering over mechanics unless you have more than average of the gifts for the work—if they did not know hundreds of plodding, indefatigable clerks, who yet remain clerks all their lives

-this theory of the will would make lunatics of a docile audience.

Yet, though all the harm which might follow, if such advice were capable of being acted upon, does not come, yet some harm always results from the wide diffusion of untruth, and the continual utterance of swelling words, even if everybody knows that they mean nothing. Not but that there is a will that makes a man; but it cannot be put into him, and, indeed, needs no prompting. A man starts on his career with a tacit understanding with himself that he is to rise. It is a step-by-step progress. He probably has no distinct aim. It is only in books that he resolves. from the first dawning of ambition to become owner of such an estate or bishop of such a see. But he means to get on, and devotes all his powers to that end. He fixes his thoughts beyond immediate self-indulgence, chooses his friends as they will help the main design, falls in love on the same principle, and, habitually deferring to a vague but glowing future, learns to work towards it, and for its sake to be self-denying and longsighted. His instincts quicken; he puts forth feelers, which men who take their pleasure from hand to mouth have no use for; he lives in habitual caution, with an eye always awake to the main chance. Thus he refines and enhances that natural discretion which doubles the weight and value of every other gift, and yet keeps them on an unobtrusive level,-leaving itself the most notable quality,—till he is universally pronounced the man made to get on, by people who do not know that

it is a steady will that has made him and kept him what he is.

This is the will strong for itself. It, in fact, pushes others aside, takes their places, holds on its fatal course; but, as being unobtrusive and never openly asserted, it is the direct opposite of the meddlesome will of our social experience, expressed in the phrase that such a person must always have his way. Both are varieties from the historical or romantic will, which makes great heroes, criminals, tyrants, or martyrs, according to the cause in which it is applied. We believe, even on this grand heroic scale, many a will gets worshipped in manhood which acts precisely on the same motive for which an obstinate child gets whipped-that is, the man goes on because he has begun. Nevertheless, we all feel a vigorous will to be a fine thing. It is a stroke of nature in the man in the play to hate a bird that does not know its own mind. It is wearisome to be with people without any will of their own. Volition is life; no one can be really great, whatever his other powers, without it; nor can a man cultivate it in himself too carefully, so long as he respects the free will of others, and only applies it to secure constancy in purposes and decision in action.

TALKING OF SELF.

It is a nice and curious inquiry how far it is desirable, or even tolerable, for people to talk of themselves. There is no broader distinction between man and man than the manner and the degree in which this is done. There are people who never talk of themselves. There are others who never talk of anything but themselves— that is, who can pursue no subject unless the vista can be made to terminate in self. Wherever it comes to this, the question admits but of one answer-indeed, society has put the too frequent use of the word “I” under an interdict. No person who mixes much with mankind dares to turn the conversation habitually upon himself, except under some feint or disguise. Nevertheless, we all of us know persons who talk only of themselves, and families who never get farther from themselves than one another. These are probably the dullest people and dullest families of our acquaintance; for, when we come to think of it, all prominent dulness has a touch of egotism at bottom, and this is