We gather this series of examples from the pages of an author, who has given much time and thought to the theme, and set them before the reader as tempting bits, to a collection of similar specimens, culled from home and every day experience.

It is, of course, conceded, that the mental process of supporting a complexity of thinking is more difficult, indeed, than to pursue a simple and single intellectual action; and, that such a variety of acts, performed at one and the same moment, is rendered more difficult still, in proportion as such acts are heterogeneous and on separate plans. But it is not impossible. Nothing more is maintained, just now. One mind possesses the ability in a far greater degree than another; and in the most active and vigorous minds, it has its seasons and its limits, let us say. A high and continued strain of complex thought will sooner or later bring on confusion and exhaustion. Hence men's minds shrink from encountering such difficult labor. They choose, as a rule, rather the less arduous path, of selecting some single object or sphere, and addict themselves thereto, in compliance with the natural bent of their constitutions. They doubtless very wisely turn to the best account the special gifts which nature may have conferred upon them, whether such gift lie within the cycle of the imagination, reason or moral sentiment. Such single intellectual action, in one straight line, as it were, acquires readily the form of habit, and men accordingly become mathematicians, logicians, poets, artists or moralists.

From such a monomaniacal proclivity in most minds, great advantages certainly result to society at large. We have, in consequence, a real division of labor, in the world of thought. We see and enjoy a more extended prosecution of separate sciences, than could otherwise be hoped for. Almost every mind can thus find some place, in which it may accomplish something. If we cannot do all things, we may not declare ourselves unwilling to do any thing. It is well that the economy is just as it is, and that men are just such pivot-men, as we find them. But all disadvantages are not necessarily excluded, in consequence of such an arrangement. Either, we will ever be compelled to be satisfied with but partial apprehensions of truth, you see, as long as such an economy stands. As long as we are obliged to prosecute our knowledge in tangential lines, we cannot see the whole surface of any truth. Truth is universal and entire, in its nature and essence; and yet, according to our present mode of procedure, we go on distributing, classifying and dividing, that which is in its very nature indivisible and ONE. We are very much like ants, in their running to and fro about their hillock-each one carrying a mere fragment of truth in his mind.

But, since the human mind, even now, although with difficulty and but to a limited extent, is able to carry on in diverse and complicated directions, various operations simultaneously, it is fair to presume, that, in our future and spiritual state, we shall be endowed with a wonderful and plenary versatility of talent. The mind will be enabled to fill out a circle of emotion and thought, let us say -holding fast to all at once instead of breaking off from one, in order to quickly grasp another. We shall no longer attend to this now, and then to that, by turns, or in succession-in a line; but apprehend, feel and act at all points at once, as the air touches and affects our whole bodily surface.

If such an obvious and probable enhancement of mental power is in waiting for us, may not the germ of such a versatility of talent be reasonably supposed to lie already in our present mental constitution? If so, why then require all minds to be monomaniacshowever exalted a meaning we may assign to the term? Why smile complacently on the man, who proves himself versatile, or many-sided-as if such an exhibition were not possible, in single cases, as typical of what shall be general, in a higher sphere? Why call up the famous "Jack of all trades," or speak of the proverbial "too many irons in the fire," or of the impossibility of "doing two or more things at once," whenever we are confronted by such an exceptional character? We question very much the wisdom of confining the youthful mind, more especially, by a sort of imperious custom, to one line of progress. It tends towards a partial and unnatural development. The education of one talent, and that in one direction, is not necessarily the advancement of another-and still less the completing of the whole mind. Mind is varied in powers, parts, and faculties. These are capable of separation and independent activity, we grant. But to cultivate each capacity independently, as is too generally done in the schools, as well as exacted in society, is to foster a species of divorce, which is at once unnatural. Much better educate and train the whole man, body and spirit; mind, with all its powers, and morals, in all their bearings; in principles and practices-all together, and you have a harmonious versatility, such as nature everywhere presents.

After

While on this subject, we cannot do better, by way of illustrating our theme, than to present Doctor Elder's brilliant photographs of certain men of just such a versatility of talent. His first specimen is the Honorable Robert J. Walker, of whom the American public heard much and favorably some years ago. quoting from his letter, the doctor says:-"We have given this brief extract of Mr. Walker's letter, in the main, to indicate our respect for the cleverness which it exhibits-the manly efficiency of the lawyer and statesman, enacting the physician in a great

emergency, as if to the manor bred, and for the abstract inference that a man that is really good for anything answers tolerably well-aye, often very well, for everything. A man well made up and well finished, is very nearly a whole hand wherever he happens to be placed. The notion that a man can be competent to only one kind of work seems to us very like a watch with only one true wheel in it. If it were the fact, which is doubtful, the whole machine is, after all, a very poor one. Universal pretenders are very poor humbugs, but sneers at universal geniuses betray anything but a sound judgment and enlarged observation. The instances of excellence in very numerous and varied abilities are as plenty as blackberries. Indeed, your partially developed people have very seldom eminence in the one thing, for which all their other faculties are smothered, and there are the best reasons in the world for it. We know an artist now, who, besides being pre-eminent in the quality of his work, can do twice as much of it in a given time, as the average of the best workmen. He ascribes his facility to the fact, that he has learned and worked at five different trades.

Having disposed of the Hon. Robert J. Walker, and his gifted Artist, the Doctor treats us to a fine morsel on the familiar Dr. Adam Clark. Few of our readers, perhaps, knew that the great commentator had been such a string of things, as we give :

Dr. Adam Clark, the Linguist, Theologian, Antiquarian, and master of a dozen of the Physical Sciences, says: "the adage too many irons in the fire' has done a world of mischief," and adds, put shovel, tongs, and poker, all into the fire, and see that none of them burn."

Here is a word on the great novelist, which is in place too :"Walter Scott was Poet, Antiquarian, Sportsman, Sheriff, Architect, Novelist, and a dozen other things at once.'

Another character of some fame, is thus set off:

:

"Alexander Campbell, of Bethany, Virginia, is a profound linguist, a revival preacher, school-master, farmer, post master, politician, architect, anatomist, and several other things beside, and cannot be much beat in any of them by anybody. The thing is worth thinking of."-Yes, we think a little thinking on the general subject will at least do us no harm. Let us then fall to thinking on the versatility of talent, both as it may already be capable of development in this life, as well as of its higher degrees, in the world beyond, where the truth of that strange saying shall be known." Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away."

A DISCUSSION CONCERNING PLAIN WORDS.

Ten years ago, the present editor of the GUARDIAN wrote an article for the Reformed Messenger on the use of short, plain words, over the signature of "Junius." To this Dr. Harbaugh wrote a reply, over the signature of "Sax," in which he conclusively showed that "Junius" had better sweep before his own door. "Junius," instead of cutting at his reprover in self-defence, meekly took the broom and swept about his door as best he could. But few of the present readers of the GUARDIAN have read this little controversy about plain words. We therefore give it in a few numbers chiefly for the sake of "Sax's" article.-[ÉD. GUARDIAN.]

AN EXCESS OF LEARNING.

BY JUNIUS.

The poor common folk in our worshiping congregations often fare little better at the hands of the preacher, and him that prays, than did poor Lazarus at the table of Dives. Eagerly they pick up the crumbs, and as to their sores, if dogs will not lick them, Dives surely will not lave them. Many of the ablest sermons are little better than Greek essays would be to one-half their hearers. The most simple, practical truths are enveloped in long entangled folds of rhetoric, which ordinary people can merely look at and listen to with dreary vacancy of thought. Nothing can be gotten out of their fancy-ridden sentences. The hymns? Yes, these they can understand. The prayers often sound to them like Greek or Hebrew.

The following is a specimen. Who prayed, it makes no difference just here. But that it was really addressed to the Divine Being, in the presence of a congregation, there are those living who can testify.

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Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night teacheth knowledge. We read Thy being, O God, in the diagrams of night; we syllable it in the harmonies of nature. We bless Thee that Thou hast delivered us from the pantheistic icebergs of unbelief, and hast brought Jesus into the fibres of our hearts. That Thou hast postulated within us a principle called conscience, which marks our responsibility. Let us not hold the truth in unstable equilibrium."

A gentleman present says, it reminded him of a certain candidate for a school, who, being asked by the directors, "How many kinds of snuff there were," replied that there were different kinds. Among others, that before them, which "is a latitudinarian excrescence of the supercrostinosity of the wick of a candle, taken by means of the finger and thumb, well saturated with saliva, from the burning taper, said lights being closed over the flame."

Some people have a great fondness for learned terms-" for words of learned length and thundering sound." We have known ministers of the Gospel parading theologic phrases before their people, until their famished hearers had quite a vocabulary of an unknown tongue, not knowing what any of them meant. Husks they were for the said hearers, without kernel or substance. With such men monosyllables are greatly under par; a vulgar tongue, they think, which ill becomes the dignity of the pulpit. Certainly, the language of the pulpit should not be defiled with the low and vulgar cant of the degraded rabble. The preacher's thoughts should be decently clad in a Sabbath dress, neither coarse nor too gay. The reader has perhaps heard of the showy young preacher, who dwelt with great eloquence on the graces of the "Proto-martyr." Being asked by a poor, plain old Christian, after the services, who that was, he replied, "Stephen, the first martyr."

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Why, then, did you not say that?" was the deserved rebuke the humble hearer gave him.

Why can writers and speakers not be as readily understood by their readers and hearers, as they are when they familiarly converse with their friends? The most abstruse scholar is able to converse intelligently with the most ignorant who asks him for charity. Strange, then, that when speaking to men about their eternal destiny, their ruin and redemption, they should indulge in what Horace calls verba sesquipedalia-words a foot and a half long.

True, great scholars sometimes use learned phrases in reviews and lecture-rooms. But when speaking to the masses, none are more simple and plain in speech than they. Aspirants for scholarly fame ape great men. They are always on the hunt for big words. They have a contempt for the old-fashioned transparent Saxon. They can no longer fire with small arms. It must be a thirty-two pounder, a columbiad. This fondness for big words, for hifalutin, is generally the index of a little mind, a shallow brain, a hollow heart. It betrays a want of sense, an excess of vanity.

Indeed, in our conversational English, the short Saxon words have been deplorably eliminated. What more expressive than the sturdy words of former centuries? The strength and beauty of the English language is in its Saxon element. This gives us short, bullet-formed words, which are solid, and always leave a mark