sented to it by the senses, or by the memory. It is ever engaged in analyzing and compounding; in discovering analogies more or less obvious; in tracing up the effect to its cause, or following the cause onwards to its distant consequences. The activity of thought in these operations far exceeds the velocity of the most subtle material agents, such as light and electricity. The number of relations discovered by the mind in a single day, or a single hour, or even, at times, in a single minute, far exceeds human calculation. It would require hours, on the part of the reflective philosopher, to spread out and analyze the judgments of as few moments of spontaneous thought. But every correlation discovered among objects may become the ground of their association by the mind at any future time.

2. The laws of association are adapted to the intellectual powers, and are the means of aiding them, and, in particular, of supplying them with illustrations, and enabling them to follow out their investigations. Whenever a relation has been discovered, it henceforth becomes a means of associating in our thoughts the objects related. The analysis brings up the synthesis, and the synthesis reproduces the analysis. The individual now calls up the species or the genus, and the species or the genus calls up the individual as an exemplification of it. The cause suggests the effect, and the effect the cause. The laws of suggestion thus carry out spontaneously the processes which, in the first instance, have required the more laborious exercises of the understanding. Our intellectual conquests are thus kept from being lost. Every discovered relation is made to re-appear with new confirmations, without limit and without end.

3. The links which bind our thoughts may be made. so far to depend on our intellectual habits. We say "so

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far," because associations may also be formed by casual circumstances or impulses, or may depend on the state of the bodily organism, or other things which cannot be directly regulated by the understanding. Still the associations formed, must so far depend on the intellect; man is not so helpless as he sometimes imagines that he is in the current of his thoughts. If the mind delight to discover high and important relations, then the ideas will be found to suggest each other agreeably to these noble relations. If, on the other hand, the mind is fond of tracing trifling relations, relations of mere accident, or mere verbal relations-as in certain kinds of wit-the links which combine the thoughts will also be of a trivial. character and tendency. It is found here, as in many other cases, that as men sow, so must they also reap.

4. A provision is made for enabling the disciplined mind to conduct ultroneously its scientific pursuits. Natural objects, we have shewn, are related according to relations of class and cause. The mind, as we have also seen, is furnished with talents specially fitted to enable it to discover these relations. And now, we have seen that objects, between which a relation has been discerned, will be brought up in their correlation again and again. Provided persons have only made the analyses required in chemistry, or traced the classes in natural history, or the causes determined by natural philosophy, they will fall in every day with illustrations and confirmations. Nay, in thoroughly trained minds, the suggestive faculty at times strikes flashes of light which illuminate the darkest subject, and disclose the way to new and brilliant discoveries.

Besides these Primary Laws of Association, there are Secondary Laws (as they have been called by Brown) determining which of the primary laws should operate at

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any given time. We have not anywhere a complete enumeration of these secondary laws. In the few remarks which we have to offer, we are to limit ourselves to the two which stand out most prominently.

First, Those objects are recalled most readily and frequently to which we have attended, or to which we have attached an act of the will of any description. How speedily, for example, does the striking of the hours of the clock vanish from our memory when there has been no particular circumstance to call our attention to it! On the other hand, when we have deliberately revolved any particular topic in our minds, it will more readily come up before us at all future times. The will has an antiseptic power, and keeps whatever has been embalmed by it from being destroyed.

Secondly, Our minds will often be directed towards an object when our feelings are interested in it. There is a locality, for example, which has been much before the minds of multitudes during the past year or two. Some of us had scarcely ever heard of it before; it possesses in itself no great interest; it consists of rocky and barren heights sweeping down to an indented shore. Yet how often have our thoughts been turned of late to that place! With what eagerness did fathers and mothers, sisters and children, lover and friend, look for tidings of beloved ones toiling and fighting on these cold and bristling eminences! There are thousands upon thousands who can never forget that spot, many to whose view it will rise up every day of their future lives, and some to whom it will henceforth appear every waking hour of their existence on earth-for there it was that a son, or brother, or husband was smitten, as amidst flying balls and bursting shells, he rushed to fight the enemies of his country. There are children, whose first lessons in

geography, learned from a mother's lips, will be about these wild heights, and the blasting storms which raged around them-for there it was that the father breathed his last. And why do men's minds wander so often to these scenes? it is because their feelings have become interested in them, and emotion has the power of V preserving, as in amber, whatever has been imbedded

in it.

Now, let us mark how these two laws aid scientific men in their pursuits. The attention which they have given to the subjects which engross them; their fixed determinations regarding them; the efforts which they have made to master the difficulties; their very disappointments and failures,-all these tend to bring the objects more constantly before them, that they may fully exhibit themselves, and reveal all their truth. Then, their original tastes, and their acquired habits, the result of association, cause them to warm as they advance, and now their hearts are as much interested as their heads in their pursuits. The botanist comes to love the plants, the zoologist the animals, and the astronomer the stars, which he has often and anxiously watched, and scientific men generally feel, when engaged with their favourite pursuits, as if they were surrounded by friends and companions. But as, when we truly love our friends, we find ourselves frequently thinking of them, so, those who are engaged in the study of nature dwell habitually among their cherished objects, and the images of them start up everywhere to delight and instruct, to furnish new examples of old laws, and suggest new laws not previously discovered.

SECT. IV.-THE ÆSTHETIC SENTIMENTS.

It may be safely affirmed that no one has been able to give a complete account of the nature of Beauty. Pleasant are the glimpses which not a few have had, but to no one has she fully revealed her charms. We have many valuable contributions toward a correct theory, but we are yet without a thorough analysis or a full exposition. We are to attempt no systematic discussion of a subject so interesting from the nature of the objects at which it looks, and yet shewing itself to be so subtle and retiring when we would advance towards it. It is very obvious that, in the judicious treatment of the subject, there should be a distinction drawn between the object which calls forth the feeling and the feeling called forth. We are to content ourselves with showing that there is a correspondence between the two, and the component parts of each. Here, as in every other province of God's works, we find the confluence of a number of streams; only, in the case of beauty, they are so blended that it is impossible to trace each to its source.

I. Vigorous efforts are being made, in the present day, to find out in what physical beauty consists. These attempts have so far been successful. It has been demonstrated that there are certain distributions of colours which are more agreeable than others. Certain colours, if placed alongside of each other in the decoration of a house, or a piece of dress, are felt to produce a pleasant impression. But we have shown that these juxtapositions of colours are frequently met with in the plant, in the plumage of birds, and in the sky. There is here a correspondence between the external world on the one hand, and our organization bodily, and probably mental also, on the other.

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