concocted philtres' to the witches of Shakspeare. In different ages and in various countries, the Spirit of war has been deified-made a god; splendid temples have been dedicated to him; and strong men have knelt at his shrine, and offered sacrifice on his altar. Horace says that Homer sometimes nods;' but 'tis not when his heroes are engaged in deadly conflict. Then his mighty genius surpasses itself. The earth shakes with the tread of impetuous feet. The very Gods and Goddesses from high Olympus are for awhile spectators of the fight, until, unable to restrain their feelings, they throw themselves headlong into the contest, stab and are stabbed in their turn.

Nor have the moderns lost much of the reverence which the ancients had for the warlike. Visible temples may not be erected to the God of war; smoking victims may not send up a savory odor from a genuine brazen altar; the Salii, with sacred rod and buckle, may not dance through our streets to measured music; but we do quite as well. We worshiped the same spirit in Napoleon; we worship it to some extent in Taylor. It yet lingers in the deep roll of the drum-yet calls to us in the shrill note of the fife. It yet finds an inglorious refuge on the field or in the grove where private quarrels are honorably settled; yet summons a few deluded worshipers to do it reverence at the prize-fight or in the cock-pit. Its glory may be, probably is, passing away; but it will die with a slow, lingering death-with many a convulsive struggle. Religion, whose law is love and peace, has often invoked its aid in the dissemination of creeds and catechisms, and it may be that she will yet again present the anomalous, though not unprecedented, spectacle of spiritual power fighting with temporal weapons, making an avenue for truth to reach the conscience by a thrust of the bayonet. At any rate, it will be long ere a red coat and gilt buttons fail to win popular applause, or captivate the hearts of the ladies. The question now arises, Why has war been so universally popular? How shall we reconcile the love of war with the love of happiness? What is it that makes war glorious? Why is the warrior a hero ?→→ Whether or not war is a necessary evil, is quite another thing. This last is one of those foolish questions which metaphysicians start for no other reason, apparently, than to hear themselves talk. It is worse than foolish to speculate on the possibility of men's having acted differently, if they had been differently constituted; and on the probable consequences, if they had acted differently. We might as well specu late on the progress of the arts, if iron and other useful metals were not in existence; or the height to which a bird would soar, with both wings on the same side of its body. We must take things as they are. The world, with all its joys and griefs, is doubtless much better off than it would have been if those far-seeing philosophers had had the making of it. War is a necessary consequence of man's having been created just what he is, rather than an angel or a stamp. The time is doubtless coming when men shall war no more, but this will be the result of wisdom gained by bitter experience; nor will it affect the great fact that for thousands of years, men fought, and, what is more, gloried in fighting.

Then, without trying to imagine the condition of things, if each and every one had been content to live and let live,' (the province rather of the poet than the philosopher,) let us attempt to reconcile the existence of war with man's love of happiness, to explain the fact that, being such as he is, he should have ever reared the standard of human excellence on a field of blood.

Hitherto the world has been governed by force rather than law. After all that is said of 'liberty' and 'equality,' even in the freest government that ever existed, a few think and act for all the others. The great majority feel the necessity of having one or a few, on whose superior wisdom they may rely for the management of the social organization, whose benefits they would enjoy. But the abilities of this one, or these few, are developed nowhere so well as in the chances and changes of war. In fair weather, a child may steer the vessel safely; but when storms arise, there must be a man at the helm. Suppose that in any system of government the rulers, instead of regarding the interests of the ruled, are watchful only of their own; or, suppose that their want of capacity disqualifies them for providing for the public good. Endurance ceases to be a virtue. The people want a change, and they will have it. But they must fight for it, and they must have a leader. Now the strong man, whether at home or abroad, who at such a juncture as this places himself at their head, manages them, unites separate factions and interests, and guides the whole fermented mass to the accomplishment of their wishes, this man becomes a hero, a divinity. He is revered as the living personification of the strength which resided in the people at large, but which without him was powerless, from the want of combination. He becomes ruler by the only right by which men ever rule-the ability to rule. His associates do homage to the implied consciousness of power with which he assumes the reins of government. Thus, the French made a god of Napoleon. And he was next to a god. He was a great man; but his greatness diminished every day that he ruled. After awhile, he began to rule for himself, instead of for France, and soon he ceased to rule at all.

Let us next consider war in its relation to the progressive improvement of society. Doubtless there has been a great deal of nonsense written and spoken about human progress. Modern essay writers, pseudo philosophers, little Fourth of July orators, and such craft, are fond of drawing parallels between ancient and modern times, extravagantly complimentary to the latter. According to them, the world has been traveling ever since its creation, on a regular high-pressure locomotive, down the track of time; and the development of a given age is mathematically computed by its distance from the 'year one.' What a pity it would be, if the race should arrive at the goal of perfection a thousand years or so too soon! What a useless waste of time waiting for the Millenium! What a pity, too, that these beautiful theories resemble so closely a large portion of late works of fiction, founded on fact!' 'Human progress' has not traveled thus regularly on to its destination. There have been many windings, and stoppings, and goings backward. Painting, sculpture, architecture, and many of the

useful and ornamental arts, once attained a greater degree of perfection than they have now; the laws of morality were quite as much respected; there were more Christians, also, about the third or fourth century, than in the boasted light of the nineteenth century. Nor does the war between the English and the East Indians, the Russians and the Circassians, France and Algiers, the United States and Mexico, indicate the immediate approach of the reign of peace. In fact, this boasted progress seems to resemble the stream that Telemachus saw on the island of Calypso, which, though it finally reached the ocean, took so circuitous a route that it threatened many times to return to mingle its waters with the parent fountain. And yet there is, there must be a gradual change for the better, or else this is a strange world we live in. Do you ask what war, with its disorganizing tendencies, has to do with this good time coming'? Much, and of good, too, paradoxical as it may seem. As a general thing, it may be said that the organization of society is never broken up, but by the assistance of some derangement that should be corrected. Men do not fight for nothing. "There is no chaos but it seeks a centre to revolve around; disorganization itself is but a struggle for order."

That society has never yet existed in which there were not radical defects, burning wrongs. A few have more than they deserve, the great majority, less. Were such a state of things to continue, were misrule quietly endured, there could be no improvement, no finding of new and better ways. Every revolution is but an effort of the body politic to attain a healthier state. As the cough of the consumptive is an exertion of nature to free the lungs from an accumulation which would speedily destroy their action, so these periodical outbreaks in society are struggles to shake off a load that is crushing the energies of the The master will not unlock the chain; the slave must break it. Thus, with war is associated the idea of liberty. Every drop of blood that is shed, becomes a consecrated offering on the altar of human emancipation. Every tear of suffering is exhaled to heaven, to fall again in a shower of blessings. Every act of tyranny successfully resisted, is another step taken towards the abolition of all tyranny. The horrors of war are lost sight of in its consequences. "Out of the eater, comes forth meat; out of the bitter, comes forth sweetness." Suffering is sanctified for good. Thus war is glorified by principle.

race.

THE WINDS AND THE SEASONS.

I.

Hark to the moan

Of the forest trees,
As they rock to and fro
In the midnight breeze!
The storm spirit rides

In his viewless car,
And the neighing of his steeds

Is heard from afar.

II.

Woe to the wretch,

Who now feels the blast

Of the cold wintry wind,
As it courses past.
Old Ocean lifts high

His white foaming crest,

And the shrieking sailor sinks

To his dreamless rest.

III.

Winter is past

The bright Spring has come—

And Nature rejoices

In the gladsome sun.

At noon and at eve,

The warm zephyrs play,

While they dally with the buds
Through the livelong day.

IV.

Swift, swift they speed

From the sunny climes,
Where the orange-grove blooms
'Mid the clustering vines-
The cheek of the sick

Is fanned by their breath,
And the dying mortal shrinks

From the touch of death.

V.

"Tis Summer now

And Phœbus looks down

From his high dazzling throne

On country and town.

TIME is a portion separated from infinite duration. It can be known to us only as we are assisted by certain criterions, either arbitrary or natural. Is the present organization of matter in the physical universe an indispensable auxiliary to us in this respect? According to Locke, we get the idea of duration by considering the train of ideas which is at the moment passing through the mind." Very few, probably, would maintain the absolute dependence of the mind on the body for its powers of reflection. We infer, then, from the remark of Locke, that matter is not, abstractly, indispensable to a knowledge of the pro