amid ruins; the block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the resolute." And if the architect determines to build a house of comfort, he can do so; if he wishes to construct a prison of gloom, still he can do so; if he waits and waits till the day is past and his time is over, he leaves a mass of unfinished ruins; the life-architect builds that common tenement for an immortal soul-a wasted and useless life. If one should base his happiness on greatness, he will find others constantly above and before him; he will cry, like Alexander, to conquer a new world, or he will sigh, like Solomon, that the very enjoyment of prosperity is damped by the reflection that all is vanity. If he bases it on riches, he will find that not only do they make wings and fly away, but that they are the most delusive of all, only attracting to us the base and the bad; if on friendship, he will find the falseness of friends; if on learning, the hollowness of that. If he runs a career of vice, he is soon checked; if of luxury and enjoyment, pleasures pall, and disease follows; but if he founds his happiness on doing good, and fulfilling his duty, he will reach the goal and win the reward. It has been said that Philosophical Happiness is to want little, and to enjoy much; Vulgar Happiness, to want much and to enjoy little. Between the philosopher and the fool there lies all the difference.

When Sir Walter Scott lay dying, after a busy life, a greatly successful one, every moment employed, and in doing his duty too, paying debts he did not contract, and working

for others, but at the same time reaping success after success, applause after applause, the observed of all observers, the most renowned and beloved man in his country, he called his son-in-law, Lockhart, to him, and said, "My dear, be a good man, be a good man; nothing else can comfort you when you lie here." Herein lies the whole secret. It is no secret; everybody knows it, nor does man know it alone. The dog which drives a flock of sheep successfully through a field or gateway bounds back for his master's applause, happy in the possession of it. The general who does his duty falls on the field, and is happy. "They run, they run!" cried an eager soldier on the heights of Abraham. "Who run?" eagerly inquired the dying Wolfe. "The French," was the answer. "Then I die happy; I have done my duty." A child knows when he is happy, and dances about when he is a good boy; and are we to be told that when a man has conquered a low desire, trodden a vice under foot, forsaken an indulgence, or done a generous action, that he doesn't know it?

Knowing how to plant our potato, and to cultivate our happiness, there is one more thing to be learnt, and that is, not to cultivate it too much. We may kill plants by overkindness; and, if we are wise, we shall not endeavour to strive after too much, even of happiness. We must not build too high. In this world we never have perfect happiness; that is, not at the same time intense and enduring. Jefferson, the American, a great and good man, did not believe that the Almighty intended man to possess it; but he said He

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had put it in our power to approach very nearly to it. Do we require too much, we are disappointed; but if we are satisfied with little, we may have it. And when we say WE, we mean all the world, with only sufficient exception to prove the rule. A Pole, born under the rule of a Russian, gagged, and bound, and beholding his country desolate; an African, born to be the victim of the senseless black tyrant Dahomey; a man, with a hereditary disease, or madness-these are the exceptions. Beyond them, a little shoe-black has an equal chance with a king--we think a higher chance than any king. Cheerfulness and thankfulness for small mercies must be the plants also cultivated, because happiness thrives in their atmosphere. Beyond that, believing that the world really cannot give it nor take it away, because it lies deeper than the world, at the very inmost recess of the heart, is the grand specific for true greatness as well-that of trying to help others, and to conquer yourself. Even the prosaic Rowe rises to poetry when he announces this truth: "To be good is to be happy. Angels are happier than men because they're better."

DREAMS OF WORLD-HAPPINESS.

T is not the fate of every author that he adds an expressive word to a language, a word which will probably keep its place as long as men

aspire and our language last. What is Utopia, and a Utopian? The first question this Essay will attempt to answer; in the second, the word has somewhat drifted from its original sense, its meaning now being a benevolent idealogue, one who wishes to leave the world better than he found it, and who believes in progress and perfectibility. Almost all earnest and good men are at one period of their lives Utopians, and dream of a happy republic, like that of Sir Thomas More, where "rumours of oppression and deceit" might never reach them more; but comparatively few are acquainted with more than the faintest sketch of the Chancellor's book. The very list of Utopian writers is a long one. It began long before Christianity was established, and it has lasted to our own day. It will last as long as unequal divisions, poverty and riches, luxury and squalor, ease and hard work, co-exist in this world. That these "happy republics' have succeeded better upon paper than they do in reality is

no argument against their designers. That certain obscure and poor religionists have carried out their principles till they have planted a happy and virtuous community in the wilderness, and have made the desert blossom like a rose, will show that, after all, Utopia is not a wholly visionary place, and that, in the grey age of the world—we being now in its youth-we may perchance perfectionate, and reach a state of society infinitely more pleasant and virtuous than this.

Even an imperfect list of those who have projected Utopias will be instructive. We begin with Plato and his Republic, and we proceed to the New Atlantis of the philosophic Bacon; the City of the Sun of Campanella; the Other World of Hall; the Isle of Pleasures, by Fénélon; the Austral Discovery of Retif de la Bretonne; Gaudentia di Lucca, an account of an unknown country in the deserts of Africa, by Bishop Berkeley; the Basilliade of Morelly; the Oceana of Harrington, our grand republican spirit; the dream of Perpetual Peace, by the Abbé St. Pierre; The Fortunate Isles, by M. de Clairfonds; the History of the Troglodytes, by Montesquieu (a fragment); Micromegas, by Voltaire; and, lastly, Universal Brotherhood; or, The Christian System of Mutual Assistance, by Goodwyn Barmby, published in London and New York about twenty years ago. This list is by no means perfect; but it contains the names of some very great men, who were bold enough to feel and to assert that, in their belief, whatever is, or was, is not and was not best; that " a brighter morn awaits the human day ;" and that society in the bright future—