That remedial sentiment is equanimity: a word which, from its derivation from the Latin-æquus animus, an equal or even mind-is descriptive of a physical condition of the human machine, which however desirable in itself, like the condition of health, no man can make sure of by any caution or exertions of his own. He who has it, has it without merit; and he who has it not, is to be pitied, not blamed: he is the object of compassion, not of

censure..

But when such a desirable evenness of mind is sought after, and pursued by moral culture upon moral considerations, and upon the mind's conviction of its propriety and fitness, aided and seconded as the moral culture should be with all physical assistance, it becomes strictly and properly a moral sentiment.

He who lays himself out to this study, and exercises a discipline over himself, physicking at once both his body and mind with a view to the attaining it, even though he should never entirely succeed, nor come up to that full mastery of his feelings, which men may boast of who never had such an irritable constitution as his to deal with, is really a very wise and good man; he makes the best of the bad bargain, which, without his consent, his fate has made for him; he has nothing to reproach himself for, nothing for which he can be reproached by others; and will unquestionably reap an adequate fruit and reward of that mental discipline. He will render his mind more calm and equal than it otherwise would have been; he will make the best of it, such as it is. Virtue can do no more, and philosophy will desire

no more.

Equanimity, upon these humble but sufficient grounds, considered as a moral sentiment fit and proper to be cultivated by every man, is easily distinguished from the excellent virtue of moral fortitude (which, at an early period of this course, we fully treated): in that, fortitude is called into action, chiefly upon great occasions, in mighty enterprises, or in grievous sufferings; whereas a man has occasion for equanimity at all times. Many a man, whose constitution has supplied him with energies of nerve and enthusiasm of sentiment, enough to make him a hero or a martyr, has been found grievously deficient of that calmer virtue that makes a philosopher.

The sentiments are in some degree heterogeneous, and cannot exist together in the perfection of each of them in one and the same person: as is exemplified in innumerable instances of very brave and stout-hearted men, whose valour and fortitude were never found in the back ground when honour called them to the front of danger; yet, losing all possession of themselves, and surrendering all their tranquillity of mind to the insidious hostility of petty annoyances, vexations, and persecutions, which needed not one half of their fortitude to have enabled them to despise and to defy. Thus full oft, for want of equanimity, the most magnani

mous valour surrenders its well-earned laurels to the gripe of a feeble and vexatious spitefulness, the brave man sinks under the arm of impotence, and the lion perishes by the puncture of an asp. Fortitude calls for an activity and energy of soul-equanimity invites to tranquillity. Fortitude is the virtue of Ajax-equanimity is the wisdom of Ulysses. The one serves us in the field-the other in the counsel. The one is the noble going forth of the soul to glorious actions, or to generous sacrifices-the other guards itself in the strength of its own bulwark, wards off the enemy's power to hurt us; and, midst all the clangour of the war without, secures to itself an inward composure that invasion cannot violate, or treason betray: a peace of mind that laughs to scorn the impotent hostility that would play havoc on our rock, but cannot.

"As some tall clift that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway meets the storm;

Though round its sides the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

It's impossible not to see that such an armed and fortified impregnability of mind must be in itself infinitely desirable; and all means or discipline, physical or moral, by which it can be attained, or by which some advance or approach towards it may be held out to our hopes, is worthy all our study, and will pay for ten thousand failures of our experiment to gain it.

It is not that a man can absolutely resist his natural sensitiveness, or get the better of the irritability of his nervous constitution, so as to become quite a stoic, and regulate the faster or slower pulsations of his heart as of his watch, screwing it up or letting it down at his mere will.

But what the stoical philosophers actually did in this way, by dint of moral considerations, by a sort of force upon themselves, (if you like) by a power of imagination, by the influence of a strong enthusiasm, or however it might be, is proof enough that a great deal can be done; and that nature, in having placed us in circumstances in which annoyances and vexations are inevitable, (" much we're bound to thank her for it,") has not left us destitute of a capacity of growing case-hardened, and modifying our sensibility to our circumstances; as they tell us, "God tempers the weather to the shorn lamb."

Indeed, many of the circumstances, and perhaps a great majority of them, that are most terrible to our apprehensions, and such as we deem grievously afflictive, are so only by comparison; and that comparison on the diametrically wrong side to that on which the comparison should have been made; and made, too, under a morbid, diseased, and unwholesome state of the mind itself, which led it to imagine evils that have no real existence, and to give an aggravated poignancy to those that do exist: for all which, nature is innocent.

Could we deduct the cruel wrongs and injuries that men do to

each other, and the bitter and hostile feelings which originate in ignorance and superstition, there is really little to be complained of in life. But these wrongs and injuries it is that call for the exercise of both the moral and physical culture of equanimity, whereby we may hold our minds as evenly balanced as they well may be, and enjoy that degree of composure which is conducive to our happiness, and essential to our honour.

The reasons for cultivating equanimity, or a calm and composed frame of mind, are, with respect to each particular man, the hopefulness of the culture, as we have seen that it certainly can, to a wonderful extent, be done; and his efforts and attempts will, at any rate, be attended with a commensurate reward, even if they should not be entirely successful. A man hath the same reason and motive to desire to possess such a command over himself, and to endeavour to attain it, as he has to preserve his bodily health, and to take the best security for his happiness in any way. And sure there can be no happiness in living in a continual fever; nor any security in a temperament that our enemies, whenever they please, can put into a fever.

With respect to a man's enemies, (especially if, like some whom we know, he happens to have a good many of them, and they be inclined, as we sometimes see, to come too thick upon him,) a man has reason indeed to look well to his equanimity, and to guard the serenity and composure of his mind; not merely for his own defence, but as his best warfare and retort on them, who can never be so effectually mortified as when they see their well-intended favours have not told to the amount they counted on, and that their man is " every inch a man," never further off from giving in the couflict than when the blows come in the fastest.

Such enemies hath the best man I know: who, to be sure, if they could see a man's spirits completely broken, see him crestfallen, down-hearted, shipwrecked of hope, and desperate of counsel. If they could catch him beating himself to death, like the caged bird against the walls of his prison, and dreaming of ropes, razors, and salvation, would see the very thing their charity had intended-would see what, I guess, they're not going

to see.

With respect to any great and good end of life to which a man may have devoted himself, the surrender of his equanimity and giving up of his mind's composure and calmness, so far as he could help it, would be a wrong done to the cause itself, and so far a moral injustice, the very thought of which should be abhorrent to his feelings. To a man in such a plight there is no better counsel than that of our immortal bard, given in such a case supposed-"Reason thus with thy necessity, and for the worth that hangs upon thy quarrel be calm and temperate." The same magnanimity which brought a man to the post of danger,

is a pledge given for his consistency of counsel and propriety of conduct when that post is to be defended. His honour is concerned to redeem that pledge, and not to leave the cause he has engaged in, in the hazard of detriment, from the irruption of intemperate feelings, or the treason of rash and hasty counsels.

The latest posterity will admire the noble answer of our Algernon Sydney, when he, who was as much hated and persecuted then as his memory is now dear to all good men, stood forth before a judge who was a knave, and a jury who were no better, the champion of the liberties of Englishmen-who, to save his country, sacrificed himself. "The prisoner is mad!" exclaimed Jefferies. "Feel my pulse, my Lord," was the reply; and sure, 'twas a reply that it was heroism indeed to be able to make, and the truest dignity to feel. "My pulse as yours doth temperately beat time, and makes as wholesome music." No mathematical demonstration can be clearer than the exact propriety and fitness of such a state of mind to such a situation. The man is exactly cut out to fit into the niche. The sentiment dove-tails into the character. Glorious was the cause for which he fell; and glorious was the man who fell in it.

But this propriety would have been lost had not a wonderful command of feeling enabled Sydney to preserve the balance of his mind, and to maintain that equanimity that was not to be irritated by insult, nor to be overborne by tyranny. An equani mity which, I guess, no man could have exhibited had he not, together with all other appliances and means to boot, considered that it was what the cause in which he suffered required from him. Had he not made up his mind beforehand to the governing conviction, that though a man may indulge his feelings where his own interests alone are at stake, that indulgence is not to be allowed when he is called on to act as the representative of others, to uphold the dignity of a glorious cause, to be the martyr of truth, and the champion of liberty.

Now come we to the consideration of our "modus tractandi." the discipline, physical and moral, by which a man may acquire, if he have not, and may greatly increase to himself if he have, that most desirable evenness of mind which, whether adversity hath done its worst, or prosperity hath done its best for him-whether all his other good qualities have succeeded or failed, will still be the best provision for his happiness, best becoming his situation as a frail creature, and his dignity as a good one.

Of all these means and considerations, I am sure the physical ones are the first in claim and importance; and I am not sure but they may be the last, too; the all but every thing of the matter. To counteract the frailty of nature is to repair her strength. The most skilful pilot in the world would own that for the chance of weathering out the storm, there is more virtue in your vessel's tar and copper than in all the tactics of your navigation.

A dead man is the worst man in the world; and he who is but going dead is going the worst way in the world: in the way to lose not only all his physical good qualities, but all his moral ones too. Here is the clear and legible indication of nature, and of the great Author of nature, that it is the primary duty of a man to be provident and heedful of his state of health-that the mind's equanimity is to be sought for in the body's health. The mens sana, as physicians say, only taking lodgings in corpore-sano; that is, a sound mind in a sound body."

The physical effect of the hyoscyamus, and of other medicines, to soothe and allay the irritability of the nervous system-of opium, to suspend the sensation of the most acute bodily pain of mental anguish, are demonstrative, that to keep the mind on its pivot, to preserve not merely its energy of action but its precision of movement, the first attentions should be given to the judicious administration of pabulum vitæ: the neglect of which, by luxurious and intemperate persons, by long fasters and long feasters, may be pathologically assigned as the cause of that unequal and unbalanced acting of their minds (if they have any minds), which produces fretfulness of temper and despondency of mind, which leads so naturally to -(I won't tell any body what it leads to!)

But all excessive excitements must necessarily be followed by alternations of dejection and gloom. A level kept by the bodily temperament is the best guarantee for the level of the mind. There is the same physical propriety in recruiting and invigorating the powers of life, to sustain an apprehended shock or straining of the nerves, as there is for supplying a more generous and nutritious aliment to sustain a man under a stronger muscular action. By judicious arrangements, with this intention in view, a man may wonderfully economize his vital powers; and may, in a literal sense, lay himself out to the best advantage. By these means may

"Minds an equal temper know,

Nor swell too high, nor sink too low." Such advice, I am aware, may seem somewhat below the dignity of public inculcation; but its vast utility is its apology. And as this Areopagus is devoted solely to the promotion of human happiness, nothing that is essential to the object can be really below our solicitude, or unworthy of our tractation. That men should have health, is assuredly as essential to their happiness as that they should be virtuous.

I am now to show what are the best moral considerations, by the happy concurrence of which, with physical attentions, we may acquire, or preserve to ourselves, or, which is the same thing, may obtain, in the greatest degree which our constitution admits of, the great and unspeakable advantage of a calm and evenly-balanced mind.

How much can be done in this way the experience of thousands