objection, my complaint, my grievance, is, that he makes me for the most part a mere lumber-room-nay, a receptacle for rubbish and garbage. I desire, I delight to have my repositories filled with sound learning, with useful knowledge, with good words and worthy deeds. But our Master, in place of allowing me to treasure up only such things as these, keeps me almost constantly employed in accumu lating all manner of hateful things-evil thoughts, idle words, wicked deeds. Is not this very hard? You would deem it almost sacrilege to turn a palace into a tavern, or a church into a playhouse, or a museum into a pawnshop. Yet these were but faint emblems of the degrading uses to which I am put. Can you wonder that I recoil from such degradation, and long for redress?"

IMAGINATION next rose, but resumed his seat at the request of the Chairman, who said, that enough had been already stated to enable the meeting to judge of the griev ances of the Mental Powers. "The speech of IMAGINATION," he added, "may be safely reserved for some future occasion, when we have time to listen to fancies as well as facts. Meanwhile it is but fair to hear what the SENSES have to say."

Upon this the EYE rose, and craved, in behalf of himself and his brother-senses, to be heard by counsel. "None of us," he said, "is accustomed to make speeches. But there is a gentleman present-a friend of yours and ours, and, withal, a fellow-servant-who, possessing the gift of ready utterance, is well able, if you will allow him, to plead both his own cause and ours."

This request having been granted, TONGUE stepped forward and proceeded thus:-" Allow me, Mr Chairman, to begin by thanking you for the honour you have done me by permitting me to appear on this occasion,-an honour which I had no right to expect, being neither one of the Mental Powers nor one of the Senses; but of which I gladly avail myself, in order to say a few words in behalf of my five friends beside me, who, unhappily, are too diffident to speak for themselves. Residing, Sir, as I do, in the immediate vicinity of these gentlemen, and being, moreover,

associated with one of them in the performance of his appointed function as Taster to our Master, I am well acquainted at once with the services they render, and with the treatment they receive; and, as the result of long observation and experience, I feel bound to say that, shameful as is our Master's conduct to yourself, Sir, and the other Mental Faculties, his conduct to these five gentlemen and myself is yet more shameful. The Mental Powers are able, when aggrieved, to make reprisals. CONSCIENCE can sting the aggressor with remorse; MEMORY can pierce him with the barbed arrow of regret; IMAGINATION can scare him with dismal fancies and forebodings; and You, Sir, in virtue of your high judicial function, can bring him to your bar, and degrade him in his own eyes, by making him see that he is a Fool. But the Senses and myself have no such means of defence. We are quite helpless; we have no alternative but to be always and everywhere his passive, unresisting slaves. And consider, Sir, to what a grinding and degrading bondage he subjects us. The EYE, instead of being allowed to pencil on its lovely orb only the grand and the beautiful, is compelled to paint for his inspection the hideous and the loathsome. The EAR, in place of having its vocal chambers always filled with the melodies of rejoicing nature, and the sweet cadences of good and gentle speech, is forced to entertain him with the harsh sounds of strife, the grating notes of blasphemy, the siren strains of licentiousness. Then think how scandalously my friend. TASTING is abused by being made to pander to gluttony and drunkenness. SMELLING, too, and TOUCH-are not they obliged to stoop to daily fellowship with all manner of nastiness? And as for myself—who that has ever heard my voice does not know that I am daily required to utter falsehood, flattery, slander, cursing, ribaldry? I was given to our Master, that by my help he might bless God, speak the truth, and interchange good and kind thoughts with his fellows. But he has turned me to such base uses that I have lost my good name, and come to be denounced as 'an unruly evil, full of deadly poison,' nay, as a fire which setteth on fire the course of nature, and is set on fire of hell.'

But to dismiss my own wrongs, and return to those of my clients'

TONGUE had proceeded thus far, when the Chairman, who well knew that the talkative little man, if allowed, would harangue till midnight, rose and beckoned him to stop, remarking that the wrongs of the SENSES were palpable to all, and that it was now time he should bring the proceedings to a close by briefly indicating his opinion as to the course that ought to be adopted in the further prosecution of their object.

Hereupon TONGUE, though manifestly chagrined and out of humour, returned to his seat, and the Chairman went on. “I will frankly confess," said he, "that, though I have willingly co-operated with my brethren and fellow-servants in bringing our grievances before the world, and trying to enlist public sympathy in our favour, yet I have but little hope that anything which the public may say or do will move our Master to do us justice. He is, indeed, alive to the opinion of the public, fond of its applause, and afraid of its censure; and possibly, when he learns that the general sentiment is against him, he may defer to that sentiment so far as to treat the SENSES and their eloquent advocate with less open disparagement than heretofore. But it is vain to expect that either applause or censure will induce him to redress the wrongs of CONSCIENCE or of MEMORY. There is a power behind the throne,' which public opinion cannot reach. lording it over us, our Master is the unconscious dupe and thrall of that domineering and wayward Chamberlain of his -the WILL. His maltreatment of us is all owing to the malign influence of that unprincipled Major-domo, who is now, as he always has been, and ever will be, the real Ruler of the house. Until, therefore, that wicked One is humbled, and completely changed in temper and tastes, there can be no reasonable hope of our ever faring better; and since no power on earth can humble him-since no power out of heaven can change the WILL-our only effectual resource, in my judgment, is an appeal, not to the bar of public opinion, but to the throne of the Heavenly Majesty."

Thanks were then voted to the Chairman, and the meeting separated.

SONNETS.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he, returning, chide; "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" I fondly ask but Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best

Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait."-MILTON.

AVENGE, oh Lord! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not in thy book record their groans

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.-Id.

NUNS fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And Hermits are contented with their cells,
And Students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the Weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; Bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to me,

In sundry moods, 't was pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground:

Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,

Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
WORDSWORTH.

EARTH has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will;
Ah me! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!—Id.

THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST.

Is the Jesus of the Evangelists a real portrait, or only a fancy picture-an historical, or only an imaginary personage? Apart from the multifarious evidence, historical and critical, which learned men have collected and adduced in proof of the genuineness and credibility of the Gospel narrative, there is enough in the mere character of Christ as portrayed by the Evangelists, to exclude the hypothesis of an imaginative creation. If the authorship of an epic poem, or the construction of a ship of the line, were claimed for a savage of the woods, every man of sane mind would at once reject the claim, because of the palpable disproportion between such a work and the capabilities of a savage. careful examination, it will be found that there is an equal disproportion between the evangelic portraiture of Jesus and the inventive powers of His biographers. For not only does Jesus rise upon us from the pages of the Evangelists with a graphic distinctness, which enables the reader to apprehend and realize His character far more precisely and

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