MATERIALISM.

necessary to the re-production and preservation of the species. The desire of glory, of honour, of immortal fame, and of constant knowledge, so usual in young persons of well-constituted minds, cannot, I think, be other than symptoms of the infinite and progressive nature of intellect-hopes, which, as they cannot be gratified here, belong to a frame of mind suited to a nobler state of existence.

Sir Humphry Davy. MATERIALISM & SPIRITUALISM.

The materialists maintain that man consists of one uniform substance, the object of the senses; and that perception, with its modes, is the result, necessary or otherwise, of the organization of the brain. Belsham.

The doctrine opposed to this is spiritualism, or the doctrine that there is a spirit in man, and that he has a soul as well as a body. In like manner, he who maintains that there is but one substance, and that that substance is matter, is a materialist. And he who holds that above and beyond the material frame of the universe there is a spirit sustaining and directing it, is a spiritualist. The philosopher who admits that there is a spirit in man, and a spirit in the universe, is a perfect spiritualist. He who denies spirit in man or in the universe is a perfect materialist. But some have been inconsistent enough to admit a spirit in man and deny the existence of God, while others have admitted the existence of God and denied the soul of man to be spiritual. Fleming.

MAY-Beauties of.

Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.
Hail! bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee and wish thee long.

Milton.

For thee, sweet month, the groves green
liv'ries wear,
If not the first, the fairest of the year;
For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours,
And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers.
When thy short reign is past, the fev'rish sun
The sultry tropic fears, and moves more
slowly on.
Dryden.

MEDALS.

MAY-Description of.
Led by the jocund train of vernal hours

And vernal airs, uprose the gentle May; Blushing she rose, and blushing rose the flowers

That sprung spontaneous in her genial ray. Her locks with heaven's ambrosial dews were

bright,

And amorous zephyrs flutter'd on her breast. With every shifting gleam of morning light,

The colours shifted of her rainbow vest. Imperial ensigns graced her smiling form;

A golden key and golden wand she bore: This charms to peace each sullen eastern storm, And that unlocks the summer's copious store. Onward in conscious majesty she came,

The grateful honours of mankind to taste; To gather fairest wreaths of future fame, And blend fresh triumphs with her glorious past. Leviboad.

braced,

MEANS-Proper Use of.
The means that Heaven yields must be em
And not neglected; else, if Heaven would,
And we will not, Heaven's offer we refuse.
Shakspeare.

MEANS AND ENDEAVOURS.

There can be no end without means: and God furnishes no means that exempt us from the task and duty of joining our own best endeavours. The original stock, or wild olivetree of our natural powers, was not given us to be burnt or blighted, but to be grafted on. Coleridge.

MEDALS-Historical Records. Ambition sigh'd: she found it vain to trust The faithless column and the crumbling bust. Huge moles, whose shadow stretch'd from

MEDITATION-Art of.

Meditation, that great and universal instructor of the human race, which presides over all the creations of genius-the parent of philosophy-the sure guide of the arts in all their applications, because it enlightens them with general principles-plays a still more important and more extensive part in the great process of moral development. It is here that its value is most conspicuous, for it puts man in possession of all his powers, and elevates him to the real dignity of his nature. In science and in art, thinking elaborates the elementary facts furnished by observation and experiment; in the work of moral development, its object is to explore the inmost recesses of the mind, to collect together those elementary phenomena which reveal to us the great law of duty, and to familiarize us with a knowledge of ourselves. In science and in art, thinking operates only on ideas furnished by the senses and the intellect; in the work of moral education, it also excites those emotions or feelings which are associated with, or which naturally flow out of, our conceptions of good, and which constitute the immediate springs of action. Thinking, indeed, may be said to be the living principle of wisdom; and if the practice of it be so difficult in the ordinary course of study, and familiar only to a small number of minds, it becomes still more so, and is consequently less practised, in reference to moral objects. In the acquirement of scientific truth, thought is often aided by images of sense, by descriptions and definitions. In moral speculations,

MEDITATION.

these exterior aids do not exist; the mind is thrown upon its own resources, is fed only by its own aliment, and maintains itself by its own native strength. Degerando.

MEDITATION-Food for.

He who has thought for himself, depends not exclusively on others; and yet neither will he depend exclusively upon himself. He deals with raw materials of thought, and knows processes of preparation; but he does not manufacture for all his needs. He buys at the market of wisdom; but when he buys, he judges well and carefully of worth, and can detect adulteration. He can look around the world, and discern uses in things that other men will despise. He can scheme, invent, and combine for himself. Having thoughts of his own, he will speak of truth and opinion generally, as one who has seen and examined, not merely has heard the report of other men. The reflective man will see in his very pathway, illustrations, opportunities, and phenomena, for which it might once have seemed necessary to go far and to search widely. It is a fault in life as great as obvious, that we see not, or heed not, how principles that we honour and profess to obey, may be, and are, applied or violated in our common conduct. He who meditates will be able to see this, and to show it. Accustoming himself to think, he will soon find shining within him, as central suns, certain great fixed principles. In their light will he see the things of his life, and of the world; his whole being will almost unconsciously become orderly and vivified, changed and glorious, under the influence of these suns. Trinal.

MEDITATION-Haunts of.

These are the haunts of meditation, -these The scenes where ancient bards th' inspiring breath

Ecstatic felt; and from this world retired,
Conversed with angels and immortal forms,
On gracious errands bent: to save the fall
Of virtue struggling on the brink of vice,
In walking whispers, and repeated dreams;
To hint pure thought, and warm the favour'd

MEDITATION.

MEDITATION-Religious.

Meditation is one of our most difficult Christian duties, but, at the same time, it is one of the most important. We can read or hear a dozen of books more easily than we can meditate properly on one; but yet, our inward thoughts are the only tests by which we can know the real state of our minds. Whatever we turn to naturally when alone, is the thing which engrosses most of our regard, and therefore we should often look inwards, to ascertain if our hearts are stored for eternity, and how far they are devoted to the service of God. Religious meditations have been compared to the blossoms on a tree in Spring: many of them fall off, come to nothing, and end in vanity; but yet they are the first things in which spiritual-mindedness consists; and there can be no fruit, good or bad, but what proceeds from our thoughts.

Sinclair.

MEETING-with a Sister.
O my sister: let me hold thee
Long in my arms; I've not beheld thy face
These many days; by night I've oft seen thee
In gentle dreams, and satisfied my soul
With fancied joys, till morning cares awaked.
Otway.

MELANCHOLY-Associations of
Can music's voice, can beauty's eye,
Can painting's glowing hand supply
A charm so suited to my mind,
As blows this hollow gust of wind;
As drops this little weeping rill,
Soft tinkling down the moss-grown hill,
Whilst through the west, where sinks the

Oh! when I look on thee, new starts of giory Spring in my breast, and with a backward

bound,

I run the race of lusty youth again.

Lee.

I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star,
Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day

Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, No further than to where his feet had stray'd, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; While his bow'd head seem'd listening to the earth,

His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

A kind of weight hangs heavy on my heart,
My flagging soul flies under her own pitch,
Like fowl in air too damp, and lags along,
As if she were a body in a body,
And not a mounting substance made of fire;
My senses, too, are dull and stupified,
Their edge rebated: sure some ill approaches,
And some kind spirit knocks softly at my breast,
To tell me fate's at hand.
Cleomenes.

MELANCHOLY-Horrors of.

Hence, loathèd Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and

Methinks I hear, methinks I see
Ghosts, goblins, fiends; my phantasy
Presents a thousand ugly shapes-
Headless bears, black men, and apes.
Doleful outcries and fearful sights
My sad and dismal soul affrights.
All my griefs to this are jolly;
None so damned as melancholy.

MELANCHOLY-Humour of.

Milton.

Burton.

Step. Ay, truly, sir, I am mightily given to melancholy.

Mat. Oh! it's your only fine humour, sir; your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir; I am melancholy myself divers times, sir, and then do I no more, but take a pen and paper presently, and overflow you half a score or a dozen of sonnets at a sitting.

Ben Jonson. MELANCHOLY.

MELANCHOLY-to be Resisted.

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach. I once gave a lady two-and-twonty receipts against melancholy: one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugar plums on the chimneypiece and a kettle simmering on the hob. I thought this mere trifling at the moment, but have in after life discovered how true it is that these little pleasures often banish melancholy better than higher and more exalted objects; and that no means ought to be thought too trifling which can oppose it either in ourselves or in others. Sidney Smith.

MELANCHOLY-Sadness of.

Melancholy spreads itself 'Twixt heaven and earth, like envy between man And man, and is an everlasting mist. Byron.

MELANCHOLY-Silence of.

I have sat with him in his cabin a day together,
Yet not a syllable exchanged between us;
Sigh he did often, as if inward grief
And melancholy at that instant would
Choke up his vital spirits; and now and then
A tear or two, as in derision of

The roughness of his rugged temper, would
Fall on his hollow cheeks; which, but once felt,
A sudden flash of fury did dry up. Massinger.

MELANCHOLY-Sweetness of.

Hence all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights,
Wherein you spend your folly;
There's nought in this life sweet,
I, man, were wise to see it,
But only melancholy!
O, sweetest melancholy!
Welcome with folded arms and fixèd eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,

A look that's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chain'd up without a sound;
Fountain-head and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves;
Moon-lit walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls;
A midnight sigh, a parting groan,
These are the sounds we feed upon;
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley, -
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
Beaumont.

MELANCHOLY-Thoughtfulness of.
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,

MELODY-Moments of.

I remember once strolling along the margin of a stream, in one of those long sheltered valleys on Salisbury Plain, where the monks of former ages had planted chapels and built hermits' cells. There was a little parish church near; but tall elms and quivering alders hid it from the sight, when, all on a sudden, I was startled by the sound of the full organ pealing on the ear, accompanied by rustic voices and the willing choir of village maids and children. It rose, indeed, "like an exhalation of rich distilled perfumes." The dew from a thousand pastures was gathered in its softness-the silence of a thousand years spoke in it. It came upon the heart like the calm beauty of death; fancy caught the sound, and faith mounted on it to the skies. It filled the valley like a mist, and still poured out its endless chant, and still it swells upon the ear, and wraps me in a golden trance, drowning the noisy tumult of the world. Hazlitt.

MEMORY-Early Associations of.

It is an old saying, that we forget nothing, as people in fever begin suddenly to talk the language of their infancy; we are stricken by memory sometimes, and old affections rush back on us as vivid as in the time when they were our daily talk; when their presence gladdened our eyes; when their accents thrilled in our ears; when, with passionate tears and grief, we flung ourselves upon their hopeless corpses. Parting is death-at least as far 88