&c.; the drama ending by Johnny throwing his arms round his mother's neck, and declaring that if he ever got well, he would never disobey his dear, dear mother any more!

The good people who write these edifying stories never seem to think whether it was wise for mamma to forbid Johnny to climb a tree. Monkeys are never forbidden to do so, and I seldom hear anything of their falling off. Poor people's children climb trees, and there does not seem to be an extraordinary increase of juvenile mortality on this account. What should you say if some hard-hearted person, myself for instance, were to say to the dear mother of little Johnny, "Dear Madam, you yourself, I grieve to say, were the cause of Johnny's accident; you have habitually prevented him from doing anything which would quicken his perceptions and strengthen his limbs. He must not soil his pinafore, he must not get his hands dirty, and above all he must not play at any games which make his hair untidy, or tear his clothes. In fact, you have forbidden him to do precisely those things which Nature prompted him to do. He has generally been very obedient, you say, and therefore his bodily powers have become weaker instead of stronger. Well, the temptation came, the unused and untrustworthy limbs were summoned to act, his consciousness of doing wrong enfeebled him still further, and made them still more nervous. He went up the tree, and the natural consequence was, that he fell."

This, in substance, is the answer to all questions of this class. I have played at cricket or shinney, or boated, since I was nine years old. During the last three years and a half, I have played at one or the other almost every day. I have played at shinney, or hockey, as we call it, all through the winter, through snow a foot deep, and when the thermometer was below zero; I have played at cricket in summer with the thermometer at 90, and I have never yet seen one serious accident. The fact is, that I have a theory that Nature loves young men and boys, and love to aid them in their sports. She sends her ice and snow to educate them and make them hardy, while we are sitting by the stove and abusing the weather. She won't let them be hurt half as much by a blow or a fall, as older people who do not love her half as well. She breaks the young one's fall, and herself puts the plaster on his little fingers. She is delighted at every conquest that these young children of hers make over herself, just like some big boxer she stands, who is teaching his boy to box. He feints and threatens and looks big, but who so pleased as he when the young one gets in his one two!

Again, the danger is little or nothing to the daring and courageous. The fellow that isn't afraid of the ball, is scarcely ever hurt. He defends himself with eye and hand. The coward is the one most likely to get hurt. I think that there is just enough risk in these games to engender a manly contempt for pain, and a bold handling of a danger. If the cricket ball were a soft affair, it would be a game for babies not boys.

Let us then take a hint from the sporting world, and turn to the use of the many that which has formed the only redeeming feature of a few. The good that these manly games do, should not be confined to a small class, but should be diffused among the whole community, for the sporting world has something to say to all of us. It rouses the scholar from his desk, shakes him, and tells him that much study is a weariness to the flesh, and that the fields are alive with song. Out then he must come, and leave his musty books.

It comes to the business man in the crowded city, and babbles of green fields, nudges Mr. Sparrowgrass with its elbow, and tells him to take Mrs. S. and the children into the country.

It comes to Mr. Fezziwig at Christmas time, and tells him to let the young men in his shop have a jolly time of it, put by their work, listen to the fiddle, and join the dance.

Ay, and the dream of those half-forgotten days comes over Scrooge, the miserly, miserable Scrooge, and wakes up something like a soul in him.

It comes to Colonel Newcome, and bids him go to Charter House School, and take his boy out for a holiday.

This same spirit came to the ancient Greek in drama, dance and game, and with him was set to music, and consecrated to the gods, to Apollo the ever young, to Pallas the wise, to Bacchus the joy-giver.

It came to the stern old Roman with his Saturnalia, when for once in all the year the slave and the plebeian might speak their minds without fear.

It came to the dark-eyed Hebrew with his feasts of tabernacles, his feast of the harvest and the vintage, and over his joyaunce a sacred shadow rested, as of One who was over these things, who both made and consecrated the joy.

Spirit of joy! Wide as the world! Offspring of heaven! That descendest with airs redolent of thy native home, and comest to give to the toil-worn brickmakers of the earth a little rest! Forgive us, foolish dwellers in the clay, if ofttimes we take thy festal garlands, and drag them in the mire! drunk with the wine of thy pleasures, we turn thy gifts to ashes and to mourning. Come thou, nevertheless! and stay not, turn not away for our folly, come with thy love-light, and smile-light, and make the whole earth green with thy summer of delight.

It were a theme worthy of the place and time, if we could sketch out the progress of mankind; to show how God laid the foundations of the human race in the barbaric ages, strong, savage human bodies being the stones thereof; how in due order, order as sure and stately as that of the geologic eras, arose the Roman and the Greek, the types of full developed body and mind together: how in the fullness of time Christianity revealed the mighty powers of heart, conscience and soul, which before were lying dormant in the human race; so that now at last upon us has fallen the task of developing the whole of man,—body, mind, heart, conscience and soul.

But my time, if not your patience, fails me: so I leave it as a hint for future thought, and will in conclusion utter a few words of courage and hope for mankind, which each event of to-day seems to strengthen and enlarge. Yes, it is no longer fitting, that for the future we should have few hopers and many fearers. Nay, rather let us all join hands to-day, and form a great Electric Cable of Hope, that shall stretch from sea to sea, from shore to shore.

For it is certain, then, that the planet upon which God has placed us, is absolutely well fitted for the development of the human race. The more Science investigates, the more wonderful seems the adaptation of Human Nature to the world in which it is placed. The more refined a man becomes, the more delicate his insight into Nature, the more satisfied, the more overjoyed is he with her exhaustless charms. It is only our sin, our folly, our ignorance, which perpetually befools us, and robs us of our inheritance.

When the great coming race, prophesied of so long, shall at last inhabit the earth, they shall see no more glorious stars, no bluer atmosphere, than we do to-day; the moon shall pour forth no more silver from her bounteous horn; the sun shall lavish his golden rays no more freely, than he does to-day. But yet the whole world shall be unimaginably brighter and more beautiful to that crowning race. And why? Because their natures shall be in tune with the outward universe; their eyes and ears, and all their senses, shall be unimaginably more acute than ours; their bodies shall be perpetual sources of joy to them, and their souls shall be awake to knowledge, truth and love.

If our eyes were endowed with magnifying powers equal to that of some colossal telescope, how would the dome of heaven expand into inconceivable dimensions, the stars would be seen to be scattered along the sky