influence unrestrained and untarnished. She
chokes not genius with caste. Our aristocracy
is even invigorated from the ranks of the
commons. Scores of titled families die out in
a century, and their place is filled up with
the worthiest of the nation. Be a man the
son of a coal-merchant, like Eldon and Stowell
—or of a cotton-spinner, like Peel—the path
to wealth and fame is ever open to him. A
tradesman's son may die on the woolsack.
A clerk may rise, like Clive, to be a Governor-
General. The fourth son of a country parson,
like Nelson, may find a tomb among the great
ones in Westminster Abbey. Turn to our
Senate; consider its annals for the last sixty
years, and say if France, with her triple
Revolution, can present a parallel to the
genius there developed—if France, stirred to
the very dregs by frantic struggles after
liberty, can equal the steady glories of a
nation inured to freedom.

One word more, and we have done—one
word to the student who may peruse these
pages—to the young aspirant, who sees life
as yet only through the bright colouring of
youth, or in the unreal guise which it wears
to the recluse.

There is a self-imposed thraldom more fatal
to genius than the blight of external oppression;
beneath the allurements of passion
there lurks a worse than Egyptian bondage.
No man ever excelled without the exercise of
much self-denial. "To live like a hermit, and
work like a horse,"* is the surest of all roads
to fame, and has been the uninviting path
trodden by most of those who have risen to
permanent renown. True liberty, the liberty
which genius demands, consists as much in
exemption from the slavery within as from
the slavery without. Let the young aspirant
ever remember, that whatever elevates man's
nature, whatever lifts him above the trammels
of earth, and places him nearer heaven,
proportionally elevates his genius; and, on the
contrary, that every passion immoderately
indulged is a fetter placed on his intellect;
that every loitering in the mazes of unwholesome
pleasure, if redeemable at all, must one
day be redeemed at too dear a price. "The
Present and the Future are rivals," said
Sir Joshua Reynolds to his pupils, "and
whoever pays court to the one, must resign
the other."

* Lord Eldon's words, applied to himself.

ATLANTIC WAVES.

ONE brisk March morning, in the year 1848,
the brave Steam-Ship, Hibernia, rolled about
in the most intoxicated fashion on the broad
Atlantic, in north latitude fifty-one, and west
longitude thirty-eight, fifty—the wind blowing
a hard gale from the west-south-west.
To most of the passengers the grandeur of
the waters was a mockery, the fine bearing
of the ship only a delusion and a snare.
Everything was made tight on deck; if any
passenger had left a toothpick on one of the
seats, he would assuredly have found it lashed
to a near railing. Rope was coiled about
every imaginable item; and water dripped
from every spar of the gallant vessel. Now it
seemed as though she were travelling along
through a brilliant gallery, flanked on either
side by glittering walls of water; now she
climbed one of the crested walls, and an abyss,
dark and terrible as the famous Maelstrom,
which can't be found anywhere, yawned to
receive her. The snorts of the engine seemed
to defy the angry waters; and occasionally
when a monster wave coiled about the ship,
and thundered against her, she staggered for
a moment, only to renew the battle with fresh
energy.

The cooks and stewards went placidly
through their several daily avocations on
board this rolling, fighting, shaking craft.
If they had been Belgravian servants, or
club-house waiters, they could not have
performed their duties with more profound
unconcern. Their coolness appeared nothing
less than heroic to the poor tumbled heaps
of clothes with human beings inside, who
were scattered about the cabins below. An
unhappy wight who had never before been five
miles from Boston, was anxiously inquiring
of the chief steward the precise time in the
course of that evening that the vessel might
be expected to founder; while another steward,
with provoking pertinacity, was asking
how many would dine in the saloon at six,
with the same business-like unconcern, as if
the ship were gliding along on glass. So
tremendous was the tossing; so extreme
the apparent uncertainty of any event
except a watery terminus to all expectation,
that this sort of coolness appeared almost
wicked.

Then there was a monster in British
form actually on deck—not braving, it was
said, but tempting the storm to sweep him
into eternity. He astonished even the ship's
officers. The cook did not hesitate to venture
a strong opinion against the sanity of a man
who might, if he chose, be snugly ensconced
in the cabin out of harm's way, but who would
remain upon deck, in momentary danger of
being blown overboard. The cook's theory
was not ill supported by the subject of it; for
he was continually placing himself in all
manner of odd places and grotesque postures.
Sometimes he scrambled up on the cuddy-roof;
then he rolled down again on the saloon-deck;
now he got himself blown up on the paddle-
box; that was not high enough for him, for
when the vessel sunk into a trough of the
sea, he stood on tip-toe, trying to look over
the nearest wave. A consultation was held
in the cuddy, and a resolution was unanimously
passed that the amateur of wind and
water (which burst over him every minute)
was either an escaped lunatic—or a College
Professor.

It was resolved nem. con. that he was the