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ACQUAINTANCES.

RESERVED and "exclusive" as the English people are considered to be, there is nothing that they who live in the world seem more anxious about than acquaintances. As to friends, the very word has become rather oldfashioned-the thing it signifies has long been So. But people love to have acquaintances, and the way in which the business of acquaintanceship is carried on, is no doubt eminently curious, and particularly worthy of this age of distinguished enlightenment. He, or she, who would be miserable without acquaintances, would be equally so if it were necessary to meet and talk with those acquaintances in any thing like a familiar way. The intellectual felicity derived from intercourse with acquaintances lies in this-you have leave to knock at their doors, and they at yours, and you may deposit with their servants, or they with yours, certain morsels of smooth pasteboard, on which are engraven your name and address, or theirs, as the case may be. The bliss is heightened if, instead of using those bits of pasteboard, you are called upon to write your name in the porter's book, which you must by all means do yourself. If the porter were to save himself the trouble of walking out to your carriage,

book and pen in hand, and to save you the trouble of writing, and the risk of inking your gloves, by performing the part of your amanuensis, at his own desk, the whole charm of the thing would be lost. Of course this is because your acquaintance, when he, she, or they, examines, or examine, the book, fall into raptures at your hand-writing, heave a sigh over the crossings of your "t's," and experience an effusion of sympathy as they contemplate the dottings of your "i's." This must be the true theory of the case, and the spectacle of the tall porter waiting beside your carriage, while you write your name, and the passing world sees what a great personage you are visiting, can have nothing to do with the matter.

One of the curious and convenient things belonging to modern acquaintanceship in London is, that it is by no means necessary that you should have any the least knowledge of the persons of your acquaintances. Your soul-felt intercourse being managed by means of visiting tickets, porters' books, and cards of invitation; any such thing as visual knowledge is unnecessary, and might be inconvenient. Your acquaintance might be disagreeable to look at, although living in a very eligible house, associating, according to the newspapers, with other people who live in very eligible houses, and occasionally paying opera singers and confectioners, to entertain the acquaintances whose names are in the porter's book.

My father early taught us all he dared,
And for his bolder flights our minds prepared.
He read the works of deists, every book
From crabbed Hobbes to courtly Bolingbroke;
And when we understood not, he would cry,
Let the expressions in your mem❜ry lie;

The light will soon break in, and you will find ^ Rest for your spirits, and be strong of mind."

There is great skill in this brief narration. How true the remark that the sceptical father did not dare to teach the children what his own mind had adopted. Even the boldest and the worst shrink with an instinctive dread and horror from the inculcation of impiety upon minds that are as yet simple and innocent. Even a fallen nature must have experience of sin, in sentiment, if not in action, before it seems anything but a hideously unnatural thing to attempt to harbour therein the seeds of impiety. But let us go on to see how the promise of " rest for their spirits" was fulfilled to these children:

"Alas! however strong, however weak,
The rest was something we had still to seek.
He taught us duties of no arduous kind,
The easy morals of the doubtful mind;
He bade us all our childish fears control,

And drive the nurse and grandam from the soul.
Told us the word of God was all we saw,

And that the law of nature was his law;
This law of nature we might find abstruse,
But gain sufficient for our common use.
Thus, by persuasion, we our duties learn'd,
And were but little in the cause concern'd.

"We lived in peace, in intellectual ease,
And thought that virtue was the way to please,

And pure morality the keeping free
From all the stains of vulgar villainy.

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Free, sad discourse was ours; we often sigh'd
To think we could not in some truths confide;
Our father's final words gave no content,
We found not what his self-reliance meant:

"in ceasing to obey, Misery and trouble meet us in our way.”

This is the true philosophy of human nature. Pride may reject it, ignorance may thrust it aside, presumption may treat it with derisive scorn; but sober experience will say, "This is true."

I must return to the theological writer already quoted, in order to borrow from him the exposure which he thinks it his duty to make of the inconsistency of many who call themselves philosophical, touching those points of knowledge which are the most important of all. The great mass of educated men are, he says, at once uneasy, impatient, and irritated, not simply incredulous, as soon as they are promised from any quarter some clear view of the original and apostolic doctrine, to them unknown, on any subject of religion. They bear to hear of researches into Christian antiquity; if they are directed to prove its uncertainty and unprofitableness, they are intolerant and open-mouthed against them, if their object be to rescue and not to destroy. They sanction a rule of philosophy

which they practically refute every time they praise Newton or Cuvier. In truth, they can endure a positive theory in other provinces of knowledge, but in theology it becomes practical. They perceive that there, what in itself is but an inquiry into questions of fact, tends to an encroachment upon what they think fit to consider their christian liberty. They are reluctant to be confronted with evidence which will diminish their right of thinking rightly or wrongly as they please. They are jealous of being forced to submit to one view of the subject, and to be unable at their pleasure to change. They consider comfort in religion to lie in all questions being open, and there being no call upon them to act. Thus they deliberately adopt that liberty which God gave his former people in wrath, "a liberty to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine," the prerogative of being heretics or infidels.

It would be well, continues our author, if these men could keep their restless humours to themselves; but they unsettle all around them. They rob those of their birthright who would have hailed the privilege of being told the truth, without their own personal risk in finding it. Such troubles of the Christian community would, in a healthy state of things, be silenced or put out of it, as disturbers of the king's peace are restrained in civil matters.