ence of nature, between the two sides; and the physical side is itself in full correlation with the recognized physical forces of the world.

II. There remains another application of the doctrine, perhaps equally interesting to contemplate, and more within my special line of study. I mean the correlation of the mental forces among themselves (still viewed in the conjoint arrangement). Just as we assign limits to mind as a whole, by a reference to the grant of physical expenditure, in oxidation, etc., for the department, so we must assign limits to the different phases or modes of mental work-thought, feeling, and so on-according to the share allotted to each; so that, while the mind as a whole may be stinted by the demands of the non-mental functions, each separate manifestation is bounded by the requirements of the others. This is an inevitable consequence of the general principle, and equally receives the confirmation of experience. There is the same absence of numerical precision of estimate; our scale of quantity can have but few divisions between the highest and the lowest degrees, and these not well fixed.

What is required for this application of the principle is, to ascertain the comparative cost, in the physical point of view, of the different functions of the mind.

The great divisions of the mind are, Feeling, Will, and Thought:-Feeling, seen in our pleasures and pains; Will, in our labors to attain the one, and avoid the other; Thought, in our sensations, ideas, recollections, reasonings, imaginings, and so on. Now, the forces of the mind, with their physical supports, may be evenly or unevenly distributed over the three functions. They may go by preference either to feeling, to action, or to thinking; and, if more is given to one, less must remain to the others, the entire quantity being limited.

First, as to the Feelings. Every throb of pleasure costs something to the physical system; and two throbs cost twice as much as one. If we cannot fix a precise equivalent, it is not because the relation is not definite, but from the difficulties of reducing degrees of pleasure to a recognized standard. Of this,

however, there can be no reasonable doubt-namely, that a large amount of pleasure supposes a corresponding large expenditure of blood and nerve tissue, to the stinting, perhaps, of the active energies, and the intellectual processes. It is a matter of practical moment to ascertain what pleasures cost least, for there are thrifty and unthrifty modes of spending our brain and heart's blood. Experience probably justifies us in saying that the narcotic stimulants are, in general, a more extravagant expenditure than the stimulation of food, society, and fine art. One of the safest of delights, if not very acute, is the delight of abounding physical vigor; for, from the very supposition, the supply to the brain is not such as to interfere with the general interests of the system. But the theory of pleasure is incomplete without the theory of pain.

As a rule, pain is a more costly experience than pleasure, although sometimes economical as a check to the spendthrift pleasures. Pain is physically accompanied by an excess of blood in the brain, from at least two causesextreme intensity of nervous action, and conflicting currents, both being sources. of waste. The sleeplessness of the pained condition means that the circulation is never allowed to subside from the brain; the irritation maintains energetic currents, which bring the blood copiously to the parts affected.

There is a possibility of excitement, of considerable amount, without either pleasure or pain; the cost here is simply as the excitement: mere surprises may be of this nature. Such excitement has no value, except intellectually; it may detain the thoughts, and impress the memory, but it is not a final end of our being, as pleasure is; and it does not waste power to the extent that pain does. The ideally best condition is a moderate surplus of pleasure-a gentle glow, not rising into brilliancy or intensity, except at considerable intervals. (say a small portion of every day), falling down frequently to indifference, but seldom sinking into pain.

Attendant on strong feeling, especially in constitutions young or robust, there is usually a great amount of mere bodily vehemence, as gesticulation, play of countenance, of voice, and so on.

This counts as muscular work, and is an addition to the brain work. Properly speaking, the cerebral currents discharge themselves in movements, and are modified according to the scope given to those movements. Resistance to the movements is liable to increase the conscious activity of the brain, although a continuing resistance may suppress the entire wave.

Next as to the Will, or our voluntary labors and pursuits for the great ends of obtaining pleasure and warding off pain. This part of our system is a compound experience of feeling and move ment; the properly mental fact being included under feeling-that is, pleas ure and pain, present or imagined. When our voluntary endeavors are successful, a distinct throb of pleasure is the result, which counts among our valuable enjoyments: when they fail, a painful and depressing state ensues. The more complicated operations of the will, as in adjusting many opposite interests, bring in the element of conflict, which is always painful and wasting. Two strong stimulants pointing opposite ways, as when a miser has to pay a high fee to the surgeon that saves his eyesight, occasion a fierce struggle and severe draft upon the physical supports of the feelings.

Although the processes of feeling all involve a manifest, and it may be a serious expenditure of physical power, which of course is lost to the purely physical functions; and although the extreme degrees of pleasure, of pain, or of neutral excitement must be adverse to the general vigor; yet the presumption is, that we can afford a certain moderate share of all this without too great inroads on the other interests. It is the Thinking or Intellectual part of us that involves the heaviest item of expenditure in the physico-mental department. Anything like a great or general cultivation of the powers of thought, or any occupation that severely and continuously brings them into play, will induce such a preponderance of cerebral activity, in oxidation and in nerve-currents, as to disturb the balance of life, and to require special arrangements for redeeming that disturbance. This is fully verified by all we know of the tendency of intellectual application to ex

haust the physical powers, and to bring on early decay.

A careful analysis of the operations of the intellect enables us to distinguish the kind of exercises that involve the greatest expenditure, from the extent and the intensity of the cerebral occupation. I can but make a rapid selection of leading points.

First. The mere exercise of the Senses, in the way of attention, with a view to watch, to discriminate, to identify, belongs to the intellectual function, and exhausts the powers according as it is long continued, and according to the delicacy of the operation; the meaning of delicacy being that an exaggerated activity of the organ is needed to make the required discernment. To be all day on the qui vive for some very slight and barely perceptible indications to the eye or the ear, as in catching an indistinct speaker, is an exhausting labor of attention.

Secondly. The work of Acquisition is necessarily a process of great nervous expenditure. Unintentional imitation costs least, because there is no forcing of reluctant attention. But a course of extensive and various acquisitions cannot be maintained without a large supply of blood to cement all the multifarious connections of the nerve-fibres, constituting the physical side of acquisition. An abated support of other mental functions, as well as of the purely physical functions, must accompany a life devoted to mental improvement, whether arts, languages, sciences, moral restraints, or other culture.

Of special acquisitions, languages are the most apparently voluminous; but the memory for visible or pictorial aspects, if very high, as in the painter and the picturesque poet, makes a prodigious demand upon the plastic combinations of the brain.

The acquisition of science is severe, rather than multifarious; it glories in comprehendiug much in little, but that little is made up of painful abstract elements, every one of which, in the last resort, must have at its beck a host of explanatory particulars: so that, after all, the burden lies in the multitude. If science is easy to a select number of minds, it is because there is a large spontaneous determination of force to

whole, is not readily united with a large emotional nature. The incompatibility is best seen by inquiring whether men of overflowing sociability are deep and original thinkers, great discoverers, accurate inquirers, great organizers in affairs; or whether their greatness is not limited to the spheres where feeling performs a part-poetry, eloquence, and social ascendancy.

Saturday Review.

THE EARLY YEARS OF H. R. H. THE PRINCE CONSORT.*

AN instalment of a biography extending only to the age of twenty-one could in general possess only a domestic value, and a narrative inspired or controlled by unquestioning affection has a tendency to degenerate into mere eulogy. General Grey's record, however, of Prince Albert's early years bears internal marks of truth, and the frequent interpolations by a more tender hand are in the highest degree touching and interesting. From his infancy to his death, the Prince seems to have been both morally faultless and singularly exempt from the errors of conduct which are in ordinary cases only corrected by experience. "God knows," said the Queen, "vice itself would ever have recoiled from the look alone of one who wore the lily of a blameless life.'" The precocious prudence and firmness which Prince Albert exhibited in a very difficult position, if less attractive, were still more extraordinary. The person who loved him best delights, with ingenuous affection, to contrast his calm judgment with the venial mistakes which awaited his influence for their removal. The Queen, at the beginning of her reign, was "animated by strong feelings of partisanship," and she was "very irate with the Tories"; but the Prince, even before his arrival in England, determined that his household should be formed from both political parties in equal proportions, and the party feelings by which the Queen candidly admits

*The Early Years of H. R. H. the Prince Consort. Compiled under the direction of Her Majesty the Queen, by Lieut.-General the Hon. C. Grey. London: Smith, Elder & Co. New York: Harper & Brothers, from advance sheets.

that she was herself biassed at the time soon ceased to show themselves under the influence of his judicious counsels." Even in trifling matters there is the same loving anxiety to give Prince Albert the credit of simple tastes and of wholesome domestic habits. Her Majesty, it seems, had been accustomed to breakfast late, and in her early youth she was always unwilling to leave London. The late hours in the morning of which the Queen speaks with such regret were gradually improved under the influence of the Prince, and only a year after her marriage, "I told Albert that formerly I was too happy to go to London, and wretched to leave it; and now, since the blessed hour of my marriage, and still more since the summer, I dislike and am unhappy to leave the country, and could be content and happy never to go to town. This pleased him," as well it might; yet, on considerations of duty, the Prince was always anxious that the Queen should spend as much time as she could in London. The history of Prince Albert's life will not fail to justify and confirm the esteem with which his memory is universally regarded; but it will still more certainly produce the wholly undesigned effect of increasing the popular attachment to the devoted wife who records his vir

tues.

The history of a happy childhood can only aspire to the merit of agreeable monotony. A good little boy who learns his lessons and writes pretty little letters to his grandmamma is at best a good little boy. It is satisfactory, however, to learn from an infantine journal that Prince Albert, on two successive mornings, had a fight with his brother and inseparable companion, the present Duke of Saxe-Coburg. At a somewhat later period he gave Count Mensdorff a blow on the nose which left an indelible mark, and at Bonn he won a prize in a fencingmatch among eight-and-twenty competitors. At the same university he is said to have been distinguished by a faculty of mimicry and caricature which found a legitimate field in the peculiarities of the Professors and of the Prince's military instructor. In after years the exercise of the most amusing of lighter gifts would have been undignified and indiscreet, and it was consequently aban

doned. His biographer might perhaps have done well to correct by additional details the prevailing impression that Prince Albert never was a boy. An idle world is too intolerant of youthful wisdom and virtue when they are not diversified by any touch of levity. A perfect character ought perhaps to pass, like Prince Albert, from the studious innocence of a simple and cheerful boyhood into the gravest responsibilities of mature life; but human weakness regrets the entire absence of noise, of nonsense, and of the simple enjoyment of animal spirits. The Prince's early career was perhaps less remarkable in Germany than it might have been in England. The real and affected contempt for learning which is more or less traditional among English boys, forms part of an instinctive suspicion that the precepts of parents and schoolmasters are doubtful, conventional, and partially insincere. A singular fabric of provisional philosophy and morality is therefore temporarily substituted for more legitimate doctrines, and it serves its purpose better than might be expected. German boys are probably less humorous and more manageable, and Prince Albert and his brother were fortunate in the care of an excellent tutor who conducted their education from their earliest years until they left the University. To the age of nineteen the brothers were never parted for a single day, and they regarded each other through life with more than ordinary affection. "Ernest's sincere pleasure," writes the Queen in announcing her engagement to King Leopold, "gives me great delight. He does so adore dearest Albert." Their parents were, for some unexplained reason, separated in 1824, and the children never saw their mother again. Their father seems to have conducted their education judiciously, although Mr. Florschutz, the tutor, complained, with professional jealousy, of undue interruptions and holidays. A peculiarity in Prince Al bert's constitution as a boy was probably connected with the cause of his early death. He had great difficulty in keeping himself awake in the evening, and he never succeeded in overcoming his tendency to sleepiness; "yet nothing," says the Queen, "could exceed the kind attention be paid to every one, frequent

ly standing the whole evening that no one might be neglected." General society, however, was to the Prince rather a duty than a pleasure, and his biographer considers it a merit that "on such occasions he loved to get hold of some man eminent as a statesman or man of science, and to pass the hours he was thus compelled to give to the world in political or instructive conversation." A still larger and more genial nature would have enjoyed gossiping and easy talk; and a compliment quoted from the mouth of the Grand Duke of Tuscany at a Court ball at Florence is at least ambiguous :-" Voilà un prince dont nous pouvons être fiers. La belle danseuse l'attend, le savant l'occupe." A boy of nineteen would have been much better employed in dancing than in serious discussion at a ball.

The paths of life have been made smooth for princes from the days when Hamlet himself could find no reasons for suicide except the proud man's contumely, the insolence of office, and other grievances from which exalted station is necessarily exempt. When Prince Albert was three years old, his nurse told him that he should marry the Princess Victoria, and the Coburg family had probably even then determined to promote in due time a union which was in itself natural and suitable. In 1836 the Prince, then aged seventeen, visited England with his father and brother, and for the first time saw his future bride. The probability of the marriage was from that time the subject of general rumor, though the report was, according to the Queen, "premature, as nothing had then been settled." The cousins, however, exchanged letters, and it appears to have been fully understood that the engagement was to be formed, if both parties, after a suitable interval, were still of the same mind as at their first meeting. King William IV. had objected to the visit of the Coburg princes, as he wished his niece to marry the brother of the present King of Holland; but Queen Adelaide afterwards told the Queen that the King would at once have given way if he had known that her happiness was involved in her early choice. On their return from England the princes went to the University of Bonn for a year and a half;