There is another aspect of this subject that I have barely space to allude to. The illustration with which this article opens, touching the effects of hay and grain respectively upon the life of the horse, suggests that the food with which our bodies are nourished may have an important bearing upon our mental and moral life. Of this I have no doubt. Coarse food, made of material but feebly vitalized, makes coarse men and women. Muscular tissues not formed from choice material, brains built of poor stuff, nervous fibres to which the finest and most delicate food has not ministered, are not the instruments of the highest grade of mental life. The dispensation of sawdust is passed away. It is pretty well understood that the most complicated, the noblest, and the finest creature in the world requires the best food the world can produce; and that he requires it in great variety. If a man leads simply an animal life-eating, working, and sleeping-let him feed as animals do; but if he lives a life above animals, as a social and religious being, then let him take food that gives pleasure to his palate, and pluck and power to all the instruments of his mind. Hay may answer very well for a mind that moves at the rate of only three miles an hour; but a mile was never yet made "inside of 2:40 " without grain.

M

"Ah God! well, art is long!

And life is short and fleeting.

What headaches have I felt and what heart-beating,

When critical desire was strong.

How hard it is the ways and means to master

By which one gains each fountain head!

And ere one yet has half the journey sped

The poor fool dies-O sad disaster!"

BROOKS' TRANSLATION OF FAUST.

ANKIND are "nothing, if not critical;" and

seem

nothing would seem to be criticism with them but fault-finding. It is astonishing to see what a number of architects there are in the world-how many people there are who feel competent to give an opinion upon buildings in course of erection on the public streets. If a dwelling is going up, there is not a day of its progress in which its builder or architect is not

convicted of being a fool, by any number of wise people who judge him on the evidence of a half-finished structure. When the dwelling is completed, it usually "looks better than they ever supposed it could; " but they learn nothing from this, though the proverb that "only fools criticize half-finished work” is a good deal older than they are. Every man who builds is obliged to take this running fire of fault-finding. Passing a new church recently, in the company of an architect, I asked him what he thought of the building. "I can tell better when the staging is down," was his reply. He knew enough not to criticize half-finished work, while probably a hundred men, knowing nothing of architecture whatever, had, during that very day, freely given their opinion of the building in the most unqualified way.

Did it ever occur to the reader of this essay that nearly all the judgments that are made up and expressed in this world relate to half-finished work? We hear a great deal of criticism indulged in with regard to American society. I have no doubt that this criticism is just, in a certain sense, but American society is only a half-finished structure. If it had arrived at the end of improvement and growth; if the elements which enter into it had already organized themselves in their highest form; if the creation of a high, refined, and beautiful society were not a thing of time; if such

a society did not depend upon the operation of forces that require a great range of influences and circumstances, then the criticism might be entirely just; but it is as unreasonable to expect a high grade of social life in America, at this point of American history, as it is to expect perfection in a church before the carpenters get out of it, and the staging is down. Wealth, learning, culture, leisure-these cannot be so combined in this country yet as to give us the highest grade and style of social life. We are all at work upon the structure, and unless American ideas are incurably bad, and we are faithless to our duties, American society will be good when the work upon it is completed. No society is to be condemned so long as it is progressive toward a goodly completeness.

Men and women are always judging one another before they are finished. A raw boy, with only the undeveloped elements of manhood in him, is denounced as a dunce. A light-hearted, sportive girl, with an incontinent overflow of spirits, is condemned as a hoiden. Neither boy nor girl is half made. There is only the frame-work of the man and woman up, and it does not appear what they are to become. A young man is wild, and judged accordingly. It is not remembered that there are various modifying influences to be brought to bear upon him, before he will be a man. We see the bold outline of a new house, and we say

that it is not beautiful. Soon, however, a piazza is built here, and a dormer is pushed out there, and gracefully modelled chimneys pierce the roof, and cornice and verandah and tower are added, until the structure stands before us complete in beauty, convenience, and strength. When we condemn a young man we do not stop to think that he is not done,— that there is a wife to place upon one side of him, and children to be grouped upon the other, and sundry relations to be adjusted before we can tell any thing about him at all.

There is nothing more common in experience and observation than the partiality felt by young and unmarried men for the society of married women, and the love of unmarried young women for the society of married men. I suppose that nearly every young man and young woman has a time of feeling that all the desirable matches in the world are disposed of, and that the marriageable young persons left are really very insipid companions. This is entirely natural, but exceedingly unreasonable. To expect a man to be as much of a man without a wife as with one, is just as reasonable as to expect a half-finished house to be as beautiful as a finished one. It is impossible for an unmarried man, other things being equal, to be as agreeable a companion as a married man; and lest I be suspected of a jest in this statement, I wish to assure my