Although from the unavoidable defects of inexperienced leaders, wayward followers, and uncontrollable circumstances, many excuses may be afforded to these two distinct establishments; yet they must develop, in their respective careers, some of the effects of acting upon the two principles of community of property, and of individuality of recompense. It is quite possible that the two vessels thus started at the same time may, ultimately, land their passengers in the same country; but to know the difference in the navigation will repay the cost of the charts. They will, at least, illustrate the laws of human organization, if they do not determine the law of human nature.

The moral principles of the French and the English experiment are, however, more importantly asunder than their economies. The English has entirely a material basis; and, though sympathetic and religious sentiments are superadded, they are only introduced as tasteful ornaments to please the eye, and are not mingled with the bread as component parts of healthful diet. The French combines the material and the spiritual; and enters, from the first, into all questions touching the feelings, sympathies, and views of individuals. One sets out with the idea that, although human beings are now endlessly varied, they may all be made of uniformly good character, by favorable circumstances, with such slight differences in organization as shall not impugn the general truth. The other proposes no uniformity of character as essential to success, but seeks to provide attractive occupation for all dispositions and tastes, and rather bases its hopes upon variety, than upon sameness. The Phalanstery, therefore, seems to be a more comprehensive view of humanity than the Community. Both are, perhaps, equally wanting in respect to the inmost life-germ, for the development of which the human egg is laid; but, mentally considered, only, that is, without relation to practical operations, one appears to be the shell alone, and the other the yolk and shell.

The poetry in life, the soul of things, the spirit in the soul, the warmth in the light, in what human association shall we find this the primal element? In the religious associations of the old world, or the new; in the convent, the monastery; the Shakers, the New England fraternities, the joint stock industrials?

Man cannot have a heart or not, at the good will and pleasure of philosophers, how benevolent soever they may be. Nor can he set it aside at his own convenience. He has it always. And it is something more than a mere hydraulic machine. It is even more than a possession. It is himself. Man, as a heart, as a nature more occult than an intelligence, is a riddle yet unsolved by intellectual philosophers. These profess to discourse of the understanding, while they deny that any reality whatever, stands under the intellectual or analytical powers. Fortunately, however, there is also a synthetic nature, which must know and feel all things as whole, as one, and provision for this nature must be part of the common stock, but, as far as we can judge by an inspection of the inventories, there is rarely any store laid in.

With the sincerest wishes for the success of any programme having for aim the bettering of man, or his conditions, we still can entertain but faint hopes where we perceive the scheme rather than man is placed first in importance. That there is to be a gradual outworking of society, a vast progress for mankind, cannot be doubtful to the steady observer. A sufficient arc is known to prove the fact of a concentric orbit. But that orbicular track cannot be calculated by the moral astronomers, who are not centralized beings. It is a calculation, too, which cannot be put beforehand into books, and systems, but must be realized, day by day, from the centre itself, as are the planetary motions. Skeptics and scoffers of social melioration have yet some misgiving of their wit, and their objections, but they are rather confirmed than converted by preorganizations never realized, and which, at the same time, serve rather to disappoint than to encourage the faithful.

Various smaller associations in England and America might be spoken of as either in existence or proposed. But for all those which are not bound down by theological tests, it may be remarked, that they are yet in so incipient a state that their immediate observers, or even the members themselves, can scarcely pronounce decisively on the elucidation of any one principle. For material results, the period is too short; for mental order, the elements too chaotic; for spiritual growth, the subject too little heeded.

A SONG OF DEATH.

DEATH is here and death is there
But the shattered shaft and dome,

Emblem of a stern despair,

Mark that utter sorrow, where

Faith yet wants a home.

Yonder with the blue-veined lid

Closed o'er eyes whose light is o'er,

Like twin angels that forbid

Beauty to be widowed,

Though they come no more;

So he sleeps! The day is fair,
Summer breezes come and go,
Gambol with his curling hair,
And no wail of sorrow bear
On their sunny flow.

Give the flower unto the earth,

But salt tears will blight its bloom;

All that in him was of worth,

Let it find in thee new birth,

Not a shrouded tomb.

Bury him at morning time,

When the dew is on the grass, Then the fox-bells ring a chime, As from out some warmer clime

Morning breezes pass.

NOTES FROM THE JOURNAL OF A SCHOLAR.

NO. II.

WRITING OF JOURNALS.

I CANNOT pinch the Genie, and shut him into a casket. The life that I live is a various, salient, wide-lying life. The spirit of the creature is not to be expressed in sentences of a journal, but lives and leaps along the uneven road of human affairs, now wrangling with obstructions, now manfully overcoming, now sportful, now prayerful. It is not the pieces, it is the forming whole I study. If I chose to press flowers of conversation, like a hortus siccus in my book, and keep them to entertain me in a winter's day, when no such flowers bloom, I might, such flowers I find and pluck, none fairer, sweeter; but I wear them in my heart. They go to perfume and enrich the imagination, a garden where they drop their seed, and spring again, after snows and dead leaves have covered and deformed the ground.

NATURE.

May. I do not know but one of the ancient metamorphoses will some day overtake me, and I shall shoot into a tree, or flow in a stream, I do so lose my human nature, and join myself to that which is without. A few days ago I spent the afternoon in the warm hollows of Canterbury. The robin, the blue-bird, a moist frog with green uniform and gold enamelled eye, were my companions, rather than W. with whom I went, for we straggled wide apart. I found the saxifrage, just urging through moss and leaves its little ear of buds. And now, a glass of water is on my shelf, wherein are met, drinking sociably together, anemones and hepaticas, the pearly fair arbutus and crimson columbine, with other green, white, and pink friends from the fields.

We are so near to nature, and yet so far! Glorious kind moon and stars that beam love; air that sweeps and sings through the chambers of heaven; flowers, beautiful and sweet; you have your life, and I mine, and a different

one; I cannot wholly possess you. We draw near to each other, perhaps a delicate and passionless kiss is breathed. towards you, but you live on in vestal state, and I am everywhere repulsed from an embrace that shall mix our

natures.

July 9. Verily your seal and beaver and the submarines are your only comfortable livers, when the mercury stands at 98 in the shade. A little aspen has flourished two summers in the spout of a building on Cornhill; and nodded kindly to me each day, but I doubt the zeal of this sun will burn up its roots.

Aug. 2. The fields grow yellow to the harvest; the autumn flowers are budding; the industrious globe hastens to finish its year. I like to tell at the top of my page what's o'clock. It is pleasant to be folded in the arms of a celestial order, and the course of seasons, days and years is like a rocking motion which tranquillizes our tumultuous thoughts.

Aug. 22. Almost autumn, the sunsets say, and goldenly publish along half the horizon, and I am glad. If oaks have spiritual creatures, whose being is linked with the life of the tree, I do not know but there is a like sympathy between my nature and the seasons. In spring, there leaps up a fount of love, and hope, and animal exhilaration; in summer, I suffer a Hindoo repose; in autumn, a broad clear spirit is mine, which, if it partake of a stoical scorn, is perhaps the stronger armed to endure the labor and pain of living.

Sept. 21. Autumn is the afternoon of the year; but there are those whom the afternoon pleases more than the fresh morn. Autumn is the Odyssey, wherein the genius of nature blazes less high than in her Iliad summer; yet the season, like the poem, hath those who set its beauty's praise above its brilliant sister. I feel so much stronger as the sun goes off the back side of the world, that o'er the ruins of the year I savage exult.

The days go, and come, and go. Here from my window towards the East, I shall presently peruse at length large-limbed Orion, my shining chronicler of many a winter. God be thanked who set the stars in the sky, planted their bright watch along the infinite deep, and ordained such fine intelligence betwixt us and them; yea, God

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