facts which embody them and lay them aside for our future guidance. Now these faculties, like all others, are strengthened by exercise, and they cannot be exercised with any advantage without a separation from the external world. Subtle distinctions in psychology are seldom arrived at in drawing rooms or popular assemblies. In all that pertains to philosophy, if the mind is hurried, it must be superficial. Sound deductions are reached slowly and with toil. The "thoughts that wander through eternity," are not apt to fasten upon those whose ears are filled with the "trampling and the hum" of town-meetings and news-boys. Hence, men, who have wished to ponder on the great problems which defy and perplex the reason-who have wished to thread the mazes of "fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute "—have been enamored of solitude. This is well exemplified in the monk-life of the Middle Ages. Nowhere do we find keener metaphysical discussions than in the pages of Augustine, and Sarpi; and Luther was fitted by this solitude and reflection of early life for the stirring warfare of later years.

It is true, indeed, that the cloister did not always produce minds of the best balance. Ignorance of the world often lead them into grotesque and puerile speculation. The same discipline which developed the acumen of Abelard, produced also the vagaries of Aquinas. Extremes are always unheathful. But let those who would discourage Solitude, remember how from the quiet seclusion of Port Royal, there went forth a power which should vindicate the theology of Augustine, and cause the Jesuits to tremble-that there the disciples of St. Cyran wrought with unpretending zeal for religious truth, so that history will never let their memory die-and that there were nourished and developed the keen controversial powers of Arnauld, and the wonderful genius which produced the Provincial Letters." Separate from the world, these great men turned their thoughts inward, and worked out trustworthy solutions of those great enigmas whose contemplation brings care to the heart and wrinkles to the brow of man. And this brings us to consider the influence of Solitude on the mental and moral character. It makes men honest. Continual contact with society, besides making men hasty and superficial, is also apt to pervert their motives and undermine their truthfulness by constantly prompting them to flatter the prejudices and yield to the opinions of others, in order to obtain influence over them. Besides, there are continual impulses to self-deception, which nothing, but keeping company with one's self from time to time, can cure.

But in the presence of his Maker and his own soul, man cannot cheat himself with flimsy sophistries—he wrestles with doubt and conquers he makes new vows to search for and serve truth. Carlyle," says his late reviewer, was matured in solitude." And who can doubt that to this he owes, in no slight degree, his ardent love of truth-his intense disgust with all simulacra and semblances-his almost ludicrous indignation when he detects a sham.

Solitude is the nurse of the imagination. Hence it has ever been loved of poets and prophets. There, at a distance from all the noises of humanity, they weave in silence that "cloth of gold" from which we cut rich vestures for our utilitarian minds. To Shelley there appeared coming in slow pomp,

"Desires and Adorations,

Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,

Splendors and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations,
Of hopes and fears and twilight Phantasies;

And Sorrow with her family of Sighs

And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam

Of her own dying smile instead of eyes."

To the calmer Wordsworth, from the solitary contemplation of Nature

there came

"the sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."

It was not among the elite of Athens, nor in the drawing-rooms of Rome, but from amid the wild fastnesses and rugged grandeur of Patmos, that John beheld the splendors and ineffable glories of the New Jerusalem. Let us, then, neither reject Solitude nor abuse it, but bear in mind the words of Emerson: "We require such a solitude as shall hold us to its revelations when we are in the street and in palaces."

C. S. K.

Death of Rev. Dr. Taylor.

Rev. Nathaniel W. Taylor, D.D., Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology in Yale College, since 1822, died in New Haven, March 10, 1858, aged seventy-one years and nine months.

His funeral was attended on Thursday afternoon, March 12, from the Centre Church, of which he was the beloved Pastor for a period of ten years, from 1812 till 1822. A sermon appropriate to the occasion was preached at that time by Rev. L. Bacon, D. D., his successor in the Pastoral office; and on the Sunday following an eloquent and affectionate discourse was preached in the College Chapel, by Rev. Prof. Fisher. These sermons, with a third preached in the North Church by Rev. Dr. Dutton, have already been published, and are so accessible to our readers, that it would be superfluous in this place to present any biographical sketch of the distinguished Theologian whom the College now mourns; and in place of other remarks of our own, we copy from the May number of the New Englander, the glowing sentences which begin an article by one of his favorite pupils, on "Dr. Taylor and his System."

"There stands upon our table a bust which, had we seen it for the first time in the Hall of the Philosophers,' in the Museum of the Capitol at Rome, would have divided our attention with the busts of Socrates and Plato. The extraor ninary breadth and hight of the forehead, the depth of arch in the brow, the fine symmetry of the features, the stamp of intellectuality and of benignity upon the face, would have commanded the homage we instinctively render to greatness. That homage is not in the least abated by the fact that this bust, which, if unknown, might stand unchallenged in the hall of the philosophers of antiquity, is known to be that of an ethical philosopher seated in the chair of Christian theology in a school of the nineteenth century. For those who know what an intellect was enthroned within it, and what a soul looked out through its portals, the ages could add no weight of dignity to that brow. But the brain does not throb beneath this arch, the eyes do not speak from these sockets, the words of wisdom and of power will not flow from these lips; and we turn away from the bust, to remember sadly, that all which it would picture is now cold as the marble of the sculptor.

"Upon the wall of our study is a portrait, in which the engraver's art has well preserved-what the sculptor cannot give-the life-expression of the same countenance. The forehead, the brow, the mouth, the symmetry of feature are

* Memorial of N. W. Taylor, D.D. New Haven: T. H. Pease. 1858. 8vo.

pp. 43.

here, as given in the bust; and beside, the eye illuminating the face, and speaking from the inner depths of the soul, and an outline of the person, showing a vigor of the muscular system proportionate to the development of the brain But this is the countenance in repose; and years of study, and physical infirmi ties, have traced upon it their ineffaceable ridges and depressions. This picture will not bring to us the man we seek.

"We go back a few days, and stand with venerable and reverend men-the teachers of our youth, the friends and counselors of riper years-by the yet unclosed coffin; and look with lingering gaze ugon the repose of a great soul in death. All trace of labor and of suffering has passed away; and that forehead in its serene majesty, and those lips with their voiceless sweetness, still 'rule us from the sceptered urn.' But in this very room, where the relation of Disciple was absorbed in the higher relation of Friend, and where in familiar conversation, the Teacher and the Preacher were lost in a childlike enthusiasm for truth and its discoveries,—in this room so animated by his presence that he lives in its every object-we cannot accept the silent though majestic impress of death, as the permanent recollection of him whom we shall meet on earth no

more.

"We go back a little earlier, to look upon that countenance made wan and sallow by disease, and to listen to that voice broken and hesitating through weakness and pain; and though the eye is not dim, nor the intellectual force abated, as he converts his bolstered bed into a didactic chair, and with clear discrimination and earnest emphasis recapitulates the grand points of Gospel truth elaborated in his lectures-we cannot bear to cherish the image of moral and intellectual strength overmastering physical weakness, as the abiding impression of the departed sage.

"We must go back more than twenty years, and look upon him in his manly vigor, as with an eye that riveted whomsoever it glanced upon, and a voice that reverberated like a deep-toned bell, and an earnestness that glowed through every feature and fiber of the man, he first stirred our mind with the overwhelming argument and pathos of his sermons, or lifted us up into mid-heaven by the magnificent sweep and attraction of his lectures. An older pupil of his at our side, insists that to know Dr. Taylor as he was, we should be able to go back forty years, and listen to him as he came fresh from the pulpit of the Centre Church to the chair of Theology in Yale College; that only his first class can fully appreciate his vigor of thought, his reach of intellect, and his power of inspiring others to tread with him the sublimest mysteries of divine truth. And one of his latest pupils insists, that no one of all his thirty-six classes could ever have known him' so fresh, so intimate, so earnest, so clear, so thorough, so profound, as did that little circle who gathered in his parlor to read together his lectures, and then listen to his exposition. There could be no higher tribute to the intellectual and moral greatness of the teacher, than these rival claims of pupils nearly forty years apart, each to have known him best, and to have loved him most. No bust or picture can ever compare with the likeness cherished in these living hearts."

New Publications.

Songs of Yale. New Haven: Thomas H. Pease.

In the excellence and variety of her Song Literature, Yale, if we mistake not, stands unrivalled. We are gratified at the evidence afforded that her motto in this department is Excelsior. Within the past five years, two editions of the " Songs of Yale" have been exhausted and a third called for. The collection before us, compiled by Edward C. Porter, of the Class of 1858, if, indeed, it can be called an edition of its predecessor, is materially improved. The arrangement is entirely new, and the selection, in the main, judicious. We meet most of our old favorities from "Gaudeamus " to "Audacia," and many of those charming airs more recently introduced, as “Lauriger," "Edite," and "Litoria," which breathe so much of Student spirit that each stands for a host of sunny reminiscences. A few, also, that have fallen into disuse are here resuscitated, that they may regain the favor which their merit deserves, among which we notice the beautiful ode of Horace, commencing " Integer vita." We wish that this little pamphlet might become a text-book in the leisure moments of every Yalensian until its contents become the involuntary expression of his varying moods.

We have also had recently put into our hands an account of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Meeting of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, held in New York, June 24th and 25th, 1857 It is put up with excellent taste, and contains, besides other matter, an Oration by Donald G. Mitchell, in his happiest style, and a Poem by William C. Williamson, both worthy of the occasion and the men. This issue is the first of its kind, and highly creditable to the organization. We understand that copies may be obtained from members of the Fraternity.

Memorabilia Valensia.

THE following literary fragment was recently discovered among the floating papers of that faithful chronicler and laborious polygraphist, President Stiles. It was furnished to us through the kindness of our indefatigable friend, Mr. E. C. HERRICK, a gentleman, by the way, whose historical acumen is only equalled