He may speak lower and lower, but a fine ear has caught every word. If he writes down his secret thoughts, not wishing to utter them, they are read : -by whom? no one knows. What he dreams upon his pillow, the next morning, to his great astonishment, he hears in the street.

MAKING THE MOST OF THE POWER OF HABIT.-CAN WE GET CLEAR OF IT?

IF spiritual dominion be really of the spirit, if the empire over thought be obtained by thought itself, by a superiority of character and mind, we must give way; we have only to be resigned. Our family may protest, but it will be in vain.

But, for the most part, this is not the case. The influence we speak of by no means supposes, as an essential condition, the brilliant gifts of the mind. They are doubtless of service to him who has them, though, if he have them in a superior degree, they may possibly do him harm. A brilliant superiority, which ever seems a pretension to govern, puts the minds of others on their guard, warns the less prudent, and places an obstacle on the very threshold ; which here is every thing.* People of mediocrity

* Novelists scarcely ever understand this principle. Most of them begin with an adventure or some surprising action. But this is what startles, warns, and deters us from the attempt. They are prodigal of adventures and actions, and certainly nothing is more likely to awaken the attention, and make fascination impossible. What we say in this chapter on the

do not alarm us, they gain an entrance more easily. The weaker they are the less they are suspected ; therefore are they the stronger in one sense. Iron clashes against the rock, is blunted, and loses its edge and point. But who would distrust water? Weak, colourless, insipid as it is, if, however, it always continues to fall in the same place, it will in time hollow out the flinty rock.

Stand at this window every day, at a certain hour in the afternoon. You will see a pale man pass down the street, with his eyes cast on the ground, and always following the same line of pavement next the houses. Where he set his foot yesterday, there he does to-day, and there he will to-morrow; he would wear out the pavement, if it was never renewed. And by this same street he goes to the same house, ascends to the same story, and in the same cabinet speaks to the same person. He speaks of the same things, and his manner seems the same. The person who listens to him sees no difference between yesterday and to-day :- gentle uniformity, as serene as an infant's sleep, whose breathing raises its chest at equal intervals with the same soft sound.

You think that nothing changes in this monotonous equality; that all these days are the same. You

power of habit will be perhaps little understood by people of fashion, especially in Paris: in a life of so much amusement and variety, they can scarcely imagine the dull uniformity which time may have elsewhere.

are mistaken; you have perceived nothing, yet every day there is a change, slight, it is true, and imperceptible, which the person, himself changed by little and little, does not remark.

It is like a dream in a bark. What distance have you come, whilst you were dreaming? Who can tell? Thus you go on, without seeming to movestill, and yet rapidly. Once out of the river, or canal, you soon find yourself at sea; the uniform immensity in which you now are, will inform you still less of the distance you go. Time and place are equally uncertain; no sure point to occupy attention; and attention itself is gone. The reverie is profound, and becomes more and more so: an ocean of dreams the smooth ocean of waters. A pleasant state, in which every thing becomes insensible, even gentleness itself. Is it death, or is it life? To distinguish, we require attention, and we should awake from our dream.-No, let it go on, whatever it may be that carried me along with it, whether it lead me to life or death.

upon

Alas! 'tis habit! that gently sloping formidable abyss, into which we slide so easily! we may say every thing that is bad of it, and, also, every thing that is good, and it will be always true.

Let us be frank: if the action that we did in the first instance knowingly and voluntarily, was never done but with will and attention, if it never became habitual and easy, we should act but little and

slowly, and our life would pass away in endeavours and efforts. If, for instance, every time we stepped forward we had to reflect upon our direction, and how to keep our balance, we should not walk much better than the child who is trying to go alone. But walking soon becomes a habit, an action that is performed without any need of invoking the constant and intermediate operation of the will. It is the same with many other acts which, still less voluntary, become at last mechanical, automatical, foreign, as I may say, to our personality. As we advance in life a considerable portion of our activity escapes our notice, removes from the sphere of liberty to enter that of habit, and becomes as it were fated; the remainder, relieved in that respect, and so far absolved from attention and effort, finds itself, by a process of compensation, more free to act elsewhere.

This is useful, but it is also dangerous. The fatal part increases within us, without our interference, and grows in the darkness of our inward nature. What formerly struck our attention, now passes unperceived. What was at first difficult, in time grows easy, too easy: at last we can no longer say even that it is easy, for it takes place, of its own accord, independently of our will; we suffer, if we do not do it. These acts being those, of all others, that cost the least trouble, are incessantly renewed. We must, at last, confess that a second nature is the result, which, formed at the expense of the former, becomes,