AMONG the earliest ideas which we form, is that of power. When its exertion is seen, our interest is always excited, and where there is a possibility that it may be possessed and wielded by us, at our pleasure, its possession is intensely desired. The infant,' says Dr. Brown, is pleased, when we shake for the first time the bells of his little rattle, before we put it into his possession; but when he has it in his own hands, and makes the noise, which is then such delightful music to his ear, by his own effort, his rapture is more than doubled.' This desire of power grows with our growth, and extends through the whole circle of faculties which we call into successive exercise, and to nearly all the objects with which we find ourselves surrounded. We learn indeed to control its exercise, and we strive to dissimulate, when conscious of its existence, and are unwilling to permit the disclosure of its influence. But this only shows the extent to which its prevalence may be traced.

The simple desire of power is not of itself, not necessarily, wrong. It is not one of those dispositions against which we are bound to wage unceasing war for its extinction. On the contrary, many valuable and important purposes are promoted by it. Its uncontrolled indulgence, or its mere subordination to the principle of selfaggrandizement, is indeed much to be deprecated. And perhaps unfortunately for the good name of this desire of power, its perversion has most frequently attended its successful prosecution.

The mere power of muscular force, which we possess in common with the brute creation, and in an inferior degree to many of them, is surely not that which gives any ennobling distinction to us, or on account of which we have any high cause for self-gratulation. It is very often possessed, to the greatest extent, by those who seem endued with very few estimable qualities of heart or mind. Nor is the power which wealth, or rank, or ancestry gives, though certainly elevated above the level of that which consists in brute force, to be considered as invested with any thing like the same interest, to the noble and ingenuous soul, as the power of mind.

This is the subject, which too tamely, perhaps too presumptuously, we have selected for the present consideration of the reader. What school-boy has not written something upon the power of mind?

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and what philosopher has ever fully analyzed it? With no pretensions to have struck out new light on such a topic, our humble purpose shall be, to concentrate, and profitably direct, some rays of the old. We shall endeavor briefly to sketch the appropriate sphere of its exercise; offer some practical suggestions on the means of increasing this power; and then consider the motives by which its exercise, and the desire of its acquisition, ought always to be controlled. The first thing proposed is, to sketch the appropriate sphere for the exercise, or the development of the power of mind. It has indeed an ample field - from the lowest act, dependant on the will, upward through all the simple and complex arrangement of ingenious mechanism, comprising by far the most interesting of all the relations we sustain to the material universe. The power, too, of adaptation and subserviency; where the ascertainment of nature's laws gives to this power of mind the opportunity of rendering nature's most steadfast course obedient to some useful subordinate purposes to which man desires to direct it; and last of all, and chief of all, the power over mind itself, either our own or the mind of others, in all its faculties, understanding, affections, and will. To give a few of the simplest illustrations in each of these departments, must suffice.

The first and lowest exercise of the power of mind, above noticed, is when the mechanical powers are applied for the accomplishment of some object, to which our physical energy, without this assistance, would be inadequate. Necessity, that prolific mother of useful inventions, must early have led to the discovery and application of the simpler mechanical powers; and perhaps no nation or tribe of men has ever been found so ignorant, as not to have employed some of them, to accomplish that which the hand or the shoulder was found unequal to, without this aid. In the absence of all historical records, of the first invention and application of so simple a contrivance, conjecture may easily and safely suggest the process. When, in erecting their first rude dwellings, or in removing some obstructions from an oft-frequented pathway, man, unaided by his fellows, had found his own strengh unequal to the task of raising the mass of stone or wood, which his purpose required him to remove, he casts around him for the means of its accomplishment. Accidental observation may, in many ways, have taught him, for instance, the use of the lever. Accustomed, as he would be, to the observation of the simplest objects and occurrences in nature, we can conceive of no way in which he would more likely discover this power, than by beholding the sturdy trunks or even roots of lofty trees, caused to move, to vibrate by the power of the winds on their tops; when the same power, or a far greater, if applied near to the ground, would produce no effect. The inference and the application would be easy. With some long branch of the tree, of convenient size, he repairs again to the object he had just found too ponderous to be moved by his hand. Placing one end of this rude lever-bar under the mass, and fixing a rest or fulcrum, he applies his hand to the other end, and as he finds the object accomplished with ease, he experiences a satisfaction arising from the same principle, which gives delight, on the other hand, to the infant first shaking his rattle, and on the other to the philosopher of Syracuse, exclaiming with ecstacy, on accomplishing the solution

of a difficult and important problem, ' evgēna! sugēna! From this lowest specimen of the power of mind-so low, indeed, that perhaps it will be contended that there is no mind about it - you may go upward, step by step, through all the simple and combined exercise of mechanical skill, in giving new force, or rather new modifications and useful varieties to the application of force, from the simplest artificer's wedge or wheel, to the astonishing achievements of Archimedes, in the defence of an ancient, or that of Crale, in that of a more modern, city; where, so confident were a small garrison of the power of mind, that they dared an overwhelming army to the assault, and by the machines of their ingenuity, sent them back discomfited and overwhelmed.

The power of adaptation and subserviency may be variously illustrated. In hydraulics, or the application of water-falls to the moving of machinery, where a knowledge of the principles of gravitation, and the force of fluids, enables man to apply that force, which before expended itself in vain, to any of his purposes; in the expansive force of rapid combustion, which has led to the discovery and application of gunpowder; in the power of steam, also, which is now developed in some of the most splendid exhibitions of human skill and ingenuity which have marked the progress of modern discovery. The polarity of the magnet is, in the mariner's compass, made subservient to the most useful and important purposes; and the transit of a planet, which with mathematical precision is anticipated, furnishes, in its occurrence, the means or the opportunity for still farther and more interesting discovery. So the air and the light, the tides and the winds, the instincts of animals, and most of the properties of matter, man, by the power of mind, investigates, and then, by an adaptation in itself as simple as its results are wonderful, makes them subservient to his purposes. How noble, in this respect, are our endowments, and how gloriously do they illustrate the wisdom of the Author of our being! Many things which He has placed entirely beyond our control, whose natures we cannot alter, whose course we can neither stop nor change, we are thus permitted, by a knowledge of their properties, and by a confidence in the stability of their course, to make almost as directly, and far more extensively, subservient to our own benefit, than though their natures and movements were entirely under our direction.

But the power of mind over mind, over itself and over others', is the noblest of its achievements. By this, he who has skill to wield the energies within him, may control, to an almost indefinite extent, the noblest of the works of God. By argument, he can carry conviction to the reason, and bend the understanding to his purpose. By sympathy, and all the other inlets to the heart, he wins over its affections, and makes them cooperate in the attainment of his objects. By imagination, and the graphic delineations and vivid coloring of the brilliant images made successively to pass before the contemplation, an ideal presence arrests and enchains the attention. Then, having yielded ourselves up to the entire control of the potent enchantment, by the combined influence of motives which the understanding admits, and the affections and imagination cooperate to strengthen, the will is gained, and whatever of influence and aid is in our power,

becomes subsidiary to the aims of him who thus wields our minds by the powers of his own. Perhaps no more perfect illustration of this influence can be found, than in the finished orator, whose clear philosophy sheds light upon the understandings of his hearers, whose sincere and deep conviction of the truth and importance of what he advances, gains over their sympathies and confidence to his side; and who unites with all the rest the real spirit of impassioned poetry, and into the creations of his fancy knows how to infuse so much of seeming truth, as for the time to make us forget that they are ideal. To all these requisites, we have only to add, that he should be of sound integrity, having principles too stern to yield to any flattering temptations which might prompt him to make the worse appear the better side; and then, if no unfriendly prejudices exist in those who listen to him, his triumph will be complete. With what an exulting consciousness of power may such a man rise up, knowing that the eyes of thousands are eagerly turned upon him, and feeling in himself the full assurance, that the high-wrought expectation which causes every heart to beat with impatience, and every ear of the mute throng to be turned to catch each accent from his lips, he can more than realize. Such examples of mental power we are sometimes permitted to see, in our halls of legislation, and in our courts of justice, and more rarely, perhaps, ministering at the altars of religion. If there be any where a more noble illustration of the power of mind than this, it is only where, with all this consciousness of the strength that can be put forth, at will, upon extraneous objects, the possessor nobly chooses to direct those energies inward, and gain a moral triumph more truly noble, because less pompously dazzling, by self-control, than which nothing seems to the inconsiderate more easy, or is found practically more difficult; which is despised by those who never practice it, and neglected by those who need it most; which increases in difficulty as we increase our power over others, and the want of which is seldom suspected, until that very want has insured the destruction of our best interests. How many, alas! by its habitual neglect, have blasted the hopes of their friends and their country, and when too late to repair the mischief, have sat down to brood in sullen despondency over the perversion of those powers, which, if more discreetly directed, would have secured their own happiness, and sensibly augmented that of their fellow creatures. Had that peerless man of modern times, whose sun of glory went down in clouds and blood at Waterloo, remembered that there was a nobler and more difficult victory to achieve, than those he won over the beleaguering hosts of enemies which he led, in successive triumph, through almost every nation in Europe; had he turned that power inward upon himself, which in its goings forth seemed to set the world on fire, then would not his closing scenes have formed so melancholy, and humbling, and even pitiful a contrast with that splendid pageantry in which he had moved before. Then, too, would not France, beautiful and chivalrous France, after having waded through an ocean of blood in the accomplishment of one revolution, have been forced to sit down for almost a score of years, under the rule of monarchs imposed on her by foreign armies; and when submission to their senseless and un

blushing attempts at lawless tyranny had ceased to be a virtue, she would not have been constrained to come forth again and put her all at hazard, as we recently beheld it, between the clamors of anarchy on the one hand, and a more grievous despotism on the other.

In considering some of the means by which the power of mind may be increased, it cannot be too constantly remembered, that the laws of matter, and many of the principles and rules applicable to its control, are here entirely irrelevant. To withdraw the attention from the various and enchanting phenomena without, to the more wonderful but generally unnoticed process continually advancing within, is not, to the great mass, found an easy task. But though difficult at the commencement, it is indispensable to our success in self-improvement, and is rendered by repeated efforts, not only less irksome, but even welcome and delightful.

The very first of the means I mention for increasing the power of mind, is possessing ourselves of a deep and permanent conviction of the superior value of mental over other acquisitions. He will never probably make any considerable advances in the cultivation and improvement of a mind, of the possession of which he remains, willingly, almost unconscious. Nor will he greatly profit by any suggestions for its elevation and efficiency, if he is continually disposed to place sensual gratifications, or even the accumulation of wealth, and the dazzling array of equipage and show, in the first rank of desirable acquisitions. The mind and the heart will feel the power of their own natural associations attracting them irresistibly to the objects of their preference. He cannot, with a becoming relish, use the means of mental discipline and improvement, whose face is always mantled with blushes when he meets one who possesses a few hundreds or thousands more of this world's pelf than himself; who, however degraded may be his intellect, is an object of envy for his pecuniary possessions. But to pour forth the most bitter invectives against this absurd but too common preference, would accomplish very little toward its removal. Still, we may be permitted, with deference, to suggest, that in a country proverbially characterized for the eager prosecution of gain, where no object of emulation is more generally cherished than mammon, which, whether obtained or not, has in so many instances proved the object of a most unholy and debasing idolatry, there may be cause to fear lest the contagious influence of example should supplant whatever of preference we may have felt disposed to award to mental culture, and thus carry us away in the surrounding dense crowd of the votaries of wealth. These considerations suggest the propriety of mentioning, as the first means for increasing the power of mind, this necessary conviction of its superior importance. Now, by whatever process this conviction can be most easily and firmly produced, let it be preeminently and broadly laid, at the very threshhold.

Another most essential means of increasing mental power, is to have great objects in view. Superior power of mind is the effect, as much as it is the cause, of aiming at elevated attainments. To fix the mind upon trifling objects will produce a trifling mind; and it is not easy to say how much of what is called genius, is the effect