The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-27 00:00:00

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY.

By and-bye, as ho strode along, he found his annoyance
lessening. There is nothing like sharp walking for driving
little worries away, and it is these after all which make up
the greater part of the sum-total of human misery. Those
peripatetic philosophers were wise men in their way. They
knew—the cunning rogues—that it was vastly easier to make
Stoics of their disciples while they kept them constantly en-
gaged in a sort of mild pedestrian tour in the groves of
Academus than if they had been trying to prove that the
ills of life were mere chimeras to hearers who were en-
gaged in kicking their heels on the benches of a crowded
lecture-hall.

Equally truthful is the very happy description of
the beneficial influences of nature :

THE GATE BEAUTIFUL.

It was pleasant getting out of the dusty road into the
green pasture-land, and ho strode along over the springy
turf, on which the sunshine lay poured out like molten
gold, lifting his head into the blythe, free air, and half-
wondering at the sense of bounding life which just now
made him fool as if every pulse w.s beating in unison with
those mysterious forces that once again were thrilling the
green heart of nature.

-For all around was the sweet riot of spring. On every
tree the fresh foliage was dancing in the breeze; the birch
and sycamore were hanging out their green tassels among
the scarce unfolded leaves. Hero a laburnum shook out
its golden tresses to the sun, and there a giant oak flung
its twisted arms aloft. And all the scented air was filled
with the song of birds, and soft with the blended perfume
of myriads of opening. flowers, and quivering with that
strange vitality that was working like a thought from God
in all around, weaving from the dead elements for the
wakening earth its living, myriad-tinted robe.

Everything so glorious, so beautiful, and so busy too,
and without knowing it, ho quickened his pace as he wont
lightly on. Nature was winning him to sympathy with
this glad toil of hers, rousing in him already a feeling of
vague impatience to be at his own work also. Only that
morning ho had left London, worried, anxious, half afraid
of what he was about to undertake, and already, bathing
his spirit in this tide of spring, he felt the life leaping up
with a strange new force within him. Como what might,
it seemed as if now he could go and conquer all. Those
long empty days of waiting are over now. He had left
behind him the potty worries, the small economies, tho
chafing sense of forced inaction, They had slipped from
him like a withered sheath from the bursting bud. Ho was
free at last, and his life lay before him, to make the best
thing he could out of it, which justnow was what Dunstan
Dayne meant to do.

Fur more than two miles the path led him over the
breezy uplands. Then it sloped down into a sort of wooded
glen, and wound along beside a broad and shallo w stream,
that babbled on musically over its pebbly bed, beneath the
shadow of the alders and grey willows that bent over it
from the opposite bank.

The trees here grow thickly overhead, twining their
branches together into a roof of matted verdure, through
which fell a tender light of sunshine filtering through
green leaves. Only here and than, where the foliage was
thinner, it streamed brightly down, filling with a mellow
radiance the cups of the pale primulas and anemones, that
covered with their pearly blossoms the slopes below.
And all around him, as Dunstan went on, was that hush
of sanctity and repose that breathes through the woods at
eventide. Ile felt it like an unseen hand laid gently on
his heart, changing its gladness into reverence. For just
now, alone with himself, the young man's spirit was open
to receive those pure and living influences that were
streaming in upon him. It seemed to him as if, entering
those green solitudes, he had passed through a true Gate
Beautiful into a temple wherein now he walked with
bowed head, awed by the sweet glory around. Far down
in the depths of his soul he heard a voice calling him ;
one to which, in those dreary London lodgings, deafened
as he had been by the din of the great Babel around, he
had never listened before, even the voice of God, walking,
as of old, in the cool of the evening among the trees.
For God is not in these days silent, as some would tell
us, to his creature man. When the last apostle, in the
lonely isle, laid down his pen and closed the record of his
vision, the Great Father did not cry to his children,
" Henceforth attend no longer, the oracles are dumb." Nay,
this very longing which most men have in the spring-time,
when the year is young, to escape, if but for a single days
from their dusty offices, their shops and work-rooms, into
the fields and woods, is but one of those innumerable ways
in which he summons us through this Gate Beautiful, this
porch which men call Nature, to worship in the temple of

His presence.
This felicitous allusion to the Gate Beautiful re-
minds us of a similar comparison in a recent clever
but very extravagant work, from a young hand,
Lionel Merval." We have said enough to com-
mend " Rachel's Secret" to the favourable atten-
tion of the novel reader, who will find a visit to
Brook Farm a pleasant and healthful recreation.

PBOFESSOR ANDERSON IN THE BANKRUPTCY COURT.
—Yesterday, Mr. Herbert Wright, acting as the
solicitor of Mr. John H. Anderson, better known as " The
Wizard of the North," filed a petition in the Bankruptcy
C3urt, in which the professor prays to be relieved of his
debts. Mr. Anderson ascribes his failures to differences
with the St. James's Hall Company, and the unsuccessful
engagements of a ventriloquist and a giant. No statement
of the liabilities have yet been filed.—Birmingham Daily
Post.

MALTON STEEPLECHASES.—Since the enclosure of
Langton Weld there have been no race meetings at Mallon.
In the early part of this year a steeplechase committee was
formed to establish a cross-country meeting, there being
now no racecourse. The Ea•• 1 Fi,zwilliam has granted a
capital steeplechase course between the old and new towns,
and an influential list of stewards and subscribers now
exists. A meeting was held on Tuesday, when it was re-
solved to hold the steeplechases in the first week of March,
1867, and that at the first meeting Mr. Johnson, of York,
be judge, and Mr. Elliott starter and clerk of the scales. It
was resolved to announce fo •r stakes for the open meeting,
viz., the Melton Borough Grand Handicap Steeplechase,
open to all England, at £lO each, 5 ft, with £lOO added;
the North and East Riding Steeplechase, for horses of Lord
Middleton's, the Sinnington, or Mr. Johnston's hunts, value
£5O, £2 entrance, weight for age, thoroughbreds 71b extra;
the Farmers' Steeplechase, limited to 30 miles round Mal-
ton, value £3O, weight for age; and the Selling Open
Steeplechase, with £25 added, entrance £2 each. It is
quite anticipated that a first-rate meeting will be otab-
li,slied at lataton.