discourses in his own inimitable way of the five senses, and how they
bring man and beast into contact with their surroundings. It is a book
on perceiving, and shows how according as this faculty is exercised it
makes each man such as he is. The following extract from the book shows
Mr. Aitken's style, and may perhaps induce some to go to the book itself
for more from the same source. He is speaking of the moral sense. "And
it is almost a truism to say that, if a man has any taste, it will show
itself in his dress and in his dwelling. No doubt, through indolence and
slovenly habits, a man may allow his surroundings to fall far below what
he is capable of approving; but every one who does so pays the penalty
in the gradual deterioration of his perceptions.

"How many times more true is all this in the case of the moral sense?
When the heart is still young and tender, how spontaneously and sweetly
and urgently does every vision of goodness and nobleness in the conduct
of another awaken the impulse to go and do likewise! And if that impulse
is not obeyed, how certainly does the first approving perception of the
beauty of goodness become duller, until at last we may even come to hate
it where we find it, for its discordance with the 'motions of sins in
our members'!

"But not less certainly will every earnest effort to bring the life into
unison with what we perceive to be right bring its own reward in a
clearer and more joyful perception of what is right, and a keener
sensitiveness to every discord in ourselves. How all such discord may be
removed, how the chords of the heart may be tuned and the life become
music,--these are questions of religion, which are quite beyond our
scope. But I take it that every religion which has prevailed among the
children of Adam is in itself an evidence that, however debased and
perverted the moral sense may have become, the painful consciousness