themselves, and on the other side pedestrians and perambulators enjoy the sun.  And then there are still other roads with such a sweet and gentle incline upon them that it is a positive pleasure both to man and beast to set their foot upon them.  And so it is with the minds and the hearts of the men and the women who crowd these roads.  Just as the various roads are, so are the ears and the understandings, the affections and the inclinations of those who walk and ride and drive upon them.  Some of those men’s ears are impassably stopped up by self-love, self-interest, party-spirit, anger, envy, and ill-will,—­impenetrably stopped up against all the men and all the truths of earth and of heaven that would instruct, enlighten, convict or correct them.  Some men’s minds, again, are not so much shut up as they are crooked, and warped, and narrow, and full of obstruction and opposition.  Whereas here and there, sometimes on horseback and sometimes on foot; sometimes a learned man walking out of the city to take the air, and sometimes an unlettered countryman coming into the city to make his market, will have his ear hospitably open to every good man he meets, to every good book he reads, to every good paper he buys at the street corner, and to every good speech, and report, and letter, and article he reads in it.  And how happy that man is, how happy his house is at home, and how happy he makes all those he but smiles to on his afternoon walk, and in all his walk along the roads of this life.  Never see an I incline’ on a railway or on a driving or a walking road without saying on it before you leave it, ’I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined His ear unto me and heard my cry.  Because He hath inclined His ear unto me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live.  Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with them that work iniquity.  Incline my heart unto Thy testimonies, and not to covetousness.  I have inclined mine heart to perform Thy statutes alway, even unto the end.’

5.  Shakespeare speaks in Richard the Second of ’the open ear of youth,’ and it is a beautiful truth in a beautiful passage.  Young men, who are still young men, keep your ears open to all truth and to all duty and to all goodness, and shut your ears with an adder’s determination against all that which ruined Richard—­flattering sounds, reports of fashions, and lascivious metres.  ’Our souls would only be gainers by the perfection of our bodies were they wisely dealt with,’ says Professor Wilson in his Five Gateways.  ’And for every human being we should aim at securing, so far as they can be attained, an eye as keen and piercing as that of the eagle; an ear as sensitive to the faintest sound as that of the hare; a nostril as far-scenting as that of the wild deer; a tongue as delicate as that of the butterfly; and a touch as acute as that of the spider.  No man ever was so endowed, and no man ever will be; but all