or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read till the attention be weary, or memory have its full freight. PARADISE LOST. A WORK not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, like that which flows from the pen of some vulgar amorist, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Syren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases.* * And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Illumine, what low, raise and support. Father of light and life! thou good supreme, 15 MILTON. THOMSON. SECTION X. LORD BACON. MEN have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason to the benefit and use of man. As if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention: or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate.-Advancement of Learning. UNIVERSITIES. As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, except it be col. lected into some receptacle, where it may by union comfort and sustain itself; and, for that cause, the industry of man hath framed and made spring-heads, conduits, cisterns, and pools; which men have accustomed likewise to beautify and adorn with accomplishments of magnificence and state, as well as of use and necessity. So knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed, as universities, colleges, and schools for the receipt and comforting the same. LIBRARIES are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden, after being mewed up in saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed. PATENT AND LATENT VICE. In the law of the leprosy it is said, "If the whiteness overspread the flesh, the patient may pass abroad for clean: but if there be any whole flesh remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean." One of the rabbins noteth a principle of moral philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not so much corrupt manners as those that are half good and half evil.* it the whole of one year, said, "I no sooner come into the library but I bolt the door after me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of ignorance and melancholy herself; and in the very lap of eternity, amidst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pity all the great and rich who know not this happiness." "Where virtue is, sensibility On certain occasions it may * Coleridge, in his Aids to Reflection, says, is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction. "So must it needs be with all qualities that have their rise only in parts and fragments of our nature. A man of warm passions may sacrifice half of his estate to rescue a friend from prison; for he is naturally sympathetic, and the more social part of his nature happens to be uppermost. The same man shall afterwards exhibit the same disregard of money in an attempt to seduce that friend's wife or daughter. "All the evil achieved by Hobbs and the whole school of materialists will appear inconsiderable if it be compared with the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental philosophy of Sterne and his numerous imitators. The vilest appetites and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their object, acquired the titles of the heart, the irresistible feelings, the too tender sensibility; and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chains of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness! “About this time too the profanation of the word love rose to its height. The French naturalists, Buffon and others, borrowed it from the sentimental novelists: the Swedish and English philosophers took the contagion: and the Muse of science condescended to seek admission into the saloons of fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot, and with the harlot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could be better forced into the PHILOSOPHIZING AND THEORIZING. THE wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit. LOGICAL AND MATHEMATICAL PARTS OF MIND. THE logical part of men's minds is often good; but the matheservice of virtue, than by such a comment on the present paragraph, as would be afforded by a selection from the sentimental correspondence produced in courts of justice within the last thirty years, fairly translated into the true meaning of the words, and the actual object and purpose of the infamous writers. Do you in good earnest aim at dignity of character? By all the treasures of a peaceful mind, by all the charms of an open countenance, I conjure you, O youth! turn away from those who live in the twilight between vice and virtue. Are not reason, discrimination, law, and deliberate choice, the distinguishing characters of humanity? can aught then worthy of a human being proceed from a habit of soul, which would exclude all these and (to borrow a metaphor from Paganism) prefer the den of Trophonius to the temple and oracles of the God of light? can anything manly, I say, proceed from those, who for law and light would substitute shapeless feelings, sentiments, impulses, which as far as they differ from the vital workings in the brute animals own the difference of their former connexion with the proper virtues of humanity; as Dendrites derive the outlines, that constitute their value above the other clay-stones, from the casual neighborhood and pressure of the plants, the names of which they assume; Remember, that love itself in its highest earthly bearing, as the ground of the marriage union, becomes love by an inward fiat of the will, by a completing and sealing act of moral election, and lays claim to permanence only under the form of duty." Do we not differ chiefly in our sensibility, and may not sensibility be thus contemplated? 1. Rightly directed, or virtue. 2. Wrongly directed, or vice 3. Sentimentality, or vice under the guise of virtue. Oft he bends His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck, matical part nothing worth; that is, they can judge well of the mode of attaining any end, but cannot estimate the value of the end itself.* * There is the very same sentiment expressed by Hobbs in his Introduction to the Leviathan. Hobbs was the friend of Lord Bacon: Aubrey says of him, "The Lord Chancellor Bacon loved to converse with him. His Lordship was a very contemplative person, and was wont to contemplate in his delicious walks at Gorham.bury and dictate to Mr. Bushell, or some other of his gentlemen, that attended him with paper ready to set down presently his thoughts. His lordship would often say that he better liked Mr. Hobbs taking his thoughts than any of the others, because he understood what he wrote, which the others not understanding, my lord would many times have a hard task to make sense of what they writ." The following is the passage: "For the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever seeketh unto himself and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, &c., and upon what grounds: he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts and passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of passions, which are the same in all men, desire, fear, hope, &c., not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared, hoped, &c., for these the constitution, individual, and particular education do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man's heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts." Give e'en a fool the employment he desires, Look round the habitable globe, how few So well design'd, so luckily begun, But, when we have our wish, we wish undone. COOPER. DRYDEN. The architect of his own fortune should rightly, use his rule; this is, he should form his mind to judge of the value of things, and to prosecute the same substantially, not superficially. “Virtue walks not in the highway, though she go per alta, that is the strength and the blood to virtue, to contemn things that be desired, and to neglect that which is feared. Why should man be in love with his fetters though of gold ?"-BACON. As a man thou hast nothing to commend thee to thyself, but that only by |