country, and arrived at the residence of an hermit, in the very bosom of this deep solitude. In conversation with this pious man, I ventured to ask him how he could like to live on the top of a mountain, and above a mile from any human habitation. "Providence," replied the hermit, "is my very next-door neighbour."--Sterne's Koran.

Civilization.

When the erudite Monboddo, and the eloquent and fanciful J. J. Rousseau, attempted to plead in favour of barbarous nations as most virtuous and happy, they exhibited more ignorance of historical facts, than sense or wit in their declamations. The histories of remote and uncivilized periods, in all countries, oppose their absurd theories. See this matter treated with much perspicuity in Warton's History of English Poetry, and in M. D'Alembert's interesting treatise on the "Commerce between Scholars and the Great."

Men of extra Intellects.

The modest and wary enquiries of persons of real genius should be a lesson of caution to men of less intellectual powers. Sir Isaac Newton steered clear in all his writings of the dangerous study of

metapyhsics; and the illustrious John Locke, with, a genius naturally sound and precise, pointed out to mankind the errors to which the human intellect was subject, from the use of abstract terms, and from the abuse of words, incident to the imperfections of language.

M. Descartes.

Aristotle is reported to have said, that the beginning of wisdom is to doubt. This assertion may be doubtful, though Descartes thought otherwise. "Cogito, ergo sum;" I think, therefore I am. Having doubted his existence in the first place, he wishes to prove it by a logical form of speech. Now that a man should doubt a thing, of which he asserts and admits as a faculty or attribute, seems strange, if we did not know, that in metaphysical studies the most ingenious man can only exhibit its difficulties most fully; and to use a line, somewhat out of its direction, indeed, they are such difficulties, that

He best can paint them, who has felt them most.
Pope's Eloisa to Abelurd.

What Studies to be pursued.

Medical men agree, that whatever meats we have most attachment to, will best agree with the

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stomach, and of course with the digestion. This seems, by an obvious analogy, to be applicable to our intellectual love of particular authors. If inclination calls upon us, the writers we peruse agree with our intellectual stomachs and digestion; and the memory, which is the best proof that we have well digested our mental food, will retain that deposit, which it otherwise would have refused. Where a man's professional studies agree with his taste, he must be, with very common talents, certainly useful, and probably eminent, in his vocation,

Addison, as a Critic,

Was an elegant classic scholar. He was (and for that reason, perhaps) too much under the "bondage of classic authority;" and his critical papers, in the Spectator, on Milton's "Paradise Lost," are too general in their praises to be very edifying. Mr. T. Warton, a more learned critic than Addison, ventures to say, that when the latter writer commended the description of "Laughter," in L'Allegro, he, no doubt, thought it the finest passage in both poems; and that it did not " coincide with Addison's subordinate ideas of poetry to exhibit passages of a more poetical character."

*Hist. of Poetry.

Petrarch's Sonnets.

In the revival of letters it became the fashion to consider many writings allegorical, which seem not so intended by the authors. The Sonnets of Petrarch have been edited with a perpetual commentary, to prove that they were written on sacred subjects. Indeed, the refined and metaphysical thoughts in these love sonnets would easily admit of such a metamorphosis, and be readily turned aşide from any profane meaning, or perhaps from any meaning at all, save what is unjustly called Platonic love. The acute and luminous historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire calls Petrarch's love for Laura a metaphysical passion for a nymph so shadowy, that her existence has been questioned.

Gilbert Wakefield.

A most singular instance of the dexterity of self-love, in apologizing for the imperfections of the writer's mind, is to be seen in his own account. "A strange fastidiousness, for which I could never account, and which has been a great hindrance to my improvement through my whole life, took a bewildering possession of my faculties.

This impediment commonly recurred in the spring of the year, when I was enamoured of rambling in the open air, through solitary fields, or by a river's side, of cricket, and of fishing, that no selfexpostulation, no prospect of future vexation, nor even emulation itself, could chain me to my books. Sometimes, for a month together, and even for a longer period, I have been disabled from reading a single page,' "* &c. A matter-of-fact man would call this a fit of idleness, rather than of fastidiousness; though such relaxation was doubtless of use, and even necessary, to one of such generally sedentary habits, and might, without injury to any man's character, be called by the right name.

Metaphysics.

The mind endeavouring to investigate the mind is a singular phenomenon in science: measuring a thing by itself would not be less so in physics. My Lord Bacon, in one of his essays, has admirably stated this absurdity in metaphysical studies: "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; if it work upon itself, as the spider

* See A. Chalmers's Biograph. Dic