rant but then he thinks, first, that in his situation, none of those things would make him better or happier, though he did know them; and, next, that he possesses abilities to acquire all that is valuable in knowledge, if accident had thrown him in the way of culture.

Character has been always his undivided study; and his progress in this difficult science is incredible. We in vain hope to dazzle him with our acquisitions; and as vainly think to conceal from him the contempt with which learned ignorance regards plain good sense and untutored sagacity.

They have not the least doubt, that, with our exterior helps, they could do all that we do. But they very well know, that were we set down in their bleak and barren country, with the same means of support, we should be of all: beings the most helpless.

They understand the maxim of " Nik:

"admirari" as well as if they had studied Horace. They have no childish wonder, or vulgar admiration of finery. They appreciated elegance, and even magnificence, at its due rate; and adorned their songs with descriptions, such as Homer gives of robes, and arms, and ivory seats: but then it was quite enough for a whole tribe, that their chief possessed these distinctions. The splendour of his costly arms, and the tapestry or paintings with which his castle was decorated, reflected lustre on the whole tribe; and they no more thought of being dissatisfied with the want of such things, than of complaining because each had not some "bright, particular star," to il luminate his own dwelling,

The good Catholics in the dark ages had a treasury of the church, in which all supernumerary or super-ordinate good works were locked up, that the deficient might receive a dole out of these redun

dant merits.

Such was the treasury of wise and witty sayings, and the record of prudent or gallant actions laid up in the ample repositories of tradition. He who could not invent, could remember;: and he who could not emulate the deeds of his ancestors, could recite them.

That even this very imperfect mode of intellectual cultivation produced considerable effect, is evident, from one de-cided proof of improvement, besides others less equivocal.

In no other country did a refined irony, a quick feeling of the ludicrous, and a keen, yet delicate stile of satire, precede the knowledge of letters. Nothing can be more gross and palpable than the jests of an uncivilized people. Wit and humour are the fruits of the garden and orchard: In the field, they are mere crabs. Witness the jests of Thersites and Antinous, the wit of the Iliad and Odyssey, the acerbity and roughness of

which cannot be smoothed down by all the melody of Pope's numbers.

Once more, I shall risk "the world's "dread laugh," by asserting, that their peculiar superstition of the second sight, as it is modified among them, is a proof of advancement beyond the barbarity which we are wont to ascribe to an illiterate people. It is to be recollected, that this mode of anticipating futurity, is not, (like all other foresight, short of inspiration,) coupled with craft or profit. It is a shuddering impulse, a mental spasm that comes unsought, and often departs without leaving a trace behind, by which it may be connected with any future event.

No one wishes for these mysterious visions, nor can any one summon them at will. They are like, very like," the "stuff which dreams are made of," and in the same manner vanish sometimes like fleeting illusions, and at others pic

ture on the brain the approaching events that are to produce fear, wonder, or sor

row.

For gay visions seldom chear the

mind of the pensive visionary.

It is not, however, in the coarse and sluggish mind of apathy, that the imaginative faculty thus predominates. "When

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coming events cast their shadows be"fore," it is the smooth and calm surface that arrests and reflects them. It is not the vain, the volatile, the turbulent, or artful who combine the habits of deep meditation and sensitive and fantastic feeling, which nourish this creative faculty. The ruddy cheek, the light wandering glance, or the important and selfsatisfied air of egotism is not found combined with this disease of the imagination. The pale, pensive, and abstracted countenance marks the victim of those wild illusions. It in a great measure resembles that "fine frenzy of the poet's