name of invention, though they have not been called by that of imagination: we speak of poetical, mechanical, geometrical invention, and of the invention of wit; though we use the word imagination in a much more restricted sense.

Imagination of all sorts, though originally dealt out with very different degrees of profusion to different men, is capable of great improvement from habit. As great part of imagination depends upon association, and the power of association always increases with practice, men acquire extraordinary command over particular classes of ideas, and are supplied with copiousness of materials for their collection, to which inexperienced and unpracticed minds can never attain. What a prodigious command, for instance, over all those associations which are productive of wit, must the head wit of such a city as this or Paris have acquired in twenty years of facetiousness, having been accustomed, for that space of time, to view all the characters and events which have fallen under his notice with a reference to these relations! What an enormous power of versification must Pope have gained, after his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey! so that no combination of words or inflection of sounds, could possibly have been new to him; and he must have almost meditated in hexameters, and conversed in rhyme. What a powerful human being must that man become who, beginning with original talents, has been accustomed, for half his life, to the eloquence of the bar or the senate! No combination of circumstances can come before him for which he is unprepared; he is always ready for every purpose of defense and attack; and trusts, with the most implicit confidence, to that host of words and images which he knows from long experience will rise up at any moment of exigence for his ornament and support.

Imagination is improved by imitation; as in living with men who are eminent for that faculty, or by reading those works in which its greatest efforts are to be found. It was the practice of some notorious man (I believe Bossuet) to read a hundred lines of Homer before he sat down to compose; and I have no doubt but that

he might have derived from such a practice unusual energy and elevation,-that it must have filled his mind full of great images, and diffused heat and light over all that he thought and wrote.

The imagination (which delights to be fed by the eye) is cherished and inflamed by great sights. Nothing can be more striking and solemn than the first sight of a mountainous country to a person who has been only accustomed to the sleepy flatness of an alluvial district. The abruptness and audacity of the scene, the swelling and magnitude of nature, the universal appearances of convulsion, the magnificent disorder and ruin, astonish a feeling mind, and not only fill it with grand images at present, but awaken its dormant life, rouse slumbering irritability, and tell those whom nature has made orators and poets that it is time to fulfil the noble purposes for which they were born.

Mere magnitude--any thing vast-affects the imagination and sets it to work. A first-rate ship of war, or a Gothic cathedral, the waters of an immense river discharging itself into the sea, the boundless prospect of the earth below, that we gain from the top of a high mountain, an expanse of stormy sea, the concave of heaven in a serene night,-all these examples of immensity are. ever found to have a powerful effect upon this faculty of imagination. The imagination is stimulated by novelty; and so much so, that whatever other cause affects it, it must be joined

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together two ideas in early life, which we find it absolutely impossible to separate in advanced age; -we reason from them as from intuitive truths, and upon such topics are utterly impregnable to every attempt at conviction. These are the principal obstacles to the progress of the reasoning faculty; and they are disorders of the mind so common, and so detrimental, that I shall speak of them more at large in my next and concluding lecture. When they happen not to exist, or when they have been guarded against by a good understanding or a superior education, the conclusions we draw upon most subjects are sound and just: for if a question be discussed coolly, if the parties have no other interest in its termination but that of truth, if they thoroughly understand the terms they employ, if they are well informed upon the related facts, and if they are, both, in the habit of guarding against accidental associations, the conclusions in which they terminate will probably be the same: there is hardly any difference of opinion not resolvable into one or the other of these causes. Here, then, we have an outline of that manly and high-prized reason, which, under the blessing and direction of God, arranges the affairs of this world; which cools passion, unravels sophism, enlightens ignorance, and detects mistake; which wit can not disconcert, nor eloquence bear down; which appeals always to realities, and ever follows truth without insolence and without fear. For it is disgraceful to the immortal un

derstanding of man to be governed by sounds, and to be the slave of that speech which was given to do him service. It is beneath the loftiness of his faculties to take his notions of truth from the little hamlet in which he was bred, or from the fashions of thought which prevail in his hour of life: for truth dwells not on the Danube, or the Seine, or the Thames; she is not this thing to-day, and to-morrow another; but she is of all places, and all times the same, in every change and in every chance, as firm as the pillars of the earth, and as beautiful as its fabric. Add to the power of discovering truth, the desire of using it for the promotion of human happiness, and you have the great end and object of our existence. This is the immaculate model of excellence that every human being should fix in the chambers of his heart; which he should place before his mind's eye from the rising to the setting of the sun, to strengthen his understanding that he may direct his benevolence, and to exhibit to the world the most beautiful spectacle the world can behold, of consummate virtue guided by consummate talents. For some men, says Lord Bacon, "think that the gratification of curiosity is the end of knowledge; some, the love of fame; some, the pleasure of dispute; some, the necessity of supporting themselves by their knowledge: but the real use of all knowledge is this, that we should dedicate that reason which was given us by God to the use and advantage of man.

LECTURE IX.

ON THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

It appeared to me rather singular when I sat down to consider this subject, that one man should get up in the midst of six hundred others, and tell them how they were to conduct their understandings. One man may very fairly be supposed to have made greater attainments in botany or in chemistry than others, because he may have dedicated to those sciences a greater portion of his time and attention than others have done ; but he who speaks of the conduct of the understanding, speaks of a science to which every one who hears him has been apprenticed as well as himself, and therefore his right of instructing can not rest upon the same clear and indisputable grounds.

Having reared up this edifice of modesty, and stopped a little while to admire it, I immediately proceed to demolish it by the following reflections:-that to advance opinions is not to prescribe laws; that knowledge is only extended and confirmed by this contribution of individual sentiments, which every one is free to reject or to adopt; and that nothing would ever be done if every person were to enter into a nice calculation of his own deficiencies, and the talents and acquisitions of others, to which they were contrasted; that the only practical way was, to say what you have to say at once, leaving it to time and chance whether your present opinions will be strengthened or refuted by further observation. I beg leave to renew an observation which I made in my first lecture,-that in saying any thing is so, I only mean to say I think it is so. I have a rational conviction of the difficulty of such subjects; but to ex