ridge of them in high words having nothing of worth, but what rather stalls than delights the auditor.*

Fine fancies in manufactures invent engines rather pretty than useful; and commonly one trade is too narrow for them. They are better to pro

ENGAGE IN STUDIES THAT WILL NOT ADMIT MENTAL

ABERRATION.

Men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that as tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put into all postures; so in the mathematics, that use which is collateral and intervenient is no less worthy than that which is principal and intended.

This is to be exactly observed, that not only exceeding great progression may be made in those studies, to which a man is swayed by a natural proclivity: but also that there may be found, in studies properly selected for that purpose, cures and remedies to promote such kind of knowledge to the impressions whereof a man may, by some imperfection of nature, be most unapt and insufficient. As for example, if a man be bird-witted, that is, quickly carried away, and hath not patient faculty of attention; the mathematics give a remedy thereunto; wherein, if the wit be caught away but for a moment, the demonstration is new to begin.

See Wordsworth's Preface to his Lyrical Ballads, in which he says, "Long as I have detained my reader, I hope he will permit me to caution him against a mode of false criticism which has been applied to poetry, in which the language closely resembles that of life and nature. Such verses have been triumphed over in parodies, of which Dr. Johnson's stanza is a fair specimen :

ject new ways than to prosecute old, and are rather skilful in many mysteries than thriving in one. They affect not voluminous inventions, wherein many years must constantly be spent to perfect them; except there be in them variety of pleasant employment.

"I put my hat upon my head
And walked into the Strand,
And there I met another man

Whose hat was in his hand."

Immediately under these lines I will place one of the most justly-admired stanzas of the "Babes in the Wood : "

"These pretty babes with hand in hand
Went wandering up and down;

But never more they saw the man
Approaching from the town."

In both these stanzas the words, and the order of the words, in no respect differ from the most unimpassioned conversation. There are words in both, for example," the Strand," and "the Town," connected with none but the most familiar ideas; yet the one stanza we admit as admirable, and the other as a fair example of the superlatively contemptible. Whence arises this difference? not from the metre, not from the language, not from the order of the words: but the matter expressed in Dr. Johnson's stanza is contemptible. The proper method of treating trivial and simple verses, to which Dr. Johnson's stanza would be a fair parallelism, is not to say, this is a bad kind of poetry or this is not poetry; but this wants sense; it is neither interesting in itself, nor can lead to anything interesting: the images neither originate in that sane state of feeling which arises out of thought, nor can excite thought or feeling in the reader. This is the only sensible manner of dealing with such verses. Why trouble yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the genus? why take pains to prove that an ape is not a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is not a man.

Imagination (the work of the fancy) hath produced real effects. Many serious and sad examples hereof may be produced: I will only insist on a merry one. A gentleman having led a company of children beyond their usual journey, they began to be weary, and jointly cried to him to carry them; which, because of their multitude, he could not do, but told them he would provide them horses to ride on. Then cutting little wands out of the hedge' as nags, for them, and a great stake as a gelding for himself; thus mounted, fancy put mettle into their legs, and they came cheerfully home.

Fancy runs most furiously when a guilty conscience drives it. One that owed much money, and had many creditors, as he walked London streets in the evening, a tenterhook catched his cloak, "At whose suit?" said he, conceiving some bailiff had arrested him. Thus guilty consciences are afraid where no fear is, and count every creature they meet a serjeant sent from God to punish them.

MISCELLANEOUS.

GRAVITY is the ballast of the soul.

Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

He shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned

by one without fault.

Is there no way to bring home a wandering sheep but by worrying him to death?

Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire.

It is the worst clandestine marriage when God is not invited to it.

Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married state. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, wholly clear, without clouds. Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as if their mirth were turned into care for their young ones.

Neither choose all, nor not at all for beauty. They tell us of a floating island in Scotland; but sure no wise pilot will cast anchor there.

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl-chain of all virtues.

SECTION VIII.

SIR THOMAS BROWN.

I WONDER and admire his entireness in every subject that is before him. He follows it, he never wanders from it, and he has no occasion to wander; for whatever happens to be the subject, he metamorphoses all nature into it. In that treatise on some urns dug up in Norfolk, how earthy, how redolent of graves and sepulchres is every line! You have now dark mould, now a thigh-bone, now a skull, then a bit of a mouldered coffin, a fragment of an old tomb-stone with moss in its "Hic jacet," a ghost or a winding sheet, or the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind; and the gayest thing you shall meet with shall be a silver nail or a gilt Anno Domini,' from a perished coffin top."-C. L.

THE PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC.

THERE is between us one common name and appellation, one faith and necessary body of principles common to us both; and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and live with them, to enter their churches in defect of ours, and either pray with them or for them; I could never perceive any rational consequence from those many texts which prohibit the children of Israel to pollute themselves with the temples of the Heathens, we being all Christians and not divided by such detested impieties as might profane our prayers or