DCCXXIII.

Names. A man that should call every thing by its right name, would hardly pass through the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy.-Halifax.

DCCXXIV.

Agriculture. As mankind become more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture; they will find it is their natural-their destined occupation.-B.

DCCXXV.

Thoughts.-A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for, are commonly the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return.-Lord Bacon.

DCCXXVI.

Importance of Time.-Those who know the value of human life, know the importance of a year, a day, and even an hour: and these when spent amid the full enjoyment of the vital functions, of how much importance to our whole existence; it is therefore an eternal and irreparable loss, when time is not enjoyed as it ought.-Struve.

DCCXXVII.

Formation of Character.-The energy of man, therefore, depends upon his birth; next upon his education; then upon his parents; and these principal contingencies of his being will superinduce his habits. I place little to the account of climate, for experience hath taught us that the effects of all climates, at different periods of the history

of the world, have been postponed to the system of education adopted. In truth, his temperament is modified in some slight degree by climate, but not so effectually as to supersede more powerful determinations.—Maltravers.

DCCXXVIII.

Poverty.-Poverty may be classed among the principal sources of human wretchedness and debility; continual and exhausting labour; insufficient reparation of the powers; poor indigestible nourishment; care, trouble, affliction, want of necessary relief in disease, and of those refreshing and strengthening means which the rich enjoy in abundance. What causes are these of debility, consumption of body and of the vital powers! Size and strength are both lost under the burden of poverty. Such a state is the first exposed to all diseases, which, in the hovels of the poor, rage with most atrocious virulence, and produce the greatest mortality.-Struve.

DCCXXIX.

Contentment.-Cowley having known the perplexities of a particular condition, readily persuaded himself that nothing worse was to be found, and that every alteration would bring some improvement; he never suspected that the cause of his unhappiness was within; that his own passions were not sufficiently regulated; and that he was harassed by his own impatience, which would accompany him over the sea, and find its way to his American Elysium. He would, upon the trial, have been soon convinced that the fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and that he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing any thing but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts,

and multiply the gifts which he proposes to remove.→ Johnson.

DCCXXX.

Reason.―There is perhaps something weak and servile in our wishing to rely on, or draw assistance from ancient opinions. Reason ought not, like vanity, to adorn herself with old parchments, and the display of a genealogical · tree; more dignified in her proceedings, and proud of her immortal nature, she ought to derive every thing from herself; she should disregard past times and be, if I may use the phrase, the contemporary of all ages.-Neckar.

DCCXXXI.

Cards. I have seen melancholy overspread a whole family at the disappointment of a party for cards; and when, after the proposal of a thousand schemes, and the despatch of footmen upon a hundred messages, they have submitted with gloomy resignation to the misfortune of passing one evening in conversation with each other, on a sudden (such are the revolutions of the world) an unexpected visiter has brought them relief, acceptable as provision to a starving city, and enabled them to hold out till the next day.-Johnson.

DCCXXXII.

The Necessity of Education.-Man is an animal, formidable both from his passions and his reason; his passions often urging him to great evils, and his reason furnishing means to achieve them. To train this animal and make him amenable to order, to inure him to a sense of justice and virtue, to withhold him from ill courses by fear, and encourage him in his duty by hopes; in short, to fashion and model him for society, hath been the aim of civil and

religious institutions; and, in all times, the endeavour of good and wise men. The aptest method for attaining this end hath been always judged a proper education.Bishop Berkeley.

DCCXXXIII.

Error. It is common to men to err; but it is only a fool that perseveres in his error; a wise man, therefore, alters his opinion, a fool never.-Latin Proverb.

DCCXXXIV.

Importance of early Principles.—If men's actions are an effect of their principles, that is, of their notions, their belief, their persuasions, it must be admitted, that principles early sown in the mind, are the seeds which produce fruit and harvest in the ripe state of manhood. How lightly soever some men may speak of notions, yet so long as the soul governs the body, men's notions must influence their actions, more or less, as they are stronger or weaker: and to good or evil, as they are better or worse.—Bishop Berkeley.

DCCXXXV.

The Growth of the Mind.-In infancy the mind is peculiarly ductile. We bring into the world with us nothing that deserves the name of habit; are neither virtuous nor vicious, active nor idle, inattentive nor curious. The infant comes into our hands a subject capable of certain impressions, and of being led on to a certain degree of im provement. His mind is like his body. What at first was cartilage, gradually becomes bone. Just so the mind acquires its solidity; and what might originally have been bent in a thousand directions, becomes stiff, unmanage able, and unimpressible.—Godwin—Inquirer.

VOL. II.-11

DCCXXXVI.

Progress of Liberal Opinions.-We live in a glorious age. The rapidity of the progress of liberal opinion, and, I will add, of liberal feeling within these few years, has been unexampled in the history of our race. Sometimes indeed the tide of improvement, like the tide of the ocean, may appear to have receded; but soon, as if deriving strength from its momentary retreat, slow, majestic, irresistible, it has rolled beyond its former limit; but, unlike its type, it has not returned, and it will not return, to the boundary it has passed.-Dr. Southwood Smith.

DCCXXXVII.

Error.-Error is the cause of man's misery, the corrupt principle that has produced evil in the world; 'tis this which begets and cherishes in our souls all the evils that afflict us, and we can never expect a true and solid happiness, but by a serious endeavour to avoid it.-Malbranche.

DCCXXXVIII.

Belief, Doubt, and Disbelief.—All the various degrees of belief and disbelief, from the fullest conviction to doubt, and from doubt to absolute incredulity, correspond to the degree of evidence, or to the nature of the considerations present to the mind. To be in doubt is to want that degree or kind of evidence which produces belief, and while the evidence remains the same without addition or diminution, the mind must continue in doubt. The understanding, it is clear, cannot believe a proposition on precisely the same evidence as that on which it previously doubted it; and yet to ascribe to mere volition a change from doubt to conviction, is asserting that this may take