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bestowed according to the sympathies of the many, the many being meantime so cultivated as that they may arrive at a sympathy with intellectual toil. With the progress of science, the diffusion of science becomes necessary. The greater the power of the people to injure or rebel, the more necessary it is to teach them to be above injuring and rebelling. The ancient tyrant who hung up his laws written in so small a character that his people could not read them, and then punished offenders under pretence that his laws were exhibited, was no more unjust than we are while we transport and hang our neighbours for deeds of folly and malice, while we still withhold from them the spirit of power and of love, and of a sound mind. Bring public education to the test, and it will be found that badgery is pomp, while universal instruction is essential to the support of the State.-Miss Martineau.

379. Slow progress of the Sciences.-One of the chief causes that has obstructed the advancement of the sciences, has been an inattention to the principal end which should be kept in view in their cultivation: the end I mean is public utility, or what contributes to the convenience and happiness of life. Instead of attending to this, most men have no other object in the pursuit of knowledge, but to gratify a transient curiosity, or to give a variety to their amusements, or to serve the purpose of vanity and ostentation, or to gain a subsistence in the profession they live by. Perhaps there never was a science that has suffered so much as medicine, by the neglect of its ultimate end and purpose, which was to preserve health, to prolong life, and to cure diseases. It has, indeed made the slowest progress of any of the useful and practical arts; not surely, from any deficiency of genius in physicians, but rather from exuberance, or misapplication of genius; nor yet from want of erudition, for no profession can boast of more men eminent for every branch of useful and polite literature, than physic. They have not only cultivated, with the greatest success, every science intimately connected with their own profession; such as anatomy, botany, chemistry, and the various branches of natural history, but have often distinguished themselves as poets, mathematicians, and philosophers. Yet how few physicians can we name, who either by their genius or industry, have advanced the practical part of their own profession; how many, on the contrary, could we name, who have corrupted it, by the sportings of their own imaginations, dignified with the name of philosophy; and even checked the slow improvement, which time must naturally bring to every art founded on observation and experience.-Gregory.

LONDON: Printed and Published by J. H. STARIE, 59, Museum Street, and to be had of all Booksellers.

Materials for Thinking.

EXTRACTED FROM THE WORKS OF

ANCIENT AND MODERN AUTHORS.

'WHATEVER CHARITY WE OWE TO MEN'S PERSONS, WE OWE NONE TO THEIR ERRORS."-Bishop Burnet.

No. XV.

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Laws that are

380. Laws.-It is cruel laws that make cruel men. partial and unequal, imply injustice. Man is not naturally cruel, he is a social being; but while society with-holds every advantage and comfort from one class of its members, yielding every enjoyment and luxury to another, the oppressed will ever be in a state of rebellion against those laws which they consider as the origin of their misery and oppression. In that source the evil exists.-Manners of the Age, 1792.

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381. Acquisition of Wealth.-It appears to us nearly as hard for him who devotes his time to the acquisition of riches to be perfectly upright and honorable through the whole course of a long life, as for a "camel go through the eye of a needle." The man who receives a fortune by inheritance has every opportunity to cultivate and cherish his virtuous inclinations; but the man who sets out in life without wealth, is beset by temptations on every side that urge him on to the acquisition of money, by means both illicit and unwarrantable. He sees that pro

perty procures pleasure, attention and respect. He wishes for pleasure: he wishes for a distinguished situation among his species: and in order to obtain things so desirable, he immediately sets about the business of accumulation. If he be able to subdue his love of pleasure, and think proper to take the plain beaten path of industry, he may get rich; but his temper and disposition will be changed. He acquires his wealth with difficulty; and we always love the product of our attention and labour. He is now a rich man; but the finer feelings and nobler sentiments of his mind are absolutely eradicated: that generous disregard of self, and that enthusiasm in the cause of virtue have disappeared.

A fortune is not to be made at once by industry; it is made up by the daily accession of small sums. Small sums, therefore, become an object of importance to the industrious man. He values them highly. And the man who sets a high value on small sums may possibly adhere to

the dead letter of honesty; but he has lost that nobility of the heart, for which nothing can be a sufficient compensation. A minute attention to trifles has narrowed and contaminated his mind. He must be shut out from the congregation of those who are clothed in the white raiment of pure unsullied honour: he is unclean.-The Savage.

382. Female Education.-Let your first care be to give your little girls a good physical education. Let their early years be passed, if possible in the country, gathering flowers in the fields, and partaking of all the free exercises in which they delight. When they grow older, do not condemn them to sit eight listless hours a day over their books, over their work, their maps, and their music. Be assured that half the number of hours passed in real attention to well ordered studies will make them more accomplished and more agreeable companions than those commonly are who have been most elaborately finished, in the common acceptation of the term. The systems by which young ladies are taught to move their limbs according to the rules of art, to come into a room with studied diffidence, and to step into a carriage with measured action and premeditated grace, are only calculated to keep the degrading idea perpetually present, that they are preparing for the great market of the world. Real elegance of demeanour springs from the mind; fashionable schools do but teach its imitation, whilst their rules forbid to be ingenious. Philosophers never conceived the idea of so perfect a vacuum as is found to exist in the minds of young women who are supposed to have finished their education in such establishments. If they marry husbands as uninformed as themselves, they fall into habits of indolent insignificance without much pain; if they marry persons more accomplished, they can retain no hold of their affections. Hence many matrimonial miseries, in the midst of which the wife finds it a consolation to be always complaining of her health and ruined nerves. In the education of young women we would say-let them be secured from all the trappings and manacles of such a system; let them partake of every active exercise not absolutely unfeminine, and trust to their being able to get into or out of a carriage with a light and graceful step which no drilling can accomplish. Let them rise early and retire early to rest, and trust that their beauty will not need to be coined into artificial smiles in order to secure a welcome, whatever room they enter. Let them ride, walk, run, dance, in the open air. Encourage the merry and innocent diversions in which the young delight; let them under proper guidance, explore every hill and valley; let them plant and cultivate the garden, and make hay when the summer sun shines, and surmount all dread of a shower of rain or the boisterous wind; and above all, let them take no medicine except when the doctor orders it. The demons of hysteria and melancholy might hover over a group of young ladies so brought up; but they would not find one of them upon whom they could exercise any power.-Foreign Quarterly Review.

383. Sovereignty of the People.-I could have wished to have been born in a country where the sovereign and the people have only one interest-where all the movements of the political machine tend to the common good; which can only happen where the sovereign and the people are one.-Rousseau.

384. Peculiarities in the Human Animal Economy.—In the diversity of the regions which he is capable of inhabiting, the lord of the creation holds the first place among animals. His frame and nature are stronger and more flexible than those of any other creature; hence he can dwell in all situations on the surface of the globe. The neighbourhood of the pole and equator, high mountains and deep vallies are occupied by him; his strong but pliant body bears cold, heat, moisture, light or heavy air; he can thrive any where, and runs into less remarkable varieties than any other animals which occupy so great a diversity of abodes: a prerogative so singular that it must not be overlooked.

The situations occupied by our species in the present times extend as far as the known surface of the earth. The Greenlander and Esquimaux have reached between 70° and 80° of north latitude, and Danish settlements have been formed in Greenland in the same high latitude. Three Russians lived between six and seven years on Spitzbergen, between 77° and 78° N. L. The Negro lives under the equator and all America is inhabited even to Terra del Fuego. Thus we find that man can exist in the hottest and coldest countries of the earth. Lawrence's Lectures on Man.

385. The Passions.

Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes,

And when in act they cease, in prospect rise;
-All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
On diff'rent senses diff'rent objects strike;
Hence diff'rent passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak, the organs of the frame;
And hence one master passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's Serpent, swallows all the rest.

Pope's Essay on Man.

386. Big Books.-Voluminous works frequently arise from the ignorance and confused ideas of the authors. If angels were writers, says Mr. Norris, we should have few folios.-Grainger.

387. Fortunate Impossibility.-An Italian, who was very poor, and very much addicted to play, used to apostrophize Fortune thus :"Treacherous Goddess! thou canst make me lose, but thou canst not make me pay."-Menage.

388.

The innocent Amusements of the Poor.-Considering that one of the great objects of government is the security, and another the advancement, of the people, it seems as if one of the expenses of government should be providing useful and innocent amusement for the people. All must have something to do in the intervals of their toils; and as the educated can find recreation for themselves, it behoves the guardians of the public to be especially careful in furnishing innocent amusements to those who are less fitted to choose their pleasures well. But where are the public grounds in which the poor of our large towns may take the air, and exercise themselves in games? Where are the theatres, the museums, the news-rooms, to which the poor may resort withoutan expense unsuited to their means? What has become of the principle of christian equality, when a christian prelate murmurs at the poor man's efforts to enjoy, at rare intervals, the green pastures and still waters to which a loving shepherd would fain lead forth all his flock; and if any more tenderly than others, it would be such as are too little left at large? Our administrators are careful enough to guard the recreations of those who, if deprived of them, are in the least danger of being driven to guilty excitements. The rich, who can have music and dancing, theatres, picture-galleries and museums, riding in the parks, and walking in the fields any day of the week, hunting and boating, journeying and study, must also have one more, at whatever expense of vice or misery to their less-favoured neighbours, and at whatever cost to society at large. Yes; their game must be protected, though the poor man must not listen in the public house to the music which he cannot hire, nor read at home almost the only literature that he can buy. He must destroy his cherished dog, if it happens to follow a hare; and must take his evening walk in the dusty road if a powerful neighbour forbids him the quiet green footway. Thus we drive him to try if there is no being merry at the beer-shop, and if he cannot amuse himself with his dog in the woods in the evening, since he must not even in the day time. Thus we tempt him to much worse places than a cheap theatre would be. Thus we preach to him about loving and cherishing God's works, while we shut out some of them from his sight, and wrest others from his grasp; and by making happiness and heaven an abstraction which we deny him the intellect to comprehend, we impel him to make trial of misery and hell, and by our acts do our best to speed him on his way, while our weak words of warning are dispersed by the whirlwind of temptation which we ourselves have raised. If the administration of penal justice be a grievous burden upon the people, it must be lightened by a practical respect to that higher justice which commands that the interests of all, the noble and the mean, the educated and the ignorant, be of equal importance in the regards of the administration; so that government shall as earnestly protest against the slaughter of the poor man's dog for the sake of the rich man's sport, as the prophet of God against the sacrifice of the poor man's ewe-lamb for the rich man's feast. If bible-read prelates preached from their hearts

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