dom neglected his opportunities of carving plenteously for himself.-Beau Nash, enjoyed what is called pleasure, for a greater length of time, and refined upon it more exquisitely, than perhaps any other man that is now among the living or the dead. Yet, setting aside all the awful considerations of futurity, no one that reads the story of his life with any degree of sound reflection, will be led to think that he had more real enjoyment of it, than falls to the ordinary lot of mankind, or even near so much. A biographer of Nash, in speaking of the latter stages of his life, observes: "He was now past the period of giving or receiving pleasure, for he was poor, old and peevish; yet still he was incapable of turning from his former manner of life to pursue happiness. The old man endeavored to practise the follies of the boy; and he seemed willing to find lost appetite among the scenes where he once was young."

A remarkable counterpart to the life of Mr. Nash, is that of Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse; which clearly shows that the most unhappy of women are those who have no taste for simple domestic comforts.

It is related of this most accomplished French lady, who had been the unrivalled leader of fashion in France, during a part of the last century, "That she not only lived, but almost died, in public; that while she was tortured with disease, and her heart so torn with agonizing passions as frequently to turn her thoughts on suicide, she dined out and made visits every day; and that, when she was visibly within a few weeks of her end, and was wasted with coughs and with spasms, she still had her saloon filled twice a day with company, and dragged herself out to supper with all the countesses of her acquaintance.”

To be temperate in all things, is as really a matter of interest as of duty. If there were even no unlawfulness in excess, nor any punishment following it in the coming world, yet it ever brings with it a punishment here; a punishment that more than countervails the enjoyment. And, on the other hand, if there were neither virtue nor duty in moderation of enjoying the pleasures of sense, yet it carries along with it its own reward, as it is the only way of deriving from those pleasures all the satisfaction which it is of their nature to give. So that to enjoy innocently, and in strict conformity to the rules of reason and of our holy religion, results ordinarily in a greater amount of real pleasure, than is to be found by the epicure or the voluptuary. It is excellently observed by Doctor Reid, on the Mind-"If one could by a soft and luxurious life, acquire a more delicate sensibility to pleasure, it must be at the expense of a like sensibility to pain, from which he can never promise himself exemption; and at the expense of cherishing many diseases which produce pain."

Beware of Pleasure! The envenomed serpent couches under the gay and fragrant flower.

NUMBER LXXXIX.

OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IGNORANCE AND A NATURAL WEAKNESS OF UNDERSTANDING.

ATLHOUGH ignorance and foolishness are near akin, there is, nevertheless, a material difference between them; the former consisting in the destitution of what is called learning, and the latter in narrowness or weakness of the understanding.

Some ignorant men, or, in other words, some men of little or no learning, manifest strength of memory, clearness of conception, and soundness of judgment; and, within the narrow compass of their own observation, their remarks are just, and sometimes profound. Though not capable of reasoning exactly according to the rules of logic, yet they do reason conclusively, and not unfrequently, by a native plainness and directness of understanding, they reach the point by the shortest way. In defiance of bad grammar and uncouth phraseology, there is discoverable in them a mine of intellectual lore which, had it been properly worked and refined, might have enriched and adorned society.

On the other hand, some learned men are foolish after all.

When a strong memory is coupled with a weak understanding, (which is a union neither impossible, nor quite uncommon)-in such a case, though a great deal of learning is attainable, the possessor is not much the wiser for it; and as to the unfortunate wights who are constrained to keep him company, they are rather plagued than profited by his learning. He is incessantly throwing it in their faces, and gorging them with it even to surfeiting. The garner of his memory is ample, and it is full; every thing is there, but nothing in its right place; and having no faculty of discrimination, he more often brings out of his treasury, for use or for show, the wrong thing than the right. If you want of him only a string of tape, he measures you off whole yards of brocade. He must needs pour forth a flood of learning upon every thing, and to every body; and he lectures upon literature and science, and quotes scrap after scrap from the ancients, without any regard to time, or place, or company.

In the course of the last age, one of this sort, namely, Dr. George, of London, a most eminent Greek scholar, who knew little else but Greek, expressed his wonder at the fame of Frederick of Prussia. "For my part," quoth the Doctor, "I cannot regard Frederick as a truly great man, for I doubt his being able so much as to conjugate one of the Greek verbs ;"-and the learned Grecian proceeded to name to the company a particular verb, which he thought would be more than a match for his Majesty's head.

This species of pedantry, which was more prevalent, by many degrees, at some former times than at the present, is keenly satirized in the following lines of Winne's translation of Boileau.

66

'Brimful of learning see that pedant stride,

Bristling with horrid Greek, and puff'd with pride!
A thousand authors he in vain has read,

And with their maxims stuff'd his empty head;
And thinks that, without Aristotle's rule,

Reason is blind, and common sense a fool."

Learned foolishness, is more egregiously foolish than the folly of ignorance. It is wayward, positive, and imperious; too conceited and indocile to be informed, and too obstinate to forsake error. Men, distempered with this kind of foolishness, imagine themselves wise overmuch, because they have read a great many books, and can repeat, in more than one language, perhaps, what others have said and written: whereas, they are like a gourmand, whose digestive faculties bear no proportion to the largeness of his swallow. They task and load the memory, without exercising the judgment. They lay up in the memory, facts heaped upon facts, without order and without distinction;-and these are in the memory only-the noble powers of the understanding being not at all, or very little, occupied about them.

Learning, in itself, is not wisdom. "We may be learned from the thoughts of others;-wise we cannot be but from our own.

The foregoing observations are, in no wise, disparaging to the legitimate honors of learning. For what though in some it produces the pedantry of conceited weakness, and what though as to others it is perverted to vile purposes? Learning itself is not to blame; nor is it the less excellent for these disfiguring excrescences, which no more belong to it than doth a wen to the proper form of the human body.

Literature, conjoined with science, and resulting in a high