selves than an officer in watching over his men? Does not such a practice, applied to our individual life, and the employment of our time, promise the greatest advantages? Is it not calculated to keep all our faculties in a state of tranquillity, equilibrium, and harmony?

X. RECAPITULATION OF THE THREE PARTS OR CODITIONS
OF THE PROPOSED METHOD.

THE triple habit of saying and doing nothing without asking ourselves: Of what benefit will it be? of accounting to ourselves, night and morning, for the use we have made of the preceding day; and of committing the substance of this account to writing, constitutes the basis of the proposed method, all the results of which it is now our business to develop, and to enable the reader to calculate and appreciate.

XI. OF THREE PRINCIPAL ADVANTAGES WHICH THE PRACTICE OF THIS METHOD CANNOT FAIL TO PRODUCE.

We shall first remark, that the continual practice of this method must necessarily produce three. principal advantages:

1. Health is not impaired, at least, not by our own fault. Now, most of the diseases with which men are afflicted, and which deprive them of the free disposal of great part of their lives, are occa

sioned by their own fault, and are the offspring of their negligence, their passions, or their excesses.

2. The soul is not debased. As it watches over itself with continual solicitude, the primitive purity of its essence is not corrupted by the intercourse with mankind, or by the contagion of bad examples. Peace and dignity of soul, constantly preserved with care, prevent the physical constitution from being impaired and disturbed by the influence of malignant and corrosive passions, and the understanding from being beclouded and warped from its natural direction, by the anxiety and care which accompany repentance and remorse. Such is the intimate connexion of morals with the two other branches of education.

In nature all is gradation. Man, equally susceptible of being well or ill, good or bad, ignorant or enlightened, does not arrive at any of these three states but by a slow and insensible progression. It depends upon himself to turn this progression to his advantage. The rule which he has adopted, not to suffer a day to pass without summoning all its moments before the bar of reason, to examine whether they have been beneficially or uselessly employed, never allows vicious habits time to take root. If he has occasionally been diverted from the real road to health,

wisdom, and happiness, he perceives his mistake soon enough to return to it without difficulty. He can judge every day if any perceptible alteration has taken place in his constitution; if the soul has any thing wherewith to reproach itself, any thing unworthy of and calculated to debase it; if the cultivation of the mind has been neglected or misdirected; or, on the other hand, he can remark, from day to day, some progress in the development of the powers of the body, in the elevation and dignity of the sentiments of the soul, and in the useful application of the intellectual faculties, or the thinking power.

So far from a moment of life being lost or misemployed, every instant is put out, as it were, at high interest, and produces a revenue, results of preservation, improvement, and happiness.

Let us now admit that most persons, for want of knowing the value of time, spend unprofitably about a third of each day, either by an excessive prolongation of the hours spent in eating, drinking, and sleep, or in play, or other frivolous and frequently pernicious occupations, and we shall find that the proposed method, which gives to a young man one-third of his life lost by all others, confers on him the advantage of numbering thirty years appropriated to his improvement, his in

struction, and his happiness, during the same space of time that has produced the rest of mankind a result or revenue of no more than twenty years. If we now consider that the strict economy which directs the application of his time allows a greater profit to be derived even from that portion of it which is usefully spent, we shall admit that the difference or proportion of ten years in thirty, in favour of the person who practises our method, is rather below than above the truth.

XII. OF SEVERAL EXCELLENT HABITS ALSO RESULTING from' THE USE OF THIS METHOD, AND TENDING TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF MAN IN THE THREE WAYS ABOVE-MENTIONED.

SUCH a person, moreover, contracts the following habits, which are connected with the three principal results of which we have treated:

1. Of doing nothing that is hurtful to his constitution, and of pursuing the regimen best adapted to the preservation of his health;

2. Of watching over himself;

3. Of destroying or gradually correcting his defects;

4. Of studying and learning to know mankind;. 5. Of chusing his friends, and associating preferably and exclusively, as far as his situation permits, with those in whose company he can gain improvement and information;

6. Of turning to account all those with whom he may happen to be for his instruction and improvement;

7. Of speaking little and always to the purpose, and of being able to be silent and to keep a secret;

8. Of observing and reflecting, of maturing his reason, and of appropriating to himself the experience and knowledge of others;

9. Of exercising his memory;
10. Of analysing with precision;

11. Of writing with ease, and forming at once his judgment and his style;

12. Of appreciating the value of time, and living much more than the rest of mankind, who frequently waste purposely, and from listlessness, a great number of hours every day, and many years in the course of their lives.

Lastly, he frames for himself fixed and invariable rules of conduct, the fruit of experience and reflection. He refers every thing to his physical, moral, and intellectual improvement, to his utility, to his well-being, considered in these three points of view. The question ever present to the mind and reason-Cui bono?" Of what benefit is it?"-serves as a guide and beacon in all the circumstances and all the situations of life; it