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The moment discovers sundry broken jars of choice ples, and trains of reasoning contained in the day's sweetmeats strewn upon the ground. The car- pages, will pass in review before you. If your riers seem frightened at the mishap; but recovering spirit be active, and bent on improvement, a sort of themselves, and gathering up the fragments with self-examination will regularly ensue: nay, and the assistance of those around, they leave the vic- you will write down in your journal an outline, or tor in undisputed possession of the field. analysis, of what you have just read. The hour spent thus, will often be as profitable as all the rest put together. Meantime, in all your reading, the consciousness of what you are to do at night will keep your faculties on the stretch. You will be constantly striving to apprehend the meaning of every thing-to stow it away in your memory in the most commodious and retainable form-to judge of its qualities--and to mould it as nearly as possible into a consistent and intelligible whole. From such a process, rapid and solid improvement will inevitably result.

But a knock at my door and a warning voice admonishes me that "the breakfast is cooling," and I descend to find the coffee at zero, and the eggs boiled to a consistency that might tax the digestive powers of an ostrich. New-York, May 1, 1841.

FROM AN UNCLE TO HIS NIECE.

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LETTER III.

A WAY TO MAKE READING PROFITABLE. My Dear Mary:-You will scarcely find a more effectual expedient for turning every page that you read to good account, than keeping a sort of JOURNAL of your studies. Let me state some of the good effects it will produce.

3. At long periods-after months, and years— you may, in a glance over your journal, take cursory, yet accurate reviews of your reading; try your recollection and understanding of it; compare your earlier and later diligence, or skill; and trace, step by step, the march of your attainments. At the end of each month, and of each year, it will be 1. It will make you more careful in your choice expedient to recapitulate in one page the names of of books. Having always present to your mind, all the books, pamphlets, &c. that you have read that whatever you do read is to be faithfully noted during that time; classing them under their apin your diary, to confront you at night when you propriate heads, of History, Natural Philosophy, record the day's work, and to look you in the face Moral Philosophy, Poetry, Novels, Magazines, &c.: at future times, you can hardly fail to bestow a giving to yourself an honest account of what you thought upon the character of any work that falls have done, laudably or otherwise, and of what you into your hands. Mentally you will ask, 'Is it so- have omitted. The periodical censorship thus exlid, sensible, and useful-or is it trashy, and per- ercised over yourself, will be a constantly increasing haps mischievous?'-'Will it look respectable in stimulus to industry, and to a chastened discriminamy journal, on a cool re-survey ?'-'Will any judi- tion. For, very shame will deter you from letting cious friend think the better of me, for having read each monthly or annual account contain more noit? These questions will present themselves un-vels, magazines, and poetry, than books of history, called for and your answers to them, equally and other works of real worth. Gradually, you spontaneous, and equally outstripping in speed "the will make the proportion of these as large, and of swift-wing'd arrows of light," will be decisive those as small, as possible.-Is it not obvious, that against all the known froth and poison of literature. all this will bring you not only specific acquisitions Against what you do not know to be such, they will many and precious, but habits of mind yet more inso put you on your guard,-will so prompt you to estimable? inqure of other people, or so awaken your own GIBBON, whose learning and abilities must ever tact and judgment; that any lurking mischief will be admired, however we may condemn his irre1isoon be disclosed to your view: and your time will gion and pedantry, adopted a method very like this be saved from waste,-your mind from enerva- which I have recommended: and in it, is plainly tion; nay perhaps your principles from unperceived, to be discovered the main secret of his wonderful though fatal taint.

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attainments. His diary gives a compressed essence of his reading: he entitled it "Extraits raisonnés de mes Lectures." Its preface explains its plan, and contains some remarks which are almost worth getting by heart. I will copy them for you:

2. What you read, will be better impressed upon your mind. This effect will flow, in a great degree, from your being more select in your reading for when all noxious or worthless plants have been weeded away from the intellectual garden, useful "This nourishment of the mind" [reading], says ones will necessarily strike deeper, and flourish Gibbon, " is easily converted into poison. SalmaBut besides this, your daily retrospect of sius had read as much as Grotius; perhaps more. what you have been reading, in order to journalize But their different modes of reading made the one it, will bring back many particulars to your memory. an enlightened philosopher, and the other a pedant, Your thoughts will glide again over the ground you puffed up with an useless erudition.

more.

have been traversing. The facts, dates, princi-'

"Let us read with method; and propose to our

selves an end to which all our studies may point. I need not consider this letter as addressed to you at Through neglect of this rule, gross ignorance often all. It is by a scrupulous fulfilment of the latter disgraces great readers; who, by skipping hastily task, that your journal will be like the fairy's ring, and irregularly from one subject to another, render which pinched the wearer's finger whenever he did themselves incapable of combining their ideas. So wrong: a constant monitor, certainly not omnipomany detached parcels of knowledge cannot form tent to save from vice or indolence, but a powerful a whole. This inconstancy weakens the energies of auxiliary to sincerely good dispositions. the mind; creates in it a dislike to application; and It is a striking fact, which long ago impressed even robs it of the advantages of natural good sense. me deeply, and may impress you, with the impor"Yet, let us avoid the contrary extreme; and tance of care in selecting what you read,—that of respect method, without rendering ourselves its the millions on millions of books in the world, a slaves. While we propose an end in our reading, student of extraordinary diligence can, in forty let not this end be too remote: and when once we years, read only about sixteen hundred volumes, of have attained it, let our attention be directed to a five hundred pages each! This estimate allows him different subject. Inconstancy weakens the under-fifty pages a day: double the quantity that most standing: a long and exclusive application to a readers can digest, of solidly valuable works. How single object hardens and contracts it. Our ideas unspeakable the necessity, then, of forethought, and no longer change easily into a different channel; and the course of reading to which we have too long accustomed ourselves, is the only one that we can pursue with pleasure.

"To read with attention-exactly to define the expressions of one author-never to admit a conclusion without comprehending its reason-often to pause, reflect, and interrogate ourselves; these are so many advices which it is easy to give, but difficult to follow.

of guarded scrutiny, in singling out from so countless a host the few productions which silently, but surely, are in a great degree to shape your character, guide your life, and rule your destiny! With what severe justice, with what unyielding self-denial, should you reject the masses of time-wasting and mind-weakening, if not heart-corrupting lore, which accident, or fashion, or an idle mood, or common-place friends, are forever throwing in your way, and pressing upon your attention!

"But what ought we to read! Each individual It requires courage indeed, as a sagacious and must answer this question for himself, agreeably to elegant writer observes, to DARE to be ignorant of the object of his studies. The only general pre-books and things with which the persons around us cept that I would venture to give, is that of Pliny-are familiar: but it is a courage indispensable to "to read MUCH, but not many things:" to make a every one who would possess a well trained and a careful selection of the best works, and to render well stored mind, or who would leave to posterity them familiar to us, by attentive and repeated pe- any durable evidence of devotion to his country, oz rusals. to mankind. Contrast, with the possession of this "When we have read with attention, there is noble courage, the young gentleman or lady who nothing more useful to the memory than extracts- cannot refrain from devouring every novel, every I speak of extracts made with reflection. I pro- poem whether long or short, and even every sily pose in this manner to give an account to myself magazine story, that chance presents, or that a of my reading. My method will vary with the sub-trifling acquaintance recommends!—I have no fear, ject. In works of reasoning, I will trace their as to your choice between the two characters. general plan, explain the principles established, and examine the consequences deduced from them. A philosopher is unworthy of the name, whose work is not most advantageously viewed as a WHOLE. After carefully meditating my subject, the only liberty I shall take, is that of exhibiting it under an arrangement different perhaps from that of my author. Throughout, I shall give my opinion with becoming modesty, but with the courage of a man unwilling to betray the rights of reason."

Goodbye, my dear child.

G. T.

S. TEACKLE WALLIS'S ADDRESS. ADDRESS delivered before the Reading Room Society of Saint Mary's College, Baltimore, at the Annual Commencement, July 20th, 1841. By S. Teachle Wallis, Esq The author of this Address, is the writer of those poplar essays which have appeared in the Messenger on Sp and her literature, and therefore it needs no higher commer dation to the favorabe notice of our readers. It is utilit rian throughout, and is set forth in the usual handsome stře of its accomplished author.

I take two things for granted, in what I say to you on this subject. 1. That you are earnestly disposed to fill your mind with useful and well arranged knowledge. 2. That your firmness, and It is against the rules that we have laid down, to transfe should give this beautiful address entire to our readers in to our columns lectures, speeches, orations, &c., else w some future number. The heavy press of original matc on our hands at this time, crowds out the extracts we intended to make.

love of truth, will make you steadily, at each day's end, set down a true account of that day's work; whether it be creditable, or shameful to you. These two requisites lie at the foundation of the journalkeeping that I recommend: and without them, you

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Dugald Stewart-quoted from memory

PUBLISHED MONTHLY, AT FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM-THOMAS W. WHITE, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR.

VOL. VII.

RICHMOND, OCTOBER, 1841.

NO. 10.

contemplation of external objects, and their gaze fixed upon self, and the world within, all-all would start from that which this internal world reveals, and all, I solemnly believe, would share in this terrible species of insanity!

I was the child of wealthy parents, but not their only child. They were occupied with the interests and pleasures of their station, fond of their offspring, but too much occupied, or too careless, to attend to the forming of their character. My mother laughed away existence-my father was divided between its business and enjoyments. The

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MONOMANIAC. When men die of diseases, of which neither the causes nor the symptoms are recognized, the industry of Science is at once exerted to discover the seat of the malady, and the nature of the agents It matters nothing what I might have been! The which have wrought it into being. But when evil events of my life have been few, but painful, and phenomena arise in the soul, they are not only suf-the cause of my misfortunes originated in myself, fered to grow into strength, but even to destroy its and might as well have belonged to the king upon his finest faculties, and that without restraint, whilst throne-to the lowliest peasant that tills the soilrestraint might avail, and without investigation, or to the child of the sun-or to the dweller amidst record, afterwards, when these might at least pos- perpetual snows, as to me-the fated struggler sess the power to place instruction before the fu- with despair. As well also might it have come ture. A fearful volume might have been, and yet into being when the earth was young, and men were may be, composed of such sad histories-startling mighty, as now when the aged sphere turns to the revelations of human weakness, and consequent all-piercing "Eye of Creation," her myriads of human wretchedness. Were the deep ocean dried, evil and helpless habitants. and all its secrets opened to our scrutiny, less varied, less monstrous would be its mighty discoveries, than those which we should receive from the unveiling of one distempered spirit. The distortion of mental vision, or of natural feeling, perhaps in early childhood-the bearing upon such a case of mingling circumstances, that mingling clash-the influences of hearts that should have been kindred one ridiculed every body and every thing-even upon that of this miserable wanderer from the bea- her children. The other lavished upon them every ten path-how small a portion would these-even indulgence they could desire, and was then heartily these!-compose, of the dark and moving shadows glad to be rid of them for the time. By nature I that we call Life! Oh! Thou, who hast made our myself was shy, sensitive, and retiring, yet full of existence a marvel, and its accompaniments the warm impulse, and of obstinate affections-thereparts of a bewildering labyrinth, amidst whose fore, whenever my mother ridiculed some simple exmysteries the soul wanders, erring and lost in con- pression of feeling, or some sudden betrayal of jecture and perplexity, how shall we elucidate the sentiments which she could not comprehend, I thousand subjects of amazement which crowd and shrank with dread from what appeared to me coarsepress upon our senses-and oh! far more difficult, ness and cruelty, and could thenceforward rarely how shall we extricate ourselves from the entangled unfold myself in her presence. As I grew up, and yet conflicting abstractions, into which our this shyness deepened into a cautious reserve, which minds enter as they enter life, and which, thence- kept me at a distance from the mother, who would forth, hold them incapable alike of advance or re-not understand me, and from the father, who had treat? Not unto us-not unto us belongs the power never found time to win my confidence. I had two to emerge into light! But Thine, as I have found, brothers, but both were older, and of hardier nato lead us forth, and to provide for the unending Fu-tures than myself, and both had habits of thought ture, that knowledge to which the departing Pre- with which I possessed no power to sympathize. sent cannot attain-to make the unreal, which I think that my mind had grown too quickly; cireludes our grasp, assume the form and substance of cumstances had developed some of my faculties too Reality, and to open Truth to the enlarged compre-early; it was therefore never strong. A creature of vehement passions, vivid imagination, and

hension of an immortal spirit!

I cast this Leaf, which contains the record of my unexercised reason, can never be calm or wise consciousness, as well as of the events which have enough for happiness. And such was I, at an early borne upon it, unto the great waters of the world. age; for no one had entered into my heart, or enPerchance, after many days, one shall find it to deavored to train my abilities to good. I was left whom it may seem the mirror of his own suffer- to form my own character; and without experience, ings, or of his own emotions. I have been a Mo- and without fixed principles, what matter of surnomaniac-and could the minds of other men be prise is it that the result should have been distorwithdrawn from the illusions of sense, and the 'tion? My family were any thing but what is

VOL. VII-84

66

styled religious"-they gave into few forms, in an atmosphere clear as crystal, became insufand submitted to nothing that could be felt as a ferable. I had walked long, and was weary, and restraint. Pleasure was the order of our house, I withdrew into the shade afforded by the skirt of a and I seemed to be its only serious and solitary deep forest. I lay down at the root of a broad oak, inmate. and lifted my eyes to the far blue arch that silent slept above me. As I looked upward through the strong boughs and shadowy leaves, and caught, now the gleam of a white cloud, shining as if the very gaze of heaven were upon it, and now the deep and almost melancholy calm of the dark and hollow skies, new and almost annihilating thoughts rushed in upon me.

"What am I?" I said to myself, and I shrunk

I was not "sufficient to myself"-so much I discovered before I was ten years old-and beyond myself I had nothing, and worse than nothing-for in those who should have been the objects of my childish devotedness, I possessed only sources of distrustful dread—and yet, in the main, we loved each other. How could I be happy? My natural impulses were all towards tenderness and confidencethey were returned into my own heart, misunder- from I know not what. I held up my hand. I stood and unvalued-and brought back with them gazed upon it, and wondered in the sense of expresent and future sorrow. I soon learned-Oh!|istence—and the sound of my own voice filled the how early is that lesson acquired!—to conceal be- measure of my marvelling, as I said aloudneath an indifferent or a gay exterior, feelings the "What am I? Oh! what am I? how is it that warmest or the most regretful. I ceased to seek I am?" enjoyment from the sympathy of others, and the Even now, when I look back upon that moment, consequence was inevitable. My faculties, com- I cannot trace my own sensations. I know not their pressed into a compass unnaturally narrow, were source. I had an instant before been looking up ready, whenever the restraint of present circum- into the height of ether, and thought only of clouds stances should be weakened, to burst all bounds, and beauty, and now I was trembling in a conand bear down all before them. Meanwhile, how-sciousness of Myself, and my blood crept slowly, ever, I was but a lonely and gentle seeming boy, and my hair rose upon my head. I had read the and in my father's library, or in the grounds around Bible, and its solution of the mysteries of creation his house, and the wild woods beyond them, II implicitly believed; but this did not diminish found resources which only books, or the great my amazement at myself. It was the first time chart of nature can afford. I used to spend in the that I-my being-my nature, had been the sublibrary, for weeks together, all the time allowed me jects of my startled consciousness; and it came by an austere and exacting tutor, and grew deep upon me now unaccountably. Yes, I had read the in romance, in travels, in all the literature which Bible, but I had read it as a history-it had filled seizes upon young and ardent imagination. Then, my imagination, it had sometimes touched my feelfor days many and consecutive, my solitary hours ings, as any other history might have touched them; passed in the quiet but living woodlands, and even now I know not how potent were the influences then and there drunk in. It was not the most fortunate part of my early education, that it was much confined to home scenes. I had no one with whom to measure myself-no companions to teach me experience—no struggle with that world which can only prove to us its hard reality, in the actual conflict from which I was held back.

but it had brought nothing home to my senses. Now these senses were all alive-and their per ceptions were met by my Own Being. That moment was one in which all that I was seemed to be electrified! Never was life so keen, and yet all was tumult and confusion. I was almost sick with the overpowering force of my own sensations. I could not bear it. I rose-I ran homewards, still followed by an image which I could not master. But a change came over my life! For once I sought the crowd in my mother's drawMy tutor withdrew from our family. My eldest ing-room, and in their midst lost the new and awbrother had before been sent to college, and an in-ful impression. I remembered it with horror during terval occurred, during which, restraint and instruc- the day, but could not recall its full vividness. tion ceased. My second brother, Alfred, was taken At midnight, alone in my chamber, in darkness, by my father upon a long excursion of pleasure, and in silence, without the presence of distracting obmy mother filled her house with company during jects, I awoke, and in the same dread consciousness the two summer months of their absence. Now of an overpowering reality, which had come upon my then I was indeed alone, and unwatched, and my mid-day life. Perhaps I might in sleep have renewhabits became more unfixed and indolent than ever. ed this mystery. I know not. But when I awoke, I was about twelve years old, but of a mind whose it was in this state, and I was awed into immobility. development, though partial, was far beyond my "Great heaven!" I said, " is it real-is it real! And now it was to receive an impression, Am I? am I in the world? Am I a thing born to which was to me the seal of destiny. live, to die, to meet God—and then-!” The picture One day I had wandered far from home. Noon of Judgment to come arose to my sight, in all the was past, and the now slanting beams of the sun, terrors of certainty, and I prayed—I who had ne

age.

ver been taught to pray-as if with mortality I even whilst I shivered with horror, but I spoke not, could cast off mortal fear, that I might die long either in tenderness, or to console. I could not before that "great and dreadful day of the Lord." have uttered a word, if the life then ebbing could And ever as the thought grew into prayer, it wa- have been detained by the effort. I was paralyzed vered, and I said—"What! is it then certain that by the one pervading influence. I saw him-my I—I—I—must die? Must I die? Is this living, father-quiver and agonize from human nature into warm, capable body to become stiff, cold, dead?-dead clay, and then, agitated beyond all self-conto return to corruption, and I be no more?" With trol, I left the apartment. one hand I grasped the other. "It will moulder in I had loved him-Heaven knows how I had the grave," I said; " but I shall not feel it! I shall loved him-incompetent as he had been to apprebe buried, and know, and think, and feel no more!" ciate my affection. That made no difference. And then again came the thought of the After- Now, however, he was dead, and could not be reJudgment; and I wrung my hands in agony, and called by any anguish of mine. Yet agony did I enhid my head beneath the pillow, as if to shut out dure; and for weeks I roamed about like a maniac, thought. A cold dew overspread my limbs, and I silent, but despairing. And yet I suffered more trembled. Soon, however, I became exhausted; for myself than for him, for what must happen, and at last sleep fell upon me suddenly, and unfelt, rather than for what was past. He was deadin its approach; and in heavy and dreamless slum- whatever might be his fate, he had attained it. bers I remained until the day came to recall me to The death-pang was over. If he were even annimyself. Many, many times did these fits of con- hilated, according to a creed which I regarded with sciousness recur. In the day, in the night, in the detestation, all was now over-thought, pain, confree scenes of nature-the quiet of the library-sciousness! If in spirit he had survived the body's the hush of my own chamber-the apartments dissolution-and who could disbelieve it? his senwhere others pursued enjoyment! The operations tence was now known to him, was certain, was of my mind had now no guide. Left to the irrevocable! I was yet to suffer all—to know all— direction of chance, my feelings became exagge- to meet the Judge of all-elevated, as I imagined, rated, perhaps, but intense even to agony, and at too, far above mortality, to be "touched with the length settled into a terror of death—of the pang feeling of its infirmities." Exaggerated passion that separates soul and body-of the unknown of any kind is selfish. Mine was the slavish pasFuture, that lies beyond that separation-of my-sion Fear, and from the inconsistency of my senself-even of the very name of Death! If that sations at this period, may be inferred its effect word were casually uttered in my presence, I upon me. One moment I indulged in the most shuddered. If I saw any form of death, I turned away trembling. I endeavored to suppress the idea entirely, and felt anguish which I cannot describe when it was forced upon me. Yet I was no coward, though I became morbidly humane-slavishly indulgent to my wretched fellow creatures as I grew older, because I remembered that they must suffer, and must die. But I was by nature passionate; and when roused to fury, all consideration for others or for myself vanished; and 1 was rash as if death had never come upon the earth to awe man into nothingness. I could deny 'Henry will die, mother, unless he recover his myself any thing-make any exertion to bene- spirits. Something must be done. I had no idea fit another—but my native sensitiveness rendered the boy possessed feelings so ungovernable. He my perception of injustice strong, and my appre- always seemed quiet and reasonable enough till hension of an insult keen and quick, and when now. But something we must do. Change of either received an appeal, my response was instant place, suppose ?"" So wretchedly inconsistent is human

and daring.

nature.

All this had one attendant good. Self-analysis became habitual to me, and I learned to trace, and finally to understand most of my own motives, and many of my own feelings. But upon the one subject I dared not trust myself to think.

My

bitter lamentation for my father-the next in re-
flections upon my own Future, which, casting aside
this grief, were madness, but which I made no
effort to repress. Days passed, weeks, months-I
was wasting to death. Sorrow and uncontrolled
imaginings were dealing hardly with me.
eldest brother, Robert, who was now of an age to
influence our family arrangements, observed the
change that had come over me, and spoke to my
mother. I chanced to hear the commencement of
their conversation.

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"Your poor father, if he had lived, would have sent him to college," replied my mother. "He had better be sent to college. There he will be forced to occupy himself with other things." My mother sighed as she spoke.

"Don't sigh, mother," said Robert, hastily; "I cannot bear to hear it! I will see about this for Henry immediately, and, meantime, we must aid each other to make the best of what cannot now

My father died. Terrible were my sensations when, at the age of seventeen, I stood beside my father, and saw him die. I had no firmness. I be helped." made no resistance to myself. I held his hand,

I passed out of the room in which I had been

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