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during her conception the Virgin was seated, Christ too was seated, and whether when she lay down, Christ also lay down? The following question was a favourite topic for discussion, and thousands of the acutest logicians, through more than one century, never resolved it: "When a hog is carried to market with a rope tied about its neck, which is held at the other end by a man, whether is the hog carried to market by the rope or the man?"

In the tenth century (says Jortin in his Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, Vol. V. p. 17.) after long and ineffectual controversy about the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, they at length universally agreed to strike a peace! Yet it must not be imagined that this mutual moderation and forbearance should be ascribed to the prudence and virtue of those times. It was mere ignorance and incapacity of reasoning which kept the peace, and deterred them from entering into debates to which they were unequal!

Lord Lyttelton in his Life of Henry II. laments the unhappy effects of the scholastic philosophy on the progress of the human mind. The minds of men were turned from classical studies to the subtleties of school divinity, which Rome encouraged as more profitable for the maintenance of her doctrines. It was a great misfortune to religion and

to learning, that men of such acute understanding as Abelard and Lombard, who might have done much to reform the errors of the church, and to restore science in Europe, should have depraved both, by applying their admirable parts to weave these cobwebs of sophistry, and to confound the clear simplicity of evangelical truths by a false philosophy and a captious logic.

FAME CONTEMNED.

ALL men are fond of glory, and even those philosophers who write against that noble passion prefix their names to their own works. It is worthy of observation that the authors of two religious books, universally received, have concealed their names from the world. The "Imitation of Christ" is attributed, without any authority, to Thomas A'Kempis; and the author of the "Whole Duty of Man" still remains undiscovered. Millions of their books have been dispersed in the christian world.

To have revealed their names, would have given them as much worldly fame as any moralist has obtained but they contemned it! Their religion was the purest, and raised above all worldly passions! Some profane writers indeed have also concealed

their names to great works, but their motives were

of

a very different cast.

THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIENCE.

NOTHING is so capable of disordering the intellects as an intense application to any one of these six things: the Quadrature of the Circle; the Multiplication of the Cube; the Perpetual Motion; the Philosophical Stone; Magic; and Judicial Astrology. In youth we may exercise our imagination on these curious topics, merely to convince us of their impossibility; but it shows a great defect in judgment to be occupied on them in an advanced age. "It is proper, however," Fontenelle remarks, " to apply one's self to these inquiries; because we find, as we proceed, many valuable discoveries of which we were before ignorant." The same thought Cowley has applied, in an address to his mistress, thus-

Although I think thou never wilt be found,
Yet I'm resolved to search for thee:

The search itself rewards the pains.
So though the chymist his great secret miss,
(For neither it in art or nature is)

Yet things well worth his toil he gains;
And does his charge and labour pay

With good unsought experiments by the way."

The same thought is in Donne. Perhaps Cowley did not suspect, that he was an imitator. Fontenelle could not have read either; he struck out the thought by his own reflection; it is very just. Glauber searched long and deeply for the philosopher's stone, which though he did not find, yet in his researches he discovered a very useful purging salt, which bears his name.

Maupertuis, in a little volume of Letters written by him, observes on the Philosophical Stone, that we cannot prove the impossibility of obtaining it, but we can easily see the folly of those who employ their time and money in seeking for it. This price is too great to counterbalance the little probability of succeeding in it. However it is still a bantling of modern chemistry, who has nodded very affectionately on it!—Of the Perpetual Motion, he shows the impossibility, at least in the sense in which it is generally received. On the Quadrature of the Circle, he says he cannot decide if this problem is resolvable or not: but he observes, that it is very useless to search for it any more; since we have arrived by approximation to such a point of accuracy, that on a large circle, such as the orbit which the earth describes round the sun, the geometrician will not mistake by the thickness of a hair. The quadrature of the circle is still, however, a favourite game of some visionaries, and several are still imagining that they have discovered

the perpetual motion; the Italians nick-name them matto perpetuo; and Bekker tells us of the fate of one Hartmann of Leipsic, who was in such despair at having past his life so vainly, in studying the perpetual motion, that at length he became himself one in the long letter of Erasmus, by means of the fatal triangle; that is, he hanged himself; for the long letter of Erasmus is the Greek phi o, which is imagined to bear some resemblance to the suspension of an unlucky mortal.

IMITATORS.

SOME writers, usually pedants, imagine they can supply by the labours of industry the deficiencies of nature. It is recorded of Paulus Manutius, that he frequently spent a month in writing a single letter. He affected to imitate Cicero. But although he has painfully attained to something of the elegance of his style, he is still destitute of the native graces of unaffected composition. He was one of those whom Erasmus bantered in his Ciceronianus, so slavishly devoted to Cicero's style, that they ridiculously employed the utmost precautions when they were seized by a Ciceronian fit. The Nosoponus of Erasmus tells us of his devotion to Cicero; of his three indexes to all his words, and his never

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