liar, and his curiosity calls upon him for fresh gratifications. Whether the time of intermission is spent in company or in solitude, in necessary business or in voluntary levities, the understanding is equally abstracted from the object of inquiry; but, perhaps if it be detained by occupations less pleasing, it returns again to study with greater alacrity than when it is glutted with ideal pleasures, and surfeited with intemperance of application. He that will not suffer himself to be discouraged by fancied impossibilities, may sometimes find his abilities invigorated by the necessity of exerting them in short intervals, as the force of a current is increased by the contraction of its channel.-S. Johnson.

EXERCISE XXIII.

Sciences, like individuals, are most severely tried by success. As long as their devotees are working on in silence, carefully removing by multiplied observations and experiments the preliminary difficulties that lie in the way of the attainment of clear ideas respecting the nature of the phenomena and the forces at work, so long the world leaves them undisturbed, and their discoveries are known only to their brother specialists, who are the persons most competent to judge of their exact extent and significance. But when these labours have led to the discovery of a great generalisation which connects widely dissimilar groups of familiar and striking phenomena, the public rushes to welcome the successful science. The imperfectly formulated results are seized upon and interpreted by each one for himself, as though scientific propositions could be understood without a knowledge of the technical meaning of the terms involved. Theorists see in the new discoveries the solution of all imaginable difficulties in nature; practical men see in them inexhaustible sources of power; and, inasmuch as the knowledge of the discoveries is no longer confined to men capable of under

standing their exact nature, there ensues a period in which the most false notions are abroad concerning them.-Saturday Review.

EXERCISE XXIV.

The most usual way among young men who have no resolution of their own, is first to ask one friend's advice, and follow it for some time; then to ask advice of another, and turn to that; so of a third, still unsteady, always changing. However, every change of this nature is for the worse; people may tell you of your being unfit for some peculiar occupations in life: but heed them not; whatever employment you follow with perseverance and assiduity, will be found fit for you; it will be your support in youth and comfort in age. In learning the useful part of every profession, very moderate abilities will suffice: great abilities are generally obnoxious to the possessors. Life has been compared to a race; but the allusion still improves, by observing, that the most swift are ever the most apt to stray from the course.- -Goldsmith.

EXERCISE XXV.

A short excursion which I made to this place, has occasioned some delay in my receiving your letter, and will prevent me from possessing, till my return, the copy of your history which you so politely desired the publisher to send me. But I have already gratified the eagerness of my curiosity and impatience; and, though I was obliged to return the book much sooner than I could have wished, I have seen enough to convince me that the present publication will support, and, if possible, extend the fame of the author; that the materials are collected with care, and arranged with skill; that the progress of discovery is displayed with learning and perspicuity; that the dangers, the achievements, and the views of the Spanish adventurers, are re

lated with a temperate spirit; and that the most original, perhaps the most curious, portion of human manners, is at length rescued from the hands of sophists and declaimers.-Gibbon.

EXERCISE XXVI.

The attack succeeded on every point; the enemy was forced from his positions on the heights, and fled in the utmost confusion, leaving behind him, as far as I could judge, a hundred and fifty pieces of cannon with their ammunition, which fell into our hands.

I continued the pursuit till long after dark, and then discontinued it only on account of the fatigue of our troops, who had been engaged during twelve hours, and because I found myself on the same road with Marshal Blucher, who assured me of his intention to follow the enemy through the night; he has sent me word this morning that he has taken sixty pieces of cannon belonging to the Imperial Guard.-Duke of Wellington.

EXERCISE XXVII.

The carriages stopped ten paces off, and the roll-call began. Each in his turn stepped out of the ranks and received a cartridge-box, a sword, a bayonet, and a musket. These were belted over the blouse, the coat, or the cloak; and we looked, with our hats, caps, and arms, like a veritable band of brigands. I received a musket, so large and heavy, that I could scarcely carry it, and, as the cartridge-box hung down almost to my calves, the sergeant showed me the way to shorten the straps. He was a kind, good man.- Erckmann

Chatrian.

EXERCISE XXVIII.

It was upon the evening of a sultry summer's day that the lady took her solitary walk on the battlements of a range of buildings, which formed the front of the

castle, where a flat roof of flag-stones presented a broad and convenient promenade. The level surface of the lake, undisturbed except by the occasional dipping of a duck or coot, was gilded with the beams of the setting luminary, and reflected, as if in a golden mirror, the hills amongst which it lay embosomed. The scene,

otherwise so lonely, was occasionally enlivened by the voices of the children in the village, which, softened by distance, reached the ear of the lady in her solitary walk, or by the distant call of the herdsman, as he guided his cattle from the glen to place them in greater security for the night, in the immediate vicinity of the village.-Scott.

EXERCISE XXIX.

We find in this treatise a good deal of general ignorance, culminating in the most absolute confusion of mind respecting the lessons of history, a profound disdain of the best-ascertained principles of political economy, and an extravagant belief in the perfection of American institutions, leading, not only to ludicrous exaggeration of the value of merely formal or technical peculiarities, but to the wildest delusions regarding the probable adoption of the American form of government by nations which are quite as well contented with their own institutions as the Americans can be.-Saturday Review.

EXERCISE XXX.

The ruin or prosperity of a state depends so much upon the administration of its government, that, to be acquainted with the merit of a ministry we need only observe the condition of the people. If we see them obedient to the laws, prosperous in their industry, united at home, and respected abroad, we may reasonably presume, that their affairs are conducted by men of experience, abilities, and virtues. If, on the contrary, we see an universal spirit of distrust and dissatisfaction,

a rapid decay of trade, dissensions in all parts of the empire, and a total loss of respect in the eyes of foreign powers, we may pronounce, without hesitation, that the government of that country is weak, distracted, and corrupt.-Junius.

EXERCISE XXXI.

The Electric Telegraph is not the invention of an individual. As it now exists, it is the joint production of many eminent scientific men and distinguished artists of various countries, whose labours and experimental researches on the subject have been spread over the last forty years. The details of a complete account of the progressive results of their labours, necessarily numerous and complicated, involving several questions of disputed priority and contested claims, besides filling a much larger volume than the present, would present few attractions for large masses of the people.-Lardner.

EXERCISE XXXII.

Under the Plantagenets, life, property, and the liberty of the subject, were very insecure. Statutes indeed were in existence, adequate, in a settled state of society, to deal with offences of every kind; but, owing to the existence of extensive forest land, to imperfect intercommunication, to frequent organisation of armed demonstrations in resistance of the encroachments of unscrupulous sovereigns, and above all, perhaps, to the preponderating interest taken in foreign affairs, they were indifferently administered. Bands of robbers infested the woods: and instances are on record where even towns were attacked and plundered by them: magistrates and judges were often influenced in their verdicts by intimidation, and private wars were frequently waged for the settlement of disputes respecting the right to property and estates. Yet, notwithstand