Motion is the only property we can affirm with certainty to be inseparable at all times from all matter, and consciousness* from all mind. With these two exceptions, the whole universe of things is parcelled out, and partitioned into regions of probability or improbability, acquiescence or hesitation, confidence or conjecture. That emperor who chiefly sways these petty states, who numbers the greatest census of subjects, and lords it over the richest extent of territory, is the capricious despot, -doubt. He is at once the richest and the poorest of potentates, for he has locked up immense wealth in his treasury, but he cannot find the key. His huge and gloomy palace floats and fluctuates on the immeasurable ocean of uncertainty; its moorings are more profound than our ignorance, but more strong than our wisdom; the pile is stable from its very instability, and has rode out those storms that have so often overthrown the firmest pharos of science, and the loftiest lighthouse of philosophy. Nothing is more perplexing than the power, but nothing is more durable than the dynasty of doubt; for he reigns in the hearts of all his people, but gives satisfaction to none of them, and yet he is the only despot who can never die while any of his subjects live.

In the complicated and marvellous machinery of circumstances, it is absolutely impossible to decide what would have happened, as to some events, if the slightest disturbance had taken place in the march of those that preceded them. We may observe a little dirty wheel of brass, spinning round upon its greasy axle, and the result is, that in another apartment, many yards' distance from it, a beautiful piece of silk issues from a loom, rivalling in its hues the teints of the rainbow; there are myriads of events in our lives, the distance between which was much greater than that between this wheel and the riband, but where the connexion has been much more close. If a private countrygentleman in Cheshire, about the year seventeen hundred and thirty, had not been overturned in his carriage, it is extremely probable that America, instead of being a free republic at this moment, would have continued a dependant colony of England. This country-gentleman happened to be Augustine Washington, esquire, who was thus accidentally thrown into the company of a lady who afterwards became his wife, who emigrated with him to America, and in the year seventeen hundred and thirty-two, at Virginia, became the envied mother of George Washington the great.

To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another; if we look backwards to artiquity it should be as those who are winning a race, to press forwards the faster, and to leave the beaten still farther behind.

Dull authors will measure our judgment not by our abilities, but by their own conceit. To admire their vapidity, is to have superior taste; to despise it, is to have none

We may concede any man a right without doing any man a wrong, but we can favour no one without injuring some one. Where there are many claimants, and we select one for his superior merit, this is a preference, and to this preference he has a right: but if we make our election from any other motive, this is a partiality, and this partiality, although it may be a benefit to him, is a wrong to another. We may be very active and very busy, but if strict justice be not the rudder of all our other virtues, the faster we sail, the farther we shall find ourselves from 'that haven where we would be.'

There is not a little generalship and stratagem required in the managing and marshalling of our pleasures, so that each shall not mutually encroach to the destruction of all. For pleasures are very voracious, too apt to worry one another, and each, like Aaron's serpent, is prone to swallow up the rest. Thus, drinking will soon destroy the power, gaming the means, and sensuality the taste, for other pleasures less seductive, but far more salu brious and permanent, as they are pure.

In proportion as nations get more corrupt, more disgrace will attach to poverty, and more respect to

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wealth. There are two questions that would completely reverse this order of things: what keeps some persons poor? and, what has made some others rich? The true answer to these queries would often make the poor man more proud of his poverty than the rich man is of his wealth, and the rich man more justly ashamed of his wealth than the poor man unjustly now is of his poverty.

It is lamentable that the intellectual light, which has so much more power than the solar, should have so much less rapidity; the sons of science mount to their meridian splendour, unobserved by the millions beneath them, who look through the misty medium of prejudice, of ignorance, and of pride. Unlike the sun in the firmament, it is not until they are set themselves that they enlighten others.

Patriotism, liberty, reform, and many other good things have got a bad name by keeping bad company; for those who have ill intentions, cannot afford to work with tools that have ill sounds. When a knave sallies forth to deceive us, he dresses up his thoughts in his best words, as naturally as his body in his best clothes; but they must expect a Flemish account, that give him credit either for the one or for the other.

England can bear more mismanagement, luxury, and corruption, than any other nation under heaven; and those who have built their predictions of her downfall from analogies taken from other nations, have all fortunately failed, because England has four points of strength and revivescence, not cominon to those examples from which those analogies have been drawn. Two of these sources of strength are physical, her coal and her iron; and two of them are moral, the freedom of the press and the trial by jury; and they are mutually conservative of each other, for should any attempt be made to destroy the two last, the two first are admirably adapted to defend them.

Every fool knows how often he has been a rogue, but every rogue does not know how often he has been a fool.

The more we know of history, the less shall we esteem the subjects of it; and to despise our species, is the price we must too often pay for our knowledge of it.

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The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health, and power.

It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do; and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.

Man is a compound being; and what little knowledge he can arrive at, to be practical, scarcely can be pure. Like the air he breathes, he may refine it, until the one is unfit to be respired and the other