suppress the expression of them, is to want the frank and manly independence of freedom, or to act under the restraint of servile and mercenary calculation. To choose the medium between proposed alternatives, is generally to incur the difficulties and disadvantages of both, and secure the advantages of neither.

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I forget not the high praise, which has been bestowed such characters, as Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero, who have maintained a kind of equivocal standing and friendship with the fiercest and most opposite leaders of faction. This example is wide from the one, which I would propose, under similar circumstances, either for imitation, or respect. Moderation and calmness, I grant, are always indispensable. But there is no kind of resemblance between the composed and firm expression of our principles and pre ferences, and the time-serving baseness of him, who courts all, and adheres to none. I bestow my highest commendation upon invariable self-possession, and unconquerable moderation. They are not only compatible with the most inflexible principle, but are generally indicative of it; but I never commend universal neutrality; nor always the midway between extremes. I would neither advise the mean nor the extremes; but either of the extremes, as an abstract principle, in preference to the mean. Let the choice be that of wisdom and discrimination- be it what course it may.

LECTURE LVII.

THE PROPER SELECTION OF BOOKS.

THE literature of every great epoch in history has had a prevalent fashion, and been stamped in the mould of the age. That of the present day bears a peculiarly marked character. We have invented a new application of steam; and the power of machinery has been increased in a ten fold proportion. We have made canals and rail-ways, and discussed utility and political economy, until the manners of the age have been evidently affected. Swayed from infancy by the circumstances around them, a generation has grown up to understand the efficacy and value of little besides money; and to feel, that man, instead of allowing himself to become a creature of sympathies and affections, is bound to train himself to pure and simple calculation, undiverted from his arithmetic by the warm impulses of flesh and blood.

The literature of the time has received a corresponding impress and direction. Books, that had their origin in the moral sentiments, the thoughts of which sprung up from the strongly moved fountains of the heart, and which were so popular in the past age, are almost entirely gone by. Works on the duties, as connected with the affections, those of a cast corresponding with the philosophical writings of the ancients, such, for example, as Cicero's treatises "On Friendship" and "Old Age" and the like; and in modern time, the works of Fenelon, Marmontel, St Pierre, Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, McKenzie, and writers of that school, are superseded by books on Political Economy, Chemistry and the Steam Engine. We have a few poets, who would have received that high appellation in any age or country; but the noblest of them is scarcely known by name among the people. at large, while our innumerable rhymers imitate the measure at least of lord Byron, and pour their lullaby into

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a thousand periodicals. For the charming, inexhaustible, and unequalled paintings of nature and men of the Waverley school, we have the Bond street dialect and the dandy heroes of the Pelham and Bulwar school, in which men and women are viewed as compounds of fine clothes and sensuality. But above all, it is the fashion of the day with those, who assume to direct public opinion, to undervalue all knowledge and study, but that of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and what are called the exact sciences. be it from me to undervalue those important studies. I do not often find these vehement partizans of the knowledge of facts and the exact sciences to be sensible and interesting companions. Persons may become talkers by being adepts in this sort of lore. But to me there is no learning more useless, than the mere accumulation of uncombined physical facts, without the capability of forming them into a system, and reasoning from them. The profound adepts in the exact sciences, the Newtons, Eulers, and La Places, were great to their age and the world, rather than interesting to their families and intimate associates.

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converse well, to foster warmth and tenderness of heart, would recommend the perusal of such books as the great work of Fontenelle, the Studies of Nature, Paley's Natural Theology, and books, in general, that exalt, and expand the conceptions, at the same time that they connect every fact in physics with moral ideas; and associate all with the wisdom, power and goodness of the Creator.

No one will go beyond me in admiration of the writings of Walter Scott, which have probably produced a greater effect upon the readers in our language than those of any other individual of the age. Who can help regretting, as he reads the works of this admirable master, that he should have limited his aim to the mere excitement of interest, without driving at a single mark in the sky, without having a visible moral for his scope, or giving a single definite attribute to his heroes, except that they are, invariably, unshrinking and unsparing duellists? Our regret is the deeper from being aware, that as he wove the warp and woof of all

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his narratives out of his own teeming brain, he could have pointed every one with a moral. The best of all his tales, The heart of Mid Lothian,' is a single solitary exception. The admirable moral it inculcates, takes nothing from its interest. What a halo would have invested the decline of this great and amiable man, had every one of his novels been charged with as rich and impressive a lesson! Compared with his writings, in this point of view, those of Miss Edgeworth take a high rank. I know of no book more calculated to be eminently useful to a young mind, or to impress it with a deep and permanent interest, than her Vivian, one of the best novels, as I think, of the age. For mere which interest, the simple story' of Mrs Inchbald, a story, scarcely one in a thousand of the present readers has seen, possesses to me a more harrowing excitement, than any one, which this age has produced; and I question, if any of the numberless novels of the writers in fashion have wrought, in the perusal, that irrepressible flow of virtuous tears, which every good heart paid to the novels of McKenzie in the past age. With all my partiality for Byron, with all my enthusiastic admiration of his genius, I cannot but admit my belief, that it would have been better for the age, that he had not lived. I cannot deny, that to me far more than half his verses are strained conceits, and harsh prose run mad in verse. As a man, who has seen more than fifty years, I recur with equal pride and pleasure to the calm and unstartling splendor, the celestial grandeur of the Paradise Lost, and the rich and harmonious amenity of Pope, and feel that great men have lived before those of the present day.

It is true, the present order of universal education is admirably calculated to bring forward the whole generation, upon which it operates, to an undistinguished equality and uniformity of acquirement. It presents us, as it were, a vast plain of pines of the same size and dimensions, height and verdure. Seen from above, the interlaced summits are as level as a scaffold. But the chances are unfavorable for the few majestic trees, that, under other circum

stances, would have stretched into the sun and air of a higher region. The benevolent advocates of universal education have brought us to witness the intellectual experiment of the bed of Procrustes, in which long minds are amputated, and short ones stretched to the same length. The multitude have acquired the pride, confidence, and self will of supposed knowledge, we fear, without very ample capabilities of reasoning. Hence the present age is the empire of partizans, who lead the unreasoning million, that imagine they are leading their guides.

Still, notwithstanding, I think I can discern disadvantages to the present age from this order of things, I wish to add my earnest suffrage in favor of universal education. Its inconveniences are transient and temporary. Its blessings will be always in progress, and will last forever. Its self-will, pride and prejudices will pass away, and the intoxication be succeeded in another age by the sober selfgovernment of reason.

I have no space for detail, in reference to the kind of reading, which I would recommend to the young. In one word, it would be writers of the old school, rather than the new, in the pursuit both of science and amusement. I much admire the writings of the serious French authors of the past age, as being deeply imbued with pathos and moral sentiment. Germany, too, has produced a rich harvest of literature, with which no modern scholar will allow himself to be unacquainted; and I know of no book more eloquent and instructive, and which will better repay frequent perusal, than Madame de Staël's Germany, in which that literature is charmingly reviewed.

Above all, let me press with most urgent and affectionate earnestness the love of books and study, as first, and last, and midst and without end, in furnishing the true and healthful enjoyment of rational beings. All, and infinitely more than all that Cicero has so eloquently said, in regard to books, as being our best and most constant friends in every place and vicissitude, is truth. Make sure and firm friends of books, of nature, and your own heart, and you may well