it ma}' be said, without notice — yet in the records of tliosft 

 marvels which have contradicted that course, is there one 

 more astonishing than this which floats with the stream? 

 How exquisite must be the construction of the organ, how 

 accurate its perceptions, how attentive the mind, how inces- 

 sant the habit of observing and discriminating, to endue this 

 wonderful faculty with all its perfection. And during the 

 process, how ardent must be that love of novelty which pro- 

 motes those exertions, how early its birth, how prodigious its 

 growth, when it rushes unconscious from the sound to the 

 sense, from the diction to the subject, from detail to reason- 

 ing, and as it advances in its progress, becomes first a love of 

 knowledge, and then a love of truth, the acme of its cha- 

 racter. 



It is strange to reflect that the foundation from which has 

 arisen the proudest superstructure of human attainments, 

 may have been an idle fairy tale or absurd romance ! It is 

 not the knowledge we receive by compulsion, in schools and 

 colleges, that takes the fastest hold of the mind ; but that 

 ■which we- acquire voluntarily, and pursue with avidity. In- 

 fant curiosity awakened by a Persian or Arabian tale, the 

 less marvellous stories of Monsieur Berquin and Madame 

 Genlis, or the invaluable and more fascinating compositions 

 of Miss Edgeworth, to whom society will perhaps be in- 

 debted for the virtues of future generations, soon demands 

 more solid nourishment. Fiction and fancy give place to 

 truth and reason. The unrestricted intellect traverses \yith 



