140 t'l Stuart''s elements. Au:; 



Sir, To the Editor of the Bee. 



When I reflect on the progrcfs of my life and sentiment, 

 I am apt to divide the whole into asras denoininateu, as 

 well as suggested, by the recollection of those by whom 

 my mind has been succefsively imprefscdj and the space of 

 lime appears longer or ihorter between the different p<.r!<- 

 ods, according to the vivacity and multiplicity of impref- 

 sions that have accompanied my studies and observations. 

 These evolutions and revolutions of intellect, have for- 

 med, as it were, a seiies of time-pieces, whereby I am in- 

 duced to form an estimate of the endurance of my intel- 

 lectual existence. 



Buchanan, and Gregory, and Watson, at St Andrews, 

 KrCdnc, and Pilatthew Stuart, and CuUen, at Edinburgh, 

 Reid and Campbell, at Aberdeen, Smith and Black, at 

 Glasgow with other excellent persons, to whom I have 

 been indebted for the improvement of my understanding, 

 have marked in my mind the progrcfs of my contempla- 

 tive life, and have conspired from the multitude of excite- 

 ments, and of investigations arising from those excite- 

 ments, to exaggerate the conception I liave of the time 

 that has intervened since the faculties of my understanding 

 began to be unfolded for the reception of the philosophical 

 truth. Before the printing prefs, that palladium of the 

 hum.an race, was employed to diffuse knowledge univer- 

 sally among all degrees of people, the progrefs of philoso- 

 phy, or the reason of ihi-ugs, was so slow and equable, that 

 tlie life of no individual could include any remarkable range 

 of intellectual melioration m society; so that I wonder the 

 Itfs at the continual complaints of our ancestors concer- 

 ning the brevity of human life, as the sense of interval is 

 ccntinuaUy erased by the p.iucity cf vivacious imprefsicns. 



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