that vain fondness for display, common to the half-learned, without which a little information, or, as it is commonly called, a smattering of knowledge, can never be injurious, and will often prove useful. "Trace science then, with modesty thy guide, But strip off all her equipage of pride." POPE. The longest life, with the additional advantages of great abilities, and entire leisure, would not suffice for attaining an intimate acquaintance with all the arts and sciences: and subject as all men are to interruption, from the various avocations of life, very few have time to make deep research into any of them. Yet persons of either sex may easily acquire so much general information, and such a knowledge of the significations of the received terms of art, as may render an intercourse with others of more extensive information, highly interesting and improving, and qualify them for taking a modest share in conversation, even if it happen to turn on subjects with which they are but imperfectly acquainted. An intelligent listener will always receive, and frequently communicate, more amusement in society, than a very able speaker ; and one who has already imbibed the rudiments of science, and evidently wishes for improvement, need not blush for himself in the most learned society; whereas, without a little preliminary knowledge, a person so situated must either talk at random, or preserve a silence, tiresome in proportion to his ignorance of the topics under discussion. Besides, there is not a step in the road to science unattended with present gratification ; not an idea can be added to our stock, which may not turn to serious account, though its benefit be not always apparent at the moment of its acquisition. And although it is indispensably necessary that the young should do every thing they undertake as correctly, and understand it as thoroughly as possible; yet, far from warning them indiscriminately against superficial acquirements, I would rather advise them to glean scraps of knowledge wherever it may be in their power to find them: in the cabinet of the naturalist, in the laboratory of the chemist; with the artist by day, or with the astronomer by night; in the husbandman's field, or at the carpenter's bench. I would advise them to treasure up the chequered store, for the purpose not of display, but of increase: for information, like money, is reproductive. A small supply to set out with, is indispensable to the acquisition of more; but, having this, it will increase with rapidity, proportioned to the judgment and industry with which it is applied. There is no fear of overloading the memory with a heterogeneous mass of knowledge; for the more it is exerted, the more it becomes capable of bearing; and every new effort of the understanding strengthens the reasoning powers, and renders all subsequent exertion of them easier and more profitable. It has been objected, that all men have some line of employment, which they are bound to follow, and many duties which they ought to fulfil, and that they may be too much distracted from these by the amusement of dipping into various sciences. But I answer, that the allurements of dissipation, the unsatisfying follies of the world, are always ready to seize upon the leisure, and fill the thoughts, of the young; and that those are safest from their destructive influence, whose minds are previously imbued with the love of knowledge and of literature; and many a one has been ruined by a passion for dissipation, sporting, or gambling, who would have been in no danger from such puerile pursuits, had he learned to seek diversion for his leisure in culling the flowers of science, and to draw his amusements from those most pure and inexhaustible sources,-the cultivation of his own intellectual faculties, and the habit of research into the innumerable wonders of nature and of art. ESSAY II. ON ASTRONOMY. Let the night dew often shed ANONYMOUS. ASTRONOMY may justly be considered the most noble of the sciences. There is no other that calls for so intense an application of the reasoning faculties of man, or that so wonderfully exemplifies the extent to which they are capable of being carried. Yet it tends, beyond all other pursuits, to check self-conceit, and curb presumption; at every step which leads to the sublime truths of astro |