Josiah Child on Trade; Urtariz's Theory of Trade and Commerce; Universal Library of Trade and Commerce; The Merchant's Map of Commerce; Locke on Trade and Coin; Lex Mercatoria Rediviva; Oldenburgh's Stevens' and Lockyer's Pieces on Trade and Exchange; Davenant on Trade and Revenues; Gee on Trade; Tracts by Mr. Tucker of Bristol; and Anderson's History of Commerce.

But whoever, from a view to public good, would perfectly understand the present state of the commerce of these kingdoms, as it is continually varying and fluctua ting, he cannot expect to have a just account of it by any other means than the informations of those actually engag ed in it.

A gentleman may afterwards read the works of those writers who have treated of the human nature and faculties, their extent and improvement, in a speculative or theoretical way. After having studied history, he will be qualified to judge whether such authors treat the subject properly or not; and will be capable of improving and correcting their theory from the examples of real characters exhibited in history.

Mr. Locke's Essay on The Human Understanding is the foundation of this sort of knowledge. There is no good author on the subject who has not gone upon his general plan. His conduct of the understanding is also a work worthy of its author. The great Bishop Butler, author of the Analogy, in some of his sermons, which might be more properly called philosophical discourses, has with much sagacity corrected several errors of the writers on this subject, on the theory of the passions, and other particulars. The works of Hutcheson of Glasgow may be perused with advantage. He is both, on most points, a good reasoner and an elegant writer. Besides these authors, and others, who have written expressly on this subject, many of whom have said good things; but have run into some indisputable pecularities of opinion, on account of which I do not choose to recommend them: besides these, I say, the writings of almost all our celebrated English divines and moralists contain valuable materials on this subject.

The inimitable authors of the Spectator, Tatler, and

Guardian, have displayed the whole of human life in all the shapes and colours it appears in. These admirable essays may be read as a ground-work of economics, or the knowledge of the arts of life.

There would be no end of giving a list of books on this head. The few following are some of the best, viz. The Rule of Life in Select Sentences, from the Ancients; Apophthegms of the Ancients; Mason's Self Knowledge; Charron on Wisdom; Bacon's, Collier's and Montaigne's Essays; Fuller's Introduction to Wisdom and Prudence; The Moral Miscellany; The Practical Preacher; and The Plain Dealer, in 2 vols.

Of all parts of knowledge, which may be properly termed scientific, there is none, that can be so ill dispensed with by a gentleman, who would cultivate his mind to the utmost perfection, as that of ethics, or on the grounds of morality. The knowledge of right and wrong, the obligations and consequence of virtue, and the ruinous nature and tendency of vice, ought to be perceived by every wellcultivated mind in the most clear and perfect manner possible. But of this most important branch of science, and what is very closely connected with it, viz. Revealed Religion, I shall treat in the two following books.

The best ancient moralists are Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Hierocles, Xenophon, Esop, Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca Antoninus. Among the moderns, besides those mentioned under other heads, and besides our best divines, as Barrow, Tillotson, and the rest, the following are excellent moral treatises, viz. Woolaston's Religion of Nature Delineated; Grove's System of Morality; Balguy's Tracts; Cudworth's Immutable and Eternal Morality; Cumberland de Legibus. Add to these, Glover's, Campbell's, and Nettleton's Pieces on Virtue and Happiness; Wilkins on Natural Religion; Fiddes on Morality; The Minute Philosopher; and Paschal's Thoughts. But no writer, ancient or modern, on this subject, exceeds, in closeness of reasoning, Price's Review of Morals, lately published.

Of all studies, none have a more direct tendency to aggrandize the mind, and consequently, none are more suitable to the Dignity of Human Nature, than those which are included under the general term of physiology, or the knowledge of nature, as astronomy, anatomy, botany,

mineralogy, and so on. The study of nature appears in no light so truly noble, and fit to ennoble the human mind, as when compared with those of the works of men, as criticism, antiquities, architecture, heraldry, and the like. In the former, all is great, beautiful and perfect. In the latter, the subjects are all comparatively mean and defective. And whatever is otherwise, owes its excellencies to nature, as in poetry, painting, sculpture, and so forth. The first leads us to know and adore the greatest and most perfect of beings. The last, to see and regret our own weakness and imperfection.

The system of nature is the magnificent palace of the King of the universe. The ignorant and incurious, to use the comparison of a great philosopher, is as a spider, which retires into some dark corner, and wraps itself in its own dusty cobweb, insensible of the innumerable beauties which surround it. The judicious inquirer into nature, in contemplating, admiring, and moralizing upon the works of its infinite Author, proves the justness of his own understanding, by his approbation of the perfect productions of an infinite perfect Being.

The sneers of superficial men, upon the weakness which has appeared in the conduct of some inquirers into nature, ought to have no influence to discourage us from those researches. If some few have spent too much time in the study of insects, to the neglect of the nobler parts of the creation, their error ought to suggest to us not a total neg. lect of those inferior parts of nature; but only to avoid the mistake of giving ourselves wholly to them. There is no species, which infinite Wisdom has thought worthy making, and preserving for ages, whose nature is not highly worthy of our inquiring into. And it is certain, that there is more of curious workmanship in the structure of the body of the meanest reptile, than in the most complicated, and most delicate machine, that ever was or will be constructed by human hands.

To gain the great advantage which ought to be kept in view, in inquiring into nature, to wit, improvement of the mind, we must take care to avoid the error of some, who seem to have no scheme but the finding out a set of mere dry facts, or truths, without ever thinking of the instruction which may be drawn from the observations made.

An inquiry into nature, (says the above eminent author, who himself went as great lengths as any one ever did in that study) who carries his researches not farther than the mere finding out of truths, acts a part as much beneath him, who uses philosophy to lead him to the knowledge of the Author of Nature, as a child who amuses himself with the external ornaments of a telescope, is inferior to the astronomer, who applies it to discover the wonders of the heavens.

The truth is, a man may be a great astronomer and physiologist, and yet by no means a truly great man. For mere speculative knowledge alone will not make a great mind, though joined with the other necessary endowments, it gives the proper idea of an accomplished character. Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Boyle, and those who, like them, look through nature up to nature's God, can alone be said to have pursued and attained the proper end of philosophy, which can be no other way of any real service to moral agents, than in so far as it has proper moral effects upon them.

It is strange that any man can think of the several wonders of nature, as the two extremes of stupendous greatness and inconceivable minuteness, the immense variety and wonderful uniformity, frightful rapidity, and yet unvarying accuracy, of motions; the countless numbers, and yet ample provision, the simplicity of causes, and variety of effects, and the rest, and not be irresistibly led to think of the Maker and Governor of such a glorious work! How can men think of a globe twenty-five thousand miles round, as the earth we inhabit is known to be, without thinking of the hand which formed this mighty mass, and gave it a figure so regular, as we see it has by its shadow cast upon the moon in a lunar eclipse, without adoring Him, who could as it were, roll the stupendous heap between his hands and accurately mould it into shape? But if astronomers are right, in calculating the magnitude of some of the other planets to exceed many hundred times this on which we live, and the sun himself to be equal to a million of earths, whose figure we observe to be perfectly regular; what can we think of the eye which could take in, and the hand which could form into regular shape, such, cumbrous masses? If we consider this unwieldy

lump of matter on which we live, as whirling round the sun in a course of between four and five hundred millions of miles in a year, and consequently, sixty thousand in one hour, a rapidity exceeding that of a cannon ball just discharged, as much as that does the speed of a horse; can we avoid reflecting on the inconceivable might of the arm which brandished it, and threw it with a force proportioned to such a rapidity? One would think those who best understand the laws of motion, and the exactness necessary in adjusting the two fold forces which produce a circular or ecliptical revolution round a centre, should be the properest persons to set forth the wonders of Divine Wisdom, which has exhibited such instances of skill in the motions of our earth, and other planets round the sun, and in the compounded motions of satellites or moons round them,

Who can survey the countless myriads of animalcules, which with the help of the microscope are visible in almost all kinds of fluids, when in a state tending to putrefaction, without thinking on the Almighty Author of such a profusion of life? When some grains of sand, some small cuttings of human hairs, or any other body, whose real size is known, are put into a drop of one of those fluids which exhibit animalcules, it appears evident to any eye, that a grain of sand must be equal to the size of some millions of them.-For the grain of sand appears a body of a great many inches solid, while the whole fluid seems filled with living creatures, even then (when so enormously magnified) too small to be distinguished: I mean at present the smallest species of animalcules, for the most infusions exhibit a great variety of sizes-Two or three times the number of the inhabitants of London, Westminster, and Southwark crowded into the bulk of a grain of sand! Every one with an organized body, consisting of the various parts necessary to animal life! What must then be the size and particles of the fluid, which circulates in the veins of such animals? What the magnitude of a particle of light, to which the other is a mountain?

These few particulars are thus cursorily mentioned, only for the sake of an opportunity of remarking upon the oddness of the cast of some minds, which can spend years in examining such wonders of nature, going through the