Now, then, are we not in promoting this and similar associations, in labouring here, not only to refine and rectify each other's ideas, but to furnish ourselves with an abundance of new ones; are we not, I say, doing that which we may reasonably expect every day of our lives to feel the profit and delight of? If I come here, and acquire a better knowledge of a character in history, am I not better qualified to receive pleasure from, and be a more distinguishing judge of, historical painting? If I receive in our metaphysical discussions more correct notions of the workings of passion, and the chequered operations of the human mind, am I not better prepared for appreciating the finest kinds of poetry, in which these are described in new and beautiful successions of images?

These pleasures are the chief aim of literature. The study of letters, no doubt, advances us in civilization; it may elevate us in society, and give us greater facilities for bestowing and receiving pleasure and instruction in conversation; it may purify and refine our morals-all valuable and important objects: but the chief end, after all, seems to me, that we personally increase our means of rational enjoyment--that by these acquisitions we infinitely multiply our agreeable emotions, and enable ourselves to extract pleasure from a greater variety of objects by innocent and delightful associations.

I

No knowledge can be justly considered useless; no knowledge, may without hesitation add, but what increases our means of drawing agreeable recollections from the fine arts. There is one other remark, which I would draw from the present enquiry, while we see that all the arts afford pleasure on certain and unvarying principles, and that all their great effects are produced by a more close adherence to, and exact knowledge of, those principles; let us receive with marked suspicion and distrust all those loose representations which would cause us to believe excellence in the arts to be only attainable by what is called innate genius. I believe there cannot be a greater plague, a more noxious moral pestilence, befal us, than an operative belief in these untrue and unsupported notions. Like impious views of fatalism in religion, this literary fatality is a canker which corrodes and wastes every springing bud of knowledge and acquirement.

We delay to advance because we doubt our power; we desire to travel, yet rise not to encounter the fatigue. Under these impressions we languish out our days in feeble efforts, and unsuccessful, because weak and hesitating, attempts. It may be true that we are born with minds like our bodies, endowed with different degrees of strength; but that strength is our own, we have beyond all question the power to walk in any direction---our progress may be slow, but we are entirely at liberty to select our own road. We know that no royal nor exclusive path to knowledge exists, and in our advances to the republic of letters, every road is open to all. Nothing, in short, is denied to well-directed labor, and nothing obtained without it.

This much-abused term, genius, this idol of weakness and indolence, is supposed to be a power of producing excellencies out of the reach of the rules of art; but how entirely this idea falls to

the ground when we reflect on the variableness of the meaning of the term. Look at it in different stages of civilization and national improvement. He was thought a genius who could first describe the commonest events in any thing like metre, or could represent, however imperfect, the likeness of a man or animal by painting.

The standard of what constitutes a genius, is continually changing; what is thought a genius to-day, may lose that character to-morrow, through the general progress of society and civilization. The genius most worthy of admiration, is nothing more than a greater or less degree of advancement before the age in knowledge, a knowledge acquired by art and diligence, and not by inspiration.

We always incline to error in estimating great undertakings, or what are called works of genius, because we do not connect the result with the painful labor and toil which produced it. We are told that the inhabitants of those countries in which great architectural remains exist, and where the people have relapsed into barbarism, that they view these erections as the works of magicians and enchantment; they have no connecting ideas of the means by which they were produced, with the objects themselves. When we read a great poem, or oration, or view a fine picture, we too little accustom ourselves to connect the labor, the corrections, the toil, of the poet and orator, and the sketches, the trials, and disappointments of the artist, with the finished productions. We untruly regard them as the effects of a kind of unsought inspiration, and of an unattainable excellence, and not as the result of care and toil, the productions of perseverance and repeated experiment.

I wish we could all bear this more entirely in mind, and encourage ourselves to walk resolutely forward to that territory of knowledge we may select, and not wait until we are assured that we have chosen the road best adapted to our natural powers. There are none so weak in body, but may improve their strength by suitable diet and exercise; and none, however great his powers, but may increase his mental vigor by art and practice, until that which was before a labor, shall become but a gentle and agreeable exercise.

I have not introduced these remarks as at all recommended by novelty, or as thoughts which have not already often occupied your attention. I consider them as naturally arising from the whole subject of investigation; and like some great truths in ethics and religion, are those fixed points to which we must often turn to guide us in our course. We cannot in literature and science, as well as morals, too often reflect on Lord Bacon's just observation, "A man's "nature runs either to herbs or weeds, therefore let him seasonably "water the one, and destroy the other."

THE BRIDGE.

I met a youngster ten years old
Upon a streamlet's side,

And that the lad was smart and bold,
It cannot be denied.

I said this youngster was but ten,
And this I can aver,

For I have read with curious pen
The Popish register.

This little fellow of ten years
Did long to pass the ridge,
And, lo! a fallen tree uprears
A dangerous kind of bridge.

The streamlet at the time was deep,
Swell'd with autumnal rain;
And, like a living thing, did sweep
Along with might and main!

Said I, My little man, attend
To what I have to say;
It is the counsel of a friend,

Whose once white locks are grey.

At this, as if a magic spell

Controlled his glittering eye,

A look of bland expression fell
From that admiring boy!

"Most haste, less speed;' then take the way

"Through Farmer Hobnail's ground;

"And tho' 'tis hard to brook delay,
""Twere far worse to be drown'd!"

And now the grateful child exclaim'd,
Doffing his bonnet black,

"I'll go the road your honor nam'd,
"And by that road come back!”

Now what surprised a thinking mind,
Was, that a lad of ten

Had patient spirit, sense refin'd,
Not often found in men !!

THE LITERARY GAZETTE AND THE CURRENCY.

O cives, cives, quærenda PECUNIA primum est. Hor.

Have you ever been at sea, reader? Have you ever been at sea in a storm? If you have, you may possibly form some adequate conception of a scene like the following. Here is a ship with a rich freight, numerous passengers, and a gallant crew of officers and men; old hands, most of them; fellows who have hardly left ship-board for a month in their natural lives. They encourage the passengers by assuring them, that in their experience of all the voyages they ever made, of all the winds that ever blew, the present is, beyond all cavilling, the finest. Suddenly, without an omen, without so much as the flight of a sea gull, a tremendous gale springs up, catches them from a quarter where they least looked for it, and where they never expected any thing but zephyrs to be generated. The officers bawl, the seamen hesitate, the passengers already in imagination are struggling in their last agonies with the waves. At length the sails are got in, and reefed, and the gale continuing, the ship is driving before the wind. The officers are heard consulting with the most experienced hands about trying a storm sail, and are seen anxiously peering with half closed eyelids to the wind's quarter.

At this juncture, a scrambling clatter arises, and a little, hungry, sea-sick-looking man, who had never before been heard of, or seen, during the voyage, is observed hastening up, with an air of ominous import, and elbowing aside the seamen, who, somewhat struck by the novelty of the scene, instinctively make a lane. A little out of wind by his efforts, he begins by intimating, that although no seaman, he has a secret which will not only prove the present salvation of the ship, and all souls on board, but will, beyond all question, render the voyage infinitely more prosperous than before. No reply is heard, and the grave blockhead is left to proceed. He then tells them, that for his part, he knows nothing of the matter, but a friend of his in the cockpit, who is afraid to venture on deck, on whose judgment in such matters he has implicit faith, has permitted him to declare his plan for managing the vessel. "No scheme," says he," could show worse sea"manship than taking in sail; it is true the vessel was nearly sunk by "it: but up with the sails, fear nothing, rig out fresh yards, crowd them "with canvas, and all will be well; you will soon out-run the gale, and "shorten the voyage." Imagine the tars-see them turn their quids with an oath-the hottest of them laying hold of a rope's end as the best comment on the advice, while the more humane recommend him to go below, and ask the surgeon's mate for some cooling physic.

This is but a very faint type of the Literary Gazette and the Currency Question. It is true, the time has lately been passed when a general licence seemed to be obtained for proposing expedients.

Like an unhappy patient, in a raging fit of the tooth-ache, the country has had to endure the recitation of ten thousand specifics from as many dull and well-meaning friends. Numerous and contradictory as many of these recommendations evidently have been, each of which, if we believe our friends, is sure in its operations, we have not had any thing to surpass the style and manner in which the subject of a cure for our national disorders has been handled in the Literary Gazette.

We are very far from supposing that a weekly periodical, devoted to the lighter and amusing kinds of literature, is the place of all others where we are to look for sound notions of political economy and finance. If this scheme, now about to be considered, had been brought forward in the ordinary manner, proposed one week, to be forgotten the next, there would have been but little occasion to have again adverted to an idle proposition, dead, buried, and forgotten a fortnight ago. But the style of the developement of the plot, the bustling pomposity of manner, may make it worth while to expose the extreme weakness and folly of the matter it was designed to introduce.

The whole scene, if it were not for the natural gravity of the subject, has, indeed, been one of a ludicrous character. It has really been a droll exhibition of that sort of swelling importance, which a very weak man, when he is resolutely bent on being great and impressive, usually assumes. Altogether, as we will very briefly point out to our readers, it has been one of the most singular expositions of weak reasoning, and want of judgment, which has been for a long time before the public.

The chief folly of the thing, as we have hinted, is not so much in writing nonsense upon a subject, on which a man may write nonsense, and yet be found in very good company; but in the remarkable puff and vapouring which was made to precede it. We candidly put it to our readers, was it acting judiciously, to say the least of it, to sound the following note of preparation? Ought not a notice, like the following, to have led to something which could have stood the test of investigation, and not have been the precursor of old and exploded opinions, the only changes being fresh accessions of weakness, impossibility, and extravagance? We defy all the great masters of the art of puffing, professors or amateurs, to surpass the following: "Sometime since, it may be remembered by our readers, we alluded, "in very marked terms, to a plan for establishing a new system of currency, &c. emanating from an individual of great ability and experience, and which, as far as our judgment went, was, we said, "perfectly calculated, not only to remove the distresses of these "times, but prevent the recurrence of similar evils, and, in short, "place Great Britain upon a broader, surer, and more prosperous "basis than ever she or any other nation enjoyed!" This notice further says, with what earnest entreaty the editor has wrestled with the" individual of great ability and experience," to make known his recipe for the good of the nation; and that after this sore conflict

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