and a sense of preference. Either, therefore, we must brutalize our notions with Pope:

Lust, thro' some certain strainers well refin'd,
Is gentle love and charms all woman-kind :

or we must dissolve and thaw away all bonds of morality by the irresistible shocks of an irresistible sensibility with Sterne.

WEDDED UNION.

THE well-spring of all sensible communion is the natural delight and need, which undepraved man hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into himself, those things, wherein the excellency of his kind doth most consist; and the eminence of love or marriage communion is, that this mutual transfusion can take place more perfectly and totally in this, than in any other mode.

Prefer person before money, good-temper with good sense before person; and let all, wealth, easy temper, strong understanding and beauty, be as nothing to thee, unless accompanied by virtue in principle and in habit.

Suppose competence, health, and honesty; then a happy marriage depends on four things: -1. An understanding proportionate to thine, that is, a recipiency at least of thine :—2. na

tural sensibility and lively sympathy in general:-3. steadiness in attaching and retaining sensibility to its proper objects in its proper proportions :-4. mutual liking ; including person and all the thousand obscure sympathies that determine conjugal liking, that is, love and desire to A. rather than to B. This seems very obvious and almost trivial: and yet all unhappy marriages arise from the not honestly putting, and sincerely answering each of these four questions: any one of them negatived, marriage is imperfect, and in hazard of discontent.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOBBES AND SPINOSA.

In the most similar and nearest points there is a difference, but for the most part there is an absolute contrast, between Hobbes and Spinosa. Thus Hobbes makes a state of war the natural state of man from the essential and ever continuing nature of man, as not a moral, but only a frightenable, being:-Spinosa makes the same state a necessity of man out of society, because he must then be an undeveloped man, and his moral being dormant; and so on through the whole.

THE END MAY JUSTIFY THE MEANS.

WHATEVER act is necessary to an end, and ascertained to be necessary and proportionate both to the end and the agent, takes its nature from that end. This premised, the proposition is innocent that ends may justify means. Remember, however, the important distinction :Unius facti diversi fines esse possunt: unius actionis non possunt.

I have somewhere read this remark :- Omne meritum est voluntarium, aut voluntate originis, aut origine voluntatis. Quaintly as this is expressed, it is well worth consideration, and gives the true meaning of Baxter's famous saying," Hell is paved with good intentions."

NEGATIVE THOUGHT.

On this calm morning of the 13th of November, 1809, it occurs to me, that it is by a negation and voluntary act of no thinking that we think of earth, air, water, &c. as dead. It is necessary for our limited powers of consciousness, that we should be brought to this negative state, and that this state should pass into custom; but it is likewise necessary that at times we should awake and step forward; and this is effected by those extenders of our conscious

ness-sorrow, sickness, poetry, and religion. The truth is, we stop in the sense of life just when we are not forced to go on, and then adopt a permission of our feelings for a precept of our reason.

MAN'S RETURN TO HEAVEN.

HEAVEN bestows light and influence on this lower world, which reflects the blessed rays, though it cannot recompense them. So man may make a return to God, but no requital.

YOUNG PRODIGIES.

FAIR criticism on young prodigies and Rosciuses in verse, or on the stage, is arraigned,

as the envious sneaping frost

That bites the first-born infants of the spring.

If there were no better answer, the following a good heart would scarcely admit;—but where nine-tenths of the applause have been mere wonderment and miracle-lust (Wundursucht) these verses are an excellent accompaniment to other arguments:

Well, say it be!-Yet why of summer boast,
Before the birds have natural cause to sing?
Why should we joy in an abortive birth?

At Christmas I no more desire a rose,

Than wish a snow in May's new budding shows;
But like of each thing that in reason grows.
Love's Labour's Lost.*

WELCH NAMES.

THE small number of surnames, and those Christian names and patronymics, not derived from trades, &c. is one mark of a country either not yet, or only recently, unfeudalized. Hence in Scotland the Mackintoshes, Macaulays, and so on. But the most remarkable show of this I ever saw, is the list of subscribers to Owen's Welch Dictionary. In letter D. there are 31 names, 21 of which are Davis or Davies, and the other three are not Welchmen. In E. there are 30; 16 Evans; 6 Edwards; 1 Edmonds; 1 Egan, and the remainder Ellis. In G. two-thirds are Griffiths. In H. all are Hughes and Howell. In I. there are 66; all Jonesses. In L. 3 or 4 Lewises; 1 Lewellyn; all the rest Lloyds. M. four-fifths Morgans. Q. entirely Owen. O. entirely Owen. R. all Roberts or Richards. T. all Thomases. V. all Vaughans;--and W. 64 names, 56 of them Williams.

Slightly altered. Ed.