ments of those countries, or by private individuals. Political and religious dissentions called forth immense multitudes of fugitive pamphlets. The number of scholars, authors, readers, printers, and booksellers, was considerably augmented. The presses groaned with incessant labours. Every month, every week, poured forth new publications upon almost every branch of literature and science. Newspapers, magazines, and reviews, were at length established, in that form and under those circumstances of periodical publication, in which they still continue to delight and instruct us.

Morality, news, criticism, and almost every thing that could be included in a literary miscellany, came to be retailed in magazines. In the progress of the eighteenth century, newspapers, reviews, magazines, registers, essays moral or political, periodicals of every species and in every form, were exceedingly multiplied over all Europe; and the present age possesses them to a number and with a degree of success, which would be absolutely incredible, were the facts less certainly and universally known.

Nor have periodical works alone been multiplied during the last and present age. It is impossible to estimate the number of works of the pen and the press which are continually made public in Europe and other parts of the world. It is with knowledge as it is with the accommodations which industry and luxury provide for common life: the acquisition of new conveniences and gratifications still teaches us to feel new wants and new desires;--the more we gain, the more we wish to gain; the more the knowledge which is communicated to man, so much the more is his passion for enquiry inflamed. Nor is this feeling to be suppressed, as it tends to the advancement, civilization, benefit, improvement, and enlightening, of the whole human race.

Still as books of all sorts have been multiplied, the circle of readers is enlarged; the demand has been augmented; and the success of one book, instead of preventing, has very often favoured the success of another. Rivals and competitors have mutually contributed to each others' fame and general reception;

even criticism itself has often saved the objects of its bitterest asperity from oblivion, more anxiously to be deprecated by authors than damnation.

In latter years, the sciences of chemistry and jurisprudence have evidently been the most advanced and understood. The knowledge of theology too, has been much simplified and improved. Mathematics, geography, and astronomy, have been eminently conspicuous in improvement during the last and present age. The sciences of matter and mind, meanwhile, are slowly, gradually, yet effectually advancing, and what of these is diffused, contributes much to enlighten and benefit mankind. The useful and fine arts too, have had many advocates during late years; and whilst the sciences contribute to expand the mind, the arts contribute to the comforts and amusements of life.

We cannot contemplate the nature of man, the circumstances with which he is surrounded, and the general history of literature, without considering him as a being capable of mental improvement, and which I would have understood to be the business, end, and object of his existence. Cold and cheerless indeed are those systems which represent man as a retrogade being, his knowledge becoming corrupted, civilization decreasing, and himself proceeding to ignorance and barbarism. Where, (I would ask the supporters of those systems,) was intellectual excellence amongst the uncivilized nations of antiquity? Amongst the rude Arabs, the Jews, the Turks, and other eastern people, where existed the useful arts and inventions so fully developed during the last three or four ages? Were such a system correct, the useful arts must be entirely forgotten; the number of books must diminish instead of increase; knowledge must be obliterated from the minds of men; science must be banished; and intellect itself be enveloped in the general oblivion!

Spurious too are those principles which tend to prove that the only happiness man can enjoy is in ignorance, and support the old adage,

"Where ignorance is bliss

'Tis folly to be wise,"

by a variety of sophistical arguments. But before

they tell us that "it is a folly to be wise," let them prove that "ignorance is bliss." Ignorance must certainly have great charms to such pretended philosophers, that they will not quit it even for the delights of wisdom itself. They never can attain to any degree of mental excellence; and consequently are the weakest of men; whatever miseries are occasioned by knowledge are caused by mental weakness; their minds are too feeble to discover, that true happiness consists in the enlargement and strength of intellect of an individual. Of this they have no idea; they have not "drank deep" enough of the fountain of wisdom, and they thence conclude that "ignorance is bliss!"

Man has a quality peculiar to himself, that of collecting knowledge, of amassing information, of possessing in fine, an aggregate existence, and this is the business and ultimate object of his life. Under this view, man lives not for himself alone, but to improve and benefit ages yet to come! To this end all the poets, the wits, the philosophers have existed-to be of service to those geniuses who came after them; and so knowledge goes on progressively, each age improving on the former one, till all shall become wise, virtuous, and happy, and receive pleasure only from mental gratifications. D******.

FOR THE POCKET MAGAZINE.

SIR,-Should you deem the following worth inserting in your magazine, you will oblige your constant reader, February 4th, 1819. PERICLES,

ABSURD IMPRESSIONS.

WHEN we sometimes hear of the dreadful atrocities which disgrace human nature, we are almost tempted to fancy we cannot all be of the same species: for our dispositions and natures seem, in effect, as various and opposite as those which animate the whole of the brute creation; and though our forms appear the same, the

spirits which inhabit them so strongly differ, that it is in form alone we can be said to resemble each other. We have our fierce tygers, deceitful hyenas, bold lions, wary foxes, voracious gluttons, subtle panthers, dull asses, tardy sloths, industrious beavers, gentle lambs, and monkeys of all descriptions; in short, the whole population of the wilderness, the desart, and the plain, seems reflected in man. Some have been wicked enough (we suppose such a libel on our beauty must be termed so) to compare even the human countenance to some among the brute creation; a man has been asserted strongly to resemble his horse; and a most striking likeness has been discovered between a lady and her pug-dog, and there certainly are some fat, stern, John Bull faces, that bring forcibly to our minds the delicate lines of le roi des animaux. However, we by no means intend to imply that in such cases the resemblance extends to the mind: on the contrary, it often proves quite the reverse. Judgment in physiognomy should never be exercised till a person begins to speak: there are some heavy, dull, lowering countenances, that retain the same unpleasant cast, till animated by the expression which accompanies speech, when they assume quite a new aspect, and we are no less surprised than pleased at the unexpected change.

There are people who will take an aversion to an individual they have never spoken to in their lives, merely because they do not like the turn of their features-a prejudice equally illiberal and absurd! We have only to recollect how frequently we have been mistaken in opinions formed on so deceptive a principle, when (if we are open to conviction) we must be sensible of our error, and be less ready in future, to yield to unfavourable impressions on such a very slight foundation. It is very true that we scarcely can resist forming some kind of opinion of every person who attracts our attention, and that founded merely on their appearance. But as such an opinion is most probably erroneous, it would be the height of folly to act upon it, as if it really had truth for its basis, and which, in fact, that person does, who takes a dislike to another from their cast of countenance.

We will exemplify this still further. Suppose (for the sake of illustration) a gentleman on his return from a journey, amusing his family with a description of the passengers who had been his companions in the mail-coach. He might say, "There was a young man of genteel appearance that looked like a lawyer. Now every body knows that, in these days, a lawyer's travelling dress varies in no particular from that of any other gentleman; yet the speaker had attached the idea of a lawyer to this young man's appearance, though probably he could not himself tell why. He might go on to say, "There was also a young woman, who, I imagine, was a mantua-maker, or lady's maid, (clad in her mistress's cast off clothes) and an illdressed, unmannerly, swearing fellow, her brother, who seemed like a sheriff's officer." Now neither mantuamaker, lady's maid, nor sheriff's officer, have any badge by which they can be distinguished on an occasion of this kind, any more than the lawyer has of his profession: yet the gentleman drew his inferences from the appearance of his companions altogether, but he never would have thought of addressing the supposed lawyer as if he actually were such, and requesting his advice respecting a law process! neither would he have enquired of the fancied mantua-maker the newest fashion of gown-making, in order to tell his wife and daughters; nor would he have thought of asking the man who looked like a sheriff's officer, if he were in actual pursuit of his prey. Yet, had be done all this, he would not have been more absurd than those who take a determined dislike to a person from their looks, as he would only have been acting on the ideas he had conceived, drawn from conclusions equally erroneous. Now he, perhaps, would have discovered his lawyer to be no other than a well-dressed linen-draper of polite address; his sheriff's officer no less a man than the Honorable A- B

my Lord C- -'s eldest son, who, with his sister, the supposed mantua-maker, was travelling incog to Scotland in order to save expense.