known and fixed, in direct contradiction to every precept of morality, religion, or civil institution; it would be therefore an idle attempt to aim at breaking so firm an establishment.

But as it sometimes happens that an elder brother dies late enough to leave the younger at the university after he has made some progress in learning; if we suppose him to have a tolerable genius, and a desire to improve it, he may consequently learn to value and esteem wisdom and knowledge wherever he finds them, even after his father's death, when his title and estate come into his own possession. Of this kind, I reckon, by a favourable computation there may possibly be found, by a strict search among the nobility and gentry throughout England, about five hundred. Among those of all other callings or trades who are able maintain a son at the university, about treble that number. The sons of clergymen bred to learning with any success, must, by reason of their parents' poverty, be very inconsiderable, many of them being only admitted servitors in colleges, and consequently proving good for nothing: I shall therefore count them to be not above fourscore. But, to avoid fractions, I shall suppose there may possibly be a round nnmber of two thousand male human creatures in England, including Wales, who have a tolerable share of reading and good sense. I include in this list all persons of superior abilities, or great genius, or true judgment and taste, or of profound literature, who, I am confident, we may reckon to be at least five-andtwenty.

I am very glad to have this opportunity of doing an honour to my country, by a computation which I am afraid foreigners may conceive to be partial; when, out of only fifteen thousand families of lords and estated gentlemen, which may probably be their number, I suppose one in thirty to be tolerably educated, with a sufficient share of good sense. Perhaps the censure may be just. And therefore, upon cooler

thoughts, to avoid all cavils, I shall reduce them to one thousand, which at least will be a number sufficient to fill both houses of parliament.

The daughters of great and rich families, computed after the same manner, will hardly amount to above half the number of the male; because the care of their education is either entirely left to their mothers, or they are sent to boardingschools, or put into the hands of English or French governesses, and generally the worst that can be gotten for money. So that after the reduction I was compelled to, from two thousand to one, half the number of well-educated nobility and gentry must either continue in a single life, or be forced to couple themselves with women for whom they can possibly have no esteem; I mean fools, prudes, coquettes, gamesters, saunterers, endless talkers of nonsense, splenetic idlers, intriguers, given to scandal and censure.

A TRITICAL ESSAY

UPON

THE FACULTIES OF THE MIND.

ΤΟ

SIR: Being so great a lover of antiquities, it was reasonable to suppose, you would be very much obliged with anything that was new. I have been of late offended with many writers of essays and moral discourses, for running into stale topics and threadbare quotations, and not handling their subject fully and closely; all which errors I have carefully avoided in the following essay, which I have proposed as a pattern for young writers to imitate. The thoughts and observations being entirely new, the quotations untouched by others, the subject of mighty importance, and treated with much order and perspicuity, it has cost me a great deal of time; and I desire you will accept and consider it as the utinost effort of my genius.

A TRITICAL ESSAY, ETC.

Philosophers say, that man is a microcosm, or little world, resembling in miniature every part of the great; and, in my

opinion, the body natural may be compared to the body politic; and if this be so, how can the Epicurean's opinion be true, that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms: which I will no more believe, than that the accidental jumbling of the letters of the alphabet, could fall by chance into a most ingenious and learned treatise of philosophy. Risam teneatis amici? This false opinion must needs create many more: it is like an error in the first concoction, which cannot be corrected in the second; the foundation is weak, and whatever superstructure you raise upon it, must, of necessity, fall to the ground. Thus men are led from one error to another, until, with Ixion, they embrace a cloud instead of Juno; or, like the dog in the fable, lose the substance in gaping at the shadow. For such opinions cannot cohere; but, like the iron and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, must separate and break in pieces. I have read in a certain author, that Alexander wept because he had no more worlds to conquer which he needed not have done, if the fortuitous concourse of atoms could create one: but this is an opinion fitter for that many-headed beast, the vulgar, to entertain than for so wise a man as Epicurus; the corrupt part of his sect only borrowed his name, as the monkey did the cat's claw to draw the chesnut out of the fire.

However, the first step to the cure is to know the disease; and though truth may be difficult to find, because, as the philosopher observes, she lives in the bottom of a well, yet we need not, like blind men, grope in open daylight. i hope I may be allowed, among so many far more learned men, to offer my mite, since a stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it. But I do not think a philosopher obliged to account for every phenomenon in nature, or drown himself with Aristotle, for not being able to solve the ebbing and flowing of the tide in that fatal sentence hessed upon himself, Quia te non capio, tu capies me.