whither I have already stated he was taken in December of the previous year. But be this as it may, it is certain that it was in ruins about the year 1323; for we learn that the inquest held in that year upon the death of Sir Aymer de Valence, expressly states it to be then " entirely destroyed and burnt." Such is a brief account of the eventful history of this very ancient edifice, which with great care I have endeavoured to deduce from the mass of information to be found respecting it in every History of Northumberland, up to the time of its final destruction by the Scots, in 1317 or 1318; after which it does not appear that it was ever rebuilt. Its present condition and appearance are tous faithfully described by Mr. Hodgson : tinued to enjoy considerable interest in the Castle and estates of Mitford for a long period of time afterwards. In the time of Edward the First, Roger Bertram, who had by some means contrived to obtain the restoration of a considerable part of his estates, made a grant of his Castle and other property at Mitford to his grand-daughter, Agnes de Bertram, who soon afterwards sold the same to Alianor, the dowager Queen of England, and mother of Edward the First, which queen enfeoffed Alexander de Balliol and Alianor de Genevre his wife in the premises. After the death of Alexander de Balliol, shortly afterwards without issue, Alianor his wife, who survived him, married Robert de Stutteville, by whom she had two sons, the eldest of whom, on the demise of his father, became entitled to the Castle and manor of Mitford, which he afterwards granted to Sir Aymer de Valence. In the year 1317, one Sir Gilbert Middleton, in concert with other notorious freebooters, raised a terrible rebellion in Northumberland against their king and the armies of Bruce, which at that time overspread the border-counties of England, after their great and decisive victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314. During this rebellion, and whilst Mitford Castle was in the possession of the Valencia family, a time when it is supposed to have been very much neglected as a residence, and consequently the more easy of conquest, it was captured and garrisoned, as were all the other castles of Northumberland, save those of Alnwick, Bamborough, and Norham, by Sirkin of stone, flanked on the south by a strong semicircular Gilbert Middleton, who was eventually taken prisoner here, in the latter part of the year 1317, and conveyed to the Tower of London; whence we are informed he was sentenced, on the 26th of June in the following year, to be dragged by horses to the gallows, and all his own, as also the property of his brother, ordered to be confiscated. Few places suffered more severely than Mitford, from the hostile incursions which, for centuries after the Norman Conquest, the Scots were ever and anon making into the northern counties of England. On the 25th of December, 1215, a period when it appears to have been a place of considerable size and importance, it was reduced to ashes, as was also the adjacent town of Morpeth, by the armies of King John, in their desolating march into Northumberland. It is not now accurately known, whether the Castles of those places shared a like fate at that time; but if they did, as is stated elsewhere, "it is certain that Mitford was soon after repaired, and put into a very strong state of defence; for Alexander, King of Scotland, in May 1217, marched into England with his whole army, and after besieging the Castle of Mitford in vain for seven days together, returned into his own dominions." Conflicting accounts prevail respecting the time when this ancient fortress was finally destroyed. Some state that it was reduced by fire during the time of Middleton's rebellion; but we are told by Mr. Hodgson that Leland in his Collectanea affirms that this was not the case. However, the latter in his Itinerary, says, "It was beten down by the Kynge; for one Sir Gilbert Middleton, robby'd a Cardynall cominge out of Scotland, and fled to his Castle of Mitford." In addition to this, Dr. Lingard, in his History of England, informs us that (amongst many others) it was reduced by the Scots in May, 1318, after they had succeeded in effecting a surrender of the castle of Berwick, in the early part of that year. Hence, if the latter account be correct, Mitford Castle must have been destroyed, if not during the time of Middleton's rebellion, very soon afterwards, and whilst that person was imprisoned in the Tower of London, The form of the mound (on which the ruins stand) is somewhat elliptical, and the great wall of the castle encircles the whole area of its summit in a line conformable with its brow. The keep is on its highest point, and at its ferent dimensions, and the internal area being about 22 northern extremity; it is five-sided, each side being of diffeet square, and divided into two vaulted rooms of good masonry, having a stone staircase leading to them. One of these rooms is supplied with two ducts in its wall, apparently for the purpose of conveying water to it. These cells which, as well as the outside stone staircase, leading to the are the only remains of the keep, all the upper parts of entrance door into its second story, are destroyed, and nothing now remains of it but the two cells already noticed. The entrance to the little court which surrounded it was from the second court, by a gateway through a thick bram breast-work of earth. This was the strongest part of the fortress, and overlooked the outer gateway and court, which close to the foss-bridge; but all traces of this gateway, stood on the most northerly limb of the hill, and almost and of the walls of the outer court, excepting some lines of their foundations, are now obliterated. The inner court occupies the main part of the crown of the hill, and is now employed as a garden and orchard, and measures, in the from east to west. This part with the keep, to the outside widest parts, about 240 feet both from north to south, and of the walls, contains very little more than one acre. The gateway leading to it was on the north-east side of the hill, and the channel, five yards long, for the bar of its gate, still appears in the wall. Almost immediately succeeding this description of the ruins of the Castle, we have a finely-wrought comparison, from the same pen, of its present condition and accompaniments, with its former glories and storied associations, which is so expressive of the feelings that more or less fervently possess the mind of every one conversant with the story of this ancient edifice, on contemplating its dilapidated remains, that I cannot refrain from quoting it, were it for no other purpose than to give to language so beautiful and im. passioned of itself a wider circulation than it is fated necessarily to enjoy, in a work of such magnitude and value as that is of which it forms a part. alluding to the remains of some human beings that were disinterred a few years ago from among the rubbish within the walls of the Castle, wherein they had been entombed for the space of five centuries or more, Mr. Hodgson adds: After How much is there for reflection in the fate and situation of these remains of mortality; and when I suffer imagination, only for a little time, to lift up the curtain of history, and think I see from the opposite bank to the south, the this fortress stands; when I see showers of arrows and armies of Scotland investing the moated plain upon which javelins flying round its bulwarks, the neighbouring hamlets and villages wrapped in flames, and hear the clashing of arms, and the shouting of the besiegers and the besieged, how grateful it is to gaze again, and see the peaceful scene as it now is, the ruined keep, and its semicircular wall that flank it on the south, overgrown with the north "split with the Winter's frost ;" the rude walls trees and weeds; the massive rampart that incased it on and towers that environed the hill rising in shattered masses among elder-trees and thorns, or shadowed with groups of gigantic ash-trees; the moated and intrenched plain covered with cattle; and, away beyond, the beautiful white walls of the new manor-house, the hoary remains of the old one, and the venerable church backed with orchards, and gardens, and river-banks, all how lovely and luxuriant. course 66 The scenery around the village of Mitford and its immediate neighbourhood is singularly beautiful and diversified, and the prospect from the ruins of the Castle extensive and interesting. Here the serpentine of solitary Wansbeck's limpid stream" divides a landscape of mingled loveliness and grandeur. Verdant fields and parks, upon which groups of cattle are seen serenely browzing, decline gently to its very margin; whilst at repeated intervals this peaceful picture is heightened and improved by the precipitous Scaurs that rise in sublime contrast on the opposite brink; their huge outlines mirrored in the pellucid stream that meanders sweetly beneath. The church, a modest and venerable pile, occupies a retired situation at the foot of the eminence on which the castle is situate, bounded on the one side by the vicarage, and on the other by the old manor-house, whose " ivymantled tower" is seen peeping from amid the tall trees which embosom it, and a portion of the adjoining churchyard, where Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, M. S. PRIDE, AND ITS EFFECTS. PRIDE is defined by a celebrated moralist, to be "inordinate and unreasonable self-esteem." Now where a man thinks too highly of himself, it is in the course of nature that he should think too lowly of others; and it may be laid down as a general axiom, that the concomitants of pride are scorn and insolence towards one's fellow-creatures, and impiety and irreverence towards God. "The proud have had me greatly in derision," was the remark of the Psalmist; and he laid his finger precisely on that spring where irreligion has its origin, when he said, "the wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts." These are the distinguishing marks of pride, where it is permitted to get dominion over the heart, and to influence the actions. However it be nourished, and whatever be the shape it is invested with, its effects are uniformly hateful and pestilential; uniformly subversive of piety towards God and charity towards man, as well as injurious to the happiness of him who is actuated by it. In the pride of exalted birth, Absalom, the son of David, broke the ties of religion, allegiance, and filial duty, and rebelled against his father, whom the Lord had anointed king over Israel, and was violently cut off in the flower of his age. In the pride of arbitrary power, Jezebel usurped the vineyard of Naboth by perjury and murder, and "her carcass was eaten by dogs." In the pride of majesty," the heart of Nebuchadnezzar lifted up, and his mind hardened" to forget his almighty Benefactor, and he was "driven from men, and his dwelling was with the beasts of the field." In the pride of despotic authority, Pharaoh "refused to let the people of Israel go to serve the Lord," and the Lord "hardened his heart" for a punishment, because he had himself already hardened it by his sin. In the pride of victory, Saul "rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord rejected him from being king over Israel." In the pride of royal favour, the insatiable ambition of Haman would not rest, so long as he saw Mordecai, the Jew, sitting at the king's gate," until he himself " was hanged on the gallows" that he had prepared for the object of his malice. himself to be saluted with divine honours; and In the pride of popular applause, Herod permitted he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost." In immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, and the pride of wealth, the covetous man in one parable thought of nothing but to " eat, drink, and be merry;" and the rich man in another, thought not of the beggar that " 'lay at his gate full of sores," until the soul of the former was required of him that night," and the latter "lift up his eyes in hell, being in torments." In the pride of youth, Rehoboam threatened to "chastise his subjects with scorpions," and was punished by the loss of his hereditary authority. In the pride of bodily strength, Goliath "defied the armies of the living God," and was slain by the hand of a stripling, whom he had disdained and cursed by his gods. In the pride of female beauty and accomplishments, the heart of Herodias's daughter was hardened into the commission of an act of wanton barbarity, in demanding the head of John the Baptist; and the crime was recompensed by the degradation and banishment of her partners in guilt, if not by her own untimely destruction. In the pride of learning, the Greeks esteemed "the preaching of Christ crucified to be foolishness," and were judicially "given over by God to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient." In the pride of a fancied equality, and consequent disobedience to their rulers, Korah and his company rebelled against Moses and Aaron, and "went down alive into the pit," because" they had provoked the Lord." Proud of their spiritual privileges, and of their descent from Abraham, the Jews despised, rejected, and crucified the Lord of glory and "his blood was on them and on their children,' and "their house was left unto them desolate."Would we see even a more decisive and alarming proof of the origin of pride, and of its offensiveness to God, we may discover it in the disobedience of Adam, which entailed sin, misery, and death on all his descendants; or in the rebellion of the evil spirit, who first set the example of resisting the Almighty, and was the primary cause of the wretchedness of man. Of such a quality as this, so selfish and malignant, so contentious and over-bearing, so impatient of control, so resolute in the attainment of its end, and so unprincipled in the adoption of means, of a quality so pernicious to all "the fruits of the Spirit, and so signally branded by the displeasure of God; surely of such a quality it may well and safely be affirmed, that "it is not of the Father, but is of the world." Such being the nature, the tendency, and the consequences of Pride, these considerations might be supposed capable of suppressing it, even if the matter on which it feeds, were much more worthy of encouraging extravagant self-esteem than it really is; but, as it hath been well observed, .... Pride hath no other glass To show itself but pride; otherwise the mirror of reason and common sense, no less than the mirror of revelation, could hardly fail of exposing its folly and deformity.-BP. MANT. THE SPANISH CHESTNUT, (Fagus castanea). ALTHOUGH there are some doubts on the subject, this tree is generally believed to be a native of the British islands, from the circumstance of its timber having been found forming the beams of many old buildings. Gilpin thus describes it. The Chestnut, in maturity and perfection, is a noble tree, and grows not unlike the oak. Its ramification is more straggling, but it is easy, and its foliage loose. This is the tree which graces the landscapes of Salvator Rosa. In the mountains of Calabria, where Salvator painted, the Chestnut flourished. There he studied it in all its forms, breaking and disposing it in a thousand beautiful shapes, as the exigencies of his composition required. The Chestnut is not so much cultivated in England as in former years. Some have endeavoured to account for this by asserting that it is not so good a timber-tree as was supposed; for it decays at the heart, and will continue decaying till it becomes merely a shell; and for this reason it has been less sought after and encouraged. This, however, is doubted by Gilpin, and Evelyn speaks decidedly in favour of the timber of the Spanish chestnut: he says, The use of the chestnut is (next to oak) one of the most sought after by the carpenter and joiner: it hath formerly built a good part of our ancient houses in the city of London, as does yet appear. I had once a very large barn near the city framed entirely of this timber, and certainly they grew not far off; probably in some woods near the town. For in that description of London written by Fitzstephens, in the reign of Henry the Second, he speaks of a very noble and large forest which grew on the boreal part of it, well stored with all kinds of timber, as well as with stags, hinds, goats, wild cattle, &c. Speaking of the fruit, he continues: But we give that fruit to our swine in England which is amongst the delicacies of princes in other countries, and being of the larger nut, is a lusty and masculine food for rustics at all times. The best tables in France and Italy make them a service, eating them with salt in wine, being first roasted on the chapplet; and doubtless we might promulgate their use amongst our common people, 'being a food so cheap and so lasting.' It is difficult to say why this tree has gained the name of the Spanish Chestnut, since it abounds in all the temperate climates of Europe. On the lower part of the Alps and the Apennines, forests of Chestnut trees abound; and here old Evelyn would have delighted in finding the peasantry employing this nut as an article of food; not, however, from any predilection for the chestnut, but on account of the scarcity of other food, they are obliged to mix the meal of the nut in considerable quantities with their wheaten bread. Whatever value may be attached to the timber of the Chestnut, in magnitude and height it is found to exceed the oak. The Tortworth Chestnut, on the subject of which the lines at the head of this article were written, is in a garden at Tortworth, in Gloucestershire, belonging to Lord Ducie. Traditional accounts (says Sir T. Lauder,) suppose it to have been a boundary tree in the time of King John, and I have met with other accounts which place it in the same honourable station in the reign of King Stephen. How much older it may be, we know not. Considerably older it probably was, for we rarely make boundary trees of saplings and offsets. So late as in the year 1788, it produced great quantities of chestnuts, which, though small, were sweet and well-flavoured. On Another celebrated Chestnut of a gigantic size, grows at a place called Wimley, near Hitchin Priory, in Hertfordshire. In the year 1789, at five feet above the ground, its girth was somewhat more than fourteen yards! Its trunk was hollow, and in part open; but its vegetation was still vigorous. one side, its vast arms shooting up in various forms, some upright and others oblique, were decayed, and peeled at the extremities, but issued from luxuriant side, the foliage was still full, and hid all decay. foliage at their insertion in the trunk. On the other L THE Common Watch, it is said, beats or ticks 17,160 times in an hour. This is 411,840 a day; and 150,424,560 a year; allowing the year to be 365 days, and 6 hours. Sometimes watches will run, with care, 100 years, so I have heard people say. In that case, it would last to beat 15,042,456,000 times! Is it not surprising that it should not be beat to pieces in half that time? The Watch is made of hard metal. But I can tell you of a curious machine which is made of something not near so hard as steel or brass; it is not much harder than the flesh of your arm. Yet it will beat more than 5000 times an hour; 120,000 times a day; and 43,830,000 times a year. It will sometimes, though not often, last 100 years; and when it does, it beats 4,383,000,000 times. One might think this last machine, soft as it is, would wear out sooner than the other. But it does not. I will tell you one thing more. You have this little machine about you. You need not feel in your pocket, for it is not there. It is in your body-you can feel it beat; it is your heart! Few observers of nature can have passed, unheeded, the sweetness and peculiarity of the song of the Robin, and its ! various indications with regard to atmospheric changes: the mellow, liquid notes of Spring and Summer, the melancholy sweet pipings of Autumn, and the jerking chirps of Winter. In Spring, when about to change his winter song for the vernai, he warbles, for a short time, in a strain so unusual, as at first to startle and puzzle even those ears most experienced in the notes of birds. He may be considered as part of the naturalist's barometer. On a Summer evening, though the weather may be in an unsettled and rainy state, he sometimes takes his stand on the topmost twig, or on the "house top," singing cheerfully and sweetly. When this is observed, it is an unerring promise of succeeding fine days. Sometimes though the atmosphere is dry and warm, he may be seen melancholy, chirping and brooding in a bush, or low in a hedge: this promises the reverse of his merry lay and exalted station. Anecdotes of the Animal Kingdom. TRAIT OF MATERNAL LOVE. A FEMALE Suttler of our corps, who had been with us during the whole campaign, returned from Moscow, carrying in a wagon five young children, and all the fruits of her industry. Arrived at the Wop, she regarded with horror the rapid stream, which compelled her to leave on its banks all her little fortune, and the future subsistence of her children. For a long time she ran up and down, eagerly looking for a new passage, then returning in despair from her fruitless search, she said to her husband, "We must, indeed, abandon all; let us now try only to save our children." Saying this, she took the two youngest from the waggon, and placed them in her husband's arms. I saw the poor father closely hug the innocent creatures, and with a trembling foot traverse the river; while his wife, falling on her knees at the edge of the water, now gazed eagerly on him, and then raised her eyes to heaven: but as soon as she saw him safely landed, she lifted her hands in gratitude to Providence, and leaping on her feet, exclaimed with transport, "They are saved, they are saved." The anxious father, depositing his precious burden on the bank, hastened, back, seized on two more of them, and again plunging into the waves, being followed by his wife, who bore the fifth on one arm, and with the other hand clung fast to her husband, reached the shore in safety. The children who had been first carried over, thinking themselves abandoned by their parents, made the air resound with their cries; but their tears soon ceased to flow, when the affectionate family was again reunited. Campaign in Russia. ACCOUNT OF A SELF-TAUGHT SAXON PEASANT. Ir is usual for the commissaries of excise in Saxony to appoint a peasant in every village in their district to receive the excise of the place, for which few are allowed more than one crown, and none more than three. Mr. Christian Gotthold Hoffman, chief commissary of Dresden and the villages adjacent, in 1753, when auditing the accounts of some of these peasants, was told, that there was among them one JOHN LUDWIG, a strange man, who, though he was very poor, and had a family, was yet continually reading in books, and very often stood the greater part of the night at his door, gazing at the stars. Hoff This account raised Mr. Hoffman's curiosity, and he ordered the man to be brought before him. man, who expected something in the man's appearance that corresponded with a mind superior to his station, was greatly surprised to see the most rustic boor he had ever beheld. His hair hung over his forehead down to his eyes, his aspect was sordid and stupid, and his manner was, in every respect, that of a plodding ignorant clown. Mr. Hoffman, after contemplating this unpromising appearance, concluded, that as the supposed superiority of this man was of the intellectual kind, it would certainly appear when he spoke; but even in this experiment he was also disappointed. He asked him, if what his neighbours had said of his reading and studying was true? and the man bluntly and coarsely replied, "What neighbour has told you that I read and study? if I have studied, I have studied for myself, and I don't desire that you or anybody else should know anything of the matter." Hoffman, however, continued the conversation, notwithstanding his disappointment, and asked several questions concerning arithmetic, and the first rudiments of astronomy; to which he now expected vague and confused replies. But in this, too, he was mistaken, for he was struck not only with astonishment but confusion, at hearing such replies as would have done honour to a regular academic in a public examination. Mr. Hoffman prevailed on the peasant to stay some time at his house, that he might further gratify his curiosity. In their subsequent conferences, he proposed to his guest abstract and difficult questions, which were always answered with the utmost readiness and precision. The account which this extraordinary person gives of himself and his acquisitions, is as follows: John Ludwig was born the 24th of February, 1715, in the village of Cossedaude, and was, among other poor children of the village, sent very young to school. The Bible, which was the book by which he was taught to read, gave him so much pleasure, that he conceived the most eager desire to read others, which, however, he had no opportunity to get into his pos session. In about a year, his master began to teach him to write, but this exercise was rather irksome than pleasing at first; but when the first difficulty was surmounted, he applied to it with great alacrity, especially as books were put into his hand to copy as and day, not in copying particular passages only, but an exercise; and he employed himself almost night in forming collections of sentences, or events that were connected with each other. When he was ten years old he had been at school four years, and was then put to arithmetic; but this embarrassed him with innumerable difficulties, which his master would not take the trouble to explain, expecting that he should content himself with the implicit practice of positive rules. Ludwig, therefore, was so disgusted with arithmetic, that, after much scolding and beating, he went from school, without having learnt anything more than reading, writing, and his catechism. He was then sent into the field to keep cows, and in this employment he soon became clownish, and negligent of everything else, so that the greater part of what he had learnt was forgotten. He associated with the sordid and the vicious, and he became insensible like them; and as he grew up he abandoned himself to such pleasures as were within his reach. But a desire of surpassing others, that principle which is productive of every kind of greatness, was still living in his breast; he remembered to have been praised by his master, and preferred above his comrades, when he was learning to read and write; and he was still desirous of the same pleasure, though he did not know how to obtain it. In the Autumn of 1735 he bought a small Bible, at the end of which was a catechism, with references to a great number of texts, upon which the principles | contained in the answers were founded. Ludwig had never been used to take anything upon trust; and was, therefore, continually turning over the leaves of his Bible, to find the passages referred to in the catechism; but this he found so irksome a task, that he determined to have the whole at one view; and therefore set about to transcribe the catechism, with all the texts at large, brought into their proper places. With this exercise he filled two quires of paper; and though when he began, his writing was scarcely legible, yet, before he had finished, it was greatly improved; for an art that has been once learnt is easily recovered. In the month of March, 1736, he was employea to receive the excise of the little district in which he lived; and he found that in order to discharge this office, it was necessary for him not only to write, but to be master of the two first rules of arithmetic. His ambition had now an object, and a desire to keep the accounts of the tax he was to gather better than others of his station, determined him once more to apply to arithmetic. His mind was continually upon the stretch to find out some way of supplying the want of an instructor; and recollecting that one of his school-fellows had a book from which examples of several rules were taken by the master to exercise the scholars, he went in search of him, and having borrowed the important volume, he pursued his studies with such application that in six months he was master of the rule of three with fractions. The reluctance with which he began to learn the powers and properties of figures was now at an end: he knew enough to make him earnestly desirous of knowing more; he was, therefore, impatient to proceed from this book to one that was more difhcult; and having at length found means to procure one that treated of more intricate and complicated calculations, he made himself master of that also before the end of 1739. He had the good fortune, soon after, to meet with a treatise of geometry, written by Pachek, whose arithmetic he had been studying, to which he applied with great assiduity; but not being able to comprehend the theory, nor yet to discover the utility of the practice, he laid it aside, to which he was also induced by the necessity of his immediate attendance to his field and his vines. The severe Winter of 1740 obliged him to keep long within his cottage, when he had once more recourse to his book of geometry; and having at length comprehended some of the leading principles, he procured a little box ruler, and an old pair of compasses, on one point of which he mounted a pen. With these instruments he employed himself in making various geometrical figures on paper, to illustrate the theory by a solution of the problems. He was thus busied in his cottage till March; and the joy arising from the knowledge he had acquired, was exceeded only by his desire of knowing more. He was now necessarily recalled to that labour by which alone he could procure himself food; and was, besides, without money to procure such books and instruments as were absolutely necessary to pursue his geometrical studies. However, with the assistance of a neighbouring artificer, he procured the figures which he found represented by the diagrams in his work to be made in wood; and with these he went to work at every interval of leisure, which now happened only once a week, after Divine service on a Sunday. He was still in want of a new book; and having laid by a little sum, he made a purchase at the fair of three small volumes, from which he acquired a complete knowledge of trigonometry. After this acquisition he could not rest till he had begun to study astronomy: his next purchase, therefore, was an introduction to that science, which he read with indefatigable diligence, and invented innumerable expedients to supply the want of proper instruments. During his study of geometry and astronomy, he had frequently met with the word philosophy; and this became more and more the object of his attention. He conceived that it was the name of some science of great importance and extent, with which he was wholly unacquainted; and being continually upon the watch for assistance, he at last picked up a book, called, An Introduction to the Knowledge of God, of Man, and of the Universe. In reading this book, he was struck with a variety of objects equally interesting and new. But as this book contained only general principles, he went to Dresden, and inquired among the booksellers, who was the most celebrated author that had written on philosophy. He was recommended to the works of Wolfius, written in the German language; and, Wolfius having been mentioned in several books he had read as one of the most able men of his age, he readily took him for his guide in the regions of philosophy. At Wolfius's Logic he laboured a full year, still attending to his other studies. In this book he was referred to another, called Mathematical Principles ; but on inquiring for it, he found it too dear for his, finances, and was obliged to content himself with an abridgment, from which he derived both pleasure and profit; it employed him from October, 1743, to February, 1745. He then proceeded to metaphysics, at which he laboured till the October following; and he would fain have entered on the study of physics, but his indigence was an insuperable impediment, and he was obliged to content himself with this author's morality, politics, and remarks on metaphysics, till July, 1746, when he had scraped together a sum sufficient to buy the Physics; and this work he read twice within the year. About this time, a dealer in old books sold him a volume of Wolfius's Mathematical Principles at Large, and the spherical trigonometry which he found in it was a new treasure which he was very desirous to make his own. This cost him incredible labour, and filled every moment that he could spare from his business and his sleep, for more than a year. He proceeded to the study of Kalrel's Law of Nature and Nations, and procured a little book on the terrestrial and celestial globes. These books, with a few that he borrowed, were the sources from which |