that he hath not spent the day in vain.-Biog. Brit. ii. 323.

6. There is a traditional anecdote concerning Mr. Boyle, that he used sometimes to have it inscribed over his door-" Mr. Boyle is not to be

spoken with to-day." This was very proper in one who was often engaged in processes of the utmost importance, and which required an unremitted attention. Indeed, if literary men, in general, could find a rational method of preventing the interruptions of needless morning visitants, it would be of service to the prosecution of many useful designs. Ibid.

514.

7. Cardan's motto was, "Tempus mea possessio, "tempus ager meus.”– ""Time is my estate, my "land that I am to cultivate."-Lord, grant me ever to consider this, and so to cultivate it, that it may bring forth fruit to life eternal! Amen.

TRIUMPH BEFORE VICTORY.

may

NOTHING can be got, but much be lost, by triumphing before a battle. When Charles V. invaded France, he lost his generals and a great part of his army by famine and disease; and returned

baffled and thoroughly mortified from an enterprise, which he began with such confidence of its happy issue that he desired Paul Jovius the historian to make a large provision of paper sufficient to record the victories which he was going to acquire.

TYPES.

THE Mosaic types are like triangular prisms, that must be set in a due light and posture, before they can represent that great variety of spiritual mysteries contained in them. The office of the prophets was to do this, and direct the people to see in these glasses the Son of God fully represented to their view. Still. Orig. Sac. b. ii. c. 5.

VAIN CURIOSITY.

MANY people, instead of minding their own business, and securing their souls, amuse themselves with enquiring what will be the fate of Heathens, Jews, Turks, and other Infidels, till they become little better than Infidels themselves- "Lord, and

what shall this man do?" "What is that to thee? "Follow thou me."

UNIVERSITIES.

1. It was a custom with the Gymnosophists, every day, at dinner, to examine their disciples, how they had spent the morning; and every one was obliged to show, that he had discharged some good office, practised some virtue, or improved in some part of learning. If nothing of this appeared, he was sent back without his dinner.-A mighty good institu❤ tion, surely! Pity but it could be revived, and praetised in college-halls !

2. "For one lost. by his own passions," says Maty, "I have known at least forty men ruined "by not being told of their danger." He proposes for reformation of universities—

1. Expulsion of those who will not submit to rules and orders, and a state of pupillage.

2. A rigorous exaction of the stated appearances at chapel, and in the hall.

3. To break, by varied hours of lecture, the possibility of long junketings.

4. Some feeling lectures from Plato and Epictetus on the dignity and manliness of the boni vivere parvo; the dependence and servility of debt; the inelegance and future mischiefs of promiscuous concubinage

WIT.

1. HE, who sacrifices religion to wit, like the people mentioned by Elian, worships a fly, and offers up an ox to it.

2. Wit, like salt, should excite an appetite, not provoke disgust; cleanse wounds, not create them; be used to recommend and preserve that which is sound, not be thrown away upon that which is already rotten.

3. Wit without wisdom is salt without meat, and that is but a comfortless dish to set a hungry man down to. Wit, employed to disguise and prejudice truth, is salt thrown into a man's eyes.

4. Nothing is more absurd than to divert a man who wants to be comforted; for salt, though an excellent relisher, is a miserable cordial.

5. Jocularity should not be obtruded upon company when they are not in the humour for it; as a well bred man would no more force salt than pepper upon his guests, whose constitutions it might not suit.

ESSAYS, originally printed in the OLLA PODRIDA, a periodical work published by the REV. THOMAS MONRO, A. B. of St. Mary Magdalene College, Oxford.

(No. VII.)

SATURDAY, April 28, 1787.

Servata semper lege et ratione loquendi.

JUVENAL.

THE different writers, who have obliged the world with memoirs of Dr. Johnson, all agree to inform us, that he esteemed conversation to be the comfort of life. He himself, indeed, in an Idler, has not scrupled to compare it to a bowl of that liquor, which, under the direction of Mr. Brydone, so deservedly engaged the attention of the Sicilian clergy; and in the composition of which, while the spirit is duly tempered by water, and the acid suffi