motion. Man, as a natural being, is indebted for his formation to heaven, to the elements, and to his parents. For the support of his existence he is dependent on his fellow-creatures, on animals, and on the elements. As a moral agent and social creature, he is dependent on civil community, to whose rules he must accommodate himself; and on men, whose kindness he must conciliate by a line of conduct which he wishes should direct their conduct towards him. When man forgets these truths, he relapses into self-love, and becomes a monster of vice. But in conforming himself to them, he discovers the mutual connection of all things with himself, and the reciprocal aid and benefit given and received under this system; of which being a part, an irregularity on his side must disturb the uniformity and the agreement of all the other constituent parts. After the same manner in the body should the feet, pretending to be made only for themselves, refuse to perform their office to the body at large; should the eye cease to di

rect, and the hands to aid, and the belly to nourish, the human machine must fall into ruin*.

*This doctrine pervades the whole system of Pope's Essay on Man; and in the following passages a very strong similarity, if not imitation, may be discovered:

Vast chain of being, which from God began,
Nature's ethereal, human, angel, Man!

Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach, from infinite to thee!

From Nature's chain, whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike,
And, if each system in gradation roll,
Alike essential to th' amazing whole,

The least confusion but in one, not all

That system only, but the whole must fall.

Again:

Look round our world: behold the chain of love

Combining all below, and all above.

Nothing is foreign: parts relate to whole:
One all extending, all preserving soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least,
Makes beast in aid of man, and man of beast.
All serv'd, all serving; nothing stands alone:
The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown.
Ethic Epistles, 1st and 3d.

THE OPPOSITE OFFICES OF A JUDGE AND

PLEADER.

On all trials in a court of justice, the judge and advocate assume opposite characters. The judge strives to discover the truth: the pleader to conceal or disfigure it. The judge keeps the medium, which is the point of equity: the pleader searches out the extremes. The judge must be rigid, austere, and inflexible: the advocate supple and accommodating; complying with the inclinations of his client, and entering into his interests. The judge should be steady, uniform, and unvariable; pursuing ever one direct line: the pleader adopts every mode of proceeding. The judge must divest himself of the influence of his passions: the advocate endeavours to excite those of his audience, and appears to sympathize with the feelings of his client. The judge should hold his scales in the same straight lines, and preserve the equilibrium: the advocate flings a weight into one scale, and destroys the balance. The judge holds

a sword in his hand: the pleader endeavours to wrest it from him.

A VULGAR ERROR REFUTED.

Frogs are produced in the same manner as other animals. The female lays her eggs, and deposits them in holes of the earth; where she nurses them, as toads do their young ones, inventusque cavis bufo. After great rains, the water, deluging the little caverns in which they lay their nests, obliges them to leave them, to prevent destruction. This sudden appearance of the frogs, after a good deal of rain, induced .the common people to imagine that they were engendered in the rain, and so came down from the skies. In Lapland, the sudden appearance of rats, bred in the mountains, after heavy showers, gave rise to the same opinion in that country concerning their generation. Olaus Magnus*, the great Swedish naturalist, adopted this belief about frogs; but, though respectable in other points, the

* Wrote in 1544.

honest Swede is in this an object of indulgence: which I can sooner grant to him than to Wormiust, the learned Dane, who lived in our times, and has thrown great light by his researches into the history of northern nations. Yet he does not scruple to assert roundly, that the frogs might have been produced in the air, and descended upon the earth in a shower.

EVERY TREE IS PRODUCED FROM A

SCION.

In the kernels of fruits, and in most seeds, this scion is discoverable. If the skin of the kernel of an apple is laid open, a small scion, planted at the head of the two lobes which form the kernel, may be perceived. By applying sufficient moisture and warmth to this scion, it begins to vegetate; and, in process of time, to extend and enlarge itself by nutrition into a full grown tree. An onion, hung up in a kitchen, and receiving warmth from its situation, frequently puts forth its scion. The

+ Wormius wrote in 1643.