mands, by the shocking nature of their representations.

sure.

A later satirist, Dr. Young, is still read with pleaBut he has the fault of Seneca, of Ovid, of Cowley; a profuse and unseasonable application of wit. His satires have been justly called a string of epigrams. A lover of originality, he did not regard models. Had he endeavoured to imitate Juvenal or Persius, he would have avoided this fault. Those great masters were too much engrossed by the importance of their subjects to fall into the puerility of witticism. There is also something in Young's versification which a good ear does not approve.

But even Young, popular as he was, has been eclipsed by a poet who has shone with the effulgence and the instability of a meteor. Churchill possessed merit; a merit which was magnified when seen through the medium of party, beyond that degree which it was able to support. When reason at last. viewed what passion had exaggerated, she was disgusted with the disappointment, and turned away with neglect. Thus the celebrated Churchill, with whose applause the town re-echoed, is sinking to an oblivion which he hardly deserves; for though he wrote many careless lines and many dull passages, yet the greater part of his productions displayed a genuine vein of satirical genius.

Within a few years satire has reassumed her original rude form of scurrilous and petulant abuse. An improved versification has given a gloss to illiberal, calumnious, and anonymous invectives. An undaunted effrontery, recommended by elegant verse, has supplied the want of every classical and

noble ornament.

That it has been well received is

no proof of its solid excellence as composition, since, to the greater part of readers, the abuse which it lavishly pours on public and private characters, is`a sufficient recommendation.

It differs from classical satire in this as well as other circumstances. Horace, Persius, Juvenal, though sometimes disgraced by obscenity, yet abound with fine moral sentiments. They not only put vice to shame, but countenanced virtue, and pointed out the way to attain to it. But the satirists of our times seem to have little else in view than to gratify private pique, or party-prejudice. It is indeed scarcely to be expected, that, in a degenerate age, many will be found to possess dignity of character and solidity of judgment, in a degree sufficient to enable them to stand forth disinterested and efficient censors of prevailing folly and fashionable vice.

NO. CXL. ON LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS.

TO false and careless reasoning most of the misfortunes of life are to be attributed. Logic then, ás an art, is perhaps so far useful in the conduct of life, as it superinduces a habit of accurate reasoning.

But what says experience? Is the man who has digested Burgersdicius found to be wiser in his actions than others? The best disputant that ever conquered in the schools, when he has descended to the walks of common life, has been found no less prone to deviate into the paths of error, to be involved in the clouds of passion, and misled by the false lights

of imagination, than the busy multitude who never heard of the categories.

They who possess common sense in a competent degree, will discover, with no other aid, the fallacy of wrong reasoning. They who are deficient in it, will not find a substitute in the use of a syllogism.

The great numbers who supply civil and-commercial offices, in which there is a constant necessity for the exertion of reason, and who conduct the most important affairs without the aid of scholastic logic, are proofs that vigorous nature wants not this slender assistance. To imagine that a well formed, mind cannot reason well without logic, is no less, absurd, than to suppose that the solid oak wants the' support of the ivy that creeps around it.

The best school for the improvement of reason, after a competent education, is the living world. We find even the illiterate, who have spent their lives in constant action, possessing a very extensive. knowledge of things, and a most accurate method of judging of them; a knowledge and a method which the cultivated but inexperienced reasoner can seldom attain. It is common to see the learned academic, whose labours are at last rewarded by a rural benefice, unable, notwithstanding his acquired strength of reason, to cope with the rude rustic in a bargain for dues which the laws have allotted him.

It seems then, that the gradual decay of scholastic logic, and the contempt in which syllogistic skill is held, are not unreasonable. It contributes little to the benefit of society. It is rather injurious to it by drawing off that attention which might be usefully bestowed. What then shall we say? Must an art,

which our forefathers have studied from age to age, and to which many of us have devoted our first years at the universities, be exploded? A veneration is due to long-established opinions. The powers of judg-' ing, which stimulate the present age to innovation, were possessed by the past in equal perfection. They had some reason for their institutions. The same reason may perhaps remain to prevent the total abolition of them; for truth and reason are unchangeable. Our ancestors established, logical studies in' the universities, because in their days there were few other books to be obtained, and no other learning was prized. Their descendants must continue to bestow on them a moderate attention, because every part of knowledge contributes to accomplish the professed scholar. But they need give no more than a moderate attention, because the improvements of philosophy, and the great multiplication of books in every part of human learning, enable the student to spend his time and exercise his sagacity more usefully and more agreeably.

He who possesses the genius and taste, together with the philosophical spirit of the Attic Harris, will do right to cultivate them by studying the un read works of ancient logicians. Our English Aristotle, whose productions are at once the quintessence of elegance, and prodigies of analytical ingenuity, has pointed out flowers in those paths of learning, where thorns only were seen before. The Stagyrite was literally idolized; and had it been the fate of Harris to have lived a few centuries ago, he also would have been honoured with a subordinate deification. If any thing can restore a taste for

these languishing studies, it is the grace which his style and his accuracy have given them.

loss.

For metaphysics what can be said? If every book that has been written on them, and thousands have been written, were annihilated, not a single individual in the great community of all mankind, would in any one respect have just reason to lament the Mathematical and arithmetical studies are speculative, it is true; but they do not terminate in speculation. They afford a great pleasure, abstract. edly considered, by the full evidence with which they display their truths; but they tend to obvious utility as well as to delight. The builder, the navigator, almost every mechanic art, is assisted by geometry, and all men, without exception, are benefited by arithmethic. But metaphysics tend only to benight the understanding in a cloud of its own making, to lose it in a labyrinth of its own contrivance.

Metaphysics were once encouraged and cultivated, because they served the purposes of superstition. They involved theological subjects in a perplexity which the simple could not unravel. They gave an air of mystery and depth, which caught the admira tion of the vulgar. They are now employed, in a similar manner, in the service of infidelity. They have induced the half-learned and the conceited, those who think they understand them, and those who wish to be thought by others to understand them, to adopt, without being apprehensive of dan. ger, opinions fatal to their own happiness and to the existence of society.

Even when cultivated by the honest and truly ingenious, they exhibit an instance of blameable pride.