Observe how confidently the great master of Dialectic went into the discussion, dealing directly all the while with the Personality of his auditors, and driving straight through the seeming windings of the discourse at the seats of thought and of sensibility, by his searching humor, his delightful irony, thus making the mind the mind's guest and querist in his suggestive colloquy. Affecting perhaps to know less than any, he yet showed those with whom he conversed how little they knew, while professing to know so much, convicting them of being ignorant of their own ignorance, real wisdom beginning in humility and openness to instruction. If he puzzled and perplexed, it was but to reduce their egotism and ignorance, and prepare them for receiving the truths he had to lay open in themselves. Plato, Aristotle, the German Methodists, but define and deliver the steps of his method. BERKELEY. Of modern philosophic writers, Berkeley has given the best example of the Platonic Dialogue, in his "Minute Philosopher," a book to be read with profit, for its clearness of thought and method. His claim to the name of metaphysician transcends those of most of his countrymen. He, first of his nation, dealt face to face with ideas as distinguished from scholastic fancies and common notions, and thus gave them their place in the order of mind; and this to exhaustive issues, as his English predecessors in thought had failed to do. His idealism is the purest which the British Isles have produced. Platonic as were Cudworth, Norris, Henry More, in cast of thought less scholastic than Taylor of Norwich,--who was an exotic, rather, transplanted from Alexandrian gardens,--Berkeley's thinking is indigenous, strong in native sense and active manliness. His works are magazines of rare and admirable learning, subtleties of speculation, noble philanthropies. They deserve a place in every scholar's library, were it but to mark the fortunes of thought, and accredit the poet's admiring line:-- "To Berkeley every virtue under heaven." BOEHME. MONDAY, 9.