The propensity of a disordered imagination to find, or to create, some region of fictitious happiness, leads not a few to betake themselves to the fields of intellectual enjoyment, where they may be exempt from the annoyances that infest the lower world. Hence it is that the walks of natural philosophy or abstract science, and of literature, and especially of poetry and the fine arts, are frequented by many who addict themselves to pursuits of this kind, not so much from a genuine impulse of native genius or taste, as from a yearning desire to discover some paradise of delights, where no croaking voice of disappointment is heard, and where adversity has no range or leave of entrance. These intruders upon the realms of philosophy—these _refugees_ from the vexations of common life, as they are in quest merely of solace and diversion, do not often become effective laborers in the departments upon which they enter: their motive possesses not the vigor necessary for continued and productive toil. Or if a degree of ambition happens to be conjoined with the feeble ardor of the mind, it renders them empirics in science, or schemers in mechanics; or they essay their ineptitude upon some gaudy extravagance of verse or picture; or perhaps spend their days in loading folios, shelves, and glass cases with curious lumber of whatever kind most completely unites the qualities of rarity and worthlessness. Nature has furnished each of the active faculties with a sensibility to pleasure in its own exercise: this sensibility is the spring of spontaneous exertion; and if the intellectual constitution be robust, it serves to stimulate labor, and yet itself observes a modest sobriety, leaving the forces of the mind to do their part without embarrassment. The pleasurable emotion is always subordinate and subservient, never predominant or importunate. But in minds of a less healthy temperament, the emotion of pleasure, and the consequent excitement, is disproportionate to the strength of the faculties. The efficient power of the understanding is therefore overborne, and left in the rear; there is more of commotion than of action; more of movement than of progress; more of enterprise than of achievement. * * * * *