defects of education, and to a want of proper discipline of the intellectual powers. The endurance of attention in minds of the highest order, by a wise law of our constitution, is limited; and if it be attempted to continue the exertion beyond the natural power, the effort is infructuous. As straining the muscles produces fatigue, stiffness, and tremor;--as ocula spectra intrude on the forced and protracted attention of the visual organs,--so confusion ensues, when thought is racked and goaded to exhaustion. As the staple of the human intellect is vastly superior to that of animals, so we find among our own species a considerable range of capacity; but however we may estimate mental excellence, it should be recollected, that its possession has seldom contributed to the happiness of the individual; so that experience would lead us to prefer the sober medium, which is included by a parenthesis, between the extremes of genius and dulness, and which appears to be the unenvied lot of the mass of society. The two great distinctions which mark the intellects of our species, seem to consist in the difference of character, which is established by those who excel in the exercise of their perceptions and consequent recollection, and those who cultivate and discipline the energies of thought. The former are distinguished by a vigorous activity, a penetrating and unwearied observation; their curiosity seems rather to be attracted by the object itself than directed by the mind. This incessant occupation and restless inquiry furnishes the memory with an abundant vocabulary: they recollect each object they have seen, and can retrace every path they have trodden; the ear greedily imbibes the conversations to which they are anxiously disposed to listen; that which they read, they verbally retain; they excel in quickness of perception and promptitude of memory, and appear to have every thing by heart; they are "the gay motes that people the sun-beams" of the intellectual world:--thus we find them, as inclination may sway, accurate chronologists, biographers pregnant with anecdote, expert nomenclators, botanists, topographers, practical linguists, and bibliographers; in short, the opulent possessors of whatever perception can detect, and memory preserve. The other order of men, (and they are comparatively few,) are the creatures of reflection:--with them the senses are little on the alert; they do not fatigue the wing by excursions through the field of nature; but that which the recollection retains becomes the subject of mental examination. An event is not registered from having merely occurred; but the causes which produced it are investigated, and a calculation is instituted concerning its probable tendency. Words are not simply regarded as the floating currency or medium of exchange, but they are severely subjected to analysis to establish their standard, or to detect the excess of their alloy; their senses are little awake to external impressions; the