objects which a change of scene presents are slightly noticed, and feebly remembered; their curiosity is not attracted from without, but excited from within; they are strangers to the haunts of gay and mirthful intercourse, and are rather consulted as oracles, than selected as companions. This constant occupation of thought produces the philosophical historian, profound critic, physiologist, mathematician, general grammarian, etymologist, and metaphysician. After long exertion they become disposed to melancholic disquietude, and often turn in disgust from a world, the beauties of which they want an incentive to examine, and taste to admire. Both of these intellectual orders of our species contribute, but in different manners, to the stores of knowledge. The sound, efficient, and useful mind consists in a due balance and regular exercise of its different faculties. How great soever the pains which an individual may bestow, to fix his thoughts to the examination of a particular subject, he will find that the effective duration of his attention is very limited, and that other thoughts, often wholly unconnected with the subject, will intrude and occupy his mind; on some occasions they are so prevailing and importunate, that he loses the original subject altogether. It is acknowledged, that the soundest and most efficient mind, is distinguished by the control it is capable of exerting on its immediate thoughts; which consist, as has before been observed, of terms, and the phantasmata of visible recollection:--this wandering of the thoughts to other subjects, or this intrusion of irrelevant words and pictures, whichever may be the case, appears to bear a very strong resemblance to a morbid state. It is usually the attendant on indolence, and has probably its source in a want of the proper occupation of mind, and, by indulgence, may become an incurable habit. Yet this rumination of mind has its votaries: by some it is courted as a delightful amusement, and eulogies are bestowed on the incoherent tissue of these reveries and day-dreams. Although these illegitimate offsprings of "retired leisure" may be considered as a perversion of the noblest attribute of man; yet they serve, in some degree, to recruit our recollection of past transactions, which might otherwise have faded in obscurity, or perished from natural decay. In the soundest and most refreshing sleep we seldom dream; so, in those wholesome exercises of the intellect where the mind is fully occupied, and, more especially, when such pursuit is combined with bodily exertion, these masterless associates do not intrude. By continuance, this habit may be so formidably increased, more especially under the guidance of malignant or depressing passions, that these shadows become embodied, and assume a form so potent and terrible, that the will is unable to bind them down, and the understanding attempts to exorcise them in vain.