the process would be as well performed. So, too, mark the care with which injuries are remedied by what has been correctly called the _vis medicatrix_. Is a muscle injured?--Suppuration takes place, the process of granulation succeeds, and new flesh is formed to supply the gap, or if that is less wide, a more simple healing process knits together the severed parts. Is a bone injured?--A process commences by which an extraordinary secretion of bony matter takes place, and the void is supplied. Nay, the irreparable injury of a joint gives rise to the formation of a new hinge, by which the same functions may be not inconveniently, though less perfectly, performed. Thus, too, recovery of vigor after sickness is provided for by increased appetite; but there is here superadded, generally, a feeling of comfort and lightness, an enjoyment of existence so delightful, that it is a common remark how nearly this compensates the sufferings of the illness. In the economy of the mind it is the same thing. All our exertions are stimulated by curiosity, and the gratification is extreme of satisfying it. But it might have been otherwise ordered, and some painful feeling might have been made the only stimulant to the acquisition of knowledge. So, the charm of novelty is proverbial; but it might have been the unceasing cause of the most painful alarms. Habit renders every thing easy; but the repetition might have only increased the annoyance. The loss of one organ makes the others more acute. But the partial injury might have caused, as it were, a general paralysis. ‘Tis thus that Paley is well justified in exclaiming, “It is a happy world after all!” The pains and the sufferings, bodily and mental, to which we are exposed, if they do not sink into nothing, at least retreat within comparatively narrow bounds; the ills are hardly seen when we survey the great and splendid picture of worldly enjoyment or ease.