more pleasing to themselves, and less injurious to others. It would be idle to expatiate on the good which literary pursuits are calculated to effect in every circle. The country gentleman need not be reminded that literature, of all sports, even when pursued as a mere desultory pastime, is the noblest pleasure that can be chased. The military man is well aware that the days of Ensign Northerton are long gone by, and that it has ceased to be the fashion to shoot maledictions at literature, even through the sides of Homer. The learned professions are no longer ashamed to couple their graver studies with the lighter graces of erudition, whose tendrils may cling around the loftiest branches of science without encumbering its technical attainments. The higher orders are well aware, that when the "blood of all the Howards" cannot ennoble an unenlightened

lord, a literary name may afford a title to immortality that any nobleman might be proud to aspire to. The middling classes of society have too much of that "strong, sound, roundabout common sense" which Locke has ascribed to them, to deceive themselves with the pretext that the duties of any avocation are incompatible with literary pursuits, or to need the authority of Seneca for the conviction that "leisure without books is the sepulture of the living soul." The first advantage of a literary and scientific institution in provincial towns, is the bringing of those together who only require to see one another in the social light of literary intercourse, to esteem each other's worth more highly than individuals of the same community often do.

Nothing tends more to the small sweet courtesies of life than the extension of know

66

ledge, the removal of ignorance and prejudice. "The commonwealth of letters," to use the elegant language of a modern philosopher, “ is of no party, and of no nation; it is a pure republic, and always at peace; its shades are disturbed not by domestic malice, or foreign levy; they resound not with the cries of faction, or public animosity; falsehood is the only enemy their inhabitants denounce; Truth, and her minister Reason, is the only guide they fol low." In a word, every mode of developing the god-like apprehension which is the connecting medium between mere organic and spiritual existence, is a vindication of our title to immortality, and an evidence of the nobility of that attribute on which we rest our superiority over the brute creation. "It is through literature and science," says Davy, "that we may look forward with confidence to

a state of society in which the different orders and classes of men, will contribute more effectually to the support of each other than they have hitherto done. Considering and hoping that the human species is capable of becoming more enlightened and more happy, we can only expect that the different parts of the great whole of society should be intimately united by means of knowledge; that they should act as the children

of one great Parent, with one determinate end, so that no power may be rendered useless, and no exertions thrown away."

CHAPTER III.

ABUSES OF LITERARY PURSUITS.

THE disadvantages of literature, and consequently the advantages of ignorance, are much better understood in Turkish countries, and a more salutary terror entertained of them than

in

any Christian clime. But even in the latter, there are many good and able men-amongst whom we are happy to be able to place that very respectable and consistent gentleman, Mr. William Cobbett-who regard the march of intellect with no very favourable eyes, and who think, with the martyr of the gridiron, that the