along the road, or standing on the road, it would appear that its ill consequences are not understood, or being understood, some other and strong er motives lead to its neglect. What that principle is, we fear there is no difficulty in tracing, and it cannot be corrected until the general habits of our countrymen improve in neatness and orderly attention. The disappearance of it will be one of those symptoms of our gradual improvement, in this respect, which we will hail with delight. 7th, Every road should be metalled from side to side, in the way the Parliamentary roads in the Highlands are. We don't enlarge upon this, as the example of these roads will amply prove the superiority of the practice. Where a summer road does exist, it ought to be kept well rounded off from the edge of the metal to the ditch; if it is kept wet and poachy, it affects the durability of the whole road; if it is allowed to be worn away from the edge of the metal, the latter is gradually worn down, undermined, and run away with. This happens chiefly on sharp turns, and down hills. The horses throw one of the wheels of the carts off the metal, in order to make it act as a drag. In all such situations, the metal ought to extend from ditch to ditch, whether the remainder of the road be so constructed or not. The road from Perth to the bridge over the Isla, and the Cupar Angus road, will prove what we mean, though every road in Scotland will afford an example of it. As to the repair of roads in Scotland, we would recommend to attention that course which has lately made the roads of East Lothian so good; and that plan which has been adopted in the new part of the great north road between the Queensferry and Perth, especially south of Kinross, and, generally speaking, on the old part of that road through Stratherne. Even on these roads, however, there is room for much improvement, and we earnestly recommend, as an example to be followed, that activity, constant attention, and industry, which is now employed in repairing the Parliamentary roads in the Highlands, and which may be pronounced nearly perfect. One thing we earnestly recommend to the East Lothian and great north road trustees, which is, that they

should cart all their materials to the road side during the long dry summer days, so that there may be no carting for repairs upon the roads during the short wet days of winter, the wheelbarrow then doing all the repairs; a use of the road, from its frequency, and the weight of materials, most injurious, and which, by being exempted from the payment of toll, is wholly loss.

We have done. Whether what we have ventured to state will be well or ill taken by our countrymen, it is not for us to hazard a conjecture; indeed, we can hardly venture to hope that the observations which we have made will ever attract sufficient notice to create that discussion and observation requisite to provoke attention to what, by some, may not be considered defects, but which never can be reme died until they are fully felt and seen as such. This much, however, we can say, that to none will we yield in an ardent admiration of our country; and to that feeling alone are the foregoing remarks owing. It has been our object to confine the illustration of our views to general principles as much as possible, and if an allusion to particular defects has occasionally been made, it was because it was otherwise impossible toget at the matter in a less direct way. What we have stated is not the result of a momentary impulse. It is, on the contrary, produced with some hesitation, after having lain by us for many years; each successive year, however, only adding to our convic tion of the truth, and the importance of the subjects to which our observations have been directed. And, let it ever be remembered, that it is the gentlemen of Scotland upon whom the disgrace of these defects rest, and by whom alone they can be removed.

The preceding communication, transmitted by a gentleman of rank and fortune, is inserted as we received it. On some points we cannot but think that his remarks, though in almost every instance just in themselves, are rather more generally applied than might have been wished. The subjects of it, however, are interesting; and we shall be glad to afford to our correspondents an opportunity of discussing them with candour and impartiality.-EDITOR.

LETTER OF ADVICE, FROM MR GOD-
WIN, TO A YOUNG AMERICAN, ON

THE COURSE OF STUDIES IT MIGHT
BE MOST ADVANTAGEOUS FOR HIM
TO PURSUE.

MY DEAR SIR,-I have thought, at least twenty times since you left London, of the promise I made you, and was at first inclined to consider it, as you appear to have done, as wholly unconditional, and to be performed out of hand. And I should, perhaps, have proceeded in that way; but that my situation often draws me, with an imperious summons, in a thousand different directions; and thus the first heat of my engagement subsided. I then altered my mind, and made a resolution, that you should never have the thing you asked for, unless you wrote to remind me of my promise. I thought within myself, that, if the advice was not worth that, it was not worth my trouble in digesting. From the first moment I saw you in this house, I conceived a partiality for you, founded on physiognomy in an extensive sense, as comprehending countenance, voice, figure, gesture, and demeanour; but if you forgot me, as soon as I was out of your sight, I determined that this partiality should not prove a source of trouble to me.

And, now that you have discharged your part of the condition I secretly prescribed, I am very apprehensive that you have formed an exaggerated idea of what I can do for you in this respect. I am a man of very limited observation and inquiry, and know little but of such things as lie within those limits. If I wished to form a universal library, I should feel myself in conscience obliged to resort to those persons who knew more in one and another class of literature than I did, and to lay their knowledge in whatever they understood best under contribution. But this I do not mean to undertake for you; I will reason but of what I know; and shall leave you to learn of the professors themselves, as to the things to which I have never dedicated myself.

You will find many of my ideas of the studies to be pursued, and the books to be read, by young persons, in the Enquirer, and more to the same purpose in the preface to a small book for children, entitled, "Scripture His

tories, given in the words of the original," in two volumes 18mo.

It is my opinion, that the imagination is to be cultivated in education, more than the dry accumulation of science and natural facts. The noblest part of man is his moral nature; and I hold morality principally to depend, agreeably to the admirable maxim of Jesus, upon our putting ourselves in the place of another, feeling his feelings, and apprehending his desires; in a word, doing to others, as we would wish, were we they, to be done unto.

Another thing that may be a great and most essential aid to our cultivating moral sentiments, will consist in our studying the best models, and figuring to ourselves the most excellent things of which human nature is capable. For this purpose, there is nothing so valuable as the histories of Greece and Rome. There are certain cold-blooded reasoners who say, that the ancients were in nothing better than ourselves,-that their stature of mind was no taller, and their feelings in nothing more elevated,—and that human nature, in all ages and countries, is the same. I do not myself believe this. But, if it is so, certainly ancient history is the bravest and sublimest fiction that it ever entered into the mind of man to create. No poets, or romance writers, or story tellers, have ever been able to feign such models of an erect, and generous, and public-spirited, and selfpostponing mind, as are to be found in Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. If the story be a falsehood, the emotions, and, in many readers, the never-to-be-destroyed impressions it produces, are real; and I am firmly of opinion, that the man that has not been imbued with these tales in his earliest youth, can never be so noble a creature, as the man with whom they have made a part of his education stands a chance to be.

To study the Greek and Roman history, it were undoubtedly best to read it in their own historians. To do this, we must have a competent mastery of the Greek and Latin languages. But it would be a dangerous delusion to put off the study long, under the idea that a few years hence we will read these things in the originals. You will find the story told,

manly, and distinct, full of severe graces, and heroic enthusiasm. The modern excels more in tenderness, and the indulgence of a tone of magnificent obscurity. The ancients, upon the whole, had more energy; we have more of the wantoning of the imagination, and the conjuring up a fairy vision

Of some gay creatures of the element That in the colours of the rainbow live, And play in the plighted clouds.

It is not necessary to decide whether the ancient or the modern poetry is best; both are above all price; but it is certain, that the excellencies that are all our own, have a magnificence, and a beauty, and a thrilling character, that nothing can surpass. The best English poets are Shakespeare, and Milton, and Chaucer, and Spenser. Ariosto is, above all others, the poet of chivalry. The Greek and Latin poets it is hardly necessary to enumerate. There is one book of criticism, and perhaps only one, that I would recommend to you, Schlegel's Leetures on Dramatic Literature. The book is deformed, indeed, with a pretty copious sprinkling of German mysticism, but it is fraught with a great multitude of admirable observations.

The mention of criticism leads me to a thought, which I will immediate ly put down. I would advise a young person to be very moderate in his attention to new books. In all the world, I think, there is scarcely anything more despicable, than the man that confines his reading to the publications of the day; he is next in rank to the boarding-school Miss, who devours every novel that is spawned forth from the press of the season. If you look into reviews, let it be principally to wonder at the stolidity of your contemporaries, who regard then as the oracles of learning.

One other course of reading I would earnestly recommend to you; and many persons would vehemently exclaim against me for doing so,-metaphysics. It excels, perhaps, all other studies in the world, in the character of a practical logic, a disciplining and subtilising of the rational faculties. Metaphysics, we are told, is a mere jargon, where men dispute for ever, without gaining a single step; it is

nothing but specious obscurity and ignorance. This is not my opinion. In the first place, metaphysics is the theoretical science of the human mind; and it would be strange if mind was the only science not worth studying, or the only science in which real knowledge could not be acquired. Secondly, It is the theoretical science of the universe, and of causation, and must settle, if ever they can be settled, the first principles of natural religion. As to its uncertainty, I cannot conceive that any one with an unprejudiced mind, can read what has been best written on free-will and necessity, on self-love and benevolence, and other grand questions, and then say that nothing has been attained, and that all this is impertinent and senseless waste of words. I would particularly recommend Bishop Berkeley, especially his Principles of Human Knowledge, and Hune's Treatise of Human Nature, and Hartley's Observations on Man. Your own Jonathan Edwards has written excellently on Free-will; and Hutcheson and Hazlitt on Self-love and Benevolence. The title of Hutcheson's book is, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, and of Hazlitt's, An Enquiry into the Principles of Human Action. No young man can read Andrew Baxter's Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, without being the better for it.

It is time that I should now come to the consideration of language. Language is as necessary an instrument for conducting the operations of the mind, as the hands are for conducting the operations of the body; and the most obvious way of acquiring the power of weighing and judging words aright, is by enabling ourselves to compare the words and forms of different languages. I, therefore, highly approve of classical education. It has often been said by the wise men of the world, What a miserable waste of time it is, that boys should be occupied for successive year after year in acquiring the Greek and Latin tongues! How much more usefully would these years be employed in learning the knowledge of things, and making a substantial acquaintance with the studies of men! I totally dissent from this. As to the knowledge of things, young men will soon enough be plunged in the mire of cold

and sordid realities, such things as it is the calamity of man that he should be condemned to consume so much of his mature life upon; and I should wish that those who can afford the leisure of education, should begin with acquiring something a little generous and elevated. As to the studies of men, if boys begin with them before they are capable of weighing them, they will acquire nothing but prejudices, which it will be their greatest interest and highest happiness, with infinite labour, to unlearn. Words are happily a knowledge, to the acquisition of which the faculties of boys are perfectly competent, and which can do them nothing but good. Nature has decreed that human beings should be so long in a state of nonage, that it demands some ingenuity to discover how the years of boys of a certain condition in life may be employed innocently in acquiring good habits, and none of that appearance of reason and wisdom which, in boys, surpasses in nothing the instructions we bestow on monkies and parOne of the best maxims of the eloquent Rousseau is where he says, The master-piece of a good education is to know how to lose time profitably.

rots.

Every man has a language that is peculiarly his own; and it should be a great object with him to learn whatever may give illustration to the genius of that. Our language is the English. For this purpose, then, I would recommend to every young man who has leisure, to acquire some knowledge of the Saxon, and one or two other northern languages. Horne Tooke, in his Diversions of Purley, is the only man that has done much towards analysing the elements of the English tongue. But another, and perhaps still more important way, to acquire a knowledge and true relish of the genius of the English tongue, is, by studying its successive authors from age to age. It is an eminent happiness we possess, that our authors from generation to generation are so much worth studying. The first resplendent genius in our literary annals is Chaucer. From this age to that of Elizabeth we have not much; but it will be good not entirely to drop any of the links of the chain. The period of Elizabeth is perfectly admirable. Roger Ascham, and Gold

ing's translation of Mornay's Trewnesse of Christian Religion, are among the best canonical books of genuine English. Next come the translators of that age, who are worthy to be studied day and night by those who would perfectly feel the genius of our language. Among these, Phaer's Virgil, Chapman's Homer, and Sir Thomas North's Plutarch, are, perhaps, the best, and are, in my opinion, incomparably superior to the later translations of those authors. Of course, I hardly need say, that Lord Bacon is one of the first writers that has appeared in the catalogue of human creatures, and one of those who is most worthy to be studied. I might have brought him in among the metaphysicians, but I preferred putting him here. Nothing can be more magnificent and impressive than his language: it is rather that of a god than a man. I would also specially recommend Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and the writings of Sir Thomas Browne. No man, I suppose, is to be told, that the dramatic writers of the age of Elizabeth are among the most astonishing specimens of human intellect. Shakespeare is the greatest, and stands at an immense distance from all the rest; but, though he outshines them, he does not put out their light. Ben Jonson is himself a host; of Beaumont and Fletcher I cannot think without enthu siasm; and Ford and Massinger well deserve to be studied. Even French literature was worthy of some notice in these times; and Montaigne is entitled to rank with some of the best English prose-writers, his contempo raries.

In looking over what I have written, I think I have not said enough on the subject of modern history. Your language is English, the frame of your laws and your law-courts is essentially English; therefore, and because the English moral and intellectual character ranks the first of modern times, I think English history is entitled to your preference. Whoever reads Engfish history must take Hume for his text. The subtlety of his mind, the depth of his conceptions, and the surpassing graces of his composition, must always place him in the first class of writers. His work is tarnished with a worthless partiality to the race of kings that. Scotland sent to