and to resign this fugitive and local science to those whose situation enables them, as one of our pocts has expressed it,

To catch the manners living as they rise.

It must likewise be admitted, that the recluse is equally shut out from au exact knowledge of business, which, like all other practical skill, can only be acquired in the school of experience. Here then, as in the former instance, we allow the man of the world to bear away the palm without contest; he must suffer us, however, in what remains, to dispute his claim to superiority.

II. The knowledge of the world in the second sense we have stated, or to know the general principles and views by which it is governed, peculiarly belongs to him who has learned to retire inward, and to watch the secret workings of his own mind; for, since no direct access can be had to the motives of any one's actions except our own, it is evident that, without

this previous self-inspection, our knowJedge of the world can be little more than theatrical.

We might illustrate this, were it necessary, by a familiar instance. Suppose a person curious to explore the principles upon which watches were constructed, and that there was one, and only one, of this sort of time-keeper which he could take to pieces, and so reduce its several parts, its spring, its balance, and its wheels, with the regular adjustment of the whole, to a minute examination; it may now be asked whether he might not, by this method alone, come to understand the general nature and construction of watches: and whether it is probable that a bare survey of the external forms of all other watches would supply his omission in this instance? Or rather, if it be not almost certain, that such a superficial view, after all that he could collect from it, would leave him much in the dark respecting the internal movements and principles in question?

}

Apply this to the case before us, and the argument will conclude more strongly; since, in the structure of the little machine here mentioned, an ingenious artificer might possibly introduce powers before unknown, whereas the principles of the human con~ stitution are fixed and determined, and exist the same in every individual of the entire species. As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man*. This sentence of a profound observer of men and things, stands confirmed by the experience and suffrage of all ages. There is therefore no need to wander into foreign countries, to visit the courts of princes, or the huts of peasants, or to resort to places of business or amusement, to obtain a general knowledge of human nature in its moral constitution and qualities; he who looks narrowly into himself will find it there.

Nor is it by means of self-inspection thus known in general only, but likewise * Prov. xxvii. 19.

own.

in many of its particular modifications and individualities. Man' is a being subject to continual mutation, and sometimes in the course of a very short period undergoes a great variety of moral transformations; and he who attends critically to these changes, will easily enter into the principles and feelings of others whose character and situation are very different from his This faculty of intuition is chiefly seen in persons of impressible tempers, and of what are called nervous habits, who readily assume one character after another, and so by turns can take up every part in the drama of life. When this susceptibility is in conjunction with a philosophic spirit, little more is wanting to develope the interior of society, in all its various classes, and amidst the surprising diversity of its appearances.

As this is a point not often considered, the reader may not be displeased if we insist upon it a moment longer. Much of the variety in the characters of men pro

ceeds from the variety of bodily temperament, which has sometimes been divided into these four kinds, the phlegmatic, the sanguine, the choleric, and the melancholic; but which will better be understood by enumerating their particular qualities, than by these general denominations. The first may be described as cold, timid, suspicious, deliberate, philosophic; the second, on the contrary, as warm, presuming, generous, vehement, pathetic; the third, as irascible, severe, bold, discerning; the last, as a composition of these three, refined and heightened by imagination. This is the complexion which, in the opinion of Aristotle, is attached to all extraordinary genius; it forms the basis, according to the part which predominates, of a general, a statesman, a poet, or a philosopher; and without it no high degree of excellence, in any department of life, contemplative or active, is ordinarily to be expected; and perhaps it is no where more displayed than in that native perspicacity which looks through the spirits of men with very little aid from experience.