a candidate or circumstance, without which this happiness cannot be tasted, pure and unabated.

Virtue is the best preservative of health, as it prescribes. temperance, and such a regulation of our passions, as is most condusive to the well-being of the animal economy, so that it is, at the same time, the only true happiness of the mind, and the best means of preserving the health of the body.

If our desires are to the things of this world, they are never to be satisfied; if our great view is upon those of the next, the expectation of them is an infinately higher satisfaction, than the enjoyment of those of the present.

There is no happiness then, but in a virtuous, and selfapproving conduct, unless our actions will bear the test of our sober judgments, and reflections upon them, they are not the actions, and consequently not the happiness of a rational being.

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 409, Oct. 14, 1736. THE world but a few ages since, was in a very poor condition, as to trade and navigation, nor indeed, were they much better in other matters of useful knowlege. It was a green-headed time, every useful improvement was hid from them, they had neither looked into heaven, nor earth, into the sea, nor land, as has been done since. They had philosophy without experiments, mathematics without instruments, geometry without scale, astronomy without demon

stration.

They made war without powder, shot, cannon, or mor、 tars; nay, the mob made their bon-fires without squibs, or crackers. They went to sea, without compass, and sailed without the needle. They viewed the stars, without telescopes, and measured latitudes without observation. Learning had no printing-press, writing no paper, and paper no ink; the lover was forced to send his mistress a deal board for a love letter, and a billet doux might be about the size of an ordinary trencher. They were clothed without manufacture, and their richest robes were the skins of the

most formidable monsters; they carried on trade without books, and correspondence without posts; their merchants kept no accounts, their shop-keepers no cash books, they had surgery without anatomy, and physicions without the materia medica, they gave emetics without ipecacuanha, drew blisters without cantharides, and cured agues without the bark.

As for geographical discoveries, they had neither seen the North Cape, nor the Cape of Good Hope south. All the discovered inhabited world, which they knew and conversed with, was circumscribed within very narrow limits, viz. France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Greece; the lesser Asia, the west part of Persia, Arabia, the north parts of Africa, and the islands of the Mediterranean sea, and this was the whole world to them; not that even these countries were fully known neither, and several parts of them not enquired into at all. Germany was known little farther than the banks of the Elbe; Poland as little beyond the Vistula, or Hungary a little beyond the Danube; Muscovy or Russia, perfectly unknown as much as China beyond it, and India only by a little commerce upon the coast, about Surat and Malabar; Africa had been more unknown, but by the ruin of the Carthaginians, all the western coast of it was sunk out of knowlege again, and forgotten; the northern coast of Africa, in the Mediterranean, remained known, and that was all, for the Saracens over-running the nations, which were planted there, ruined commerce, as well as religion; the Baltic Sea was not discovered, nor even the navigation of it known; for the Teutonic knights came not thither till the 13th century.

America was not heard of, nor so much as a suggestion in the minds of men, that any part of the world lay that way. The coasts of Greenland, or Spitsbergen, and the whale fishing, not known; the best navigators in the world, at that time, would have fled from a whale, with much more fright and horror, than from the devil, in the most terrible shapes they had been told he appeared in.

The coasts of Angola, Congo, the Gold and the Grain coasts, on the west side of Africa, from whence, since that time, such immense wealth has been drawn, not discovered, nor the least inquiry made after them. All the East India and China trade, not only undiscovered, but out of the reach of expectation! Coffee and tea, (those modern blessings of mankind) had never been heard of: all the unbounded ocean, we now call the South Sea, was hid, and unknown all the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the mouth of the Straights, was frightful, and terrible in the distant prospect, nor durst any one peep into it, otherwise than as they might creep along the coast of Africa, towards Sallee, or Santa Cruz. The North Seas was hid in a veil of impenetrable darkness; the White Sea, or Arch Angel, was a very modern discovery; not found out, till Sir Hugh Willoughby doubled the North Cape, and paid dear for the adventure, being frozen to death with all his crew, on the coast of Lapland; while his companions ship, with the famous Mr. Chancellor, went on to the Gulph of Russia, called the White Sea where no Christian strangers had ever been before him.

In these narrow circumstances stood the world's know. lege at the beginning of the 15th century, when men of genius began to look abroad, and about them. Now, as it was wonderful to see a world so full of people, and people so capable of improving, yet so stupid, and so blind, so ignorant, and so perfectly unimproved; it was wonderful to see, with what a general alacrity they took the alarm, almost all together; preparing themselves as it were on a sudden, by a general inspiration, to spread knowlege through the earth, and to search into every thing, that it was impossible

to uncover.

How surprising is it to look back, so little a way behind us, and see, that even in less than two hundred years, all this (now so self-wise) part of the world did not so much as know, whether there was any such place, as a Russia, a China, a Guinea, a Greenland, or a North Cape? That as to America, it was never supposed, there was any such

place, neither had the world, though they stood upon the shoulders of four thousand years experience, the least thought, so much as that there was any land that way!

As they were ignorant of places, so of things also; so vast are the improvements of science, that all our knowlege of mathematics, of nature, of the brightest part of human wisdom, had their admission among us within these two last centuries.

What was the world then, before? And to what were the heads and hands of mankind applied? The rich had no commerce, the poor no employment; war and the sword was the great field of honor, the stage of preferment, and you have scarce a man eminent in the world, for any thing before that time, but for a furious outrageous falling upon his fellow-creatures, like Nimrod, and his successors of modern memory.

The world is now daily encreasing in experimental knowlege; and let no man flatter the age, with pretending we have arrived to a perfection of discoveries.

What's now discovered, only serves to show,
That nothing's known, to what is yet to know.

ON THE USEFULNESS OF THE MATHEMATICS.

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 360, Oct. 30, 1735.

MATHEMATICS originally signifies any kind of discipline or learning, but now it is taken for that science, which teaches or contemplates whatever is capable of being numbered or measured. That part of the mathematics. which relates to numbers only, is called arithmetic; and that which is concerned about measure in general, whether length, breadth, motion, force, &c. is called geometry.

As to the usefulness of arithmetic, it is well known that no business, commerce, trade, or employment whatsoever, even from the merchant to the shopkeeper, &c. can be managed and carried on, without the assistance of numbers; for by these the trader computes the value of all sorts of goods that he dealeth in, does his business with ease and certainty, and informs himself how matters stand at any

time with respect to men, money, or merchandise, to profit and loss, whether he goes forward or backward, grows richer or poorer. Neither is this science only useful to the merchant, but is reckoned the primum mobile (or first mover) of all mundane affairs in general, and is useful for all sorts and degrees of men, from the highest to the lowest.

As to the usefulness of geometry, it is as certain, that no curious art, or mechanic work, can either be invented, improved, or performed, without its assisting principles.

It is owing to this, that astronomers are put into a way of making their observations, coming at the knowlege of the extent of the heavens, the duration of time, the motions, magnitudes, and distances of the heavenly bodies, their situations, positions, risings, settings, aspects, and eclipses; also the measure of seasons, of years, and of ages.

It is by the assistance of this science, that geographers present to our view at once, the magnitude and form of the whole earth, the vast extent of the seas, the divisions of empires, kingdoms, and provinces.

It is by the help of geometry, the ingenious mariner is instructed how to guide a ship through the vast ocean, from one part of the earth to another, the nearest and safest way, and in the shortest time.

By help of this science the architects take their just measures for the structure of buildings, as private houses, churches, palaces, ships, fortifications, &c.

By its help engineers conduct all their works, take the situation and plan of towns, forts and castles, measure their distances from one another, and carry their measure into places that are only accessible to the eye.

From hence also is deduced that admirable art of drawing sun-dials on any plane howsoever situate, and for any part of world, to point out the exact time of the day, sun's declination, altitude, amplitude, azimuth, and other astronomical matters.

By geometry, the surveyor is directed how to draw a map of any country, to divide his lands, and to lay down and plot any piece of ground, and thereby discover the