modern; history, philosophy, the most sublime theology, and the arts and sciences. There was not a book but he had read, not an eminent man, either as a profound thinker, or as an excellent writer, but he had entertained: none quitted him without adding to their knowledge, or correcting their ideas, either by his shrewd questions, or by his judicious reflections. His conversation was therefore delightful, because he knew how to adapt it to the talents of each; not merely talking with military men of their campaigns, with courtiers of their interests, with politicians of their negociations, but also with inquisitive travellers of their observations and discoveries, either in nature, government, or commerce; with the artisan of his inventions; and, lastly, with men of science, concerning the most extraordinary things they had met with in their respective pursuits.'

The Russian prince Potemkin, according to the character given of him to the author by an ambassador who had been intimately acquainted with him, had acquired, by the same means, an extraordinary fund of information, though he had learned nothing from books. He had conversed with able men in all professions, and in all the arts and sciences. None ever understood better the art of appropriating to himself the knowledge

of others, and converting it into his private property. He would have astonished alike in conversation the scholar and the artist, the artisan and the divine. His knowledge was not profound; the kind of life which he had led prevented him from penetrating deeply into any thing; but it was very extensive and multifarious. How much better informed he must be who has drawn with discernment all his knowledge from those two equally abundant sources, reading and society; or from the extracts made by himself from the most esteemed works, and from the instructive conversations, the substance of which he has noted down!

No one, says the author of a biographical account of Locke, ever understood better than that illustrious philosopher the art of suiting himself to every kind of capacity, which is perhaps one of the surest signs of a great genius. In conversation he had a particular knack of making people talk on the subjects with which they were best acquainted. With a gardener he would talk of gardening, with a jeweller of precious stones, with a chemist of chemistry. "In this manner," said he, "I please all these persons, who, in general, cannot speak to the purpose of any thing else. Finding that I interest

myself in their occupations, they are delighted to display their skill, while I, for my part, profit by their conversation."

By means of this practice, Locke had actually acquired an extraordinary knowledge of all the arts, and he extended it every day. He was accustomed to say, that a knowledge of the arts contains more genuine philosophy than all those brilliant and learned hypotheses, which, having no connection with the nature of things, answer in reality no other purpose than to waste the time of the inventors, as well as of those who strive to understand them. By the different questions which he put to people of all professions he found out the secret of their art, of which they were themselves ignorant, and frequently suggested new and useful hints, which they turned to good account.

You have ensured the beneficial employment

of your time by a judicious application of all your moments to useful objects; you appreciate also the advantages accruing from the due selection and employment of men; you avoid those by whom you have less to gain than to lose, and seek the society of such whose company and conversation are always profitable.

This method, which we have recommended

as particularly useful to the soldier and the traveller, is equally advantageous to the studious man, who, confined within a narrow circle, and deriving the materials for his journal from reading, from reflection, from his recollections, and not from society, likewise reaps every day an abundant harvest, and carefully classes the extracts or analyses of the good works which he has read and meditated upon, or reviews the successive parts of the sciences which he has studied. In this manner, a person may go through in a few hours the substance of what he has read and observed in the space of several months.*

If we propose to embrace several sciences, we can have as many separate journals as we have different kinds of works to extract from, or sciences, the scattered notions of which we are desirous of collecting, in order to combine them into one whole. The more we increase our stock of knowledge, by this method, the more strongly we feel urged still farther to augment it, and the more we take delight in cultivating our minds, and in the pure pleasures attached to successful study.

* See note 2, subjoined to this Essay, containing an account of a particular method of reading, studying, and analysing historical works.

Order and clearness, lucidus ordo, should preside over all our studies. A suitable division of time, a certain and uniform method, chosen with discernment and followed with perseverance; an object of real and practical utility, whenever we apply ourselves to any science; variety in our pursuits, to afford recreation to the mind; a judicious and alternate mixture of occupation and rest, of bodily and intellectual exercise, of reading and instructive conversation; the salutary practice of concentrating our powers upon a single point, instead of spreading them, and thus losing in depth and solidity what we seem to gain in surface and extent; the advantage which thence accrues of completely mastering every subject that we take up, and of successively resolving all the most difficult and the most interesting questions, by means of doubt, reflection, observation, and experience; such are some of the effects of the proposed method. It tends more particularly to strengthen the mind, and to impart to it a useful habit of observation and meditation.