"Scilicet ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes It taketh away the wildness, and barbarism, and fierceness of men's minds; but, indeed, the accent had need be upon fideliter, for a little superficial learning doth rather work a contrary effect: it taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the mind, and to accept of nothing until it is examined and tried. As there is a connexion between knowledge and happiness, it might perhaps be assumed that there is a similar connexion between ignorance and misery, or between error and misery; but it will be an error on the right side to add a few words upon each. And, first, as to the connexion between ignorance and misery. Ignorance looks upon any thing,-upon prussic acid for instance, or upon gunpowder, without ascribing any good or bad effect to either of them, and upon an English word as if it were Arabic. Who then, I repeat, can doubt whether ignorance may not be the parent of misery:-the same truth, a fortiori, extends to error. A young lady partook of some salad with which an onion had been mixed, and for the purpose of destroying the unpleasant odour, she purchased a quanity of camphor, of which she ate ; she was soon seized with violent symptoms of illness, and was conveyed home in a state of insensibility. Such is the nature of error with respect to inanimate creatures. ERROR WITH RESPECT TO MAN. England has long held a high character in foreign. countries for her riches, her courage, her love of liberty, but above all, for her benevolence and hospitality to strangers. This character, so justly earned and so nobly maintained, is known in every part of the globe. When did the forlorn and outcast touch her shores, without finding consolation and shelter? No matter to her whether they came hugging their superstitions as servants of the Pope and the Bourbon, or victims of an attempt to shake off those fetters,refugees for the sacred cause of freedom, a deposed king or a houseless and homeless liberal,―all, all were welcome, free, and unquestioned, except how far they could be served. A few years since the mother of an Italian boy sent her child to England to seek his fortune. She saw him quit his own beautiful country and sunny skies, and did not grieve, because he was going to plentiful, kind, and happy England. He had scarcely landed, when a villain saw the friendless boy, asked him to eat and drink, and play with his children, and then murdered him to sell his body. Such is the nature of error with respect to man. Perhaps no greater error exists than the supposition that two human beings, because they resemble in some respects, resemble in all. There are no two animals that differ more from each other than man from man. How different was Howard from Jefferies! Eve on the first day of her creation from Milwood! Caliban from Ariel! ERROR WITH RESPECT TO MARRIAGE. In a very interesting novel entitled "Marriage," there is the following dialogue between the couple a few weeks after their marriage: "Henry Douglas saw the storm gathering on the brow of his capricious wife, and clasping her in his arms, Are you indeed so changed, my Julia, that you have forgot the time when you used to declare you would prefer a desert with your Henry to a throne with another?' 'No, certainly not changed; but I did not very well know then what a desert was, or at least I had formed rather a different idea of it.' 'What was your idea of a desert?' said her husband, laughing; do tell me, love.' 'Oh, I thought it was a beautiful place, full of roses and myrtles, and smooth green turf and murmuring rivulets; and though very retired, yet not absolutely out of the world, but where one would occasionally see one's friends, and give déjeûnés and fêtes champêtres.'" Such is the nature of errors from misunderstanding the word marriage. "That a It is written in the code of Hindoo laws, woman who on the death of her husband ascends the same burning pile with him, is exalted to heaven as equal in virtue to Arundhati." By such jargon is ignorance and innocence misled. Upon the death of her husband the deluded widow sacrifices herself; she places her dead husband's head on her lap, and, amidst the dancing of maidens and the blessings of priests, joyously lights her funeral pile. Many years have not passed away since, under erro neous notions of piety, England abounded with nunneries and monasteries; and in countries where the Catholic religion prevails they still abound, in defiance of the maxim that nature never says one thing, and wisdom another. Thus error misunderstands the properties of inanimate creatures, as in the case of the camphor; or of animate as in the case of the scorpion; and of man as in the case of the Italian boy; or of the words used to express the institutions of society as in the case of marriage; or of piety as in the widow's burning themselves in India, or nunneries and monasteries. As knowledge consists in understanding the sequence of events, or cause and effect, so error consists in misunderstanding this sequence. A physician who mistakes the consequence of administering a particular medicine, when he calls the next morning in the expectation that his patient is better, finds that he is dead. NOTE (C). Love will not be spurred to what it loathes. ASCHAM. "Socrates, whose judgement in Plato is plainlie this: No learning ought to be learned with bondage: for bodily labours, wrought by compulsion, hurt not the bodie; but any learning learned by compulsion, tarrieth not long in the mynde.' And leste proude wittes, that love not to be contraryed, but have lust to wrangle and trifle away troth, will say that Socrates meaneth not this of children's teaching, but of some other higher learninge, hear what Socrates, in the same place, doth more plainlie say: My deare friend, bryng not up your children in learninge by compulsion and feare, but by playing and pleasure.' "Fonde scholemasters neither can understand, nor will follow, this good counsell of Socrates; but wise ryders, in their office, can and will do both; which is the onelie cause that, commonlie, the yong jentlemen of England go so unwillinglie to schole, and run so fast to the stable: for, in very deede, fond scholemasters, by feare, do beate into them the hatred of learning; and wise ryders, by jentle allurementes, do breed up in them the love of ryding. They finde feare and bondage in scholes, they feel libertie and freedome in stables s; which causeth them utterlie to abhorre the one, and most gladlie to haunt the other. Beate a child if he daunce not well, and cherish him though he learne not well, ye shall have him unwilling to go to daunce, and glad to go to his booke: knock him alwaies when he draweth his shafte ill, and favour him againe though he fault at his booke, ye shall have him verie loth to be in the field, and verie willing to be in the schole. "And one example, whether love or feare doth worke more in a childe for vertue and learninge, I will gladlie report; which maie be herd with some pleasure, and folowed with more profit. Before I went into Germanie, I came to Brodegate, in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholdinge. Her parentes, the Duke and the Duches, with all the |