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The best method, therefore, of epitomizing books, is from recollection to express the author's ideas in our own words. In this exercise the memory is exerted, and the style is improved. We make what we write our own; and we rise above an employment that is merely manual and mechanical.

A proper variety too, will greatly contribute to render reading agreeable; for, though it is true that not more than one or two books should be commenced at a time, yet when these be finished, it will be proper, if any weariness be felt, to take up another written in a different style, or on a different subject; to change from poetry to prose, and from prose to poetry.

Of all that is conducive to improvement from reading, none perhaps is more effectual than familiar conversation. This interests the mind, and stimulates it to additional inquiry. It is also of essential use in removing whatever difficulties may have arisen, and in rivetting in our minds the ideas we have collected ; and he who would read advantageously, must in some measure attend to the time of the day and the season of the year. The morning is universally allowed to be the best time for study. Those faculties, which before dinner are capable of engaging in the most acute and sublime disquisitions, are found, after dinner, to be comparatively dull and stupid. In weather which drives us to the fireside for comfort, we find that delight in books, which at other times we seek in sunshine, and the sweets of rural scenery.

RULES FOR IMPROVING THE MIND.

LET the enlargement of your knowledge be one constant view and design in life; since there is no time or place, no transaction, occurrence, or engagement, which excludes us from this method of improving the mind.

When we are in the house or in the city, wherever we turn our eyes, we see the works of men when we are in the country we behold more of the works of God. The skies above, and the ground beneath us, and the animal and vegetable world round about us, may entertain us with ten thousand varieties.

From the observation of the day and night, the hours and the flying minutes, learn a wise improvement of time; and be watchful to seize every opportunity to increase in knowledge. From the vices and follies of others observe what is hateful in them; consider that such a practice looks as ill or worse in yourself. From their virtues learn something worthy of your imitation. From your natural powers, sensation, judgment, memory, hands, feet, &c., make this inference, that they are not given you for nothing, but for some useful employment, for the good of your fellowcreatures, your own best interest and final happiness.

Thus, from every appearance in nature, and from every occurrence of life, you may derive natural, moral, and religious observations to entertain your

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minds, as well as rules of conduct in the affairs relating to this life, and that which is to come.

Let the circumstances or situations of life be what they will, a man should never neglect the improvement that is to be derived from observation.

Let him travel into the East or West Indies, and fulfil the duties of the military or mercantile life there; let him rove through the earth or the seas for his own humour as a traveller, or pursue his diversions in what part of the world he please as a gentleman; let prosperous or adverse fortune call him to the most distant part of the globe; still let him carry on his knowledge, and the improvement of his faculties, by wise observations.

But on making your observations on persons, take care of indulging that curiosity, which is ever inquir ing into private and domestic affairs, with an endless itch of learning the secret histories of families. Such curiosity begets suspicions and jealousies, and furnishes matter for the evil passions of the mind, and the impertinencies of discourse.

Be not also too hasty to erect general theories from a few particular observations, appearances, or experiments. This is what the logicians call a false induction. A hasty determination of some universal principles, without a due survey of all the particular cases which may be included in them, is the way to lay a trap for our own understandings in the investigation of any subject, and we shall often be taken captive by mistake and falsehood.-Watts.

CONVERSATION.

CONVERSATION calls to light what has been lodged in the recesses and secret chambers of the soul. By occasional hints and incidents, it brings former useful notions into remembrance; it unfolds and displays the hidden treasures of knowledge, with which reading, observation, and study, had before furnished the mind. By mutual discourse, the soul is awakened, and allured to bring forth its hoards of knowledge, and it learns how to render them most useful to mankind; but a man of vast reading without conversation, is like a miser who lives only for himself.

In free and friendly conversation, our intellectual powers are more animated, and our spirits act with a superior vigour in the pursuit of unknown truths. There is a sharpness and sagacity of thought that attends it, beyond what we find whilst we are shut up in retirement. Often does it happen, that in free discourse new thoughts are strangely struck out, and those seeds of truth sparkle and blaze through the company, which in calm and silent reading would never have been excited. By conversation, we both give and receive this benefit; as flints when put into motion and striking against each other, produce on both sides living fire, which would never have risen from the same materials in a state of rest.

In conversing with ingenious and learned men, we

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bring our sentiments to the test, and learn in a more compendious way, what the world will judge of them; what objections may be raised against them; what defects there are in our schemes; and how to correct our mistakes; which advantages are not easily obtained by our private meditations, for self-love, as well as the narrowness of our views, tempts us all to pass too favourable an opinion on our own schemes; whereas the variety of genius in our several associates, will give happy notices how our opinion will stand in the view of mankind at large.

Another considerable advantage of conversation is, that it furnishes the student with a knowledge of men and the affairs of life, as reading furnishes him with book-learning. A man who has dwelt all his days among books, may have amassed together a heap of notions, and still be a mere scholar, which is a contemptible sort of character in the world. A hermit, who has been always shut up in his cell in a college, has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul, and all his airs of behaviour have a certain awkwardness in them, but these awkward airs are worn off by degrees in company; the rust and the mould are filed and brushed off by polite conversation. The scholar then becomes a citizen or a gentleman, a neighbour or a friend; he learns how to dress his sentiments in the fairest colours, as well as to set them in the clearest light. Thus, he produces his ideas to public inspection with honour, he makes use of them in the world, and he improves his theories by practice.-Watts.