pupils to judge strictly of the
reasoning which they meet with in books; no names of high authority
should ever preclude an author's arguments from examination.

The following passage from St. Pierre's Etudes de la Nature, was read
to two boys: H----, 14 years old; S----, 10 years old.

"Hurtful insects, present (the same) oppositions and signs of
destruction; the gnat, thirsty of human blood, announces himself to
our sight by the white spots with which his brown body is speckled;
and by the shrill sound of his wings, which interrupts the calm of the
groves, he announces himself to our ear as well as to our eye. The
carnivorous wasp is streaked like the tiger, with bands of black over
a yellow ground."

H---- and S---- both at once exclaimed, that these spots in the gnat,
and streaks in the wasp, had nothing to do with their stinging us.
"The buzzing of the gnat," said S----, "would, I think, be a very
agreeable sound to us, if we did not know that the gnat would sting,
and that it was coming near us; and, as to the wasp, I remember
stopping one day upon the stairs to look at the beautiful black and
yellow body of a wasp. I did not think of danger, nor of its stinging
me then, and I did not know that it was like the tiger. After I had
been stung by a wasp, I did not think a wasp such a beautiful animal.
I think it is very often from our knowing that animals can hurt us,
that we think them ugly. We might as well say," continued S----,
pointing to a crocus which was near him, "we might as well say, that a
man who has a yellow face has the same disposition as that crocus, or
that the crocus is in every thing like the man, because it is yellow."

Cicero's "curious consolation for deafness" is properly noticed by Mr.
Hume. It was read to S---- a few days ago, to try whether he could
detect the sophistry: he was not previously told what was thought of
it by others.

"How many languages are there," says Cicero, "which you do not
understand! The Punic, Spanish, Gallic, Egyptian, &c. With regard to
all these, you are as if you were deaf, and yet you are indifferent
about the matter. Is it then so great a misfortune to be deaf to one
language more?"

"I don't think," said S----, "that was at all a good way to console
the man, because it was putting him in mind that he was more deaf than
he thought he was. He did not think of those languages, perhaps, till
he was put in mind that he could not hear them."

In stating any