s being usually built on an undefinable
chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of
reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide
every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not
convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom, it must be
granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of
reform is rapidly diffusing itself; and though I have heard cold-blooded
declaimers assert, that these shades of science are become the retreats
of ignorance, and the haunts of dissipation, I consider them as the
great schools of urbanity, and favourite seats of the _belles lettres_.
By the _belles lettres_, I mean history, biography, and poetry; that all
these are universally cultivated, I can exemplify by the manner in which
a highly accomplished young man, who is considered as a model by his
fellow-collegians, divides his hours.

"At breakfast I found him studying the marvellous and eventful history
of Baron Munchausen; a work whose periods are equally free from the
long-winded obscurity of Tacitus, and the asthmatic terseness of
Sallust. While his hair was dressing, he enlarged his imagination and
improved his morals by studying Doctor what's his name's abridgement of
Chesterfield's Principles of Politeness. To furnish himself with
biographical information, and add to his stock of useful anecdote, he
studied the Lives of the Highwaymen; in which he found many
opportunities of exercising his genius and judgment in drawing parallels
between the virtues and exploits of these modern worthies, and those
dignified, and almost deified ancient heroes whose deeds are recorded in
Plutarch and Nepos.

"With poetical studies, he is furnished by the English operas, which,
added to the prologues, epilogues, and odes of the day, afford him
higher entertainment than he could find in Homer or Virgil: he has not
stored his memory with many epigrams, but of puns has a plentiful stock,
and in _conundra_ is a wholesale dealer. At the same college I know a
most striking contrast, whose reading"--But as his opponent would hear
no more, my advocate dropped the subject; and I will follow his example.

It seems probable, that when the artist engraved this print, he had only
a general reference to an university lecture; the words _datur vacuum_
were an after-thought. Some prints are without the inscription, and in
some of the early impressions it is writte