ts. When
GOLDONI found his sleep disturbed by the obtrusive ideas still floating
from the studies of the day, he contrived to lull himself to rest by
conning in his mind a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, translating some
word into Tuscan and French; which being a very uninteresting occupation,
at the third or fourth version this recipe never failed. This was an art
of withdrawing attention from the greater to the less emotion; by which,
as the interest weakened, the excitement ceased. MENDELSSOHN, whose feeble
and too sensitive frame was often reduced to the last stage of suffering
by intellectual exertion, when engaged in any point of difficulty, would
in an instant contrive a perfect cessation from thinking, by mechanically
going to the window, and counting the tiles upon the roof of his
neighbour's house. Such facts show how much art may be concerned in the
government of our thoughts.

It is an unquestionable fact that some profound thinkers cannot pursue
their intellectual operations amidst the distractions of light and noise.
With them, attention to what is passing within is interrupted by the
discordant impressions from objects pressing and obtruding on the
external senses. There are indeed instances, as in the case of Priestley
and others, of authors who have pursued their literary works amidst
conversation and their family; but such minds are not the most original
thinkers, and the most refined writers; or their subjects are of a nature
which requires little more than judgment and diligence. It is the mind
only in its fulness which can brood over thoughts till the incubation
produces vitality. Such is the feeling in this act of study. In Plutarch's
time they showed a subterraneous place of study built by Demosthenes, and
where he often continued for two or three months together. Malebranche,
Hobbes, Corneille, and others, darkened their apartment when they wrote,
to concentrate their thoughts, as Milton says of the mind, "in the
spacious circuits of her musing." It is in proportion as we can suspend
the exercise of all our other senses that the liveliness of our conception
increases--this is the observation of the most elegant metaphysician of
our times; and when Lord Chesterfield advised that his pupil--whose
attention wandered on every passing object, which unfitted him for study
--should be instructed in a darkened apartment, he was aware of this
principle; the boy would learn, and retain what he learned,