ord Bacon, that we should
pursue our studies in whatever disposition the mind may be, is excellent.
If happily disposed, we shall gain a great step; and if indisposed, we
"shall work out the knots and strands of the mind, and make the middle
times the more pleasant." Some active lives have passed away in incessant
competition, like those of Mozart, Cicero, and Voltaire, who were
restless, perhaps unhappy, when their genius was quiescent. To such minds
the constant zeal they bring to their labour supplies the absence of that
inspiration which cannot always be the same, nor always at its height.

Industry is the feature by which the ancients so frequently describe an
eminent character; such phrases as "_incredibili industria; diligentia
singulars_" are usual. We of these days cannot conceive the industry of
Cicero; but he has himself told us that he suffered no moments of his
leisure to escape from him. Not only his spare hours were consecrated to
his books; but even on days of business he would take a few turns in his
walk, to meditate or to dictate; many of his letters are dated before
daylight, some from the senate, at his meals, and amid his morning levees.
The dawn of day was the summons of study to Sir William Jones. John
Hunter, who was constantly engaged in the search and consideration of
new facts, described what was passing in his mind by a remarkable
illustration:--he said to Abernethy, "My mind is like a bee-hive." A
simile which was singularly correct; "for," observes Abernethy, "in the
midst of buzz and apparent confusion there was great order, regularity of
structure, and abundant food, collected with incessant industry from the
choicest stores of nature." Thus one man of genius is the ablest
commentator on the thoughts and feelings of another. When we reflect on
the magnitude of the labours of Cicero and the elder Pliny, on those of
Erasmus, Petrarch, Baronius, Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the
base of these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake to admire. These
were the laborious instructors of mankind; their age has closed.

Yet let not those other artists of the mind, who work in the airy looms of
fancy and wit, imagine that they are weaving their webs, without the
direction of a principle, and without a secret habit which they have
acquired, and which some have imagined, by its quickness and facility, to
be an instinct. "Habit," says Reid, "differs from instinct, not in its
nature, but