t he was
practising a plan to annihilate an enemy's fleet. This proved to be that
discovery of breaking the line, which the happy audacity of the hero
afterwards executed. What situation is more common than a sea-voyage,
where nothing presents itself to the reflections of most men than irksome
observations on the desert of waters? But the constant exercise of the
mind by habitual practice is the privilege of a commanding genius, and, in
a similar situation, we discover CICERO and Sir WILLIAM JONES acting
alike. Amidst the Oriental seas, in a voyage of 12,000 miles, the mind of
JONES kindled with delightful enthusiasm, and he has perpetuated those
elevating feelings in his discourse to the Asiatic Society; so CICERO on
board a ship, sailing slowly along the coast, passing by a town where his
friend Trebatius resided, wrote a work which the other had expressed a
wish to possess, and of which wish the view of the town had reminded him.

[Footnote A: A collection of sixty-four of these sketches were published
at Paris in 1730. They are remarkable as delineations of mental character
in feature as strongly felt as if done under the direction of Larater
himself.--ED.]

To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing the first simple idea to
its remoter consequences, the philosophical genius owes many of its
discoveries. It was one evening in the cathedral of Pisa that GALILEO
observed the vibrations of a brass lustre pendent from the vaulted roof,
which had been left swinging by one of the vergers. The habitual
meditation of genius combined with an ordinary accident a new idea of
science, and hence conceived the invention of measuring time by the medium
of a pendulum. Who but a genius of this order, sitting in his orchard,
and observing the descent of an apple, could have discovered a new quality
in matter, and have ascertained the laws of attraction, by perceiving
that the same causes might perpetuate the regular motions of the planetary
system; who but a genius of this order, while viewing boys blowing
soap-bladders, could have discovered the properties of light and colours,
and then anatomised a ray? FRANKLIN, on board a ship, observing a partial
stillness in the waves when they threw down water which had been used for
culinary purposes, by the same principle of meditation was led to the
discovery of the wonderful property in oil of calming the agitated ocean;
and many a ship has been preserved in tempestuous weather, or