as such, and with little or no extraneous tendency to the knowledge of particular departments of truth—is apt to leave uncultivated an order of sentiments which, in the best men, are always mingled with philosophical speculation. The motives of religion and duty, which find their highest appropriate stimulus in the department of truth which regards God and our relations to Him, ought not to be separated from a love for abstract truth. But, on the other hand, it is possible to speculate without any impulse from the conscience, and to find materials of science, among the objects of religious faith, which pervade the whole region of the higher philosophy, without forming the habit of converting the scientific knowledge into practice. An habitual employment, merely as the ministers of pure speculation, of those objects which, of all others, are most fitted to alter the character for good, is appropriately punished in the agonies of religious scepticism.
Another general characteristic of these Notes and Dissertations, hardly less remarkable than the one which has supplied a text for the observations contained in the preceding paragraphs, is the enormous accumulation of the materials of exact learning and historical research which they contain. Sir William Hamilton has long possessed a European reputation for extraordinary erudition. The evidences of his varied and accurate reading which his edition of Reid contains are not confined to one province of literature, although they are of course especially conspicuous in all that is in any way within the margin of the history of philosophy, and particularly of the
