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of vague formulas, susceptible of almost any meaning, which occasion that dangerous collapse of the mind upon itself, that is often experienced after an intense effort of thinking with scanty materials about which to think. There seems to be an intellectual necessity that, in the present age of unscholastic and ill-disciplined philosophical taste, this remarkable addition to our literature shall slowly, if at all, find direct admission for its doctrines, possessing, as it does, a selection and arrangement of words unsurpassed among the books of the English language for precision and consistency—a formal clearness and distinctness of method—a singular incapacity to rest contented with a partial or isolated view of any great doctrine—a depth of thought and a refinement of distinction, the very apprehension of which implies the exercise of mental functions hardly ever in these times called into action, and a copiousness of pure argument unrelieved by those lighter graces and ornaments of fancy which are usually needed to seduce men to an exertion of the higher powers of mind. Even students of speculative science may confess the existence of a wish that, amid themes so ennobling and kindred with the most suitable objects of imaginative emotion, the metaphysician had given occasional vent, through the mass of subtle distinctions and profound principles, and the accumulation of passages extracted from his stores of unequalled reading, to the living copious eloquence of which such themes are susceptible, and in which the literature of philosophy supplies so many illustrious examples. The gorgeous imagery of Bacon has done much