BULLS. Novi ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando pulsari horam quartam audiverit, et sic numeravit, una, una, una, una; ac tum præ rei absurditate, quam anima concipiebat, exclamavit, Næ! delirat horologium! Quater pulsavit horam unam. I knew a person, who, during imperfect sleep, or dozing, as we say, listened to the clock as it was striking four, and as it struck, he counted the four, one, one, one, one; and then exclaimed, "Why, the clock is out of its wits; it has struck one four times over!" This is a good exemplification of the nature of Bulls, which will be found always to contain in them a confusion of what the schoolmen would have called-objectivity with subjectivity;-in plain English, the impression of a thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically, with the image which the mind abstracts from the impression. Thus, number, or the total of a series, is a generalization of the mind, an ens rationis not an ens reale. I have read many attempts at a definition of a Bull, and lately in the Edinburgh Review; but it then appeared to me that the definers had fallen into the same fault with Miss Edgeworth, in her delightful essay on Bulls, and given the definition of the genus, Blunder, for that of the particular species. I will venture, therefore, to propose the following: a Bull consists in a mental juxta-position of incongruous images or thoughts with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection. The psychological conditions of the possibility of a Bull, it would not be difficult to determine; but it would require a larger space than can be afforded here, at least more attention than my readers would be likely to afford. There is a sort of spurious Bull which consists wholly in mistake of language, and which the closest thinker may make, if speaking in a language of which he is not master. WISE IGNORANCE. It is impossible to become either an eminently great, or truly pious man, without the courage to remain ignorant of many things. This important truth is most happily expressed by the elder Scaliger in prose, and by the younger in verse; the latter extract has an additional claim from the exquisite terseness of its diction, and the purity of its Latinity. I particularly recommend its perusal to the commentators on the Apocalypse. Quare ulterior disquisitio morosi atque satagentis animi est; humanæ enim sapientiæ pars est, quædam æquo animo nescire velle. J. C. Scalig. Ex. 307. s. 29. Ne curiosus quære causas omnium, Josep. Scalig. ROUGE. TRIUMPHANT generals in Rome wore rouge. The ladies of France, and their fair sisters and imitators in Britain, conceive themselves always in the chair of triumph, and of course entitled to the same distinction. The custom originated, perhaps, in the humility of the conquerors, that they might seem to blush continually at their own praises. Mr. Gilpin frequently speaks of a " picturesque eye:" with something less of solecism, I may affirm that our fair ever blushing triumphants have secured to themselves the charm of picturesque cheeks, every face being its own portrait. Επεα πτερόεντα. HASTY WORDS. I CRAVE mercy (at least of my contemporaries: for if these Omniana should outlive the present generation, the opinion will not need it) but I could not help writing in the blank page of a very celebrated work* the following passage from Picus Mirandula : Movent mihi stomachum grammatistæ quidam, qui cum duas tenuerint vocabulorum origines, ita se ostentant, ita venditant, ita circumferunt jactabundi, ut præ ipsis pro nihilo habendos philosophos arbitrentur. Epist. ad Hermol. Barb. MOTIVES AND IMPULSES. It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of comparative indifference to determine what a man's motive may have been for this or that particular action. Rather seek to learn what his objects in general are. What does he habitually wish, habitually pursue? and thence deduce his impulses which are commonly the true efficient causes of men's conduct; and without which the motive itself would not have become a motive. Let a haunch of venison represent the motive, and the keen appetite of health, and exercise the impulse: then place the same or some more favourite dish before the same man, sick, dyspeptic, and stomach-worn, and we may then weigh the comparative influences of motives and impulses. Without the perception of this truth, it is impossible to understand the character of Iago, who is represented as now assigning one, and then another, and again a * Diversions of Purley. Ed. third motive for his conduct, all alike the mere fictions of his own restless nature, distempered by a keen sense of his intellectual superiority, and haunted by the love of exerting power on those especially who are his superiors in practical and moral excellence. Yet how many among our modern critics have attributed to the profound author this the appropriate inconsistency of the character itself. quon A second illustration:- Did Curio, the dam patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinion, and yell the foremost in the hunt of persecution against his old friends and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear predetermination, formed at one moment, of making £5000 a year by his apostacy?—I neither know nor care. Probably not. But this I know, that to be thought a man of consequence by his contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of his superiors in artificial rank, to excite the admiration of lords, to live in splendour and sensual luxury, have been the objects of his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning has turned at once the polarity of the compass needle: and so, perhaps, now and then, but as rarely, a violent motive may revolutionize a man's opinions and professions. But more frequently his honesty dies away imperceptibly from evening into twilight, and from twilight into utter darkness. He turns hypocrite so gradually, and by such tiny atoms of motion, that by the time he has arrived at a given point, |