my happily destroyed '_Prior of Marrick_.' * * * * * A crank boat needs ballast; and of happy fortune is it for a disposition towards natural levity, when educational gravity has helped to steady it.

Upon the vivacious, let the reflective supervene: to the gay, suffer in its season the addition of the serious.

Amongst other wholesome topics of meditation--for wholesome it is to the healthy spirit, although of some little danger to the presumptuous and inflated--the study of the sure word of Prophecy has more than once excited the writing propensity of your author's mind.

On most matters it has been my fate, rather from habits of incurable revery than from any want of opportunities, to think more than to read; and therefore it is, with very due diffidence, that as far as others and their judgments are concerned, I can ever hope to claim originality or novelty.

To my own conscience, however, these things are reversed; for contemplation has produced that as new to my own mind, which may be old to others deeper read, and has thought those ideas original, which are only so to its own fancy.