instrument of expression than a homogeneous one like the German.

We possess a wonder

ful richness and variety of modified meanings in our Saxon and Latin quasi-synonymes, which the Germans have not. For "the pomp and prodigality of Heaven," the Germans must have said "the spendthriftness.” * Shakspeare is particularly happy in his use of the Latin synonymes, and in distinguishing between them and the Saxon.

That is the most excellent state of society in which the patriotism of the citizen ennobles, but does not merge, the individual energy of the man.

* Verschwendung, I suppose.-ED.

September 1. 1832.

GREAT MINDS ANDROGYNOUS. PHILOSOPHER'S ORDINARY LANGUAGE.

IN chemistry and nosology, by extending the degree to a certain point, the constituent proportion may be destroyed, and a new kind produced.

I have known strong minds with imposing, undoubting, Cobbett-like manners, but I have never met a great mind of this sort. And of the former, they are at least as often wrong as right. The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous. Great minds Swedenborg's for instance-are never wrong but in consequence of being in the right, but imperfectly.

A philosopher's ordinary language and admissions, in general conversation or writings ad populum, are as his watch com

pared with his astronomical timepiece. He sets the former by the town-clock, not because he believes it right, but because his neighbours and his cook go by it.

January 2. 1833.

JURIES. - BARRISTERS' AND PHYSICIANS'

FEES. QUACKS. CESAREAN OPERA

TION. — INHERITED DISEASE.

I CERTAINLY think that juries would be more conscientious, if they were allowed a larger discretion. But, after all, juries cannot be better than the mass out of which they are taken. And if juries are not honest and single-minded, they are the worst, because the least responsible, instruments of judicial or popular tyranny.

I should be sorry to see the honorary character of the fees of barristers and physicians done away with. Though it seems a shadowy distinction, I believe it to be beneficial in

effect. It contributes to preserve the idea of a profession, of a class which belongs to the public, in the employment and remuneration of which no law interferes, but the citizen acts as he likes in foro conscientiæ.

There undoubtedly ought to be a declaratory act withdrawing expressly from the St. John Longs and other quacks the protection which the law is inclined to throw around the mistakes or miscarriages of the regularly educated practitioner.

I think there are only two things wanting to justify a surgeon in performing the Cæsarean operation: first, that he should possess infallible knowledge of his art; and, secondly, that he should be infallibly certain that he is infallible.

Can any thing be more dreadful than the thought that an innocent child has inherited from you a disease or a weakness, the penalty in yourself of sin or want of caution?

In the treatment of nervous cases, he is the best physician, who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

January 3. 1833.

MASON'S POETRY.

I CANNOT bring myself to think much of Mason's poetry. I may be wrong; but all those passages in the Caractacus, which we learn to admire at school, now seem to me one continued falsetto.

January 4. 1833.

NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION.-ALL AND THE WHOLE.

NATURALLY one would have thought that there would have been greater sympathy between the northern and north-western states of the American Union and England,